PERSUASIVE UTTERANCES IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE (A CASE STUDY OF MAYOR AND VICE MAYOR
ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2015 IN MEDAN
A Thesis
Submitted to English Applied Linguistics Study program in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Magister Humaniora
By :
YONI RAHAYU
Registration Number 8146111070
ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM
POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL
i ABSTRACT
Rahayu, Yoni. Registration Number: 8146111070. Persuasive Utterances in Political Discourse (A Case Study of Mayor and Vice Mayor Election Campaign 2015 in Medan). Thesis. English Applied Linguistics Study Program, Postgraduate School, State University of Medan. 2016.
ii ABSTRAK
Rahayu, Yoni. Ujaran Persuasif dalam Wacana Politik (Sebuah Studi Kasus Calon Walikota dan Wakil Walikota Medan 2015). Tesis. Linguistik Terapan Bahasa Inggris, Sekolah Pascasarjana, Universitas Negeri Medan Postgraduate School. State University of Medan. 2016.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
In the name of Allah, the most gracious and the most merciful whom she would like to express her sincere gratitude, Allah the almighty who has given her blessing health, strength and patience in the process of completing this thesis which entitle “Persuasive Utterances in Political Discourse (A Case Study of Mayor and Vice Mayor Election Campaign 2015 in Medan) as a partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Magister Humaniora at the Postgraduate of English Applied Linguistics Program, State University of Medan. Then, Praises are also addressed to our prophet Muhammad SAW who guided us to the better life.
In the completion of this thesis, the writer wishes to acknowledge her deepest gratitude for all generous guidance and assistance which has been given to her by a lot of people. The writer would like to express her highest appreciation to Prof. T. Silvana Sinar M.A., Ph.D. as her first adviser and Dr. Rahmad Husein, M.Ed. as her second advisor, for their generous assistance, guidance, advice, and precious time they spent on supervising and guiding this thesis.
The writer would also like to express her gratitude to Dr. Rahmad Husein, M.Ed. as the Head of English Applied Linguistics Study Program and Prof. Dr. Sri Minda Murni, M.S. as the Secretary of English Applied Linguistics Study Program who have assisted her in processing the administration requirements during the process of her studies in the postgraduate School of the State University of Medan, and not to forget special thanks to the all lecturers of the English Applied Linguistics Study Program who have given their valuable knowledge to her in their lectures.
iv
An un-expressible gratitude to her beloved parents, Suyoto and Yusni Nasution, who have given their love, prays, patience, motivations and supports in keeping encouraging the writer to finish her study. And also special thanks for her sisters and brothers; Suchairani, S.Pd, Dhani Aldila Putra M.Pd, Febri Wildani, and Imam Andrianto for their sincere and supports, there is no suitable word that can fully describe their everlasting love and express how much she love them.
At last, it is honor for her to convey special thanks to Zon Saroha Ritonga, M.Pd who has motivated and supported her. Then, last but not least, thanks to her beloved friends Iis Aprianti, Dian heriani, Yoshiko, her classmates of LTBI A1 XXIV, and all of those who supported her in any respect during the completion of this thesis.
Medan, 25 February 2016 The Writer,
Yoni Rahayu
v
1.1 The Background of the Study ...1
1.2 The Problems of the Study ...8
1.3 The Objectives of the Study ...8
1.4 The Scope of the Study ...9
1.5 The Significances of the Study ...10
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE ...11
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3.4 The Instrument for Collecting Data ...36 3.5 The Technique for Analyzing Data ...36 3.6 Trustworthiness ...40 CHAPTER IV DATA, DATA ANALYSIS, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Data ...44 4.2 Data Analysis ...44 4.2.1 The Strategies of Persuasive Utterances Utilized by
Mayor and Vice Mayor Candidates ...46 4.2.1.5 The Preference Strategy of Persuasive
Utterances Utilized by Mayor and Vice
Mayor Candidates ...52 4.2.1.6 The Rareness Strategy of Persuasive
Utterances Utilized by Mayor and Vice
Mayor Candidates ...53 4.2.2 The Realization of Speech Acts In persuasive
Utterances Used by Mayor and Vice Mayor
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4.2.2.1 Directives in Persuasive Utterances ...55
4.2.2.2 Assertives in Persuasive Utterances ...57
4.2.2.3 Commisives in Persuasive Utterances ...57
4.2.2.4 Expressives in Persuasive Utterances ...59
4.2.2.5 Declarative in Persuasive Utterances ...60
4.2.3 The Reasons of Using Persuasive Utterances in the way They are ...61
4.3 Findings ...64
4.4 Discussion ...65
CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS ...69
REFERENCES ...71
viii
LIST OF FIGURES
ix
LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix I The Transcription of First Pair in “Kampanye Simpatis’ ...75
Appendix II The Transcription of Second Pair in “Kampanye Simpatis’ ... 73
Appendix III The Transcription of First Pair in “Kampanye Akbar’ ...80
Appendix IV The Transcription of Second Pair in “Kampanye Akbar ...81
Appendix V The Categorization of Persuasive Strategies Utilized by Mayor and Vice Mayor Candidates of Medan 2015 ...84
Appendix VI The Realization of Speech Acts in Persuasive Utterances utilized by the Candidates of Mayor and Vice Mayor 2015 of Medan ...92
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1The Background of the Study
Language has important role in human’s life. It was what people used for
communication to express ideas and feelings. It is used wherever people go,
whenever people stand, whatever people do for having interaction each other.
Fairclough (2001) stated Language “as a form of social practice”. It viewed as a
tool to express the self, to establish and maintain a certain relationship with the
other.
Human language serves as a means of cognition and communication: it
enables us to think for ourselves and to cooperate with other people in our
community (Widdowson, 2000). When people were communicating to each other,
they would send and reply ideas by the utterances. It is important to understand
the meaning of someone utterances, in order that both the speaker and the hearer
understand each other and they can communicate well. There will be
misunderstanding if the hearer cannot get the meaning of the speaker utterances.
For example, when someone says “do that again, and I’ll kick you”, it means that
the speaker doesn’t try to make a request to do something, but he tries to make a
threat in order to stop what the hearer do. In case of this situation, the hearer
should be able to understand the meaning of the speaker utterances to avoid the
misunderstanding.
2
Stewart and Vaillette (2001) state that people use language to do an
extraordinarily wide range of activities. It is used to convey information, request
information, give orders, make requests, make threats, give warnings, make bets,
give advice, etc. All of the activities are done by the addressers to reach an
understanding with their addressees through the use of different strategies. These
include persuasion.
According to Diamond and Cobb (1999), persuasion is an act of
conversion, convincing others, changing their views, shifting their ideal points
along the imagined line. It can be said that it has the ultimate objective of
influencing people or making them embrace certain beliefs in order that they may
either adopt new goals or abandon previous ones in favor of higher value goals, as
presented by the persuader.
Nippold (1994) also states persuasive attempts to convince a listener of
something. It is of interest for many reasons. First, it is a highly utilized form of
discourse in social situations. For example, it is not uncommon for individuals to
have to persuade others to see their point of view. Although written persuasion
tends to be used in more formal settings such as formal exams, or letters to
newspapers, spoken persuasion is used almost daily in social interactions. Second,
it is a fairly complex form of discourse that could be particularly challenging, for
instance, it is socially acceptable to have different views about politics. There is
always an attempt to attract people to one side or another. Thus, attempt to
persuade people to change their opinions becomes a legitimate feature of political
3
Political discourse is as attached to political actors- individuals
(politicians, citizens), political institutions and organizations that engaged in a set
of process and through rituals events with citizens who may participate in the
process of government (Fairclough, 2012). In this process, language plays a
crucial role. Therefore, it has been a vast and fruitful area of contemporary
research, particularly among politicians who have studied it from different angles,
as well as linguists, because politics relies upon language as its tool of trade.
As in political discourse, language is the essential implementation of
successful democratic rule in any country. Ayemony and Arkinkuolere (2012)
observe that language is the conveyer belt of power, it moves people to vote,
debate or revolt and it is therefore a central explanation of political stability or
polarization. The language of politics provides the opportunity for politicians to
explore the resources available through language to manipulate words to suit their
intentions. Therefore, language could be regarded as the vehicle of politics. In
other words, the most activities performed by the politicians are done through
language, such as speech, debate, inauguration, campaign, etc.
Olimat, et.al. (2014) stated a political campaign is a communication
process to find the right message, target that message to the right group of voters,
and repeat that message again and again. The communication process of political
campaign is happened by the interaction. Such interaction may be formal or
informal, verbal or nonverbal, public or private but it is always persuasive, forcing
4
Then, Al-Gublan (2015) said political campaign is dynamic struggles
between candidates to define the informational context for voters. It means the
political campaign holds many events from the political parties related to persuade
people in order that voting the candidates. The votes from the people will be
determined by what the candidates say and how they say by uttering their
utterances.
Related to the utterances used by the campaign speakers, it can be stated
that most of the utterances used in campaign activity aimed at affecting and
convincing the audiences in order that they keep following the speakers’
intentions. According to Simons (1976), the notion of persuasion is to make
manipulative acts, but it also leaves receivers with the perception of choice. It
involves attempted influence such as a politician attempts to attract votes, a
legislator seeks a bill, or a student seeks permission to take a make-up exam. In
some contexts it may be appropriate to refer to “persuasion” as an effect already
produced by messages, whether intended or not. This concept can be
comprehended that a persuader needs some strategies in order to convince the
voters. They are consistence, authority, reciprocal, social-evidence, preference and
rareness (Cialdini, 1999).
Besides six strategies above, the persuasive utterances by the candidates
can be interpreted as speech acts in which the candidates’ intention is to make the
people vote and commit themselves to vote. Speech acts as action performed via
utterances was first developed by Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) who argued
5
because it proposes descriptive terms for different kinds of speech acts such as,
apology, promise, and thanking which are expanded on by the current researcher
to also include persuasion.
Referring to the descriptions above, the forms of persuasive utterances also
can be identified with the concept of the way of performing speech-acts (direct or
indirect) argued by Searle (1979), that realized in types of speech acts namely,
directives, assertives, commissives, expressives, declaratives. Speech acts provide
a framework to identify the conditions underlying the production and
understanding of persuasive utterances of the candidates as a particular
linguistically realized action (Kahari, 2014). It accounts for what the candidates
mean, what the candidates intend and what the people understand and the rules
govern the linguistic elements in the persuasive utterances. In other words, the
speech acts theory is important to this study because it explains what the
candidates do with the language in their persuasive utterances.
The existence of the persuasive utterances become the phenomena in
political discourse. It means that it can involve all the elements of the society by
having some activities in every campaigns that the candidates done. The
candidates attract the people to involve in their campaigns directly. By looking at
this phenomena, the primarily observation is done to look at the phenomenon
above that could be seen on the campaign of Mayor and Vice Mayor’s election
campaign 2015 from the candidate pairs of number two (Ramadhan Pohan). It is
taken in sympathy campaign that held in Sunggal market.
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By the utterances above, it could be said that the candidate pairs of number two
persuade the utterances by asking the people vote them. In this case, the
candidates used the imperative sentences and asking the people to vote them
directly.
Moreover, it is also exist in the pair of number 1 (Akhyar Nasution)
“Mohon doa restu dan dukungan dari bapak ibu sekalian untuk nanti pada tanggal 9 desember dapat memilih nomor 1 yang benar yaitu Bang Eldin dan Akhyar”. (Please we need your prayer and support to choose number 1 “Benar” Bang eldin and Akhyar) on 9th December.
The persuasive utterances above indicate that the speaker persuaded the audiences
by asking their prayer and support to choose number 1. The utterances are also
done in directly way. If the speaker persuaded the audiences by saying instruction
on record or directly, he must have used the authority strategies.
In the study of persuasion, there are several studies that have described and
raised many issues on the different strategies in their way of uttering the
utterances. From the data above, the candidates used persuasive utterances in
direct way. It’s appropriate with the previous study about persuasive, Kani (2014)
has been conducted the research entitled “The persuasive Strategies in Regent
Election Campaign of Pasuruan”. The aims of this study were to describe the
patterns, strategies and culture-social norms of persuasive utterances used in the
political campaign based on the pragmatic perspective. The findings of this study
showed (1) the patterns of persuasive-utterances which are theoretically
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forms were actualized in the directive-speech-acts in the forms of: assertive,
commissives, expressives, and declaration, (2) the strategies of
persuasive-utterances used by the speakers consist of the six strategies, they are consistence,
authority, reciprocal, social-evidence, preference and rareness, (3) Based on the
social and culture norms, it can be identified that the politeness of the
persuasive-utterances used by the speakers is relatively high. This study emphasized that all
of the persuasive utterances and types of speech acts are used by the campaigners
in campaign. Moreover, Jarraya (2013), her thesis title Persuasion in Political
Discourse: Tunisian President Ben Ali's Last Speech as a Case Study. She
investigated persuasion in political discourse in the last speech of the former
Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. She found types of speech acts are
used in the same utterance either with or without an explicit performative verb.
Some speech acts may be used as a medium to carry others. It also shows how the
strategic use of deictic pronouns and agency with certain illocutionary forces
helps construct otherness as well as the self. This process is enforced by the
marked use of ethos, which is a crucial strategy of persuasion in political
discourse.
Based on the phenomenon above, the researcher interested to conduct a
research by using persuasive strategies by Cialdini (1999) in order to know how
creative the Mayor and Vice Mayor in utilizing the persuasive utterances by doing
some strategies of persuasive and the way they intend the act by the language
(speech acts) on the Mayor and Vice Mayor election campaign that will be held
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future leaders directly since Indonesia is also a democratic country. Medan, one of
the town in Indonesia hold the election of the new mayor and vice mayor for the
next five years on. There were two couples candidates of the mayor and vice
mayor of Medan who fought to win this position, they were (1) Dzulmi Eldin with
Akhyar Nasution, (2) Ramadhan Pohan with Eddie Kusuma.
Therefore, by using six persuasive strategies (consistence, authority,
reciprocal, social-evidence, preference, and rareness), the way of performing
speech acts (direct or indirect) that realized in types of speech acts (directives,
assertives, commisives, expressives and declaratives), in analyzing the candidates’
persuasive utterances, people knew comprehensively about what is actually the
meaning of the candidates’ utterance in the campaign.
1.2The Problems of the Study
Based on the background of the study, the problems of the study were
formulated as the following:
a) What strategies of persuasive utterances are utilized by the Mayor and
Vice Mayor candidates 2015 of Medan in political campaign?
b) How are the persuasive utterances realized in speech acts that utilized
by the Mayor Vice Mayor candidates 2015 of Medan in political
campaign?
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1.3The Objectives of the Study
In relation to the problems, this study aimed to:
a. describe the strategies of persuasive utterances that utilized by the
Mayor and Vice Mayor candidates 2015 of Medan in political
campaign.
b. describe types of speech acts in persuasive utterances are utilized by
the Mayor Vice Mayor candidates 2015 of Medan in political
campaign
c. explain the reason of utilizing persuasive utterances in political
campaign.
1.4The Scope of the Study
This study investigated the persuasive strategies, speech acts, and the way
of persuasive utterances that utilized by the Mayor and Vice Mayor candidates of
Medan in political campaign („Kampanye Simpatis‟ and „Kampanye Akbar‟). The
main aspects will be observed are the persuasive strategies (consistence, authority,
reciprocal, social-evidence, preference, and rareness), the realization of persuasive
utterances in types of speech acts (directives, assertives, commisives, expressives
and declaratives) by performing the way (direct or indirect), and the reasons of
using persuasive that utilized by Mayor and Vice Mayor candidates 2015 of
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1.5The Significances of the Study
The findings of this study are expected to give some relevant contributions
both theoretically and practically:
1. Theoretically, this research is expected to enrich the theories of Discourse and
pragmatics, specifically give a better understanding and new insight on how
speech acts used in persuasive utterances are related to the aspects of
pragmatic study.
2. Practically, the findings of the study are expected to be guidance for those
who are interested to use as a model to identify the speech acts in persuasive
utterances used for social interaction in formal situation, particularly for
political discourse.
3. The findings of this study are expected to know the pattern of persuasive
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 5.1 CONCLUSIONS
This study was concerned on the realization of persuasive utterances by the mayor and vice mayor candidates 2015 in Medan in political campaign. It was aimed at describing the types of persuasive strategies, the way of performing speech acts in persuasive utterances and the reasons of using persuasive utterances by the mayor and vice mayor candidates 2015 in Medan in political campaign. After all the data have been analyzed, the conclusion can be stated as the following:
1. There are only five strategies of persuasive utterances that utilized by mayor and vice mayor candidates 2015 of Medan in the campaign, they are consistence, authority, social-evidence, preference and rareness strategy. While, the reciprocal strategy was not found in all persuasive utterances that uttered by the candidates.
2. All types of speech acts were found in realization of persuasive utterances that utilized by the candidates. They were directives, assertives, commisives, expressives, and declaratives. Based on the data analysis only the directives were performed by direct way (on-record), while, assertives commisives, expressives, and declaratives were performed by indirect way (off-record).
3. There were some reasons of persuasive utterances utilized by the candidates, namely to convince, to actuate and to stimulate the audiences.
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The three of these reasons supported each other to make the complete persuasive utterances.
5.2 SUGGESTIONS
The suggestions are as the following:
1. It is suggested for the other researchers to study about the language of politics used in campaign, speeches, inauguration, debates, etc to analyze the utterances or language used by the politicians.
2. It is suggested for other researchers who want to elaborate the study about persuasive utterances to do the research in other fields, such as marketing, or even in teaching and learning process.
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