Argumentation Strategies and Linguistic Features of the Philippine Mining Policy: A Discourse Historical Analysis

Abstract

This study analyzes the argumentation strategies and linguistic features of the Philippine mining policy using Discourse Historical Approach and Gunnarsson’s (1984) theory on functional comprehensibility of legislative texts. Two intercoders validated the manual analysis, while UAM Corpus Tool, a linguistic tagging software, was used to identify the linguistic feature of the policy. Interviews with local legislators were also carried out to provide a holistic interpretation of the mining policies. Results reveal that the mining policy hinged on the topoi of duty, authority, and justice while its linguistic features reflect the conventions of legislative genre, heavily loaded with registers identifiable to members of a legalese community. Further, the policy generally contains action-directing orientation and the modal, shall, which are both indicative of the sense of urgency and accountability in the execution of duties and responsibilities. Results further indicate the salient role of the state in the environmental management and balanced use of resources of the country and in ensuring the protection of the rights of its citizens, particularly the marginalized ones.