CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON THE REPRESENTATION OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE PHILIPPINES (AFP) ON COVID-19 SPEECHES OF PRESIDENT RODRIGO ROA DUTERTE

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an approach, which claim to scrutinize how dominance, manipulation, institutional power, and ideology are executed in presidential speeches. Through this approach and the Social Actor Network theory of Theo van Leeuwen (2008), this study unraveled the representation of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in three (3) national speeches of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte on COVID-19; it identified the Social Actor Network tools used and examined the underlying ideologies that had been exposed based on how those tools were applied by Duterte in his speeches. The study used nonprobability sampling in choosing the speeches and utilized qualitative method to analyze the data. Duterte employed Nomination, Exclusion, Impersonalization, and Categorization. These tools exposed that Duterte applied the idea of clear and present danger; it legitimizes curtailment of mass movement and instrumentalization of AFP to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. However, he deviated to the idea when vindictive enforcement and authoritarian tendencies arose and resulted to controversial mass killings and deprivation of freedom of speech of the marginalized. Employment of CDA and Social Actor Network theory in political speeches would expose attitude of the speaker that affects and persuades the public.