WOMEN’S RIGHT, A CALL FOR LIFE: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PRES. DONALD TRUMP’S SPEECH FOR THE 2020 MARCH FOR LIFE

Political ideologies and power are shaped by politicians’ manipulation of linguistic features that appeared in their public discourses. Employing transitivity system, this study investigated President Donald Trump’s speech during the 2020 “March for Life” to identify the transitivity processes and to determine how these processes are assimilated in the said discourse. Findings revealed that 126 transitivity processes are dominantly material, relational, and mental. Being the first US president who graced this event, material processes constructed a self-statement of initiatives and efforts in preserving human life and his attack on his political nemesis as threats to the preservation of the value and dignity of life. Relational processes have constructed life-protection ideas by valuing the significance of the children and the unborn. Trump’s feelings toward the dignity of life are shaped by mental processes by his direct association to the public as among the advocates of human life. Ironically, transitivity processes have shown minimal involvement of women in his speech, contrary to the theme. Data prove that language employed in a public discourse builds power and ideologies that serve as the human framework to understand the mind of the speaker.


INTRODUCTION
Language in itself is power as it works powerfully in constructing the reality (Goddard & Carey, 2017). Indeed, its capacity produced, distributed and consumed … in particular sociocultural context" (Fairclough, 1995, cited in Jeffries, 2007. Additionally, CDA has its role in looking at how language and society work together because language powerfully produces social disparity, prejudice, and hegemony. With that merit, CDA is helpful in developing awareness toward the "power of linguistic constructivism" and how it brings impact or change to society (Norgaard, Montoro & Busse, 2010, p. 69). Unifying the discussion, CDA possesses significant "concepts of power, history, and ideology" (Wodak (2002, cited in Jeffries, 2007 because any discourse is not just about social activities, but on top of that is the showcase of power (Jäger & Maier, 2016).
Even though CDA does not belong to any "particular school of thought" (Wodak, & Meyer, 2001, cited in Norgaard, Montoro & Busse, 2010, it is claimed that Systemic Functional Grammar (S.F.G.) of Halliday is apposite to CDA because of S.F.G.'s "orientation toward context, that is situational, generic and ideological", which appears through its three major approaches: the textual, interpersonal and ideational that is helpful for CDA considerable grammatical features to achieve the purpose, that is to analyze the discourse ideologically (van Leeuwen, 2006, cited in Norgaard, Montoro & Busse, 2010. Among the critically analyzed speeches, the president or head of state's speeches become the favorite since the voice of the president is considered the voice of his constituents; hence, whatever philosophy, ideology, or belief being presented publicly become the framework of the entire nation (Kondowe, 2014b). Similarly, the president's voice becomes significant in the formulation of the government policy as his discourse linguistically or non-linguistically varies that reveal his persona and his intentions to his people (Akinseye, 2015).
For instance, the speech of Queen Elizabeth during the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, used a passionate appeal to the public, which helps establish calmness in the midst of people's fury (Rotaru, 2010). In President Muhammadu Buhari's inaugural speech, it appeared to be more informative than persuasive contrary to the speeches delivered during the campaign period. Generally, his speech focused on praising the electorate system, presenting his ideological plans and promising his people on the new initiatives of his government which include the preservation of democracy, stronger foreign policies, improvement of power and economic section among others; these also included his restrained attack to their previous administration (Sharndama, 2015).
In the study conducted by Horváth (n.d), the inaugural speech of President Barack Obama, which used Fairclough's ideological framework, has expectedly discussed the administration of President George W. Bush highly. Generally, the analysis produced the following themes: "pragmatism, liberalism, inclusiveness, acceptance of religious and ethnic diversity and unity" (p. 55). Another significant result of the study is the inclusive idea of Obama in entire America, which could highly be supported by solidarity and harmony in the midst of the different national threats, including societal multiplicity. He also noted the very significant contribution of America's past, which could be beneficial in addressing "the global financial crisis and the threat of global terrorism" (p. 55).
In Remorosa's (2018) CDA of political speech of Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, it is highly noted that the president's speeches highly observe transitivity and passivity as dominant linguistic features. Accordingly, the use of more construction and shift of passive than the active form which could influence the impact of the agency to shape "world of various responsibilities, and power". Such a move could also be responsible for a "complete shift of understanding of the reader" (Eggins, 1994;Wodak andMeyer, 2001, cited in Remorosa, 2018, p. 75).
While a number of studies were conducted using CDA as both theoretical frame and method, it is always interesting that speeches of any politician especially the head of state or a president be critically analyzed to further look at their ideological stance in either international, national or local issues that will serve as a chassis of people's understanding to his leadership and his policies. While it is true, it is even more interesting to study politician's public discourse in an event whose primary objective is to promote and uplift the value of life and the rights of women and children, especially if the speaker is known to have a sexist ideological stance. For instance, the study of Darweesh and Abdullah (2016) pointed out that Trump has a "long history of sexist, disparaging and discourteous comments about women" which is evident in his excessive use of "negative lexicalization, insults, and metaphors" (p. 95).
With that consideration, this present study aimed to investigate the political discourse of US President Donald Trump's speech for 2020 "March for Life". Specifically, it sought to:

identify the transitivity processes evident in President Donald
Trump's 2020 March for Life speech; and 2. determine how these transitivity processes are assimilated in President Donald Trump's speech.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This present study is anchored to Halliday's (1985) transitivity system in order to respond to the problems indicated. In Systemic Functional Grammar, transitivity pertains to the principal idea, which is used in providing ideational meaning to represent the "person's experiences and personality in relation to society" (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004, cited in Salayo & Macam, 2019). This representation is seen through participants (nominal), processes (verbals) and circumstances (adverbials) (Halliday, 1994, cited in Norgaard, Montoro & Busse, 2010. In order to describe the participant's experiential world, six different processes were classified: (a) Material. It is a process of doing which pertains to any physical or abstract action done by an actor or the doer to deliver something in a situation in achieving a goal. (b) Relational. It is a process of being as it describes the condition or status of or attributes the quality of the carrier. This process is in the form of the verb "to be" (am, is, are) or those which as semantically related to "be" (look, appear, sound). (c) Mental. It is a process of sensing, thinking, feeling, and perceiving done by a human or non-human participant that serves as a senser while the phenomenon is that being perceived, sensed, thought, or felt. (d) Behavioural. It is a process of behaving or expressing an involuntary human reaction where participant acts automatically like breathing, smiling, yawning, crying, etc. The participant is called behaver. (e) Verbal. It is a process of communicating a message to its target recipient. The participant is called a senser while the message is the verbiage. (f) Existential. It is a clause of existing introduced by there indicating that someone or something exists (Bustam, 2011;Toolan, 2010). The summary of these transitivity processes, including their meaning and the participants are shown in Table 1.

METHOD
A mixed-method design was applied in this study to address the stated problems where a descriptive qualitative approach was mainly used through the transitivity processes of President Donald Trump during the 2020 March for Life. Accordingly, qualitative research is developed using particular descriptions and constructs of a social phenomenon to understand different occurrences further, condition and interaction (Creswell, 2014;Locke, Spirduso, & Silverman, 1987;Miles & Hubernman, 1984, cited in Creswell, 2014. On the other hand, a quantitative approach is used to determine both the frequency and percentage of transitivity processes used by the speaker. The speech of President Donald Trump was just recently delivered during the celebration of 2020 March for Life at the National Mall in Washington DC, the USA on January 24, 2020. The speech, which is titled "Remarks by President Trump at the 47 th Annual March for Life," was released officially on that same day (United States of America, White House, 2020). President Donald Trump is the first US President who graced the event since the beginning of this kind of humanitarian gathering.
March for Life in Washington, DC is a yearly demonstration showing how Americans oppose the legality of abortion. It is celebrated during the anniversary of the decision of the US Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion across US states. This year's celebration, has its theme, "Life Empowers: Pro-Life is Pro-Women." Accordingly, this is the world's biggest gathering that centers on human rights and life in general. Hence, this peaceful and inspiring celebration of life is emphasized from the moment of conception. Participated by men, women, young and children across the USA., March for Life, as an organization, has this mission and vision indicated in their website (March for Life, 2020):

Mission:
We promote the beauty and dignity of every human life by working to end abortion-uniting, educating, and mobilizing pro-life people in the public square.

Vision:
We march because we envision a future world where the beauty and dignity of every human life are valued and protected.
After acquiring a copy of the study corpus, the researcher watched the video of the event, "March for Life," to check the authenticity of the paper. The researcher proceeded to segment and identified the data into clauses. Analysis of the clauses was done by using Halliday's and Halliday and Matthiessen's transitivity system, specifically focusing on the ideational metafunction which is classified into six (6) transitivity processes, such as material, relational, mental, verbal, behavioural and existential. Coding of these processes, including the participant's roles such as actor, senser, carrier, behaver, sayer goal, phenomenon, attribute, beneficiary and existent, was manually done through MsWord but the tallying of transitivity processes was done by using MsExcel spreadsheet. Results show that there is a total of 126 transitivity process from a total of 90 clauses. The distribution of the transitivity processes was done through frequency and percentage. This was validated by an expert validator in linguistics and language studies.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Transitivity processes are shown in the following discussion as proof that US President Donald Trump's message in relation to the celebration of women and life is successfully created by the identified processes (see Table 2). The analyzed speech has a total of 126 transitivity processes, where the material process has the highest frequency of 51 (40.48%). This is followed by relational and mental processes. Both have a frequency of 27 (21.43%). Next is the verbal process with 20 or 15.87%, while the existential process has only 1 or 0.79%. Similar to a number of critical discourse analyses of public discourses that show a high percentage of material processes, the result proves that President Donald Trump has actively initiated programs and policies involving the preservation of human life and dignity. Similarly, he also showed direct relation to the common people who consider themselves as advocates of life by describing their worth in bringing life. Discussions below specifically show how each transitivity process shaped the ideologies of the speaker as head of the nation. Likewise, these processes also showed their support in building key patterns in relation to the theme of the celebration when the speech was delivered.

Material Process
The material process refers to the "clauses of doing and happening" which are executed by an actor who serves as the doer of the process and the goal which serves as the object of the process (Ezzina, 2015, p. 287). In this text, this process has a frequency of 51 or 40.48%. Among the verbs used under this process include: send, have taken, reinstated, expanded, issued, notified, would veto, made, are stopping, are preserving, have confirmed, are protecting, will defend, will set, is celebrating, are using, uplifts, provide, host, changes, brings, hold, must uphold, pay, supports, blocked, must protect, defend Similar to Trump's dominant use of material processes, late Philippine Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago also utilized material process dominantly in the analysed speeches that show power as a means of persuading her listeners (Balog, 2019). Alvi and Baseer's (2011) paper also proves that Obama's speeches preferred material processes in order to encourage or persuade his audience; indeed, the effectiveness of these processes has been shown during his victory in the American presidential elections on 2008; it also demonstrated the achievement of his administration including the present and the future undertakings and policies to further gain the support of American citizens (Wang, 2010).
Interestingly, material processes work successfully in demonstrating diversities in Pakistan; in return, the listeners developed confidence toward the speaker (Munawar, 2016).
Notably, material processes show several key constructs that highlight President Donald Trump's speech. Primary to that is his expression of human life as an indicator of world's beauty especially the children's: "one life (actor)

changes (material) the world (goal), "every life (actor) brings (material) love (goal) into this world," and every child (actor) brings (material) joy (goal) to a family."
However, Trump's appreciation of life is outstripped by sanctimonious character through excessive expressions of his initiatives in preserving and protecting the value of life. Through the material processes used, the speaker strongly built power as head of a nation in doing what he wished to provide prolific programs and legal actions that solidify his decisions and moves. These are manifested through the following:

(1) … I (actor)'ve taken (material) a historic action (goal) to support America's families and to protect the unborn. (2) I (actor) notified (material) Congress (goal) that I (actor) would veto (material) any legislation (goal) that weakens pro-life policies or that encourages the destruction of human life. (3) …I (actor) reinstated (material) and expanded (material) the Mexico City Policy (goal), and we (actor) issued (material) a landmark pro-life rule (goal) to govern the use of Title X taxpayer funding. (4) …I (actor) made (material) clear that global bureaucrats have no business attacking the sovereignty of nations that protect innocent life.
These boasted efforts to further construct his pro-life image is extended to his respect to religious freedom, human dignity and rights, especially that of the children's and truth and his tenets in relation to the mentioned values as he effusively expressed especially when he said, "We (actor) have taken (material) decisive action (goal) to protect the religious liberty -so important." The following further show how he involves himself in life-building:

(1) We (actor) are preserving (material) faith-based adoption (goal). (2) We (actor) are protecting (material) pro-life students' right (goal) to free speech on college campuses. (3) … we (actor) must protect (material), cherish (material), and defend (material) the dignity and sanctity of every human life (goal). (4) … we (actor) will defend (material) this truth (goal) all across our magnificent land. (5) But we (actor) are stopping (material) it (goal), and we (actor)'re taking care (material) of doctors, nurses, teachers, and groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor. (6) We (actor) will set free (material) the dreams of our people (goal).
Trump has successfully connected himself to the Americans through the event. He directly stated the contribution of ordinary people especially the extraordinary American women "who are using (material) the power of their votes (goal) to fight for the right, and all of their rights, as given in the Declaration of Independence". Praises to the women were also intensified when he stated that their "devotion and your leadership (actor) uplifts (material) our entire nation (goal)" for which he was grateful but not as frequent as his self-proclamation of effort toward the cause. The following were mentioned as the role of women in building a strong community of life that gives every American reasons to celebrate these numbers of great deeds.
However, these appear minimally versus his self-acclaimed statement to his role as protector of life. Having few statements about women simply lessen the impact of this year's theme in giving much respect to them as co-creator of life: provide (material) housing, education,

jobs, and medical care to the women (goal) that you serve, host (material) baby showers (goal) for expecting moms and make (material) -you (actor) just make (material) it (goal) your life's mission to help spread God's grace.
This event was also a perfect day to celebrate Trump's attack on his political nemesis as he expressed the following: (1) … then they (actor) must uphold (material) your First Amendment right (goal) to speak your mind. (2) … they (actor) pay (material) a very big financial penalty (goal), which they will not be willing to pay.

Relational and Mental Processes
The relational process refers to the participant's state of being or having, which provides a description or identity of the participants (Marbun, n.d.). Most of the verbs used include am, is, are, have, have never had, and has been. In this speech, there are 27 or 21.43%. In the speech made by Obama, relational processes constructed a strong impact of his "image in the minds of the masses" (Alvi & Baseer, 2011, p. 160). Similarly, Obama's use of relational processes in his speeches has clearly manifested the connection of their "traditional ideals and beliefs"; hence, the speaker's natural and unconscious reasoning was smoothly approved and acknowledged by his listeners (Cheng Yumin, 2007, cited in Wang, 2010. Relational processes build several themes in relation to the value of children and life, but dominantly this process shapes the idea of life as God-given grace that gives Trump the respect being a selfrighteous American leader by using positive emphasis especially young people who composed the event: "Every child (carrier) is (relational) a precious and sacred gift (attribute) from God," "… each person (carrier) is (relational) "wonderfully made." (attribute)," "every person (carrier) is (relational) worth protecting (attribute)," and "… that every human soul (carrier) is (relational) divine (attribute), and every human life (carrier) -born and unborn -is made (relational) in the holy image of Almighty God." Indeed, he has indirectly called himself a life warrior of the helpless by saying, "unborn children (carrier) have never had (relational) a stronger defender (attribute) in the White House." His effusive appreciation to the young are further stressed by the following: Young people (carrier) are (relational) the heart of the March for Life (attribute), and it (carrier)'s (relational) your generation (attribute) that is making America the pro-family, pro-life nation; You (carrier)'re (relational) grateful (attribute) -and we (carrier) are (relational) so grateful (attribute)… and Your strength, devotion, and drive (carrier) is (relational) what powers our nation (attribute). And, because of you, our country (carrier) has been blessed (with amazing souls who have changed the course of human history. Having said these statements, he joined them using the pronoun "we" in celebrating life: "We (carrier)'re (relational) here for a very simple reason: to defend the right of every child, born and unborn, to fulfill their Godgiven potential," "we (senser) are (relational) the voice (attribute) for the voiceless (recipient)". These emphasize that he is, indeed, part of any move in giving defense to the helpless children of God.
On top of these, Trump continued stressing his role and his administration in uplifting the significance of life as "it (carrier) is (relational) my profound honor (attribute) to be the first President in history to attend the March for Life", "I (carrier) am (relational) truly proud (attribute) to stand with you" and "It (carrier)'s (relational) so great (attribute) to represent you".
In a similar way, relational processes also give to Trump to devalue his enemies. "The far-left (carrier) is (relational) actively working (attribute) to erase our God-given rights, shut down faithbased charities, ban religious believers from the public square, and silence Americans who believe in the sanctity of life". Seeking attention and approval from the Church, he added that "religious liberty (carrier) has been (relational) under attack (attribute) all over the world." Mental processes are verbs that express "perception, cognition, affection, and desire" which are often employed to facilitate beliefs, notions or understanding to portray the real world of the participants (Halliday, 1994;Saragih, 2010, cited in Ong'onda, 2016. In this text, the verbs consist of want, know, cannot know, love, would like, wanted, see, remember, find, look, and don't mind. Similarly to the relational process, it also received a total of 27 or 21.43% in the speech analyzed. Through mental processes, both Trump and Clinton delivered their proposed policies by connecting their thoughts to the understanding of the listeners; hence, the present hardships of the Americans were eased as they tried to "influence the audience minds" in winning their approval to such policies (Zhang, 2017, p. 69). Further, these processes successfully built an association between the speakers' political tenets and philosophies and the listeners' anticipations (Sharififar & Rahimi, 2015).
These processes are contributory in the furtherance of his empathy and responsiveness to the young with the following expressions: (1) When we (senser) see (mental) the image of a baby (phenomenon) in the womb… (2) … we (senser) know (mental) the endless love (phenomenon) that each child brings to a family. (3) … we (senser) see (mental) the splendor (phenomenon) that radiates from each human soul.
Mental processes continued to emphasize his connection and his love to Americans with his promise that they are with him in winning their fights toward life: "We all (senser) know (mental) how to win." The following statements have proven how he excessively elevates his presence among the Americans who fight for life: (1) I (senser) want (mental) to welcome tens of thousands (phenomenon).
(2) We (senser) cannot know (mental) what our citizens yet unborn will achieve (phenomenon), the dreams they will imagine, the masterpieces they will create, the discoveries they will make. It is notable that from time to time, material process shows Trump's eagerness to express his thanks in almost every line he uttered: "I (senser) want (mental) to thank (phenomenon) everybody (beneficiary) for that," "I (senser) want (mental) to thank you."

Verbal Process
The verbal process pertains to the matter that is being stated or uttered by the participants. The expressed ideas or thoughts are called verbiage (Matthiessen, Teruya & Lam, 2010). In this text, there are a total of 20 or 15.87%. The common verbs used are the following: thank, thanks, tells, stated, say, have to say, called, and have called.
Verbal processes are obviously evident of his gratefulness to the advocates of life and to the success of the event, the support of the people to this cause, and to his administration and to the continuous effort in giving priority for life. The following are the identified expressions of his gratitude: Similar to the result of this study having low frequency of verbal processes, Isti'anah's (2014) study proved that these processes tell that Jakarta's constituents are tired and uninterested of simply hearing promises of the candidates every election period; hence, they would rather see and feel the result of what they have promised. On the other hand, the study of Adjei and Ewusi-Mensah (2016) showed how Kufour established himself to be a first-hand sayer or speaker that made built his authority as the head of the nation. Moreover, his speech, using verbal processes, attested his "political maturity and democratic fortitude" (p. 46) as he openly expressed his congratulatory statements to his successor from the opposition. True enough, any political discourse involves a number of verbal processes to show its informative feature (Liping, 2014).

Existential and Behavioural Processes
Again, the existential process is commonly introduced by "there" and "here" which shows that "someone or something exists or has happened" (Toolan, 2013, p. 84); hence, the reader becomes aware of the events that the speaker or narrator will do what he decided to (Darani, 2014, p. 184). This process shows positional states which signal to what will take place or be detailed in the discourse. On the one hand, behavioural process construes to participant's behaviour including mental and verbal as both processes are attributed to human cognizance: the senser for mental and behaver for the behavioural process (Martin, Matthiessen & Painter, 2010, p. 207).
In the analyzed text, existential and behavioural processes do not show any strong role; indeed, the latter does not even appear among the identified transitivity processes. For existential, it only appeared once, "there are (existential) tens of thousands of people outside (existent)". The speaker would like to prove that a good number of Americans support this life-oriented event; in the end, Trump implied that this powerful backing is also behind him and his administration. The proportion of these last two processes confirms that political speeches usually do not employ existential and behavioural process like the study of Adjei and Ewusi-Mensah (2016) and Zhang (2017). Otherwise, the overuse of existential processes may produce "a sense of monotone" which may defeat the attention of the listeners (Zhao & Zhang, 2017, p. 40).
Nevertheless, it is still best for any politician to use different processes to successfully accomplish his political agenda that even most of the public discourse largely used material, relational and mental process, the inclusion of the other less commonly used processes (verbal, behavioural and existential) can produce "powerful and persuasive speech" (Liping, 2014, p. 135).

CONCLUSION
This study has proven that critical analysis of linguistic spin in a public political discourse supports people's understanding of political, economic, social, and cultural issues raised by the speaker. Looking specifically at Trump's discourse, power is strongly evident because of his straight association to the dignity of life through his and his administration's prolific actions, policies, and decisions. Similarly, he highly dignifies the value of life through young people and children, and he is with them in their fight. Adding flavor to his speech, he never forgets criticizing his political enemies whom he addressed as an enemy of life. Ironically, the frequency on the value of women is less addressed contrary to the bannered theme of this year's March for Life celebration. These identified foci were supported by the transitivity system, having been dominated by the material process, followed by relational and mental processes. As other studies revealed, this paper showed that President Trump gives more relevance to physical action toward achieving certain goals. Likewise, he highlights the role or the position of every American, especially the young ones in preserving the value of life.