A phenomenological discourse analysis of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's work titled "Nutuk"

Within the historical development of philosophy, phenomenology, which found its way directly or indirectly and developed in this manner, took its true form in the 20th century with the works of Edmund Husserl and was accepted as a new field in philosophy. It was also placed at the foundation of the theory of meaning by Husserl, giving rise to the Phenomenological Theory of Meaning. Recognising that the fundamental concepts and approaches outlined by Husserl in his phenomenology and the theory of meaning based on it could be approached as steps that could be utilised in the analysis of the discourse of an oral or written text, we laid the foundations for a new discourse analysis approach: Phenomenological Discourse Analysis. In this doctoral thesis, a new discourse analysis approach called Phenomenological Discourse Analysis has been developed by bringing together the fundamental principles of phenomenology and discourse. The aim of the thesis is to analyse Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Nutuk using the Phenomenological Discourse Analysis approach in order to evaluate the discourse of the text holistically according to linguistic and non-linguistic situations. In this regard, after explaining the theoretical basis of phenomenology and discourse, Nutuk was analysed using the Phenomenological Discourse Analysis approach. The text examined in this study is Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's work entitled Nutuk. The study was conducted according to qualitative research methods, data was obtained through document analysis, and analysed using Phenomenological Discourse Analysis. The introduction to the study provides a general overview of the subject matter; the purpose, necessity, importance, scope and limitations of the study are outlined; and information is provided on relevant studies within the scope of the subject. In line with the theoretical framework on which the thesis is based, information is provided on the philosophy of language, meaning, theories of meaning, phenomenological theory of meaning, discourse, discourse approaches, discourse analysis, and current approaches; the application stages of Phenomenological Discourse Analysis are determined. Finally, detailed information is provided about the Nutuk, which will be examined according to this new approach. The third chapter focuses on the materials used in this thesis and the methodology employed. The Phenomenological Discourse Analysis of the Nutuk was conducted by determining its context, thematic framework, and the expressions influencing its discourse; the findings were classified according to the headings of the thematic infrastructure; after each section with semantic integrity, the expressions influencing the discourse, the concepts and sub-concepts corresponding to these expressions were tabulated, and a comprehensive evaluation of the Phenomenological Discourse Analysis in the section was made. Through Phenomenological Discourse Analysis, the phenomena addressed in the work, the actual or conceptual entities to which they refer, and how these entities were experienced by the first person, namely Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and how the possibilities of language were used in their expression were identified. The findings obtained from the Phenomenological Discourse Analysis of the Nutuk have been evaluated in the final section, and a discussion section has been included. The phenomena addressed by Atatürk in the Nutuk, the ways in which these phenomena are experienced, the structure of the words, the metaphors in the expressions in line with the relationship between meaning and reality, the layers of meaning in his discourse, the relationship between meaning and context, the implicit meanings in the discourse, the fundamental messages intended to be conveyed through the discourse, and the function of the discourse have been explained. In this regard, it has been observed that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk based the context of his Speech on three main themes and twenty-eight sub-themes; that there are five hundred and ninety- four (594) utterances containing phenomena within these themes, and that forty-five (45) of these are categorical, while the rest are non-categorical. It was determined that Atatürk focused on the phenomena of 'old state, new state, old leadership understanding, new leadership understanding, old government, new government, internal and external enemies, struggle and rebirth'; and through these, on the phenomena of 'complete independence, nationalism/nationalism, duty'. The messages were attempted to be conveyed through these phenomena. It was understood that Phenomenological Discourse Analysis can analyse voluminous, multi-message texts containing multiple discourse types through phenomena. Along with this, a brief comparison was made between this thesis study and Nutuk and previous discourse analysis approaches.