Discourse Analysis
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Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume 11. Number3 September Pp.212 -225 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol11no3.13
Planning for Transformation: A Semantic-Grammatical Based Discourse Analysis of Saudi
Vision 2030
Ansa Hameed
Department of English, College of Science and Humanities, Alkharj Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia
Ismat Jabeen
Department of English, College of Science and Humanities, Alkharj Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia
Aalia Mehar Khan
English Department Safa and Marwa Islamic School, Ontario, Canada
Abstract
The need for transformation has led kingdom to envision and encode the Saudi Vision 2030 document; it is not merely an idealistic divination but a manuscript with an appropriate plan to accomplish its anticipated economic and social goals. In fact, planning is a critical factor in the document, which shapes it as a discourse of realization and fascination, made in the public interest. The present research aims to investigate the ways strategic planning has been articulated in the Vision 2030 document. It can help to get a deep linguistic understanding of this ideological discourse as well as to make it comprehendible for familiar readers. The core purpose of the present study is to examine this ideological discourse for the linguistic items that encapsulate the planning factor. For this purpose, the text has been reviewed using the foundational document model projected by Holland (2014). This semantic-grammatical based linguistic model helps to investigate the ideological strand of planning in the selected text. The research design is quantitative, using a content analysis method. The results reveal that planning strategies are well voiced in the Vision 2030 document, using a variety of vocabulary items; Investment, support, cooperation, provision, and increment are found as the fundamental strategies. The study suggests that other linguistic features can also be investigated to explain this document in the public interest. Keywords: foundational document, semantic- grammatical discourse analysis, strategic planning, Vision 2030 Cite as: Hameed, A., Jabeen, I., & Khan, A. M. (2020). Planning for Transformation: A Semantic- Grammatical Based Discourse Analysis of Saudi Vision 2030. Arab World English Journal, 11 (3) 212 -225. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol11no3.13
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Introduction Change is the key for staying active as well as staying connected with the world. Translated
as transformation, this becomes a more significant phenomenon when applied to a higher social or national level. With opulent antiquity and cultural tenets, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has taken many bold initiatives to transform its conservative image into an economically and socially elevated country. One of these is the Saudi Vision 2030, documented as a blueprint of the road to success. It was presented by the Saudi government in 2016 and was declared as the kingdom’s plan to manage a celebrated future in the world. Nuruzzaman (2018) comments in this regard that this serves as a plan of transformation that can lead the country to a better future mainly through the enriched economy and enlightened society. The local authorities consider it a source to “basically uncap the potential in Saudi Arabia” (Khalid, 2020). Over time, the Vision document (from 2016 to 2020) has led to design many policies and actions in the kingdom. Whether making a policy of marriage prohibition before eighteen years of age, giving women the right to drive, opening the land for international tourism, etc. almost all of these actions are in line with Vision 2030 document. Thus, this text acts as one of the influential state discourses as a document.
This document explains the necessary steps for the kingdom to achieve the status of an
economically prosperous and socially preeminent country by 2030. Thus, it serves as a foundational document, which is defined by Holland (2014) as documents that “provide cultural metanarrative for religious, political, social and business organizations” (p. 383). Such texts provide frameworks of narration and action to accomplish desired ideological stances for an organization or at a higher level for a nation. What makes these foundational documents significant for researchers is the power to persuade and mobilize the community through appropriate rhetorical discourse. In other words, language is used as a gizmo to contour and compose these documents in the desired manner to obtain desired results, whether it is the supporters’ favor, the resources’ division, the required agents, or the worldly gains.
Being a foundational document for the Kingdom, Saudi Vision 2030 is a permutation of
dominant discourse and anticipated image. Thus, the readers must understand the planning strategies in the text. In this regard, the present research aims to scrutinize the ideological discourse through the foundational document model proposed by Holland (2015). This model is a semantic- grammatical approach that examines the various strands of conversation to disclose underlying ideologies. These include ethical norms, utopian schemes, folklore narrative, role attribution, and strategic planning. However, as per the dimension and magnitude of the present study, only the last discourse category, i.e., planning is focused, in the selected text. The main quest of the study is to examine the linguistic strands outlined to frame strategic planning. Thus, the research question is:
Q. How does the Vision 2030 document present strategic planning by using language items? Inline, the research objectives are the following:
• to analyze the discourse of Saudi Vision 2030 to understand the ideology proliferated for planning
• to explore the factor of strategic planning employed through the use of language in the selected text
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The research is significant in many ways. Firstly, it contributes to the field of linguistics in the domain of the Foundational Document Model (FDM), the theory proposed by Holland (2014), as an appropriate tool to study the foundational documents. It also helps to understand discourse items and patterns used to display the strategic planning feature of any foundational document. From a social perspective, the research can assist the general public in understanding the different features of a text such as vision document 2030 of the Saudi kingdom. For general readers, it can give an insight into how a vision can serve as an ideological discourse with concrete outcomes.
Literature Review:
This section reviews some essential terms, concepts, and works related to the present study. The keyword of the present study is “foundational”, which generally means “related to the
foundation” or “underlying”; thus, inline, a foundational document can be considered as a text that provides building foundations. According to Collins online dictionary (2019), the definition of the term foundational document, as a general term, is “the charter incorporating or establishing a society or institution and the statutes or rules governing its affairs (n.p.).” Thus, following the lines Holland (2014), considers any document as foundational, which outlines the rules and regulations for a foundation to achieve its desired goals. In this regard, Gammelgaard (n.d.) comments that many examples of such texts prevail around us, for instance, the religious books (Bible, Quran, Torah, etc.), The Universal Declaration of Human Rights or Constitution for America, etc. Moreover, de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex also serves as foundational text providing a frame of action to the feminist movement. He further asserts that these texts achieve a specific standing as they propose a truth and communicate values that can act as superintendent principles (Gammelgaard, n.d.). Following the lines, Holland (2014) implied this term for his discourse analysis model known as the Foundational Document Model (FDM). This model examines the discourse of any document that serves as a foundation to provide vision, dogma, design or, line of action for an organization, a society or a nation, etc. Moreover, the primary focus is on the discourse from a critical perspective to identify various ideological strands placed together to achieve the targeted goals by an establishment or a group of people who frame such documents.
The term discourse which, generally refers to “language in use”, is applied to a variety of
texts meant to convey, converse, and concoct something significant by using language. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1995) defines it as a serious mode of oral or written speech on a particular subject. However, an important feature of any discourse is that there are always some agentive forces behind the veil; moreover, every time, the motive is to make some impression on the audience. Gee (1999) points out that such discourses are “embedded in a medley of social institutions” (p. 18), which enables it to mobilize the minds and actions of the targeted population. From media to politics and from academia to corporations, discourses create an impact; often, this is as an ideological strand of the discourse. Fairclough (2001) opines that discourses are epithets of ideologies used to persuade, inspire, and influence the addressees. Here ideologies can be defined as simply shared beliefs or ideas of a group, a society, or a nation (van Dijk, 2002). Thus, ideologies exist both verbally as well as psychologically. Eagleton (2014) comments that ideologies are beliefs that we keep in mind and practice in societies, whereas Simpson (2005) purports that language is a carter of these ideologies. In the light of this link, discourses are no doubt epithets of ideologies.
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Discourse analysis is one of the poignant fields in Linguistics, aiming to scrutinize and analyze oral and written speeches to expose underlying drives, structures, and ideologies. Mohammad and Alshahrani (2019) explain it as a strategy that “enables linguists and social scientists to explore endless aspects of human interaction and how the message is mediated between the speaker and the interlocutors” (p. 18). In this regard, there are two prominent approaches: formal and functional. Formal approach refers to the structural analysis of discourse where each strand of words, phrases, and sentences play their part to generate intended meaning: whereas, functional methods go beyond the architectural features and insist on reading between the lines or often concerning the physical context (Drid, 2010). Schifrin, Tannen, and Hamilton (2001) combine both approaches and defines discourse analysis as a “study of language use above and beyond the sentences” (p. 170). This approach helps to understand discourse in both linguistics and physical contexts and generates more meaningful results. Another strand to this is critical discourse analysis, which emerged from the vital approaches towards language use in texts. It is a more socio-political strand that aims to analyze discourses from a critical perspective to reveal secreted agendas, intended ideologies, and power structures in society (Fairclough, 2001). Different researchers have used diverse approaches to examine and explore various types of discourses. Griffin (2007) analyzed news reports to make connections between gender and migration trends. Hall (2012) investigated the discourse of protest as published in UK newspapers. He mainly focused on speech acts to theorize how readers are informed or misinformed about the actual events of demonstrations in favor of governmental organizations. Sipra and Rashid (2013) used a critical discourse analysis model to examine Luther King’s speech. They used the Fairclough version of CDA to explore color and race prejudice in the selected text.
The Foundational Document Model (FDM) by Holland (2014) is also an aspect of critical discourse analysis approaches. This approach is a semantic- grammatical based model, which helps to critically evaluate various grammatical categories, incipient meanings, and contextual enactments to expose hidden ideologies. According to Holland and Nichelle (2015), “the FDM is not only concerned with ideological content but also with higher orders of a text’s grammatical layout” (p. 2). Holland (2014) also states that this model can be used to explore documents as ideological layouts that provide the public with frameworks ensuring perfect world order, strategic planning, motivational appeals, and role attribution. For the said purpose, he provided with the following five ideological strands: the utopian scheme, ethical norms, role attribution, folklore narratives, and strategic planning. The first category is the utopian scheme, which designates the encouraging words to spectators for a better world; in contrast, the second category is of ethical norms that refer to the choice of words representing moral responsibilities and values. The next in line is the role attribution about the division of roles allocated to various agentive forces. In addition, the fourth strand is folklore narrative, which provides a link to history and other types of stories to create a meta-link within the text. The final category of strategic planning highlights the words and phrasal choices that aim to focus on the practical implication for premeditated ideologies. Each of these categories works on identified sets of words with their role in the syntactic organization and the meanings to identify proliferated ideologies. This model was first implemented by Holland and Nichelle (2015) to analyze mission statements in Coca-Cola and PepsiCo ads from a socio-political perspective. Another research was conducted by Sardar (2018) to analyze corporate discourses in Pakistan. She employed the FDM model to analyze mission vision statements and corporate responsibility discourse, provided in websites of the selected
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cellular companies. She concluded that selected texts used ethical norms and utopian schemes efficaciously to create a binding relationship with the audience.
The present study focuses on Saudi Kingdom’s discourse produced as Saudi Vision
document in 2016. This document serves as a foundational text for the country, as it verbalizes a new layout for a prosperous future. According to Mohammad and Alshahrani (2019), it is “one of the most important documents for Saudi Arabia in recent history” (p. 16). The selected document is examined by a few researchers, for example, Alshuwaikhat and Muhammad (2017), Yusuf (2017) and Moshashai, Leber, and Savage (2018). Alshuwaikhat and Muhammad (2017) analyzed the selected document from the sustainability perspective and reported what it needs to make the visionary dreams come true for a sustainable future. Yusuf (2017) explained existing issues in the educational sector, which are not parallel with the new Vision. Moshashai, Leber, and Savage (2018) have analyzed the document’s goals and policies laid down to achieve them in light of the reformation plan. Besides, Mohammad and Alshahrani (2019) conducted the critical discourse analysis of the news related to the Vision 2030 using corpus-based data. They identified the major themes related to Vision 2030 in the Saudi News corpus from 2013 to 2018. However, there is no such study (as per the researcher’s knowledge) with a focus on the Saudi Vision document itself, from the critical discourse analysis perspective. The present research intends to fill the gap.
Research Methodology:
The present research explores the Saudi vision document for the ideological strand of strategic planning using the Foundational Document Model by Holland (2015). It is a primarily semantic- grammatical approach, which allows examining lexical items related to selected ideology. The nexus of lexical items reflects particular ideology, whereas these lexical items are linked through associative meanings. The present research is quantitative as it involves the identification of keywords and phrases related to planning strategy in the selected text. For the said purpose, the data is collected in two phases. It is essential to discuss the method of extracting data to provide strength and clarity to our analysis. In the first step, the document was converted into a word format to highlight the STRT easily. The text was coded manually in the first round by reading and highlighting parts of the text that dealt with planning, strategy, or future goals. The second-round coding involved finding frequencies for most prominent or recurring words/ phrases and then putting synonymous words under each category. For example, in the first round of coding, we found out that the term “build” has occurred 35 times in the text, making it one of the categories in STRT. The second round of coding found synonymous words like “establish” (28 times), “creating” (19 times), and “create” (17 times). So, these are labeled as sub-categories for the main category “build”. Our methodology mainly stresses upon picking those linguistic items that ideologically deal with planning and are action-oriented. Moreover, it is also significant to discuss their frequencies because we need to understand which themes or categories in STRT are prioritized by the Saudi government.
In the second phase, the researcher studied the concordance of each item to comprehend the usage of nominated lexical items. Generally, the corpus-based studies focus on the concordance by using a variety of software. However, this study does not use any particular software as the corpus is relatively small (containing 11423 words only). The researcher studied the textual environment of the selected lexical items by using Microsoft Word. This approach offers an insight
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into words and structures where these categories are located, and provide us an understanding of other words or phrases that have an impact on not only these categories but also bring out the strategic stance of the organization.
The research does not have any ethical issues as Saudi Vision 2030 is a publically
accessible document for everyone. The link to the pdf version is available in the appendix.
Results and Discussion:
This section deals with the analysis of data extracted in the first and second rounds of coding following Holland’s (2014) method of finding thematic strands in the form of words or phrases. The major part of analysis and interpretation is about presenting linguistic items from the Saudi Vision 2030 document related to Strategic Planning or STRT, as denoted in the Foundational Document Model. The results also show a discussion on the concordance of these categories and sub-categories in STRT.
This section presents the results of the first round of coding, followed by a short discussion.
The next part has outlined categories with sub-categories along with concordance results and detailed analysis of each type. The following table one presents the results of data/ words extracted in the first round of coding: Table 1 Frequently occurring items in the category Strategic Planning (STRT) Support 156 Build 153 Increase 112 Attract 67 Work 64 Service 48 Achieve 35 Provide 32 Plan 29 Transform 26
Seek 25 Continue 24 Project 20 Commit 19 Ensure 18 Contribute 17 Management 15 Focus 15 Review 14 Implement 12
Use 11 Prevent 11 Diversify 10 Cooperation 10 Investing 7 Adopt 7 Monitoring 4 Rewarding 3 Protecting 3 Allocate 3
Table one shows 30 words found in the first round of coding the text. These words represent ideological strands or ideas related to planning and strategy development. The terms associated with Strategic Planning with the highest frequency are “support” and “build”, followed by “increase”, “attract”, and “work” respectively. These items semantically relate to the practical implications of propagated ideologies (Holland, 2014). For example, the category “support” has been found 156 times (including frequencies of the sub-categories) in the text, suggesting that the Saudi Vision is strategically inclined towards supporting and strengthening existing developmental programs, infrastructure, and policy issues. Other prominent categories also indicate that Saudi Vision is sketched on details like building the economy, expanding growth, and attracting investment to accelerate the progress rate of the country. These words/categories semantically represent an image of growth and expansion by employing hard work (described by the category “work”, repeated 60 times) and “achieving” transformation through “service” and “planning”.
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These categories in the first phase of coding are significant for discussion because these indicate a pattern or thematic layout, which gives an ideological structure to the foundational text. If certain linguistic or semantic items repeat themselves in a particular fashion in a manuscript, then it emerges as an ideological content and can be labeled as a “foundational text” because such texts become foundation or basis for presenting fundamental ideologies of an organization. In this case, the document containing Saudi Vision appears to be a foundational text. These categories have been placed in the script in a repeated and peculiar pattern, thereby strengthening specific themes. These ideas not only reflect the ideological stance of the Saudi government but also serve the purpose of building its positive image.
Words or categories in the left side column show the frequently occurring themes. If we
examine these words meticulously, it is evident that the Saudi government intends to achieve growth by taking practical and strategic steps, i.e. by supporting, expanding, transforming, and serving its citizens. The FDM approach in this scenario is quite handy because the coding of categories gives us a quick and easy overview of the language used in discourse. Such analysis helps us understand the ideological preferences of an organization, to build its image and to get its popularity. It is vital to discuss the least occurring (but prominent) categories in the first phase of coding. For example, lack of words like “monitoring”, “protecting”, and “allocate” represent that the Saudi vision has laid less emphasis on strict control, protection of social structure, and allocation of funds and lands. This analysis helps to trace issues where organizations have less focus on. Further, by studying concordance, we can understand these matters clearly.
The second phase of coding involves finding frequently-occurring words related to the
terms collected in the first round (based on their similar meanings or context). An example is discussed here for clarity. The word “increase” has appeared 30 times in the document, so it is the main category. Other synonymous words like “grow” (18 times), “enhance” (14 times), and “promote” (13 times) are grouped under the main category due to their incidences. The total of frequencies for all the words in this category is 112, and it has ten different words which mean the same as “increase”. This specific category is on the fourth position because the other three groups have higher frequencies. “support” is on number one because it has 14 synonymous sub-categories, and the total of frequencies is 156. “Build” and “increase” follow the first category with the frequencies of 153 and 112. It is important to note that these are the three main categories with total occurrences of more than 100.
Table two gives a detailed distribution of main categories and sub-categories in: Table 2 Main and Sub-categories of Planning strategy and Frequencies Support 31 (156) Improve 26 Help 16 Enable 14 Encourage 13 Facilitate 13 Strengthen 11 Empower 8 Boost 6
Attract 19 (67) Launch 14 Open 14 Initiative 9 Stimulate 5 Welcome 4 Start 3 Work 54 (64)
Management 10 (15) Managing 2 Administrative 3 Focus 10 (15) Localize 5 Review 14
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Align 6 Reinforce 5 Link 3 Fortify 2 Aid 2 Assist 1 Build 35 (153) Establish 28 Creating 19 Create 17 Make 15 Developing 11 Building 10 Prepare 7 Construct 5 Developed 3 Identify 4 Set up 3 Increase 30 (112) Grow 18 Enhance 14 Promote 13 Expand 10 Raise 11 Increase 8 Generating 3 Double 3 Maximize 2
Working 10 Service 36 (48) Serve 12 Achieve 26 (35) Get 9 Provide 27 (32) Give 5 Plan 19 (29) Planning 5 Policies 3 Strategy 2 Transform 11 (26) Transfer 8 Change 4 Restructure 3 Seek 16 (25) Follow 5 Pursue 2 Tracking 2 Continue 24 Project 20 Commit 19 Ensure 18 Contribute 17
Implement 7 (12) Leveraging 5 Use 9 (11) Utilize 2 Prevent 4 (11) Reduce 4 Remove 2 Minimize 1 Diversify 10 Cooperation 6 (10) Collaborate 3 Cooperate 1 Investing 7 Adopt 7 Monitoring 3 (4) Control 1 Rewarding 3 Protecting 3 Allocate 3
Table two presents items in both the rounds of coding. The first category is “Support” with the highest frequency of 156. It has 14 sub-categories, which comprise of words having similar meanings as the word “support”. If we look at the occurrence of this item in the document, this term has been frequently found with words like “social health care systems”, “families”, “private sector”, “SMEs”, “projects”, and “industries”. These ideas suggest that Saudi Vision is mainly about supporting and helping different sectors of the economy and overall development. Analyzing sub-categories: “improve”, “help’, “enable”, and “encourage” are few of the dominating themes.
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These words have neighboring ideas such as: “business environment”, “services to pilgrims”, “academic partnerships”, “visa issuance”, “microfinancing”, strengthening “defense exports”, aiding “entrepreneurs”, boosting “exports”, “small businesses”, and “infrastructures”. These ideologies represent that the government firmly believes in strengthening and empowering different sectors of the economy. These concordances reveal that Saudi vision relies heavily on providing support to different segments of the economy, to promote overall growth. Strategic and planned support is vital for holistic growth, and these textual examples substantiate this point.
Category number two in STRT is “Build” and has 11 sub-categories. It is an imperative term in the text because it focuses on creating and developing the country. As the table shows, the word “build” appears 35 times, followed by “establish” (28 times), “creating” (19 times), and “make” (15 times). “Build” has been found with ideas like: “building better future”, “systems”, “children’s fundamental character”, and “broad talent base”. If we examine concordance for “establish”, it has neighboring items such as: “recycling projects”, “facilities and projects”, “SMEs”, and “new business partnerships”. “Creating” has occurred with progressive ideas, such as: “economic opportunities”, “jobs”, and “supportive cooperative environment”. Results for the sub-category “developing” show that this word has been found in the context of “early childhood education”, “skills and networks”, “industries”, “funding methods” and “our country”. Such occurrences indicate that future Vision firmly relies on the notions of supporting and building different aspects of the economy, which are significant for growth and prosperity.
The third category is “increase”, which has a total frequency of 112 with nine sub-
categories having similar meanings and context. “Increase” is surrounded by words like “capacity”, “household spending”,” life expectancy”, “women’s participation”, “investments”, “private sector contribution”, “financing of small retail enterprises”, and “exports”. All these items show positive and progressive strategic planning outlined in the document. The first sub-category in this section is “grow” which has frequently occurred with “economy”, “retail sector”, “cities”, and “non-profit sector”. Other sub-categories for example, “enhance” and “promote” have following concordance results including: “government funds”, “quality of life”, “cultural activities”, “healthcare facilities”, “national unity”, “use of water resources”, “strategic partnerships”, and “accountability and transparency”. If we observe these ideas, it is evident that the Saudi government is focused on increasing growth in various sectors, thus ensuring overall development and expansion. Other notable sub-categories are “expand”, “raise”, “increase”, “double”, and maximize”. Concordance results for these words indicate the growth of relevant sectors and segments of the Saudi economy.
“Attract” is the fourth category in coded data. With an overall frequency of 67, this
category has six sub-categories. These are “launch”, “open”, “initiate”, “stimulate”, and “start”. Neighboring phrases for the word “attract” are “finest talent and best investments”, “local and international investors”, “global trends”, “finest Saudi minds”, and “international brands”. The document has frequently used the word “investors” and “investments”, suggesting that the Saudi government believes in bringing investment for success and expansion of the economy. Sub- categories: “launch” and “open” also have the similar meanings as the main category and following ideas have been found to co-occur with them: “executive programs”, “projects”, “new services for pilgrims”, “renewable energy initiative”, “investment opportunities”, and “open for business”. If
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we analyze concordance results for the other four sub-categories, we can conclude that the government of Saudi Arabia has plans to start new projects, invest in new programs, open employment opportunities, and initiate new collaborations. The main goal is to improve the health sector, education system, and housing. They not only aim for providing new opportunities but attracting the competition, welcoming new ideas, and to start all ventures with definite plans.
The next category in the discussion is “work” with a total frequency of 64. There is one
sub-category “working”, which has occurred ten times. The textual environment of this category indicates that the organization plans to work for up-grading accommodation, restoring of cultural sites, and restructuring of government agencies. The sixth category is “Service”, having a frequency of 48. There is one sub-category, i.e. “serve” (12). Interpretation of neighboring text reveals that the Saudi Vision focuses on serving the public in the employment sector, improving quality, helping pilgrims, working in housing and legislation. “Achieve” (35) is another category that reflects strategic planning, and concordance analysis shows that the focus of the text is on achieving dreams, plans, and goals set for growth.
The eighth category in the data is “provide” with the total frequency of 32, and the
neighboring text includes ideas like: “better opportunities”, “good hospitality”, “roads and transport”, “financial support”, “give privilege”, and “better training”. “Plan” is the next category in the list with three sub-categories (Planning, Policies, Strategy), and a total frequency of 29. The concordance items in this section are: “programs”, “public sector”, “laws and regulations”, “long term partnerships”, and “decision making”. Significantly, the document outlines plans; however, planning has occurred 29 times, and the usage is infrequent.
Another relevant category in the analysis is “transform” (26 times), which suggests
“change” and “restructuring”. These items have the textual environment comprising: “strategic location”, “Aramco” (the oil company), “public investment fund”, “real estate”, “knowledge and technology”, and “economic cities”. These items show that the Vision is based on bringing change to a wide range of sectors, organizations, and social structures. Such usages imply that the planning is holistic and covers major sections of the economy.
Category number 11 is “seek, and it has three sub-categories, i.e. “follow”, “pursue”, and
“tracking”. Analysis of the adjacent ideological context reveals that the government of Saudi Arabia plans to follow Islamic guidelines, best practices, and public-private partnerships. They aim to pursue cultural ventures, offer services to pilgrims, and support the Saudi companies. The analysis suggests that the organization has a clear focus and vision to materialize their plans for the future. The next item under discussion is “Continue”, which has the frequency of 24 and no sub-category. This idea has occurred with language items, including “building a better country”, “continue to excel”, “to work”, “modernizing and encouraging”, “collaborate”, and “develop regulations”. Such language use in foundational texts shows a progressive ideology and forward- looking approach.
The next category is “Project” with a frequency of 20. The textual environment for this
category includes “train project”, “Makkah Metro”, “tourist and recycling projects”, “industrial and real estate”, and “support and management projects”. The mentioning of projects throughout
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the documents implies that the government plans to work on the developmental projects, which would help in the growth and prosperity of the country. Category number 14 is “Commit” (19), and number 15 is “Ensure” (18). There are no sub-categories for both these words. The text shows the Saudi commitment to “world-class government services”, “transparency”, “accountability”, “effective public spending”, and “achieve our goals”. On the other hand, “ensure” co-occurs with “Traffic safety”, “high-quality services”, “independence”, “best management practices”, and “business continuity”. Both these categories indicate planning and commitment towards growth and progress. “Contribute”, “Management”, and “Focus” are the next three categories, significant in our discussion of results. According to the second phase of coding, the document promises to contribute towards “economy”, “development”, “economic growth”, and “the achieving goals”. Results for the category “Management” are “waste management”, “funds management”, “HR and performance”, and “development”. The word “focus” has occurred with “preventive care”, “planning and legislation”, “innovation”, and “social impact”. These language practices are indicative of commitment and focus to achieve long term growth.
“Review” (14) is the nineteenth category in the list. The concordance results show what
the government plans to review. These results indicate that their Vision promises to review “laws and regulations”, “licensing procedures”, “renewable energy framework”, and “existing roles”. The next category “Implement” (12) also has similar findings where we see items like “existing laws and regulations”, “performance management”, “initiatives”, “leveraging unique position”, and “strategic locations”. For the next category “Use” (11), the findings are based on “utilizing resources”, “primary care”, “global leadership”, and “utilizing the capacity of hospitals”. Another category “Prevent” (11) focuses on “reducing gaps”, “obstacles”, “infectious diseases”, “traffic accidents”, and “resource wastage”. If this category is compared with the grouping “Increase” (112), we can understand that the document is focused more on the representation of positive views than the negative concepts. The frequencies for both opposing ideas also substantiate this finding, and help to project a positive image of the Saudi government.
To discuss the last categories, it is useful to analyze groups with a total frequency greater
than five. These categories are “Diversify” (10), “Cooperation” (10), “Investing” (7), and “Adopt” (7). The category “diversify” means bringing variety or expanding something, and the government of KSA plans to diversify their revenues, capabilities of their economy, resources, and communication channels. Such steps bring innovation and modernization in the country. The next category, “Cooperation” exists with concepts like “Aramco” (oil company), “Gulf Cooperation Council”, and “empathy and mutual responsibility”. “Investing” and “Adopt” have the same frequency, i.e. seven and as per the Vision document, they aim to invest in education, training, trading, infrastructure and make long term investments. As far as “Adopt” is concerned, their government plans to adopt “transparency”, “measures to ensure “traffic safety”, “planning culture”, and “principles of performance measurement”. It is important to mention other categories that shape up Strategic Planning in the document, and these are; “Monitoring”, “Rewarding”, “Protecting”, and “Allocate”. Their frequencies are low, but these suggest that development and implementation of strategy require monitoring and control over all the systems; further, it needs rewarding human resources, protecting society and allocating resources. These categories also indicate the idea of fruitful planning and useful tactics that ensure growth in all sections of the economy.
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According to Holland and Nichelle (2015), FDM is a useful technique to deconstruct textual semantic units in a foundational document, to reveal underlying ideological content. The findings of the present study confirm that any kind of strategy employed by the discourse producers can be effectively highlighted by using this model. Such discourses are not merely prophetic visions but are also carriers of practical dogmas, channeled by certain groups in power (Gee, 1999). The different assorted categories help us to understand the power of the discourse to convince and mobilize the respective audience. The findings show how the kingdom’s authority is quite positive in their intentions with appropriate planning. Inline, Yusuf (2017) has also exposed the positive strategies that are adopted in the new visionary plan to meet the educational needs of the country. Thus, overall it can be argued that the Vision 2030 is quite successful in its approach and use of linguistic patterns to persuade the targeted audience.
Conclusion:
The present research aims to critically analyze the discourse of the Saudi Vision document 2030 to examine the planning related ideology. The primary purpose is to scrutinize the ideological discourse for the rhetorical excerpts that summarize the Kingdom’s proposal to recognize targeted dominions, patterns for execution, and tactics for engaging the potential recipients. For the said purpose, the researcher uses the Foundational Document Model (FDM), proposed by Halliday (2014), which is a semantic-grammatical based model to determine ideologies purported through linguistic patterns. The research uses a quantitative paradigm to analyze the content of the selected document. For the said purpose, the document is manually coded, and various categories are identified and tabulated. The findings reveal that the document is outlined primarily on Strategic Planning, as suggested by Holland (2014). The emerging themes from the text indicate that providing “support” to the economic systems and providing aid to developing sectors are the top priorities for the Saudi government. The second aspect of planning is inclined towards “building” and creating a developed society. The third priority is to “increase” capacity, rate of growth, efficiency, and investments. The strategic idea of number four is to “attract” investments, supreme talents, and launch new programs and projects. These ideas have been repeated frequently in the document, thus shaping its ideological content in a specific direction, i.e. development of the country. Overall, these categories show the interest of the authorities to achieve the desired goals through proper planning, and not merely setting a perfect dream for the intended audience. The study concludes that the Saudi Vision 2030 is not only a prophetically generous doctrine but also linguistically well planned to represent an ambitious Vision. For the said purpose, planning is well articulated and well-structured to persuade the intended audience.
However, there is dire need to research and explore other factors that contribute to the
kingdom’s transformation plan as professed in the vision 2030, to see its different potential linguistic patterns. This exploration can reveal how language plays a role in shaping ideologies. Finally, the study recommends FDM as a combination of the theoretical and methodological approaches to effectively analyze such foundational documents for various ideological strands.
About the Authors:
Dr. Ansa Hameed is currently working as an Assistant Professor at Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, College of Science and Humanities, AlKharj. She has received her PhD degree in Linguistics (English) from NUML, Islamabad in January 2013. Her areas of interest
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are Ecolinguistics, Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics and Syntax. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3477-156X
Dr. Ismat Jabeen is working as an Assistant Professor at Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, College of Science and Humanities, AlKharj. She has received her PhD degree in Linguistics (English) from NUML, Islamabad in January 2015. Her areas of interest are Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics and ELT.ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2514-230x
Aalia Mehar Khan is a distinguished scholar with MPhil degree in English Linguistics from NUML, Islamabad in 2018. She is currently working as Head of English Department at Safa and Marwa Islamic School, Ontario, Canada. Her research interests include Applied and Socio Linguistics. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9836-1813
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Appendices
Appendix
The link to the Saudi Vision 2030 document is the following: https://vision2030.gov.sa/en/download/file/fid/353