THAI PRIME MINISTER'S WEEKLY TELEVISED ADDRESSES IN IDEOLOGICAL AND PENTADIC CRITICISM

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine how General Prayut Chan-O-cha, Prime Minister of Thailand, employed rhetoric in weekly televised address broadcasted from May 30, 2014 to December 16, 2016. This study adopted two concepts, which are pentadic criticism and ideological criticism, to examine 41 pieces of Thai Prime Minister’s weekly televised addresses.

The findings revealed that General Prayut Chan-O-cha paid most of his attention on Thailand’s political and economic dreadlocks and saw himself as the country’s savior amid the turmoil, as scene and agent were the controlling terms over other pentadic elements. The findings also suggested that the speech delivered by General Prayut Chan-O-cha was dominated by capitalism, nationalism, monarchy, sufficiency economy philosophy and authoritarianism ideologies respectively. The mentioned beliefs and motives became General Prayut’s prominent rhetorical tool in the weekly televised addresses.

Keywords: Ideology criticism, Pentadic criticism, rhetoric, rhetorical criticism, televised address, Thai prime minister