APPRAISALS AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN “WE WILL NOT GO

DOWN” SONG LYRIC

Outline:

BACKGROUND:

Introduction

Purposes

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Appraisals

WE WILL NOT GO DOWN SONG

DISCOURSE ON LYRIC

METHODS
FINDING AND DISCUSSION

CONCLUSION
Introduction

In 2009, almost all people in the world gave their attention on the humanitarian tragedy in
Palestine (Gaza). Israel, Palestine’s neighbor country, had created some attacks to Gaza
Palestine. Many casualties from both parties could have been inevitable. There were many
bombings and almost a hundred of people dead each day. This Israeli invasion belonged to
one of the massive wars since the World War II had occurred. Many of leaders and other
countries gave their respects and caviled at what Israeli did. However, this endless conflict
which was started from their ancestors seemed never ended because the problem rises from
their beliefs. Thus the both countries were very difficult to stop their aggressions. Israeli
leaders seemed ignoring all the criticism addressed to them although most of casualties were
from civilians and children.

The news of Israeli’s aggressions spread very quickly to all Medias over the world. It gained
sympathies from volunteers to come and help them. Most of them gave the food supplies,
medicines, secondary clothes, and etc. However, for some authors, composers, or artists, they
embodied their respects by writing on the Medias or composing a song to express their
sympathy. The last attempt, composing a song, is one of some powerful ways to express one’s
solidarity to Palestine. Of course, everybody never forgets a very famous song entitled “We
will not Go Down” which is played when the humanitarian tragedy is broadcasted on
televisions. The song is written by a European and American composer named Michael hearts
to condemn the aggressions. This slow-bit song has a power to describe the Palestinians’
suffer and pain that time. Some of people may not know how the song actually negotiates the
social relationship and tells the listeners how the composer feels about the humanitarian
tragedy in Gaza. Therefore I use the critical discourse analysis to examine the song which
describes the social inequality of the humanitarian tragedy. However, in this article, I limit
my analysis on the system of interpersonal meaning or called appraisal to evaluate what
happened, the people’s character and their feeling (Fairclough, 1989) (Martin & Rose, 2003:
22).

The previous studies of discourse analysis on song have been conducted by some researchers.
Abrahamsson (2011) was examining the gender roles of in pop lyrics of Lady Gaga’s album.
She analyzed the roles and the interests of listening to her music. Another research is done by
Thompson (2002) who did the Critical Discourse Analysis tools of ideology, discourse and
binary opposition to demonstrate how world music is constructed in music education. The
analysis reveals an ideology of difference underpinning a number of binary oppositions
constructed between world music and European music in relation to their surrounding
cultures, musical functions, pedagogies and placements in the curriculum. Different analysis
also used by Nhamdi O. Madichie (2011), he studied paper seeks to highlight hip-hop's
contribution to the entrepreneurship and place marketing literature. Some of the researches
reveal the discourse analysis related to Gender, Education, and marketing. The finding and
the result of the studies show that there is a discursive situation between the text and the
context.

However the existing researches do not reveal or describe the negotiating attitudes of the
composer in writing the lyrics dealing with the world situation. Therefore, this research is
undertaken to find out: 1) How the song writer negotiates his attitudes toward the situation by
analyzing the affect, judgment, and appreciation? 2) How is the social relation among the
participants realized in discourse? 3) How is the context of the situation realized by
discourse? 4) How is the power relation in the discourse?

The objectives of the study is; to know the song writer’s negotiating attitudes toward the
situation, to find out the social relations among the participants, to interpret the context of
situation, and to describe the power relation realized on the lyrics.

Gaza Song - We will not Go Down

During the war in Gaza, Michael Heart wrote a humanitarian song entitled “We will not Go
Gown (Song for Gaza)” in January 2009. It is written in order to support of the Palestinians
victims from the Israeli Aggression. The song was very well-known in all over the world
because it is spread as a free MP3 which means it can be downloaded without any charge. It
has been downloaded by over half a million people from the official websites and not yet
counted from other websites. More than 500 new clips have been made with "We Will Not
Go Down" by people all over the world, and thousands of websites have uploaded the clip
and posted the lyrics. As the first release, the official video on YouTube has viewed by over
one million people within the first month. And the appreciations of the song are very high
since the statistic shows that over 10,000 e-mails, comments, and messages are sent to
respond this song. In addition, the song has also been translated into a dozen languages and
subtitled on numerous clips.
Michael Heart, the composer of Gaza song, is Syrian American singer-songwriter, recording
artist, guitarist and audio engineer based in Los Angeles, CA. He was born in Syria and raised
in Europe (Switzerland and Austria) and the United States. He has released many singles, but
the Gaza song is a very phenomenal hit which makes his name famous internationally.

Besides his popularity achieved from the song, he also received some critiques. The first, of
course, comes from the Israeli politician because they would get the disadvantages from it.
Besides that, many people also claimed that Heart is a follower of any particular religion.
Therefore, to encounter that, Heart explained that the song has nothing to do with religion. It
is only a humanitarian song in nature. Based on the above explanation, it can be drawn to the
conclusion that how phenomenal this song so it can gain many respects, responds, or claims
from many people around the world.

However, the statistic of how famous the song is only the explicit power that the lyric posses.
Certainly, there is a power which lies behind the text or beyond the lyric composed by Heart.
Here is the lyric which is discussed in this study:

WE WILL NOT GO DOWN (Song for Gaza)

Length: 3 minutes 12 seconds

A blinding flash of white light

Lit up the sky over Gaza tonight
People running for cover
Not knowing whether they’re dead or alive

They came with their tanks and their planes

With ravaging fiery flames
And nothing remains
Just a voice rising up in the smoky haze

We will not go down

In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

Women and children alike

Murdered and massacred night after night
While the so-called leaders of countries afar
Debated on who’s wrong or right

But their powerless words were in vain

And the bombs fell down like acid rain
But through the tears and the blood and the pain
You can still hear that voice through the smoky haze

We will not go down

In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

(Composed by Michael Heart)

Copyright 2009

Appraisal

In interpreting social discourse, the term appraisal comes first as a discourse analysis. It
evaluates the text by using a system of interpersonal meanings. Martin & Rose (2003: 22)
state that “we use the resources of Appraisal for negotiating our social relationships, by
telling our listeners or readers how we feel about things and people (in a word, what our
attitudes are).” Here attitudes have to do with evaluating things, people’s character and their
feelings. There are three basic options for appraisal. They are attitudes, amplification, and
source. However as stated in introduction, this study limits the scope its object by analyzing
the attitudes of the song composer only.

Martin and Rose (2003: 25) classify three kinds of attitudes as follows;

1) Expressing of feelings (affect)

Affect is the way we explore how people express their feelings in discourse. There are
two general ways in affect. Firstly, affect can be positive or negative. Positive indicates
people have good feelings; meanwhile negative has to do with the bad feelings. Secondly,
affect can be expressed directly or implied since people can express their feeling directly,
or sometimes they do it indirectly from their behavior. Table below can explain further.
The example is taken from Helena’s story:
 We were ecstatic.
Positive
We even celebrated.
I was torn to pieces.
Negative
I can’t explain the pain and bitterness in me.
Ecstatic
Emotional state
Wild consuming fear
Direct
Withdrawn
Physical expression
Shake uncontrollably
Wander from window to window
Extraordinary behavior
Rolls this way, that side of the bed
Implicit
Ice cold in a sweltering right
Metaphor
Eyes… dull like the bed
Table 1

2) Judging people’s character

In line with affect, judgements of people’s character can be positive or negative, and they
may be judged explicitly or implicitly. However, judgements differ between personal
judgements of admiration or criticism and moral judgements of praise or condemnation.
The table below is the brief explanation and example of character’s judgement from
Helena’s story.

direct Implied
Bubbly, vivacious, energetic, He was working in a top
Admire
intelligent, popular security structure.
Personal What’s wrong with him?
I can’t explain the pain and
Criticize … I can’t handle the man
bitterness in me when I saw…
anymore!
Their leaders have the guts to I envy and respect the people
Praise
stand by their vultures… of the struggle…
… ‘those at the top’ were
Moral
Our leaders are too holy and again targeting the next
condemn
innocent. And faceless. ‘permanent removal from
society’ …
Table 2

3) Appreciating things

Appreciating things have to do with the ‘things’ or we can assume that how people feel
about people and the way they behave. In other words, how are our attitudes about
‘things’ such as about TV shows, films, books, CDs; about paintings, sculptures; about
plays, parades; or feelings about the nature for that matter. As with affect and judgement,
things can be appreciated positively or negatively. To make it clearer, see the examples
below:
 Positive A beautiful relationship
A very serious issue
Healing of breaches
Redressing of imbalances
Restoration of broken relationships
Negative My unsuccessful marriage
A frivolous question
Broken relationships
The community he or she has injured
Table 3

Critical Discourse Analysis

In creating a text, people always consider the context. Texts can have different meaning if
they are placed in the different contexts. Therefore, discourse analysis is undertaken by
researches to examine the relationship between them. There something is questioning is what
critical discourse analysis (CDA) actually. Here Dijk (1998) states that:

“Critical Discourse is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily

studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted,
reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context.
With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position,
and thus want to understand, expose, and ultimately resist social inequality.
(Dijk, 1998: 352)”
As stated above, it is clear that critical discourse deals with the analytic research and
examines text in the social and political context. This analysis is in line in this thesis
because the humanitarian tragedy of Gaza involves both the political and social context
although the last context is much influencing to the lyrics. Moreover by conducting CDA,
text can be taken into an explicit position to draw the social inequality such as what lies
beyond the composing the song or what the composer feels.

CDA is not merely an approach in discourse studies, but it can also offer a different
"mode" or "perspective" of theorizing, analysis, and application throughout the whole
field. In discourse, we can observe a different perspective or even deeper understanding
than other areas such as pragmatics, conversation analysis, narrative analysis, rhetoric,
stylistics, sociolinguistics, ethnography, or media analysis, among others.

Furthermore, there are three inter-related processes of analysis tied to three inter-related
dimensions of discourse proposed by Faiclough’s (1989) model of CDA. They are (1) the
object of analysis (including verbal, visual or verbal and visual texts), (2) The processes by
means of which the object is produced and received (writing/speaking/designing and
reading/listening/viewing) by human subjects, (3) the socio-historical conditions governing
these processes.

In analyzing the three dimensions stated above, we require different kinds of analysis. The
first stage is text analysis (description), the second stage is processing analysis
(interpretation), and the last stage is social analysis (explanation). By following these stages,
we can get what accompanies the text throughout the whole field.

In addition, Dijk (1998) suggests in some requirements which should be fulfilled in

conducting CDA satisfactorily. (1) As is often the case for more marginal research traditions,
CDA research has to be "better" than other research in order to be accepted. (2) It focuses
primarily on, social problems and political issues, rather than on current paradigms and
fashions. (3) Empirically adequate critical analysis of social problems is usually
multidisciplinary. (4) Rather than merely describe discourse structures, it tries to explain them
in terms of properties of social interaction and especially social structure. (5) More
specifically, CDA focuses on the ways discourse structures enact, confirm, legitimate,
reproduce, or challenge relations of power and dominance in society.

In the term of discourse analysis and CDA, they are very different in the process,
perspective, focus, and result. Discourse analysis (DA) usually focuses on the text
analysis in a simpler way than CDA. DA cannot cover what CDA investigates because
CDA deals with the social problem which varies and should be conducted by exploring
all the aspects and fields which influence and take part on the text.

Methods

In examining the song, I use the three inter-related processes of analysis tied to three
inter-related dimensions of discourse proposed by Faiclough’s model of CDA. Thus, I
have done the stages as follows; the first action is the stage of analyzing text
(description), the second is the stage of processing analysis (interpretation), and the third
is the stage of social analysis (explanation).

The analysis starts by analyzing the text based on kinds of attitudes. Then it observes the
social relation among the participants realized in discourse, the context of the situation
realized by discourse, and the power relation in the discourse. In examining ‘We will not
Go Down’ lyric, I use Martin and Rose theories on appraisals, Fairclough, and Van Dijk.
Their theories on discourse analysis and CDA are very much sufficient to analysis such
lyric and formulate the findings. Besides, I also try to describe the situations and
conditions when the song is famously booming on the world. Thus I include some other
sources to support them.
Thompson, Cathy. 2002. A Critical Discourse Analysis of World Music as the `Other' in
Education. Research Music and education Journal. Vol. 19 no. 1 14-21. Available
online at http://rsm.sagepub.com/content/19/1/14.abstract. Accessed on 24 June 2012.

Wikipedia. 2012. Michael Heart. Available online at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Heart. Accessed on 24 June 2012.

Michael Hearth. 2009. Song for Gaza. Available online at

http://www.michaelheart.com/songforgaza.htm. Accessed on 24 June 2012.

Abrahamsson, Birgitta. 2011. Gender Roles in Pop Lyrics a discourse analysis of the lyrics of
Lady Gaga. Available online at
https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/26155/1/gupea_2077_26155_1.pdf. Accessed
on 24 June 2012.

Nnamdi O. Madichie. 2011. Marketing Senegal through hip-hop – a discourse analysis of

Akon's music and lyrics. Journal of Place Management and Development. Vol. 4 Iss:
2, pp.169 – 197.