Germana DAcquisto

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Germana DAcquisto Cristina Pennarola

• Diplomacy on the web A Linguistic analysis of
  the UN Millennium Development Goals

Genres on the Move. Hybridization and Discourse
Change in Specialized Communication University of
Naples Federico II 9-11 December 2009
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Investing in Development brings together the core
recommendations of the UN Millennium Project. By
outlining practical investment strategies and
approaches to financing them, the report presents
an operational framework that will allow even the
poorest countries to achieve the Millennium
Development Goals by 2015.
OXFORD Business Series
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The Millennium Project was commissioned by the
United Nations Secretary-General in 2002 to
develop a concrete action plan for the world to
achieve the Millennium Development Goals and to
reverse the grinding poverty, hunger and disease
affecting billions of people. In 2005, the
independent advisory body headed by Professor
Jeffrey Sachs, presented its final
recommendations to the Secretary-General in a
synthesis volume Investing in Development A
Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium
Development Goals.
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MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

• 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• 2. Achieve universal primary education
• 3. Promote gender equality and empower women
• 4. Reduce child mortality
• 5. Improve maternal health
• 6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
• 7. Ensure environmental sustainability
• 8. Develop a global partnership for development

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AIMS

• Examine the hypertextual evolution of the genre
  of the UN report
• Analyse the way in which the UN official
  documents on the Millennium Development Goals are
  mediated on the UN website

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METHOD

• Qualitative and quantitative analysis
• Features investigated
• Textual organization
• Visuals
• Register
• Pronouns
• Modal verbs

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MATERIALS

• K. Annan, 2000, We the peoples. The role of the
  UN in the 21st century www.un.org/millennium/sg/re
  port/
• UN The Millennium Development Goals Report 2008
• www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/The20Millennium2
  0Development20Goals20Report202008.pdf
• UN 2008 Committing to action Achieving the MDGs
  www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2008highlevel/pdf/commi
  ting.pdf
• UN 2007 Student voices against poverty. The
  Millennium Campaign Curriculum Project
• www.un.org/works/Lesson_Plans/MDGs/MDG_Curriculum
  _US.pdf
• MDGs webpages
• MDGs briefing papers

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CRITICAL FRAMEWORK

• Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 2003, 2006)
• Genre Analysis (Bhatia 1993, 2004)
• Digital genre analysis (Askehave, Nielsen 2005
  Kwasnik, Crowston 2005 Medina et al. 2005
  Santini 2007)
• Multimodal Discourse Analysis (Brugger 2009
  Garzone et al. 2007 Lemke 1999)
• Diplomatic discourse (Bellier 2005 Donahue,
  Prosser 2007 Gregory 2008 Kurbalija Slavik
  2001)

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OUTLINE

• Analysis of the genre of the UN report and its
  hypertextual variant
• Analysis of the Millennium Project campaign on
  the UN website

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Background readings (1)

• Communication with other cultures has always
  been central to diplomacy. The essence of the
  diplomats work lies in the relations between
  countries and peoples. Important decisions in
  international relations and related fields affect
  citizens of more than one nation, therefore the
  question of whether communication between people
  of different nations is effective and whether all
  parties emerge with the same understanding is of
  crucial importance.

(http//www.diplomacy.edu/Conferences/LD1/default.
htm)
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THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS REPORT

• A self-legitimating discourse
• a kind of shop window of international
  organizations, their own representation of their
  discourses to the outside world
• (Maingueneau 2002 119- 132 Rist 2002)

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The UN REPORT

• S(PR)E structure
• Situation
• Problem
• Response
• Evaluation
• Langue de bois i.e. formulaic style (the
  rhetoric of the challenge and development)
• Absence of interactional markers
• Double readership experts and lay people
• (cf. Bellier 2005 Donahue, Prosser 2007
  Maingueneau 2002 Rist 2002)

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The UN Millennium Report held together by
purpose all parts of the document were prepared
for a particular meeting, activity, or
initiative.
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No linear access to information. It is divided
according to a hierarchical structure based on
the following four agendas 1) development
2)security 3)environment 4)reforms
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(No Transcript)
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THE UN MUST BE OPENED UP
UN General Assemby 2000 A/54/2000
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Impact of slogans
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A BRIEFING PAPER
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SUCCESS STORIES
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HUMAN INTEREST STORIES
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THINK. KNOW. ACT.
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WHY YOU? You might think that achieving all of
the Goals by 2015 is the responsibility of
politicians, and that there is little you can do
to help. Nothing could be further from the truth.
To achieve the goals, the world need everyone
young people, aids activists, religious leaders,
environmentalists, unions, civil society
organizations, and women's rights activists -
everyone concerned about our future - to work
together and make sure the goals become a
reality.
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What can YOU do?
More and more, young people are asking me this
encouraging question What can I do to make
things better? My advice is always start by
learning and looking around you. Get to know
people whose lives are different from yours. Find
out what you have in common with them. Build
bridges of understanding with them.
"If something has not been done before, it does
not mean it can't be done it only means you
could be the first to do it."
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WHERE DO I FIT IN ?
We need a grand alliance of young people, AIDS
activists, women activists, health workers,
environmentalists, teachers, unions, civil
society organisations, and labour unions
everyone who is concerned
THE GOALS WONT BE MET WITHOUT YOUR VOICE!
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Hypertexts in diplomacy

• Present information in multiple layers
• Make vast amounts of information manageable
• Include transtextual references
• (Kurbalija 2001)

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Pre-text (negotiation phase)

• International legal documents are the result of
  long negotiations, proposals and
  counter-proposals, and the interplay between
  actors. Each agreement is negotiated within a
  specific social, political and technological
  context if that context changes, the application
  of norms changes as well.
• (Kurbaljia 2001)

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Post-text

• Once adopted, a text has life of its own. In the
  case of international legal documents, the
  post-text steps include ratification and
  implementation. Even with the most precise and
  carefully negotiated formulations, application in
  real life brings new implications and sheds new
  light on existing texts.
• (Kurbaljia 2001)

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Criteria for Analysis of Hypertext Accessibility

• Treaties, agreements, conventions, reports of
  international conferences, and other diplomatic
  documents are usually long texts fragmented into
  smaller, self-contained segments, modules or
  articles.
• (Kurbaljia 2001)

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Documents should be transtextual.

• Transtextuality is a strong characteristic of
  diplomatic documents, which include a complex and
  visible net of references to other documents,
  conventions, reports, and texts.
• (Kurbaljia 2001)

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• In the Millennium Declaration, world leaders
  were confident that humanity could, in the years
  ahead, make measurable progress towards peace,
  security, disarmament, human rights, democracy
  and good governance.
• Millennium Report
• The new millennium, and the Millennium Summit,
  offer the worlds peoples a unique occasion to
  reflect on their common destiny, at a moment when
  they find themselves interconnected as never
  before. 
• Briefing papers

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MODALS
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PERSONAL PRONOUNS
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WE INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE

• We need to remind ourselves why the United
  Nations exists - for what, and for whom.
• At the national level we must govern better,
  and at the international level we must learn to
  govern better together. We the peoples. The role
  of the UN in the 21 century
• What are we doing to our planet? Briefing
  Paper Climate change

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CONCLUSIONS

• Evolution of the genre of the international
  report in a hypertextual format
• UN institutional communication on the web at the
  interface of promotional educational
  discourses
• Dialogism, interactivity and the pedagogy of
  positiveness (Gomez de Matos 2005)

Think of the language you use as a
peace-building, peace-making, peace-promoting
force
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• Bellier I. 2005 Anthropology of institutions and
  discourse analysis, R. Wodak, P.A. Chilton eds. A
  new agenda in (critical) discourse analysis,
  Benjamins, 243-265 
• Bhatia V. K. 1993. Analysing Genre. Language Use
  in Professional Settings. London Longman.
• Bhatia V.K. 2004. Worlds of Written Discourse A
  Genre-based View. London Continuum.
• Donahue T., M. H. Prosser. 1997, Diplomatic
  discourse international conflict at the United
  Nations Ray Greenwood Publishing
• Fairclough N. 2003 Analysing Discourse. Textual
  Analysis for Social Research. London Routledge.
• Fairclough N. 2006. Language and Globalization.
  London Routledge.
• Garzone G., Poncini G., Catenaccio P. (eds.)
  2007. Multimodality in corporate Communication.
  Web genres and discursive identity. Milano
  FrancoAngeli.
• Gomes de Matos F. 2001 Applying the pedagogy of
  positiveness to Diplomatic Communication,
  Language and Diplomacy. Malta DiploProjects.
• Gregory B. 2008. Public Diplomacy Sunrise of an
  Academic Field, The Annals of the American
  Academy of Political and Social Science, 616,
  274-290.
• Kurbalija J. 2001 Hypertext in Diplomacy,
  Language and Diplomacy. Malta DiploProjects.
• Maingueneau D. 2002 Les rapports des
  organizations internationales un discours
  constituant?, G. Rist ed. Les mots du pouvoir.
  Paris PUF, 119-143.