AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra
in English Letters
By
MEITA ESTININGSIH
Student Number: 044214102
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS
FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
i
NEWS IDEOLOGY OF SUHARTO’S FALL EVENT
IN “AFTER SUHARTO” IN NEWSWEEK
AND “END OF AN ERA” ARTICLE IN TIME MAGAZINE
AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra
in English Letters
By
MEITA ESTININGSIH
Student Number: 044214102
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS
FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
iv
To a million merciful and sneering men,
While families cuddle the joys of the fireside
When spurred by tale of dire lone agony.
A newspaper is a court
Where every one is kindly and unfairly tried
By a squalor of honest men.
A newspaper is a market
Where wisdom sells its freedom
And melons are crowned by the crowd.
A newspaper is a game
Where his error scores the player victory
While another's skill wins death.
A newspaper is a symbol;
It is feckless life's chronicle,
A collection of loud tales
Concentrating eternal stupidities,
That in remote ages lived unhaltered,
Roaming through a fenceless world.
v
g{|á à{xá|á |á wxw|vtàxw àÉ Åç uxÄÉäxw ÑtÜxÇàá? ytÅ|Äç
tÇw yÜ|xÇwá‹
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I honestly declared that this thesis, which I have written, does not contain the work or parts of the work of other people, except those cited in the quotations and the references, as a scientific paper should.
Yogyakarta, September 21, 2010 The Writer
MEITA ESTININGSIH
vii
LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN
PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS
Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma:
Nama : Meita Estiningsih
Nomor Mahasiswa : 044214102
Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:
NEWS IDEOLOGY OF SUHARTO’S FALL EVENT
IN “AFTER SUHARTO” IN NEWSWEEK
AND “END OF AN ERA” ARTICLE IN TIME MAGAZINE
Beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya maupun memberikan royalty kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.
Demikian pernyataan ini yang saya buat dengan sebenarnya.
Yogyakarta, 21 September 2010 Yang menyatakan
viii
First of all I would like to thank God Almighty for helping me and guiding me during the process of the thesis, and for answering my prayers in His way.
I would like to thank my parents and my family for supporting me all these past six years. Without them, I could not afford to finish my study. I dedicate this thesis to them. My best gratitude is especially for aunty Tarti and uncle Pudjioto for supporting my study finance.
In addition, I would like to thank my advisor Adventina Putranti, S.S., M. Hum. and my co-advisor Anna Fitriati, S.Pd., M.Hum. for their patient in guiding me and giving me some useful and clever advice for this thesis. I thank for their guidance, advices, and time that they gave to finish this study.
I also thank Tempo Jakarta, Indonesian Visual Art Archive, Kolese St. Ignatius, and Sanata Dharma University library for the references of this study. I also thank Yoshi Fajar Kresnomurti of IVAA as my informal advisor and Prandika Yudhistira as my personal motivator and for giving me such care and love. In addition, I thank Keke for lending me a digital dictionary.
I thank my friends at English Letters department, Atma Jaya Yogyakarta University, Christian University of Duta Wacana, Aksara IVAA, Dhyastra boarding house and Beo 20, and my friends of Mitra Perpus Sadhar, also Gayam 16 for loving me and giving such courage, attention, and care.
ix
LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS ... vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ... viii
2. Critical Discourse Analysis (Critical Linguistics Approach)... 13
3. Representation ... 27
A. The Analysis on the Vocabularies’ Meaning Related to the Context of the Fall of Suharto in the Article of “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” in TIME... 37
1. The Analysis on the Vocabularies in “After Suharto” Article .... 39
x
2. The Representation of the Fall of Suharto Event in “End of an
Era” ... 105
C. News ideology Constructed through the Representation of the Fall of Suharto Event in “After Suharto” and “End of an Era” ... 110
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION ... 121
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 126
APPENDICES ... 130
Appendix 1 ... 130
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LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND TABLES
Diagram 1. The Example of Vocabularies Taxonomical Structures ... 21
Diagram 2. The Diagram of the Representation Process in “After Suharto” ... 111
Diagram 3. The Diagram of the Representation Process in “End of an Era” ... 115
Table 1. The Example of Vocabulary Choices ... 22
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Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” Article in TIME Magazine.
Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University. News magazine is a kind of written communication. Written communication is also one of kinds of verbal discourse, which indeed deals with language. News is the representation of the world in language; it represents the events through languages, which does not merely reflect the world neutrally. Thus, different expressions of language carry different ideology, which is different ideas, or belief. Referring to this, I focused on newsweeklies that have been well known internationally, which are TIME and NEWSWEEK to study the ideology of the fall of Suharto event. I chose articles in both magazines that became the headline as well as cover story, “After Suharto” and “End of an Era”.
In this thesis, I analyzed three problem formulations. First, it is to analyze the meaning of the vocabularies related to the context of the fall of Suharto event in the article of “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” in TIME magazine. The second one is to analyze the representation of the fall of Suharto event through the meaning of the vocabularies in “After Suharto” and “End of an Era”. The third is to identify the ideology constructed through the representation in “After Suharto” and “End of an Era”.
In order to analyze the problems above, I used Critical Discourse Analysis as the approach to understand the news components. Critical Discourse Analysis is interdisciplinary theory, which could be linked to other theories, which are representation and ideology.
xiii
ABSTRAK
MEITA ESTININGSIH (2010). News Ideology of Suharto’s Fall Event in “After
Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” Article in TIME Magazine.
Yogyakarta: Jurusan Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma.
Majalah berita merupakan salah satu bentuk komunikasi tertulis. Komunikasi tertulis itu juga salah satu dari bentuk wacana verbal yang pastinya berhubungan dengan bahasa. Berita merupakan representasi dari realita di dunia yang merepresentasikan peristiwa-peristiwa dalam bahasa yang tidak direfleksikan secara natural. Maka dari itu, ekspresi-ekspresi bahasa dalam berita membentuk ideologi tertentu, ide-ide tertentu atau kepercayan-kepercayaan tertentu. Mengacu pada hal tersebut, saya memfokuskan studi ini pada majalah berita mingguan yang ternama secara internasional, TIME dan NEWSWEEK untuk menganalisis ideologi dalam berita lengsernya Suharto. Saya memilih artikel yang menjadi berita utama maupun berita sampul, “After Suharto” dan “End of an Era”.
Dalam studi ini, saya menganalisis tiga rumusan masalah. Yang pertama, menganalisis makna dari pilihan kosakata yang berhubungan dengan berita lengsernya Suharto di artikel “After Suharto” di majalah NEWSWEEK dan “End of an Era” di majalah TIME. Kedua, menganalisis representasi dari berita lengsernya Suharto melalui makna pilihan kosakata-kosakata. Ketiga, mengidentifikasi ideologi yang terkonstruksi melalui representasi dari berita lengsernya Suharto di artikel “After Suharto” dan “End of an Era”.
Untuk menganalisis rumusan masalah tersebut, saya menggunakan Analisis Wacana Kritis sebagai pendekatan untuk memahami komponen-komponen berita. Analisis Wacana Kritis merupakan teori interdisipliner yang juga mengandung teori ideologi dan representasi.
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A. Background of the Study
Language is the most prominent and crucial medium for human communication. ‘People use language in order to communicate ideas or beliefs (or emotion), and they do so as a part of more social events’, for instance to have a conversation with friends in a specific situation, a phone call, a lesson in a classroom, a job interview, during visit a doctor, or when writing and reading news report. A communicative event in specific social context is one of characterizations of discourse (van Dijk, 1997: 2). Sara Mills gave further explanation of the definition of discourse by quoting Geoffrey Leech and Michael Short’s definition.
Discourse is linguistic communication seen as a transaction between speaker and hearer, as an interpersonal activity whose form is determined by its social purpose. Text is linguistic communication (either spoken or written) seen simply as a message coded in its auditory or visual medium (2001: 4).
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in the conversation in talking, there are speaker and receiver, in text there are author and reader. Text, in this case, is a product of written communication or written discourse. Therefore, there are enough similarities between spoken and written language use, communication, and interaction (van Dijk, 1997: 3). Referring to this, therefore, news is considered as a text, a product of written discourse.
…they combine dramatic narrative with dramatic still pictures, the latter taking up at least a third of the total news page (or "newshole"), and sometimes there are several pages of pictures (2004: 4).
This feature writing style also includes cover story writing, which is also the headline, reports the cover illustration in a magazine.
Every news whether it is written in daily newspapers, newsmagazine, or other news media, has news values. The news media select events to be reported through complex process in which to fulfill the criteria of newsworthiness whether it is worth to be published or not. The criteria consist of six attributes, which are
conflict (struggles featuring people, governments, or social and natural forces), impact (the number of people affected and how much they are affected), proximity (geographic or demographic closeness to the reader, listener, or viewer), timeliness (the more recent, the more newsworthy), prominence (how widely known a person or event is on the local, regional or national and international levels), and novelty (unique or bizarre people and events) (Sterling, 2009: 1002).
These criteria are considered as the news values. Therefore, news does not just merely report the events and it is impossible has newsworthiness naturally. This notion is explained further by Stuart Hall, which is quoted by Roger Fowler in his Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press
The media do not simply and transparently report events, which are ‘naturally’ newsworthy in themselves. ‘News’ is the end-product of a complex process which begins with a systematic sorting and selecting of events and topics according to a socially constructed set of categories (1996: 12).
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photographs, graphics, tables, etc. Referring to the general notion of discourse concept that contains the communicative event, news article is indeed as one of the product of a text or written discourse. Thus, news is a discourse, which ‘far from neutrally reflecting social reality and empirical facts’ or simply it is ’the social construction of reality’ (Fowler, 1996: 2). The non-neutrality of news is because the language use like the choice of words, lexical structure, or the sentence or clause structure in the news are not neutral too. Thus, news is a representation of the world in language in the sense of construction, which is not a value-free reflection of ‘facts’ (Fowler, 1996: 4). It refers to the notion that language is not neutral, but a highly constructive mediator (Fowler, 1996: 1). Thus, the representation in the news through the language is a constructive thing.
The non-neutrality of language could be seen from the journalists’ view or thought, belief, social background or what it is called ideology. The ideology is constructed through how the author describes the reality of the event using the language use in a text or writing. As a text, news has the tendency of ideology from the representation of the language created in the news writing. Thus, ideology in a text itself is constructed through the representation of the language structure meanings.
news-magazine in reporting a crucial political situation in Indonesia. It is because the foreign journalist has different political background, ideas, beliefs, social, and nation to many Indonesians. Related to this, I chose newsweekly magazines, TIME and NEWSWEEK as the representation of the American biggest news
magazines and as the data for this study. I purposely chose the article of “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” in TIME magazine, which reported about the fall of Suharto in 1998 and they were published on June 1, 1998.
Since headline is the prominent issue in news, I prefer to analyze it rather than any other news articles. As I mentioned before, that the style of the news report written in magazine is in the form of feature or article, so the headline here is also written in feature writing style. I chose the 1998 Indonesian political issue and narrowed down the topic into the fall of President Suharto. Because of the topic became the headline as well as cover story in both TIME and NEWSWEEK magazine, it is for sure that the issue/ topic is actual and fulfill the news value and newsworthy criteria that I have mentioned previously.
The fall of Suharto is an extraordinary political event because Suharto resigned before his term end. As Ibnu Hamad stated in his Konstruksi Realitas Politik dalam Media Massa: Sebuah Studi Critical Discourse Analysis terhadap
Berita-Berita Politik
Political issues always attract the attention of mass media as the news source…especially if that political issue is more than the usual thing or extraordinary case, such as presidency replacement in the middle of his term and the parliament dissolution (my translation) (2004: 1).
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In addition, the fall of Suharto is one of the historical facts in Indonesia since it was the time of reformation when the new era in Indonesian politics began after Suharto’s fall.
The crisis, May riots, and the reformation of political system and presidency transition in Indonesia are the news values, which are worth to publish as news in media. Moreover, different political background, nation, culture, or belief of a journalist or reporter will cause different choice of words, structure, and meaning in the news report. Thus, the ideology that carries is also different from one to another feature in different magazine. Referring to that, this study is trying to seek the news ideologies brought in the article of “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” in TIME magazine in understanding the fall of
Suharto event in Indonesia, through its representation on the language use, which I focus on the use of vocabularies choices in both articles. Since vocabularies choices are part of the discourse elements, they could cover all of the larger elements like syntax in the level of clause or semantics unit coherence in the level of paragraph, like macrostructures or superstructures, so the analysis focus on vocabularies will be much efficient. In addition, the vocabularies are the integral part to analyze the ideology of a discourse.
B. Problem Formulation
1. What is the meaning of the vocabularies in the context of the fall of Suharto in the article of “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” in TIME magazine?
2. How is the fall of Suharto represented in both articles, “After Suharto” and “End of an Era” through the contextual meaning of vocabularies?
3. What are the ideologies of both articles constructed through its representation?
C. Objectives of the Study
In this part, I will explain the objectives of the study based on the problem formulations stated above in order to make them clearer. This study has three objectives. First, I try to find out the contextual meaning of the vocabularies in the article entitled “End of an Era” in TIME and “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK magazine. Second, I will identify the representation of the fall of Suharto in both articles through the contextual meaning of the vocabularies. Then, third, I would like to identify the ideology of both articles that reveals from the representation of the event, the fall of Suharto. Thus, from those objectives, it will be easier to answer each of the questions stated in problem formulation.
D. Definition of Terms
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refers to the view of Fowler that it is the ideas, beliefs, values, theories, ideology of the news content (1996: 1).
According to Mappatoto, an article is the complete nonfiction story/narration in the mass media that it is not in the form of straight news, which has no fix length. In addition, it is written dynamically as the expression of creativity, which sometimes has the touch of subjectivity of the writer toward the events, situation, and life aspects with emphasizing on the human interest in order to achieve its aims, which are giving information, entertaining, educating, and convincing (1999: 5).
Vocabulary is ‘a set of lexemes, including single word, compound words, and idioms’ (Richards and Schmidt, 2002: 580). There is a sense-relations within system that makes vocabulary of any languages as a ‘structured system, rather than an abstract list’ (Fowler, 1996: 82). Sense ‘defines meaning as a relationship between words rather than between words and the world’ (Fowler, 1996: 81).
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A. Review of Related Studies
There are many scholars who worked on various discourse analysis, especially on the news discourse or press or media analysis. Since TIME and NEWSWEEK magazines are the best-known news magazine all over the world,
several scholars also specified their study on news discourse on these news magazines. From time to time, TIME and NEWSWEEK became the popular study among the literary analysts or linguists. In addition, as a well-known media with its news-writing style, various topics of study on TIME and NEWSWEEK had been worked, including the study that had been done by Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and
Time. Gans worked on the comparative study on CBS evening News, NBC
Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time. His study focused on the domestic news on how the media covered the Cold War and Cuban missile crisis, and affected the audience, also ‘how that audience, in turn, affected the decisions that were being made in Washington’ (2004: xxi).
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United States. Gans chose these two news programs on CBS and NBC for a minute or two minutes news to compare them with the columns in both news magazines but still at the same section, which was domestic news. He did not only work on or study on the national news or national programs but also how the journalists of each news organizations reported, and wrote it, especially on how they reproduced the ideology and values appeared in their writings and reporting about America as a nation and society.
He used content analysis to analyze what news journalists had selected over time. In addition, there was assumption that the news contained a picture of the nation and society but the journalists seemed not aware of such presence. Thus, it brought to the analytical study not critical. For the content analysis, the methodology he used was largely qualitative and supplemented by quantitative data. For the qualitative was a set of hypotheses based on over years of watching television news and reading news magazines. The hypotheses was supplemented with the quantitative data that he chose a six-month sample of stories appearing in alternate months during 1967, 1971, and 1975. Thus, the result of Gans’ study tends to be sociology study on observing how the American culture portrayed through the domestic news section on newsweeklies magazines, TIME and NEWSWEEK also news programs on CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News.
1999, whether they emerged the religious and racial factors or not. They are national daily newspapers published all across the archipelago, and have the background of religious ideology. Eriyanto wanted to seek the tendency of each newspaper’s point of view on reporting or writing the religious and racial conflict in Maluku on December 26, 1999.
He did his analysis by Critical Discourse Analysis, so that he did not merely descriptively analyze and compare the four newspapers but he also criticized them. He used all the elements of CDA, which are text and social analysis to observe the four newspapers. For the text analysis, he analyzed the language use within the four newspapers, and for the social analysis, he analyzed the four newspapers’ ideology and related it to the situation of religious and racial conflict in Maluku. For the supplementation, he used quantitative data to observe and seek the frequency of the case and religious group description, news point of view, event labeling with vocabularies.
Therefore, the results are Republika had the point of view from the Islam group but Kompas and Suara Pembaruan did not choose to use religious point of view, both even used government or military point of view. Republika and Pos Kota described the event, Maluku case as religious conflict, whereas Kompas and Suara Pembaruan did not have such description, and even they had no clear
tendency in describing that case. In addition, Republika chose the vocabulary of ‘pembantaian’ (slaughtering) to describe the conflict whereas Kompas and Suara Pembaruan chose to use the vocabulary of ‘konflik’ or ‘pertikaian’ or ‘bentrok’
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Both studies done by Herbert J. Gans and Eriyanto are the media studies, but Eriyanto tends to critize rather than to describe like Gans. Eriyanto tried to seek the tendency of religious ideology and the event labeling whereas Gans merely to observe and analyze how American portrayed through the domestic news and its journalists also audiences. The paradigm of the analysis in Eriyanto’s is critical whereas Gans’ is positivistic. Like both of the scholars had done, I also used printed news as data for the study concentrating on articles or features in newsweeklies magazines. However, unlike Eriyanto who used all the CDA’s elements in his study, I only focused on the text elements, as my field is linguistic study. In addition, my study also to observe and seek the ideology of the news through the representation of the event, which is the fall of Suharto in the article of “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” in TIME magazine.
B. Review of Related Theories
1. News as Discourse
(TV or radio) program type in which news items are presented, third, a news item or news report, i.e., a text or discourse on radio, on TV or in the newspaper, in which new information is given about recent events (van Dijk, 1988: 4). It is similar to what van Dijk had studied; I also use the third concept of news in this study.
I emphasize on the news as an informative discourse, that it is constructed through the social shared. Thus, news is a kind of discourse, which is ‘a social product and a social practice’, so the meaning of event in the news is socially constructed (Fowler, 1996: 8). News is a representation of the world in language, which the language is not neutral in representing the world but it is refracting, structuring medium. Anything that is said or written about the world (in the news) is articulated from a particular ideological position (Fowler, 1996: 10).
2. Critical Discourse Analysis (Critical Linguistics Approach)
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language use (or in discourse)’ (Wodak, 2006: 2). Critical Discourse Analysis examines the language use in order to see the inequality power in society, thus, could reveal the ideological practice in a discourse.
Overall, there are several concepts or notions of CDA that CDA examines discourse in the concept of action, context, power, history and ideology.
a. Action
Discourse is understood as an action. This associates the discourse as the interaction form. Discourse could not be treated as a closed and internal analysis. People talk, write, and use the language to interact and communicate with other people. According to that statement, discourse is seen as purposive activity to persuade, debate, argue, etc. and second, discourse is uttered consciously and controllably (Eriyanto, 2009: 8).
b. Context
where the text is produced, intended functions. Discourse, then, is understood as a text also context, to describe text and context all together in a communication process. However, not all of the contexts are put in the analysis, but it only puts the relevant and significant contexts to the text production and interpretation (Eriyanto, 2009: 8-10). Thus, discourse analyst must be very well informed, and must learn by experience how to bring the relevant knowledge to the process of interpretation (Fowler, 1996: 90).
c. Power
Critical Discourse Analysis considers every discourse, either text or conversations are not as a neutral or natural entity. In discourse basically, there is a power opposition. This concept of power is important to see the people who have the control or be controlled in discourse (Eriyanto, 2009: 11-12).
d. History
One of integral ways to understanding texts is by placing them in specific historical context. The result will appear why discourse develops or is developed in certain way or why certain language is used instead of the others (Eriyanto, 2009: 10-11).
e. Ideology
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present domination as God-given, natural, benign, inevitable or to otherwise persuade the dominated groups to simply take such social relation for granted’ (van Dijk, 1997: 25). Implicitly, the dominant groups’ ideology will be effective if it is based on the reality that the dominated groups are considered it as a truth and something natural. Eriyanto quoted van Dijk’s statement that this phenomenon is called a “false consciousness”, how the dominant groups manipulated ideology to the dominated groups through propaganda or media control. Discourse analyst must see the context on how the ideology of the groups have role to construct the discourse. For instance, in the news text could be analyzed that whether the text is the representation of somebody’s ideology, like whether he/she is a feminist, anti-feminist, capitalist, socialist, etc. (2009: 13-14).
In addition, there are several approaches of CDA as its development from time to time by many scholars, which are critical linguistics, French discourse analysis, socio cognitive, socio-cultural change, and discourse social approach. However, I used critical linguistics approach in this study. Roger Fowler in his Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press explained that
critical linguistics seeks, by studying the minute details of linguistic structure in the light of the social and historical situation of the text, to display consciousness the patterns of belief and value which are encoded in the language—and which are below the threshold of notice for anyone who accepts the discourse as ‘natural’ (1996: 67).
certain linguistics construction, but it has to relate them to context in a special way. The critical linguist must have contextual knowledge and relate it to the linguistic structure to interpret the meaning in a discourse. The contextualizing is a matter of knowledge, experience, and intuition. Furthermore, ‘critical interpretation requires historical knowledge and sensitivity’ (Fowler, 1996: 68). Critical linguistics takes the view that any aspect of linguistic structure, whether syntactic, lexical, semantic, pragmatic, phonological can carry ideological significance.
Many scholars had applied and developed CDA on their works on ideology, or power relation. According to van Dijk, the discourse analysis has three dimensions, which are text, socio-cognitive and social context analysis in order to analyze the news text. However, I only focus on the text analysis of Critical Discourse Analysis, to reveal the ideology within the text. Van Dijk’s discourse analysis of news on the text analysis dimension divides into three levels of semantic structures, which are macrostructures, superstructures, and microstructures (Eriyanto, 2009: 224-226). Macrostructures deal with the analysis of the global or general speaking of news called topics or themes. Topic describes the dominant concept, the most central and the most important of the news content; it describes the overall content of the news discourse. Thus, the macrostructures seek the global meaning of discourse through topics of the text.
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major schemes, summary, and story. Summary has two elements, which are headline and lead. Headline and lead describe the general theme of the news report and represent the journalist’s main idea that he/she wants to emphasize about. The headline of an article or news is usually written in eye-catching graphics in big and bold capital letters, so that it could attract the readers’ attention. The headline also usually uses simplified sentence or just a phrase, and use particular dictions or vocabulary, which stimulates the readers’ curiosity.
Lead is typed in bold and in bigger fonts than the content but smaller than the headline, and occurs after the headline. It is as the introduction to the content of the news or the summary of the news story before we entry the main content of the news. Lead usually written in brief and not more than one paragraph. Story is the whole content of the news report. It usually contains two subcategories, which are situation and comment. Situation subcategory describes the main story of an event and the backgrounds of the story to support it. Subcategory comment describes how people in the news give comments of an event (Eriyanto, 2009: 232-233).
The next text level analysis is microstructures. Microstructures deal with analyzing at the local level or local meanings. Derived from the word ‘micro’ means small or specific or detail, microstructures analyze such as words and sentences; it analyze the surface structures, such as words or lexis, phrases, clause and sentence forms. Van Dijk gave the analysis on microstructures from the general elements up to specific and detail elements: semantics, syntax, stylistics and rhetorical analysis (Eriyanto, 2009: 228). However, I only focus on the analysis of the vocabulary choices used in the discourse or text. In addition, in order to analyze the contextual meaning, the vocabulary choices are also analyzed along with the transitivity analysis.
a. Vocabularies
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i. Vocabularies is making classifications
According to Fowler, language is as the classification system. The crucial understanding of this classification could be seen as how the same event could be explained or expressed with the different language or lexis. It means that the different lexical choices in the text are not merely seen as the writing techniques but as an ideology practice (Eriyanto, 2009: 134). Fowler explained that vocabulary or lexical choice is making a classification and limited our perception toward an event. Language, as a human communication, is full of ideas, perceptions, beliefs, etc, system of beliefs, system of classification, discriminating grids, which represent the world according to the needs of the societies. The lexicon or ‘mental dictionaries’ makes hierarchal set of ideas in structured logical organizations or simply classifications. Further, Fowler explained that
The vocabulary of a particular language sorts concepts into strictly defined categorical relationships, and this is the basic resource through which some field of experience or activity is kept stable, and transmitted from person to person, from generation to generation (Fowler, 1996: 54).
carpentry. Carpenters have taxonomies (hierarchal classifications) for tools, for timber, for fixings, adhesives, joints, woodworking process, etc. Fowler made a diagram to show the illustration how the taxonomies of carpentry work; it shows part of the carpenter’s lexicon for tools, expanded into some of the sub-categories and sub-sub-categories for one branch, saws.
Diagram 1. The Example of Vocabularies Taxonomical Structures (Fowler, 1996: 55).
This diagram is a very explicit and simple explanation of a technical field, however, newspaper discourse or generally, news discourse is handling political ideas works in a less explicit way. However, the principle is similar that there exists ‘a system of ideas which can be regarded as categories and relationships, and its existence is maintained by utterance’ (1996: 56).
Referring to Halliday’s notion that categorization by lexical structure is when diagramming the elements of ideational structure. Fowler quoted this Halliday’s notion as ‘taxonomic organization of vocabulary’. It does not only sort
panel
handsaws
rip
tools
saw hammer chisels & gouges
screw- drivers
bits cramps
backsaws special-purpose
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out the experience in general terms, but also makes detailed distinctions of classes and concept. Thus, the categorization or classification of vocabularies is as an integral part or the reproduction of ideology in the newspapers or generally, news discourse, and as the basic of the discrimination practice (1996: 84).
ii. Vocabularies limit our perception
Basically one of language characteristics is to limit our perceptions about the world, limit on how we understand it. We are presented certain words or structures of language in a text to not think something else but the text or its structures are provided. Classification of vocabulary provides a field to control the information and experience, and thus influence the people in understanding an event or reality. Therefore, a certain vocabularies or words would refer to certain reality. Eriyanto gave further explanation by giving an example of how the mass media influence our point of view or thought about the religion conflict in Maluku.
Table 1. The Example of Vocabulary Choices (Eriyanto, 2009:137) War vocabularies Euphemistic vocabularies perang, pembunuhan, pembantaian
pembasmian, pembumihangusan, pembersihan (war, combat, killing, massacre, slaughtering, annihilation)
tragedi, insiden, kasus, masalah (tragedy, incident, case, problem)
perang antara Islam Kristen,
pertempuran laskar Islam dan Kristen, pembantaian pasukan Kristen terhadap mujahidin Islam (the war between Muslim and Christian, the battle between Muslim warriors and Christian, a massacre of Islam mujahidin by Christian warriors)
Eriyanto showed how the media perceived and described religious and racial conflict in Maluku with the choices of vocabularies above. The choices of vocabularies or words used in a text showed certain attitude of a media when a media understood a fact or an event. He gave the example of how Suara Pembaruan, Republika and Kompas used different vocabularies in referring the
same fact or event, the religious and racial conflict in Maluku. Republika frequently tended to use and choose the word ‘pembantaian’ (slaughtering) to describe this event. Whereas Kompas and Suara Pembaruan frequently used the choice of words ‘konflik’ (conflict), ‘bentrok’ (clash), ‘pertikaian’ (quarrel) to describe the religious and racial conflict in Maluku (2009: 137-138).
b. Transitivity
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differences of the meaning between various types of verb, and therefore various types of clause. It emphasizes on what kind of process the verb designates, for example:
(a) John kicked the ball (b) Mary ran
the first clause (a) has the verb ‘kicked’, which is a kind of action that has an effect on another entity, ‘the ball’, whereas the verb in (b) refers to an action which only affects on the actor, ‘Mary’.
Referring to Halliday’s theory on transitivity or predication, Fowler only used the significant terms to apply it in his study, and also to this study. There are three types of predicates: actions, process, and states. Actions is where the verbs have an effect on some other participant, like I had mentioned in (a), which traditional grammar called it as ‘transitive’, or it could be ‘intransitive’, for example the word ‘struggling’ in a sentence
(c) Through a porthole they will watch the crew of the sinking ship struggling in the oily water.
(d) Irish leader secure despite defeat or the word ‘radioactive’ in the sentence:
(e) ROAST Welsh lamb was given the chop by Government yesterday because more than two million of the animals are radioactive.
Those types of predicate or verb above, actions, process, and states may be material, which is it could notice on the external, physical, or they may be mental, such as ‘decide’ [mental action], ‘dream’ [mental process], ‘tough’ [mental states]. Those also may be verbal, for example:
(f) Mr. Richard Luce, the Minister of the Arts, has been unusually sharp in criticizing [verbal action] what the University has done.
(g) Three appeal judges ruled [verbal action] yesterday that the men were not party to conspiracy.
These kinds of verbs are overwhelmingly in the newspaper, and they are important to critical linguistics. Furthermore, this kind of verbs could be categorized as speech act.
The participant of transitivity structure in a clause has the roles, which are agent, patient, experiencer, instrument, and circumstances. An agent is the doer of an action. For example in the sentence (a), ‘John’ is as an agent that he does something in to the ball with the verb ‘kicked’. Alternatively, another example by Fowler:
(h) PC shot boy from 9 inches Agent action affected participant circumstance
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participant is the object or people that have things done to them or happen to them, or ‘someone or something is affected in a material way by an action or process, and is considered as a physical entity’ (Fowler, 1996: 75). The neutral way to call it is object. Another term to call such semantic role is patient role, which is used generally ‘to refer the role of an affected participant who/which is human, or at least animate, and who has something done to them’. It is indeed that patient role always occurs after the verb, as in example (h) or in this italicized patient below:
(i) FERRET ATTACKS TODDLER (Fowler, 1996: 75-76)
This transitivity theory is needed to analyze the contextual meaning of the vocabularies in this study. Although, not all of the syntactic structure theories to be applied in this study only the theory, which is needed to analyzing the contextual meaning of vocabularies. Instead, transitivity is ‘the foundation of representation: it is the way the clause is used to analyze events and situations as being of certain types’. Further, Fowler explains that transitivity had the facility to analyze the same event in different ways. In addition, transitivity makes options available, what we chose the language structure in a discourse indicates our point of view that it is ideologically significant (Fowler, 1996: 71).
community (Fowler, 1996: 95). The power-relations here are the asymmetrical relationship between people who have the authority to control the other’s actions and liberties and not vice versa. This construction of such power-relationship can be observed in the structure of texts (Fowler, 1996:105-106). For instance, ‘characteristically, people with authority are treated as subjects (semantically, agent), while those with less power occur as objects (patients, beneficiaries)’ (Fowler, 1996: 98).
3. Representation
Representation here refers to how somebody, a group, certain opinion or idea is represented or described in the news. There are two important notion related to representation. First, whether people, groups or ideas are described as they are or negatively described. This refers to the description of how the people or events are represented negatively and tends to marginalize people or certain groups. It means that only the bad image appears in the news. Second, how the representation is shown into words, sentence, propositions, graphics or photographs which describe somebody, group or opinion in the news to the public (Eriyanto, 2009: 113).
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to the people. Terms or vocabularies do not only focus on the audience’s attention on the specific subject, but also limit audience’s perception and direct the audience’s thought and belief system. In other words, the use of words could limit people’s other perceptions, and provide specific aspect of an event and direct them with how they suppose to understand an event (Eriyanto, 2009: 119).
working class is as the guilty one. That social belief is often perceived as common sense, took the perception for granted without the further questions (Eriyanto, 2009: 114-116).
4. Ideology
There are a number of definitions of ideology. Raymond Williams found three main definitions of ideology
a. a system of beliefs characteristic of a particular class or group
b. a system of illusionary beliefs—false ideas or false consciousness—which can be constructed with true or scientific knowledge
c. the general process of the production of meanings and ideas (Fiske, 2002: 165) From those three definitions of ideology, I use the third definition in this study. According to Fiske, the third definition of ideology is used to describe the social production of meanings.
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Such news has the ideology of capitalism. This ideology sees the capitalist power is considered as the most important part in the social production. The workers were only as the small part of the production process that had worked and produced the social production. How this ideology works in the production of meaning could be seen from how the society action and company is described and how the involved groups are placed (2009: 92-93).
C. Theoretical Framework
Critical Discourse Analysis theory will be applied as a theory to answer or solve the first question, which is to seek the contextual meaning of the vocabularies related to the fall of Suharto event in both article, “After Suharto” and “End of an Era”. Then, for the second question is identifying the representation of the fall of Suharto event through the contextual meaning of the vocabularies also by applying this theory. The third question is to find the ideology through the representation through the process of ideological encoding by Fiske.
which is to find the ideology of both articles could be achieved because the ideology will come out in the representation of the event.
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CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
This study deals with the vocabularies related to the context of the fall of Suharto used in the article entitled “”End of an Era” in TIME magazine and “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK magazine, both of them issued on June 1, 1998. Both articles have the topic of the fall of President Suharto. “After Suharto” is an eight-page long article written by Ron Moreau and “End of an Era” is six eight-pages long article written by Terry McCarthy, which both report the process of the fall of Suharto in 1998 in the form of news feature writing. Both “After Suharto” and “End of an Era” are also cover stories that report about the illustration in the magazine front cover. They are not only news written in columns but also including photographs and graphical data to support the writing.
In 1998, the economic crisis brought Indonesia in a chaotic economical situation also including political situation, which was the fall of President Suharto on May 21, 1998. Since this moment has newsworthiness and news value, national and international mass media published this as headline, including the American magazines that have been internationally published, TIME and NEWSWEEK magazine. Both of them are American newsweeklies, which cover
newsweeklies. As the American magazines, they published the issue of prominent events in Asia including Indonesia. In 1998, both of magazines published news stories of economic crisis until the fall of Suharto and the events surround it.
B. Approach of the Study
This study use Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the approach as well as theory to be applied. In CDA, language is not only merely analyzed the linguistic structures but also the language that are associated to the context. Context here means the language is used for certain aim or practice including the power relation practice (Eriyanto, 2009: 7). The discourse practice can make the ideological effect appear that it could produce and reproduce the inequality of power relation between the class of society, men and women, majority and minority groups through the representation of how both groups are described in the society.
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C. Method of the Study
This study used the qualitative research analysis/inquiry, which identifies set of qualitative data that is usually in the form of words rather than numbers (Miles and Huberman, 1994: 1). I applied the interactive cyclical process of qualitative analysis by Miles and Huberman, which are data collection, data reduction, data displays, and drawing conclusion. First, before I collected all the vocabularies related to the fall of Suharto topic in “After Suharto”, I selected which one of the analytic components in CDA to be analyzed in the article of “After Suharto and “End of an Era”. There are many analytical components in CDA which are the lexical items or vocabularies, proposition, references, coherences, disclaimers, speech acts, graphic, etc., but I focus only on one analytic tool, vocabularies, than analyzing all of the tools. By focusing the analysis on the vocabularies choices, it could cover other components related to it in order to seek the contextual meaning.
Then, after that, I chose the samples among many of the vocabularies in both articles, “After Suharto” and “End of an Era” that ‘qualitative samples tend to be purposive rather than random’ (Miles and Huberman, 1994: 27). The samples are the vocabularies used in the article of “After Suharto” and “End of an Era”, which were purposely chosen related to the fall of Suharto topic.
three classifications related to the fall of Suharto event. First, the key concept of the fall of Suharto, second the general process of the fall of Suharto, which includes the sub category of Suharto’s image, as the former president and Habibie’s image as the successor. Third, the surrounding events during the fall of Suharto, which consist of sub category of public protest that consist of students’ protests and riot/civil disturbance, and the role of the legitimate agents toward the events subcategory that consists of the military as the national security apparatus and political elite as the constitutional institution apparatus.
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CHAPTER IV
ANALYSIS
This chapter will discuss about the analysis on two discourses, which are “After Suharto” on NEWSWEEK and “End of an Era” on TIME magazine. As in the theoretical review, the analysis applies the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) theory. As I stated in the chapter II, CDA has three level of analysis, which are texts, social cognition, and social analysis. However, the analysis is focused on the text level. I will use one specific linguistic model, critical linguistics as the approach. Critical linguistics will emphasize on the linguistic structure analysis.
As I have mentioned in chapter two, the text analysis level consists of macrostructures, superstructures, and microstructure analysis. However, I focus on one of the microstructure elements, which are vocabularies in order to achieve its contextual meaning of the articles. Although I only analyze vocabularies as one of CDA‘s analytic tools, the analysis will relate to other linguistic structures, which is proposition analysis.
articles. The second step is to transmit the vocabularies related to the fall of Suharto into the representational codes, how the event is represented in the discourse. The third, the representational codes of the event are organized into ideological codes, how the representational codes are connected and organized into social coherence like social class or the dominant belief in society.
A. The Analysis on the Vocabularies’ Meaning Related to the Context of the
Fall of Suharto in the Article of “After Suharto” in NEWSWEEK and
“End of an Era” in TIME
In this part, I will analyze the vocabularies meaning in each of classification I had made. There are three classifications of events related to the fall of Suharto context, which are the key concept of the fall of Suharto, the general process of the fall of Suharto, and the surrounding events during the fall of Suharto. First, the classification of key concept of the fall of Suharto talks about the key concept of how the whole process Suharto’s fall being described. It is as the main idea of the news story. I considered this as the key concept since the vocabulary choices occurs in the lead or headline that will lead us to the whole content. The vocabulary choices will lead us to the general context of the news, and as the point of view of news.
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was. The process fall of Suharto event indeed includes actors. Thus, within the general process of Suharto’s fall, certainly includes Suharto himself as the former president, and Habibie as the successor. The analysis of vocabularies related to Suharto and Habibie will be put within this classification as Suharto’s image sub category and Habibie’s image sub category. Therefore, the vocabularies in this classification will be related to Suharto himself, Habibie as the successor and the process generally. In addition, the analysis of the contextual meaning of the vocabularies in this classification would contribute to the rest of the contextual meaning of vocabularies in the next classification.
1. The Analysis on the Vovabularies in “After Suharto” Article
a. Key Concept of the Fall of Suharto
The key concept in the article of “After Suharto” is ‘revolution’, which it occurs in the lead of the news story (data no. 1). Thus, as the word ‘revolution’ occurs in the lead, the whole process of the fall of Suharto in this article generally is described as ‘revolution’. Moreover, since ‘revolution’ appears in the lead, this article tends to emphasize the process of the fall of Suharto as the process of revolution. In addition, the whole event during the fall of Suharto, how he finally stepped down, would be related to the word ‘revolution’.
According to International Encyclopedia of Government and Politics Vol. II, the word revolution means
a process of deep and widespread social change in society, which often includes violence and the overthrow of the central government by armed citizens of that society (Magill, 1996: 1195).
The thing that is necessary to be underlined here is the widespread social change that includes the overthrow of the government using violence. The meaning of ‘revolution’ affirms with the statement in the previous publication article, “Jakarta in Flames”, issued on May 25, 1998. The lead of this article mentions ‘Suharto came to power on a wave of violence. Now Indonesians face a terrible prospect: he might go out the same way’ (Moreau, 1998: 12). Suharto was predicted go out in the same way when he came to power, which was on a wave of violence that there was a riot caused hundreds died.
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Order to the more democratic system in all life sectors especially on economy and politics sectors, which includes the armed forces. In addition, “revolutions thus typically begin with a mix of moderate and radical groups in opposition to the regime” (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3045302275.html). This concept of ‘revolution’ is applied in this article that it covers the demonstration by students who against Suharto and demand for total reform; riots done mostly by poor citizens, who more demanded on the low cost of foods and other needs; and the moderate generals who control the situation, and as the agent of the legitimate. Thus, the fall of Suharto is only limited being perceived as the ‘revolution’. The whole process of Suharto’s fall—including some events related to it during the process of Suharto’s fall happened—in this article will be related to the word ‘revolution’ since it is the key word and appears in the lead of news story.
b. The General Process of the Fall of Suharto
The word ‘revolution’ in this article is related to “people power”, which is mentioned in paragraph two (data no. 2). The writer indirectly stated the White House administration’s opinion of the fall of Suharto event as ‘a classic example of “people power”’ in paragraph two. It is written ‘To outsiders—including White House aides, who as anxious observers scrambled with the help of officials in Singapore and Australia to track the fast-moving events—Suharto’s ouster had at first seemed a classic example of “people power” at work.’ “People power” here is related to the “people power” revolution in Philippines.
Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) in Manila, close to the military camps Aguinaldo and Crame (Leifer, 1996: 200).
They saw what happened in Indonesia, the fall of Suharto, and what happened in the Philippines in 1986 was at a glance seemed to have similarity that the dictator leader like Marcos is typically overthrown by the forces of the mass of a whole nation, the people power. This notion is related to the previous publication article reporting about the riot, “Jakarta in Flames” stated in paragraph 4: ‘Many observers heard echoes of the fall of Ferdinand Marcos, but the burning of Jakarta is likely to have even wider aftereffects’ (Moreau, 1998: 17). Thus, the White House aides representing the government of United States perceived the overthrow of Suharto, a dictator leader typically works with “people power”, like what happened in Philippines.
Still in paragraph 2, there appears the vocabulary ‘Suharto’s ouster’ attached to the same clause as “people power”, ‘Suharto’s ouster had at first seemed a classic example of “people power” at work.’ ‘Ouster’, according to Encarta World English Dictionary, means a forcible action to remove somebody
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The transition of power, from Suharto to Habibie is described as ‘brokered transition’ (data no. 4) in paragraph 18 attached in the clause: ‘But it was not all clear that students would sit still for the brokered transition’. The students did not like the leadership transition from Suharto to Habibie, because Habibie is Suharto crony. This notion is explicitly mentioned in paragraph 13, ‘… students hate him because he’s Suharto’s crony..’. Thus, the government or political system that Habibie brought would be much similar to the former one. This could be proven with the opinion of Mochtar Pabottinggi in Tempo Interaktif, “Soeharto, Akhirnya” that the transfer of power to Habibie was not a regime change, which means it includes all the government and political format changes. This transition did not include the political format change because Habibie’s political format is similar to Suharto’s. Pabottinggi continues his opinion on the similar political format that Habibie once ever said he had been fostered by Suharto for about 24 years. He explained further that New Order’s political format was already fragile, which instead got worse by Habibie (1998: 178).
i. Suharto’s Image, the Former President
This sub category covers the vocabularies related to the image of Suharto, how he is represented through the vocabularies choice in this article, “After Suharto”. Suharto is described in the vocabularies: ‘the ruler of the world’s fourth most populous nation’ (data no. 5), ‘Suharto’s 32-year rule’ (data no. 6) and his government system called ‘Suharto’s regime’ (data no. 8). In the first paragraph appears a noun phrase: ‘the ruler of the world’s fourth most populous nation’. ‘Ruler’, derived from the word ‘rule’, means somebody such a sovereign who governs state or nation (2008). It constructs the image of Suharto as an authoritarian leader, a dictator. In addition, the word ‘ruler’ is attached to the other noun phrase, ‘the world’s fourth most populous nation’ in paragraph one. The world’s fourth most populous nation refers to Indonesia, which place the fourth rank of the most populous nation in the world after China, India, and the United States (http://www.expat.or.id/info/overview.html).
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stepped down (1999: 295). That, again, emphasizes his long dictatorial leadership in this country.
His label as a dictator is also described in the vocabulary ‘Suharto’s regime’ in paragraph 17. Regime, according to the Encarta World English Dictionary refers to the government of a country, which is oppressive (2008). It
does not only explain that he is such a dictator leader but also an oppressive one. In Indonesia beyond Suharto, Liddle explained about Suharto’s regime that
The regime was a complex hierarchy of authoritarian institutions designed to curtail political participation and enable Suharto and the military to control society (1999: 40).
During his rule, people had no freedom to express their opinions, especially publicly, and especially which are related to his politics, government and other issues surrounded him; people were oppressed by his power in this nation. For instance, the press was not free to publish their news, their opinions. If they did not follow Suharto’s rules, the government would ban the newspaper or magazine to publish. The government could issue and withdraw the publication license. For instance, in 1994, the government withdrew the licenses of three major newsweeklies, one of them was Tempo magazine. Since early 1970s this banned was effective for the newspapers or magazines, which relatively appeared to be independent and critical, had many readers, and had reputations, then ‘they were cut down when they appeared to threaten the powerful elite groups’ (Liddle, 1999: 43).
businessmen enjoy close personal relationships with key politicians’ (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3045300489.html). On the economy sector, while Suharto was in power, he built large conglomerates with his cronies and family. Conglomerate, generally is a large business group, an association of various firms, which operates in many sectors. ‘Typically, such a group is owned, if not also operated by related individuals whose cooperation is more or less based on personal trust’. Conglomerates do not represent or encourage entrepreneurship at all, they ‘inhibit it by dominating industries, monopolizing markets, and using political connections to forestall or defeat competition’ (Habir, 1999: 170). This thus indicates the traditions of patronage in which economic and political calculations were intertwined. Thus, it is called ‘crony capitalism’.
The example of this practice is the controversial cooperation between Suharto and Liem Sioe Liong during New Order. Liem, the wealthiest ethnic Chinese in 1990s benefited economically from Suharto’s patronage, so that Suharto was able to exploit his non-pribumi friend’s economic resources for his political purposes (Habir, 1999: 171). Another controversial of business group is the business group owned by Suharto’s children.
In 1997, these conglomerates and the Suhartos to whom they belong were: Bimantara (Bambang Trihatmodjo), Citra Lamtoro Gung (Siti Hardiyanti [“Tutut”] Rukmana), Humpuss (Hutomo [“Tommy”] Mandala Putra, Arseto (Sigit Harjojudanto), and Datam/Maharani (Siti Hediati Harijadi [Titiek] Prabowo) (Habir, 1999: 187-188).
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leadership, which was corruption. Therefore, Suharto is not only described as a dictator president but also as a corrupt leader who used his power to build large business group.
To sum up, the choices of vocabularies used in this article are to describe Suharto’s image as dictator and oppressive leader are ‘the ruler of the world’s fourth most populous nation’, ‘Suharto’s regime’, and ‘Suharto’s 32-year rule’. In addition, ‘Suharto’s brand of crony capitalism’ is used to describe Suharto’s corruption, or in Indonesian acronym KKN (corruption, collusion and nepotism). Therefore, Suharto was described as an oppressive authoritarian or dictator and corrupt president.
ii. Habibie, the successor
The negative evaluation on Habibie continues with the appearance of rumors’ statement in this article. It is stated in paragraph 13 that he was an ‘illegitimate son’ (data no.11) of Suharto. Indeed, he was very close to Suharto since Habibie at the teenager age in 1950. Suharto was a young army officer on duty in Habibie’s hometown Ujung Pandang. Even Habibie considered him as a patron since he became the technology minister. He always sought for Suharto’s advice on the principles of life, so that Habibie thought him as his own parent (Emmerson, 1999: 315). However, having illegitimate son in Indonesia is shameful and sinful according to the culture tradition and Islamic bible or Koran that mostly the people of this nation adhere to including Habibie. Lukman Harun, a member of House of Representatives gave his opinion on “End of an Era” that ‘Habibie is a devout Muslim who fast on Mondays and Thursdays, even when he travels aboard’ (1998: 24). Therefore, this expression is such a cruel and harsh way to insult Habibie. In addition, by this vocabulary meaning, Habibie is regarded as someone who is very close to Suharto even there was a rumor he was Suharto illegitimate son.
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interest rates he created namely “zig zag” theory. Gatra, “Perjalanan Mr. Crack ke Kursi Presiden” explains what “zig zag” theory is. He decreased the interest rates, which tend to increase, practically, 14% become 8 %, then if the monetary is overheating, the interest rates will be increased to 12%, after the monetary is cooling down, the interest rates will be decreased again up to 5% until the monetary is stable gradually in the level 4%. According to the economic analyst, controlling the interest rate it is not as easy as a pilot flying the plane in zig zag manner (Gatra, 1998: 34). The theory that Habibie offered was inexperienced and carried the risk for the investor (McCarthy, 1998: 20). His calling as ‘a crackpot on economy policy’ is related to the vocabulary ‘bizarre “zig zag” theory of inflation’ stated in paragraph 21 in “End of an Era” article in TIME magazine.
analysts had the perception toward him that they called him as “high negatives” (Emmerson, 1999: 314).
To sum up, Habibie’s closeness to Suharto is described in the vocabularies ‘widely reviled crony’, ‘Suharto crony’, and ‘illegitimate son’. Those are the negative evaluation on Habibie’s image. On the economy field, Habibie is described in the vocabularies ‘crackpot on economy policy’ for his “zig zag” theory of inflation, and his “strategic industries”. By those, the technocrats were considered him as economically illiterate and the American politics analysts called him as “high negatives”. Therefore, Habibie is described in negative evaluation on economy that he could not handle the economic problems.
c. The Surrounding Events during the Fall of Suharto i. Public protest
1) Students’ protest
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disapproval of something unfair or person in authority, especially in large public meeting (Stephen, 2003). In this context, ‘Indonesia’s student protesters’ are the university students who against Suharto regime and demanded Suharto to step down and demanded for reform in all sectors, especially, economy. ‘Indonesia’s student protesters’ occurs in the lead, indicating that they appear as one of the actors of the overthrow besides the military. However, ‘Indonesia’s student protesters’ treated as Patient in transitivity, which makes they are less prominent or de-emphasized as the actors of the overthrow. Moreover, by the predicate ‘manipulated’ attached, it implicitly means the students’ actions are controlled by the military.
The student protesters did the protest action in peace, without violence, as it is implicitly stated in the vocabularies ‘six unarmed student protesters’ in paragraph 3. They are regarded as harmless since they did not carry any weapons by having the adjective ‘unarmed’ in the phrase. In addition, it is explicitly stated in Indonesia beyond Suharto, that the ‘students had demonstrated peacefully against Suharto and his regime’ (1999: 296). They are in the powerless position, because they could not counterattack the shooting from the police as the powerful side group. It is clarified with the semantic role of ‘six unarmed student protesters’ in the clause ‘when riot police killed six unarmed student protesters on May 12…’, which is as Patient, whereas the ‘riot police’ is treated as Agent.
black “pro-reform” armbands and white “peaceful reform” headbands’ in paragraph 5. I underlined the vocabularies ‘pro-reform’ and ‘peaceful reform’; it is obviously stated that the student brought peaceful protest. They did not want any violence action on the process of transition and reformation and certainly on their protest as well. ‘Pro-reform’ and ‘peaceful reform’ indicate what they demanded for and voiced for. International Encyclopedia of Government and Politics Vol. II clarifies the meaning of reform, which is
fundamental change in the government, constitution, socioeconomic order, or basic values of society, which does not involve the violent overthrow of the existing government (1996: 1195).
Thus, it is related to the meaning of protest as it is stated in this encyclopedia that ‘protest is a type of political participation that is vital for democracy’ (1996: 1112). It implicitly clarifies that the students’ protest is as a part of the process of Suharto overthrow or as this article describes it in the word ‘revolution’. It is in order to achieve the democracy. The students’ protest is indeed as strong disapproval to the government especially the autocracy one.
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Power. It affirms the writer’s point of view about the overthrow that the writer’s point of view referred to the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos in Philippines in 1986 and tended to give the same perception to the overthrow situation in Indonesia in 1998. Thus, it clarifies the context of ‘revolution’ in the first classification that the process of ‘revolution’ includes the work of People Power.
In addition, the rally plan is attached to the clause: ‘But the military quashed plans for a Manila-style mass rally in front of the downtown National Monument’. Here, the protest plan led by Amien Rais occurs as Patient, and the military as the Agent with the predicate follows it ‘quashed’ indicates the dominance of the military and their harsh action over the protest. As the protest plan by students occurs as Patient, it become less prominent in the overthrow and implicitly their action was controlled by the military. In the next sentence, still in paragraph 10, there appears ‘protest leader Amien Rais’, which also occurs as Patient. Here, again the protesters represented by Amien Rais as the leader are regarded as less prominent and less power in the overthrow.
