Discourse analysis on the city ordinances of Tagum City

Abstract

This study entitled DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON THE CITY ORDINANCES OF TAGUM CITY describes and analyzes the stance markers, lexico-grammatical patterns of verbs, and semantics of verbs in the city ordinances. The method of analysis of this descriptive-qualitative study is based on the frameworks of the elements of stance by Hyland (2005), sub-categories of verb groups by Burton-Roberts (1994), and classification of verbal prototypes by Dixon and Aikhenvald (2004) employing Wetherell et al.'s (2001) four approaches to discourse analysis. This study analyzed five (5) randomly selected city ordinances of Tagum City from 2000 to 2017 with topics focusing on health, women, children, gender, and family. Based on the analyses of data, the findings revealed that in the city ordinances’ (a) boosters are used to express persuasion; (b) complex transitive verb groups are used to provide justification or support to the provisions; (c) affective verbs are used to express commitment and responsibility; and (d) stance markers, lexico-grammatical patterns of verbs and semantics of verbs contribute to the overall meaning and understanding in the city ordinances and helped in the easy understanding of the local law. The results of this study are found to have implications concerning the students, language teachers, government officials, and future researchers.