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“Macro-structures are further required in order to make explicit the semantic relations between a discourse and its possible summaries.
Thus, it is assumed that a summary is a verbal expression of a macro- structure of the discourse it summarizes
”.
a. Topics
Ideological content is most directly expressed in discourse meaning. Then, someone shall pay special attention to the semantics of ideological
discourse. Since the meaning of words, sentences and whole discourses are extraordinarily complex, the researcher have to make a selection of its most
relevant aspects. However, the meaning of discourse is not limited to the meaning of its words and sentences. Discourse also has more global
meanings, such as topics. Such topics represent the gist or most important information of a discourse, and tell us what a discourse is about.
Topics typically are the information that is best recalled of a discourse. Although the topics abstractly characterize the meaning of a whole discourse
or of a larger fragment of discourse, they may also be concretely formulated in the text itself, for instance in summaries, abstracts, titles or headlines.
The ideological functions of topics directly follow the general principles mentioned above: if someone wants to emphasize self-good things or others-
bad things, the first thing they do is topicalizing such information. Conversely, if someone wants to de-emphasize self-bad things and others-
good things, then they need to de-topicalize such information. For instance, in much public discourse in multicultural society this means that topics
associated with racism are much less topicalized than those related to the
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alleged crimes, deviance or problems allegedly caused by minority groups van Dijk, 2004: 45.
2. Microstructure
Microstructure points on the local meaning of the discourse, by observing the semantic, syntactic, stylistic and rhetorical aspects van Dijk, 1993: 23.
The application of words, proposition, and certain rhetoric in the media is understood by van Dijk as the part of the speake
r’swriter’s strategy. The use of certain words, sentences, and diction is not only viewed as the way of
communication, but also viewed as a method of political communication to influence public opinion, to create support, to strengthen the legitimacy, and
to eliminate the rivals or the adversaries. Microstructure is the effective way to observe the next rhetorical and
persuasive process when someone conveys the message. Certain words are chosen to clarify the choice and attitude, shaping political consciousness, and
so on. Microstructure is defined into four aspects: Semantic aspects, syntactical aspects, stylistic aspects, and rhetorical aspects. Those aspects of
microstructure will be explained as follows.
a.
Semantic aspects
This aspect presents the meaning which tends to emphasize on the text, for example by giving detail on one side or making the explicit on another
side. This attempt aims to draw certain purposes such as positive self- representation or negative other-representation. As what van Dijk 2003: 46,
proposes as follows.
