My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: colonialism, language strategies and the formation of critical discourse of chakri reformation in the late 19th century Siam

This research explores the pragmatics of Thai or Siamese elites in the late 19th century to safeguard national sovereignty from colonization while modernizing the Thai state. Focusing on ‘The Princes and Royal Officials Offer Their Opinion on Reforming the Administration of the Kingdom’ and ‘Royal Address Responding to Proposals for Administrative Reform, 1885’, the research highlights the conflicting views of Prince Prisdang and King Chulalongkorn concerning administrative reform and Western influence. This disagreement thereby raises the question of how pragmatic conditions shaped elite debates over proposed political reform in late nineteenth-century Siam through the combined lenses of Historical Pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Utilizing van Dijk’s Ideological Square, the analysis examines linguistic strategies that reflect discursive formation, thus incorporating CDA into historical analysis and foregrounding a linguistic–pragmatic dimension often overlooked in studies of Thai intellectual history. Prince Prisdang’s petition advocated for a constitutional monarchy and criticized the King’s methods as superficial, while King Chulalongkorn’s response to imperial pressures prioritized centralized governance and selective legal modernization. The findings reveal how linguistic strategies shaped power relations and underscore ideological tensions that continue to influence contemporary Thai society. This research sheds light on the historical roots of Thailand’s struggle between traditional authority and democratization.