T1 112012128 Full text

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STANCES ENDORSING JOKOWI

IN THE JAKARTA POST’S

EDITORIALS

THESIS

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Sarjana Pendidikan

FARADITA HANNA DIENSWARI 112012128

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION PROGRAM

FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS

UNIVERSITAS KRISTEN SATYA WACANA

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STANCES ENDORSING JOKOWI

IN THE JAKARTA POST’S

EDITORIALS

THESIS

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Sarjana Pendidikan

FARADITA HANNA DIENSWARI 112012128

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION PROGRAM

FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS

UNIVERSITAS KRISTEN SATYA WACANA

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER PAGE ... ii

APPROVAL PAGE ... iii

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT ... iv

TABLE OF CONTENT ... v

LIST OF TABLES ... vi

LIST OF FIGURES ... vii

INTRODUCTION ... 1

LITERATURE REVIEW ... 3

Attitude: Affect, Judgment, and Appreciation ... 5

Review of Previous Studies... 10

THE STUDY ... 11

Research Methodology ... 11

Context of the Study ... 11

Text Sampling ... 12

Data Analysis Procedure ... 12

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ... 13

Editorials’ support to Jokowi ... 14

Attitude of The Jakarta Post ... 15

CONCLUSION ... 23

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ... 24

REFERENCES ... 25

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LIST OF TABLES

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. An overview of Appraisal System ... 5

Figure 2. Judgment - Social Esteem ... 8

Figure 3. Judgment - Social Sanction ... 9

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STANCES ENDORSING JOKOWI

IN THE JAKARTA POST’S

EDITORIALS

Faradita Hanna Dienswari

ABSTRACT

Societies are often shaped by the media as they consume it every day. However, it is inevitable that media will take a stance in their coverage. As one of the media, newspapers also give contribution in shaping social construction. In the light of that issue, it is deemed important to know where a newspaper takes its stance. In order to know the newspaper’s stance, editorial section is used since it represents the voice of the newspaper. The editorial articles were taken from The Jakarta Post’s online articles. The newspaper, although is a trustworthy one, has a tendency on giving supporting stance toward Joko Widodo (a.k.a Jokowi). The articles were selected from July 2014 when Jokowi run for the presidential election until January 2016. Aiming to find how The Jaka rta Post’s editorial portrays it supporting stance toward Joko Widodo, his working cabinet, and Na wa Cita, I used appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005). Sentences in the editorials that indicate support to Jokowi were analyzed and classified using qualitative data analysis by considering the linguistic choice of affect, judgment, and appreciation. The findings of this study overall suggested that the editorials were so much in favor of using judgment in the articles.

Key words: media discourse, editorials, stance, attitude, Joko Widodo INTRODUCTION

It has been almost two years since President of Indonesia, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and his Vice President Jusuf Kalla won the presidential election and ruled

over the country by carrying their working program which usually called Na wa

Cita (Nine Programs). As it is named, Na wa Cita focuses on nine specific areas in

which The President and his working cabinet set their goals. His nine agenda

priorities as reported by The Jakarta Post (May 21, 2014) includes protecting all

citizens and providing a safe environment; developing clean, effective, trusted and

democratic governance; developing Indonesia’s rural areas; reforming law enforcement agencies; improve quality of life by increasing education quality as

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economic independence by developing domestic strategic sectors; overhauling the

character of the nation through education; and strengthening the spirit of “unity in diversity” and social reform. Many mass media had already evaluated the progress that the Jokowi’s cabinet makes during these years.

However, mass media can be biased in their reports because some of them

are likely to take side with the one in which the media purpose seem fit. For

example, Metro TV will take a side on the government’s side because it is owned by one political figure, Surya Paloh, who has a political interest in securing his

position in the government. Moreover, Macdonald (2003) believed that “media themselves make claims for truthfulness and accuracy in relation to their coverage

of real events ... [then] refusing any attempt to assess the validity and veracity...” which raised questions about the validity and veracity on the media themselves (p.

17). In addition, some researches in media analysis suggested that there were

unfairness in discussing news actors (e.g. Dwi-Nugroho, 2013), misinterpretation

of a minority (e.g. KhosraviNik, 2010), and stereotyping (e.g. Chang & Mehan,

2006). This issue of bias provoked questions on the reliability of mass media as

one of the institutions that supposedly neutral in their report. Therefore, this study

was dedicated to identifying and analyzing media stance toward an issue that

happened at the moment, since unfortunately, there were still few

Indonesian-based media studies that discuss media stance-taking.

According to Fairclough (1997 in Dwi-Nugroho, 2013), news is very

influential in shaping the society and it is also shaped by the society. As a result of

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negatively toward some issues (Van Djik, 1988). This, I believe, is true because

usually people are easily influenced after they read some articles in the

newspaper, especially when that newspaper is already known as a trustworthy

newspaper. This study analyzed one of Indonesia’s relatively trustworthy newspapers, The Jaka rta Post, in its positioning when discussing President Joko

Widodo, his working cabinet, and Na wa Cita. The analysis was conducted by

analyzing the editorial section in the newspaper using Systemic Functional

Linguistic tools and media discourse analysis perspective.

LITERATURE REVIEW

This research focused on newspapers as one of the mass media in which

bias might occur. To illustrate, Wortham and Locher (1996) found in their study

that newscasters sent their implicit message about political candidates in news

political coverage, specifically coverage of the 1992 US presidential election by

using the analysis of voicing and ventriloquation. They closed their study by

saying that if those newscasters could be more explicit about their message, they

could help the audience to make up their minds about the issue. Through their

study, it can be inferred that the newscaster could lead the audience to have the

same position as his/her towards certain candidate which probably gave some

influences in the election. For this reason, some studies had reconsidered the

notion that said news is a neutral means of information. Fowler (1991) argued

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usually position themselves when they are writing. Therefore, it is necessary to

assess how newspaper positions itself in delivering some recent issues in society.

In order to find newspaper position, I focused on the editorial section

published by The Jaka rta Post. It is commonly believed that editorial articles

usually point out the newspaper opinion toward some issues. Greenberg (2000)

defined editorial as the “official voice of a media outlet on matters of public importance” (p. 520). Fowler (1991) viewed editorial articles as “an important symbolic function” which usually is seen as the newspaper point of view and “implicitly supporting the claim that other sections [...] are pure ‘fact’ or ‘report’” (p. 208). Therefore, editorial articles are important sections in the newspaper since

they may shape the public opinion, even more, when the newspaper is deemed

trustworthy.

Since editorial is believed to have a role to construct public opinion,

knowing how the newspaper is represented by the editorial in showing their

position or stance toward the issues that are being discussed is essential.

According to Du Bois (2007), stance was defined as

a public act by a social actor, achieved dialogically through overt

communicative means, of simultaneously evaluating objects, positioning

subjects (self and others), and aligning with other subjects, with respect to

any salient dimension of the sociocultural field (p.163).

Thus, by taking a stance people, or especially writers, attempted to communicate

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(2007) further stated that there are some kinds of stance taking which are

evaluation, assessment, appraisal, and point of view.

As Du Bois (2007) saw evaluation as one kind of stance, Hunston and

Thompson’s (2000) and Martin and White’s (2005) Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) approach believed stance as a part of evaluation. According to

Huston and Thompson (2000), there are three functions of evaluation: expressing

an opinion, maintaining a relationship between writers-readers, and organizing the

discourse by delivering writer’s attitudes, values, and reactions to the readers. Therefore, based on the function of evaluation mentioned earlier, in order to

determine an author’s stance, the author’s stance was examined in light of the SFL framework of appraisal suggested by Martin and White (2005).

Attitude: Affect, Judgment, Appreciation

It needs to be underlined that attitude in Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal framework which was the tool of the analysis in this study is different

from stance. Nonetheless, they are closely related to each other in a way; “stance

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largely involves the writer’s expression of personal attitudes and assessments of the status of knowledge in a text” as Hyland (2012, p. 134) stated in his study. Attitude system is one constituent of, besides engagement and graduation, the big

picture of appraisal system which supports one another as shown in Figure 1. In

Martin and White (2005), attitude enabled a writer to show their feeling through

“emotional reaction, judgment of behavior and evaluation of things” (p. 35) in the text. Engagement enabled the writer to engage the readers to have the same point

of view as his/hers. Graduation enabled the writer to “amplif[y]” (p. 35) that point of view. However, due to limited space, I only focused on attitude which is

sub-divided again into three parts: affect, judgment, and appreciation.

Martin and White (2005) defined affect as a way writers delivered their

feelings positively or negatively, while judgment usually “deals with attitudes towards behavi[or], which we admire or critici[ze], praise or condemn” (p. 42). They further defined appreciation as an evaluation toward things or phenomena

rather than human behavior.

Affect

In Martin and White (2005), there are six factors that are used to find the

affect. However, for the purpose of this study, I only chose two out of the six

factors.

1. Are the feelings positive or negative? In this factor, emotion is seen through

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vibes that are better avoided” (p. 46). The examples1 of this factor are as follows:

 Positive affect the captain was happy  Negative affect the captain was sad

2. Are they one of the groups of emotions which have to do with un/happiness,

in/security and dis/satisfaction? The un/happiness variable encompasses

emotions associated with “affairs of the heart;” the in/security variable encompasses emotions concerned with “ecosocial well-being;” the dis/satisfaction variable includes emotions related to “telos” (the pursuit of goals) (p.49). The examples2 of this factor are as follows:

 un/happiness the captain felt sad/happy

 in/security the captain felt anxious/confident

 dis/satisfaction the captain felt fed up/absorbed

Judgment

Judgment is divided into two basic categories based on Martin and White

(2005, pp. 52-56):

i. social esteem is often seen in oral culture including chats, gossips, jokes, and

stories. Social esteem has three sub-categories: normality which is related to

the modal category of usuality (e.g. It’s normal, average, fashionable, peculiar, odd, etc.), capacity which deals with ability (e.g. He’s healthy enough, mature enough, clever enough, etc.), and tenacity which is linked to modulations of inclination (e.g. I’m resolute, steadfast, unyielding,

1

Adapted from Martin & White (2005, p.47)

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unflinching, etc.). Figure 2 contains some illustrative realization for social esteem.

ii. social sanction, is often found in writing, “as edicts, decrees, rules, regulations and laws about how to behave as surveilled by church and state” (p. 52) which usually deals with vera city that is related to modal category or

probability (e.g. It’s true, honest, credible, authentic, bogus, etc.) and propriety that is related to obligation (e.g. It’d be corrupt, insensitive, arrogant, selfish, rude, etc.). Figure 3 is the illustrative realization of social sanction.

Appreciation

The last part of attitude is appreciation. Martin and White (2005) defined

appreciation as an evaluation toward things rather than human behavior. It is also

divided into three sub-categories:

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Reaction is related to affection (emotive – ‘it grabs me’, desiderative – ‘I want it’); composition is related to perception (our view of order); and valuation is related to cognition (our considered opinions). (p. 57)

To make it clearer, the following is Figure 4 which shows the illustrative

realization of appreciation.

Figure 3. Judgment - Social sanction, taken from Martin and White (2005, p. 53)

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10 Review of Previous Studies

In order to understand fully about the framework of this study, I examined

some of the previous studies that discussed stance and attitude. Hyland (2012)

used undergraduate reports as the object in his study and focused not only to find

stance but also voice. He found that stance and voice that was delivered by the

students showed an awareness of academic conventions and the context of

situations, impact of institutional power and cultural preference. He further said

that the most frequently used attitude system (Martin & White, 2005) in the

academic text was appreciation. The example of appreciation in his study that was

taken from Biology academic text:

The remarkable inertness of the nitrido function in technetium complexes

towards proton-active reagents permits an extraordinarily wide variety of

substitution reactions. (p. 147)

In the light of his study, it was necessary to find another context to address the

stance and voice. Therefore, this study attempted to find the stance in the context

of newspaper discourse.

A study conducted by Bartley and Benitez-Castro (2016) had a similar

approach to the current study. They aimed to find the evaluation and attitude

toward homosexuality in 2008 newspaper articles in Irish context. They found that

the three newspapers in their corpus showed “gays and lesbians as immoral, evil, corrupt, violent, promiscuous, effeminate and abnormal beings that are loathed by

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newspapers. The current study did not address the issue of gay, but it extended

Martin and White’s (2005) SFL framework in touching upon mass media stance (or “bias”).

THE STUDY Research Methodology

The research question of this study was “how does The Jakarta Post take a supportive stance through the attitude of the editorial section when discussing

President Joko Widodo, his working cabinet, and Na wa Cita?” In order to answer the research question, I employed a qualitative data methodology that used SFL

tools as a means of analysis. The articles were selected through purposive

sampling with editorial articles in The Jaka rta Post electronic newspaper as the

main criterion. The articles that were used were the ones published on May 2014

until January 2016 in order to get sufficient amount of articles to see how the

newspaper showed their supporting stance over time at a certain timeframe.

Context of the Study

The study focused on Jokowi, his working cabinet, and his notion of Na wa

Cita (nine programs that run by the governor) as the new government agenda. The

Na wa Cita made an aggressive approach to reform economy, education, and

security sectors (The Jakarta Post, May 21, 2014). This Na wa Cita was released

when President Joko Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kala held their campaign.

Nowadays, through some articles in the newspaper, more Indonesia people seem

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research, I believed that it was appropriate to analyze the articles in The Jaka rta

Post newspaper since there was a tendency of supporting stance in this newspaper.

Text Sampling

I chose The Jakarta Post (henceforth JP) newspaper which according to

the Tarrant (2008) is the largest English newspaper in Indonesia. Its first edition

was published on April 25, 1983, and still continues its publication until today.

The Jakarta Post has two form of publication: printed and online newspaper. The

newspaper has a slogan “Always Bold. Always Independent.” In the current study, I used only the editorial section in online newspaper as editorial represent

the newspaper point of view of the newspaper as displayed in Table 1. The articles

were published from May 2014 until January 2016.

Table 1. Selected Editorial Articles

Text Title Date

1 Editorial: The Jokowi-Kalla platform May 26, 2014

2 Editorial: Endorsing Jokowi July 4, 2014

3 Editorial: Integrity key for Jokowi October 22, 2014

4 Editorial: Showtime for Jokowi November 12, 2014

5 Editorial: After 100 days January 30, 2015

6 Editorial: Down-to-earth diplomacy February 3, 2015

7 Editorial: Jokowi and the foreign press August 28, 2015

8 Editorial: Jokowi's early return October 28, 2015

9 Editorial: Wrong on APEC November 13, 2015

Data Analysis Procedure

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selection also limited to the discussion of President Joko Widodo, his working

cabinet, or Na wa Cita.

As I found the sentences, then I analyzed the attitudes of the authors’ news articles. Based on the theoretical framework explained under the Literature

Review section, attitudes were analyzed in terms of affect judgment, and

appreciation. Affect indicated the positive/negative feelings and un/happiness,

in/security and dis/satisfaction; judgment indexed the social esteem and social

sanction, and appreciation denoted reaction, composition, and valuation. The

analysis focused only on the words or sentences level. Then using data

interpretation, I found how the newspaper shows their supportive stance

considering the analysis result. I got assistance from my thesis supervisor when

coding or checking my code. In so doing, the analysis was more reliable.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This section was divided into two major sections in which all of the

analysis of the study was discussed. The overall sentences that indicated the

editorials’ support to Jokowi were examined in the first section. Subsequently, the discussion about the affect, judgment, and appreciation was presented in section

two. Through the analysis process, I found 50 sentences (see appendix) that were

in favor of Joko Widodo, his working cabinet or Na wa Cita from the nine articles

that had been selected. These selected sentences were those in which indicated

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Editorials’ support to Jokowi

JP might have the slogan “Always Bold. Always Independent” from the first time it published its articles. However, further scrutiny should be done in

order to evaluate whether the slogan is not just merely a slogan. This study found

that the newspaper might be bold and independent, yet it is not always both bold

and independent. Nine articles that were selected for the current study did not

seem to suggest that they were totally independent. JP itself once made an

editorial section that endorses Joko Widodo to be an Indonesian president before

the presidential election as follows:

[...]The Jakarta Post in its 31-year history has never endorsed a single

candidate or party during an election. [...] Our deliberations are dictated on

the values by which the Post has always stood firmly for: pluralism, human

rights, civil society and reformasi. We are encouraged that one candidate

has displayed a factual record of rejecting faith-based politics. [...] As one

candidate offers a break from the past, the other romanticizes the Soeharto

era. One is determined to reject the collusion of power and business, while

the other is embedded in a New Order-style of transactional politics that

betrays the spirit of reformasi. Rarely in an election has the choice been so

definitive. Never before has a candidate ticked all the boxes on our negative

checklist. And for that we cannot do nothing. Therefore the Post feels

obliged to openly declare its endorsement of the candidacy of Joko 'Jokowi'

Widodo and Jusuf Kalla as president and vice president in the July 9

election. It is an endorsement we do not take lightly. (JP, July 4, 2014)

Despite the editors’ reasoning, their endorsement on the Jokowi-JK behalf in the presidential election was clearly implied or even explicitly stated in the

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Nonetheless, not all the selected articles portrayed their agreement with the

government leadership as can be seen in The Jakarta Post published on August

28, 2015. The article expressed their disappointment on Joko Widodo’s decision to ban foreign press to do its coverage in Papua. Yet again, the newspaper still

gave its faith to the government in this following sentence

We don't think Jokowi has forgotten his own words while visiting the

country's easternmost region Merauke in May that 'foreign journalists, as of

today, are allowed to enter Papua as freely as they enter other provinces'.

(JP, August 28, 2015)

The Post was still carrying its hope when Joko Widodo clearly failed his

supporters when he declined to attend APEC last November 2015 and asked him

to reconsider his decision.

For the sake of Indonesian interests, we hope the President changes his

mind. (JP, November 13, 2015)

The above and the other 50 sentences were going to be identified in terms of

attitude (either affect, judgment, or appreciation) they belong to.

Attitude of The Jakarta Post

By using linguistic choices, a writer can express and amplify their stance.

Hyland (2012) pointed out that a writer gives his/her personal judgment and

marked their certainty towards some issues using attitude markers. The three of

attitude markers which had already been mentioned earlier in this study are (1)

affect, which dealt with the linguistic choice of emotion, (2) judgment, which was

indicated by the linguistic choices describing behaviors, and (3) appreciation

which signaled evaluation toward things or phenomena. This section evaluated the

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JP did not use affect frequently since, in the 50 sentences that had been

selected, there were only two sentences that had the linguistic choice of affect.

The first affect was found in Text 2 in which it showed positive satisfaction since

the underlined words implied a determination to reach a certain goal.

Therefore the Post feels obliged to openly declare its endorsement of the

candidacy of Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo and Jusuf Kalla as president and vice

president in the July 9 election. (JP, July 4, 2014)

The word ‘obliged’ in the underlined words was an imperative word which can be included in the social sanction under judgment. However, the word ‘feels’ changed the sense of the word obliged from imperative word into emotion word.

Another affect was found in Text 4 where it portrayed Jokowi’s insecurity toward his first APEC meeting in 2014.

It is understandable that he wanted to concentrate on pressing domestic

matters and perhaps felt nervous to negotiate with global leaders [...]

(JP, November 12, 2014)

The underlined word ‘felt nervous’ implied Jokowi’s feeling of joining APEC for the first time. Although the affect seemed to refer to insecurity in which constructs

negative context, the previous words understandable and perhaps, appreciation

words of reaction, directed the sentence into a more hopeful sentence, which

implied the editor’s support to (or bias toward) Jokowi.

The newspaper probably limited the usage of affect linguistic choice since it

referred more to the emotions. An article which included more feeling can be seen

as less reliable. Moreover, to be all sensitive towards some issues is not the

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Different from affect, JP marked its articles mostly with judgment. There

were only four sentences out of fifty that had no judgment marks. In this section, I

discussed judgment based on two sub-categories which are social sanction and

social esteem and on which category the newspaper focused its linguistic choice.

Through the overall analysis, I argued that, JP through its linguistic choice,

focused on social esteem with a total 40 words representing it while social

sanction was exemplified by 28 words. The following sections discussed the

social sanction and social esteem in more depth.

Social Sanction

As written in the Literature Review, social sanction covered veracity that

expressed truthfulness and propriety that expressed obligation. To show JP’s veracity, below is an example.

Jokowi’s obsession with having people of integrity fill the ministerial positions 'to the extent that honesty and sincerity is everything' is

understandable because integrity and competent leadership are his basic

political capital in winning the trust of the people. (JP, October 22, 2014)

Through this sentence, The Post used the quotation of honesty and sincerity to say

that Joko Widodo was highly committed to making sure that those in ministerial

positions were people of integrity. Honesty and sincerity were classified in

veracity since it evaluated probity.

However, not all veracity that had been analyzed portrays positive marking

as in the sentence below.

On Monday, the new President proved his doubters wrong.

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The veracity in this sentence was the word ‘wrong’ which evaluated Jokowi’s doubters’ opinion about his ability to represent Indonesia in APEC. The word ‘wrong’ gave positive evaluation on the sentence because, despite its negative in literal meaning, the ‘doubters’ word changed the value of the word ‘wrong.’

After viewing JP’s veracity in its coverage, the following paragraph discussed the newspaper’s propriety. Propriety was used more frequently than veracity since it showed the obligation which was often used by the newspaper as

a form of support and request to Jokowi. The use of modal of obligation was often

seen in the sentence indicating propriety, as follows

Without any hesitation, it must be his decision to cut short his first

American tour. (JP, October 28, 2015)

The propriety was not always marked by modal of obligation, but also by

using verb as it is shown in the following example.

The President's presence is deemed important to ensure that the rescue

operation and disaster mitigation efforts succeed.

The words ‘ensure’ and ‘succeed’ suggested a meaning of obligation since they were showing a necessity to be done by the actor, in this case, the President’s presence in Sumatra and Kalimantan fire disaster last October.

Social Esteem

There were three sub-categories which were covered by social esteem.

They were normality that was seen from usuality, capacity that was seen from

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this section was the normality. The following sentence is an example of a sentence

that had normality.

Despite disheartening public criticism, Jokowi should know full well that

critics are merely reminding him of why they supported him in the first

place. (JP, January 30, 2015)

As the normality represented the commonness, the word ‘merely’ fit into this category. It lessened and countered the harshness of ‘critics’ that were mentioned earlier as ‘disheartening public criticism.’ Therefore, the word ‘merely’ provided a supporting stance toward Jokowi who got the criticism.

Another example of normality below showed JP’s favor toward Jokowi. [...]convincing the international business community that the time was right

for it to bring money and technologies to Indonesia.

The underlined words were included in the normality because it implied a

meaning that it is not always the right time to invest in Indonesia, but in Jokowi’s era it is. Moreover, ‘the time was right,’ in literal meaning, were referring to a certain period which had the correlation with usuality.

The next category to be discussed was capacity which was the most

frequently used to exemplify social esteem. 23 words out of 40 words indicating

social esteem were related to capacity. It was frequently used because it portrayed

Joko Widodo’s ability. By using capacity, the newspaper promoted The Indonesian President as shown in the example:

In the energy sector, the pair's policies of prioritizing the use of natural gas

and coal for electric power and strengthening incentives, legal certainty

and regulatory body in the petroleum industry are indeed quite strategic.

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The sentence evaluated Jokowi’s Na wa Cita plan when he was still a candidate in the presidential election. The capacity that was shown in this sentence was

prioritizing and strengthening in which Jokowi’s focused on after he was elected. Through the capacity, JP also portrayed Jokowi’s criteria for the minister he worked with.

[...] he needs to ensure that the core members of the team have impeccable

integrity. (JP, October 22, 2014)

To win the Indonesian society’s favor, The President needed to gain their trust. Therefore, he selected his minister faithfully. When he did his part to win the

society, the newspaper also did its part in promoting him. The word ‘impeccable integrity’ gave a strong impact that the president set a high standard of integrity to those who wanted to be his minister.

The last part of this section discussed tenacity in which it represented

determination, among others. Tenacity usually used modal of inclination (feeling

of doing something) as is point out in the following sentence.

It would be much more productive if the ministers were to take more time

to listen to than to brief the participants. (JP, February 3, 2015)

The sentence contained suggestion in which indicated the newspaper was

determined to support the government even though the sentence may seem to be a

critic. The suggestion then made the government more dependable. Another

example of tenacity was represented in the following sentence, where the focus of

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We understand that President Jokowi has committed to resolving problems

on a domestic level before paying attention to Indonesia's role in the

international community[...]. (JP, November 13, 2015)

JP showed in this sentence that the President was dependable by saying

‘has committed to resolving problems.’ It implied the meaning that Jokowi’s decision in declining his presence in APEC 2015 was reasonable because he was

committed to the internal problem. Again, the newspaper was taking side with the

President although he made a wrong decision.

Appreciation

Appreciation was used in the selected articles twenty times, more

frequently than affect yet still less frequent than judgment. There were three

sub-categories of appreciation discussed in this section. The first category was

reaction which is an evaluation of the impact or quality of a thing or phenomenon.

Their plan to increase research and development in agriculture is also quite

strategic [...]. (JP, May 26, 2015)

The words ‘quite strategic’ evaluated the plan in a way that they gave a positive image to the thing (i.e. plan). Moreover, the newspaper added the word ‘quite’ to amplify the quality of the strategic plan.

The next category to be discussed was composition in which it evaluated

the balance or complexity of a thing or phenomenon, as is showed in the

following example.

While we do share the President's concern about such pressing agendas at

home needing his direct involvement, the Indonesian leader's no-show at

APEC is a diplomatic blunder, especially given the APEC summit host is a

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The word ‘pressing’ was classified in the composition category since it evaluated the complexity of the ‘agendas’ as the thing in the sentence. While the words ‘a diplomatic blunder’ suggested negative mark because Jokowi preferred choosing internal affair to the global issue, the previous word ‘concern,’ a judgment mark of social esteem capacity, signified the president’s positive attitude toward the ‘pressing agendas.’ Moreover, JP said ‘we do share’ to mark its support for Jokowi’s concern.

Valuation was the last category in this section in which it evaluated the

importance or the attractiveness of a thing or phenomenon.

A fresh start for the nation included his reminder that we had “turned our backs on the ocean” for too long [...] (JP, January 30, 2015)

The word ‘fresh’ evaluated the word ‘start’ as it was a new beginning of the government’s decision to focus also on the nation’s maritime. ‘Fresh’ was included in valuation since it denoted the importance of the start. Moreover, it

gave a positive evaluation of the decision that the government had made.

Based on the previous discussion on attitude, it can be argued that the way

JP’s editors made their supportive stance toward Joko Widodo was mostly by using judgment rather than the others (i.e. affect and appreciation). It was

frequently used since it enabled the editors to describe the usuality, the ability, and

the dependency of Jokowi. Moreover, judgment also permitted JP’s editors to suggest probability and obligation in order to make supporting sentences in

discussing Joko Widodo, his working cabinet, and Na wa Cita.

However, these findings cannot be over-generalized to all text types,

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that appreciation was the most frequently used. In his study, the undergraduate

students used appreciation in their study since it allowed them to express a more

emotive evaluation of things or phenomena. In another case, affect was mostly

used in discussing sexual orientation issue (Bartley and Benitez-Castro, 2016)

since it gave the writers a freedom to show the LGBT people’s feelings (dissatisfaction or anxiety) toward the society. Therefore, writers’ choice of using whether affect, judgment, or appreciation was related to the purpose of the text.

CONCLUSION

This study was aimed to answer the question “how does The Jakarta Post take supportive stance through the attitude of the editorial section when discussing

President Joko Widodo, his working cabinet, and Na wa Cita?” Through this study, it was found that JP made its encouragement toward President Joko

Widodo, his working cabinet, and Na wa Cita by using attitude linguistic choice.

The newspaper used affect, judgment, and appraisal linguistic choice as parts of

attitude analysis although the most favorable category was judgment.

Nevertheless, Martin and White (2005) saw affect as the core to propose judgment

and measure the value of things. Therefore, basically, in discussing the following

two linguistic markers (i.e. judgment and appreciation), we also discussed affect.

For further study, it is better to choose one of the affect, judgment, or

appreciation. So that the study gets deeper analysis and more focus discussion. In

general, it is expected that society, including Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana

students can be more aware of the media stance and the use of appraisal system,

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24

that through this study students’ critical reading and thinking can be developed. Also, it hopefully increases their awareness of some issues that happen recently.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The utmost gratitude I give unto My Almighty God, Jesus Christ, because

only by His blessing and grace I could do everything and become who I am. I also

would like to express my great gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Joseph Ernest

Mambu, Ph.D., for such dedication and willingness in helping me going through

the struggles and giving me feedbacks and inputs so that I could complete this

thesis. There is no way I could repay your sacrifice, Sir. Another gratitude I would

like to give to my thesis examiner, Dian Toar Y.G. Sumakul, M.A., for without

his assistance and consideration I probably will not able to finish this thesis.

I personally would like to thank my beloved ones for being my greatest

motivator in difficult times. An enormous appreciation I give to my parents who

have taken care of me for this past 22 years and probably ahead. I hope, as your

oldest daughter, I can make both of you proud. Also, I would like to thank my

only and beloved sister who often accompanied me stayed up late to make this

thesis. And for the dearest one, Satrya, I would like to thank you for every

encouragement and understanding that pushed me to finish my duty.

Finally, I would like to give lots of hugs and kisses for Jap, Victoria who

has become such a wonderful listener, sister, and friend in this past four years of

our college life, proofread my thesis, and struggled together on many occasions,

including thesis. Many thanks I also would like to give to Frenky, Huri, Valerie,

Elin, Ones, Edwin, Rio who have lightened my day when I felt down. Thanks to

BPMU periode 2015-2016 members as the witness of my struggling in working

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25

REFERENCES

Aritonang, M. S., Witular, R. A. (2014, May 21). Jokowi-Kalla hawkish on economic policies. The Jakarta Post. Retrieved December 12, 2015 from http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/05/21/jokowi-kalla-hawkish-economic-policies.html

Bartley, L., & Benitez-Castro, M.-A. (2016). Evaluation and attitude towards homosexuality in the Irish context: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of appraisal patterns in 2008 newspaper articles. Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies 16(1), 1-21.

Chang, G., & Mehan, H. (2006). Discourse in a religious mode: The Bush administration's discourse in the war on terrorism and its challanges. Pragmatics 43(1), 33-51.

Du Bois, J. W. (2007). The stance triangle. In R. Englebretson, Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction (pp. 139-182). Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Dwi-Nugroho, A. (2013). With and without ‘General’: The representation of Wiranto in the Sydney Morning Herald during Indonesia’s 2004 general election. Kata 15(1), 39-45.

Editorial: After 100 days. (2015, January 30). The Jakarta Post. Retrieved March 30, 2016 from www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/01/30/editorial-after-100-days.html

Editorial: Down-to-earth diplomacy. (2015, February 03). The Jakarta Post.

Retrieved August 22, 2016 from

www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/02/03/down-earth-diplomacy.html

Editorial: Endorsing Jokowi. (2014, July 04). The Jakarta Post. Retrieved August 22, 2016 from www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/07/04/editorial-endorsing-jokowi.html

Editorial: Jokowi's early return. (2015, October 28). The Jakarta Post. Retrieved

August 22, 2016 from

www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/10/28/editorial-jokowi-s-early-return.html

Editorial: Showtime for Jokowi. (2014, November 12). The Jakarta Post.

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26 the Chinese "Boat People". Canadian Journal of Communication 25, 517-537.

Hunston, S., & Thompson, G. (2000). Evaluation in text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hyland, K. (2012). Undergraduate understandings: Stance and voice in final year reports. In K. Hyland, Stance and voice in written academic genres (pp. 134-150). London: Macmillan Publishers.

KhosraviNik, M. (2010). The representation of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in British newspapers. Journal of Language and Politics 9(1), 1-28.

Macdonald, M. (2003). Exploring media discourse. London: Arnold.

Martin, J., & White, P. (2005). The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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27 APPENDIX Text 1 - Editorial: The Jokowi-Kalla platform

Text 2 - Editorial: Endorsing Jokowi

No. Items Attitude

1. The economic components of the platform put forth by presidential candidate Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo and his running mate Jusuf Kalla reflect the right priorities that the nation really needs as they focus on food, energy and infrastructure.

Judgment-Social Esteem, Appreciation-Reaction, Appreciation-Reaction

2. The Jokowi-Kalla plan to open 1 million hectares of new rice fields outside Java and build new key to agricultural productivity is high-yield seeds that can be developed only through research.

Appreciation-Reaction, Appreciation-Reaction, Judgment-Social Esteem

4. In the energy sector, the pair's policies of prioritizing the use of natural gas and coal for electric power and strengthening incentives, legal certainty and regulatory body in the petroleum will have the political courage to take the bull by the horns.

Judgment-Social Esteem, Judgment-Social Esteem

No. Items Attitude

6. We are encouraged that one candidate has displayed a factual record of rejecting faith-based politics.

Judgment-Social Esteem, Appreciation-Valuation

7. As one candidate offers a break from the past, ... Judgment-Social Esteem 8. One is determined to reject the collusion of power

and business, ...

Judgment-Social Esteem

9. Therefore the Post feels obliged to openly declare its endorsement of the candidacy of Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo and Jusuf Kalla as president and vice president in the July 9 election.

Affect-Satisfaction, Judgment-Social Sanction

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28 Text 3 - Editorial: Integrity key for Jokowi

Text 4 - Editorial: Showtime for Jokowi

No. Items Attitude

11. We apparently must wait another day before learning who will form the working team that will assist President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo in implementing his vision and the mission of his government during the next five years as he needs to ensure that the core members of the team have impeccable integrity.

Judgment-Social Sanction, Judgment-Social Esteem, Judgment-Social Esteem, Judgment-Social Esteem

12. It is heartening to learn though that the short delay in Jokowi’s announcement of his Cabinet has nothing to do with horse trading to strengthen his coalition at the House of Representatives.

Judgment-Social Sanction, Judgment-Social Esteem

13. Jokowi’s obsession with having people of integrity fill the ministerial positions ‘to the extent that honesty and sincerity is everything’ is understandable because integrity and competent leadership are his basic political capital in winning the trust of the people.

immediately to revise the 2015 state budget,...

Judgment-Social Sanction

15. ..., the new government will have to intensify tax collection during the last quarter to maintain the budget deficit at 2.4 percent of gross domestic deficit as set in the State Budget Law.

18. ..., convincing the international business community that the time was right for it to bring money and technologies to Indonesia.

19. As a former businessman, he understands well how to do business in Indonesia.

20. ..., but Jokowi left his own impression with a down-to-earth approach.

21. It is understandable that he wanted to concentrate on pressing domestic matters and perhaps felt nervous to negotiate with global leaders [...].

Appreciation-Reaction, Affect-Insecurity

22. These will be easier for him because now his self-confidence has grown stronger and many

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29 Text 5 - Editorial: After 100 days

Text 6 - Editorial: Down-to-earth diplomacy

participants of the upcoming summits also attended the Beijing forum.

25. So far he has done a good job. Judgment-Social Sanction

No. Items Attitude

26. It was a victory for Indonesians when the former Jakarta governor was voted our seventh president, and was a sharp break from the old mold of leaders.

Appreciation-Valuation, Appreciation-Reaction

27. Despite disheartening public criticism, Jokowi should know full well that critics are merely guidelines mentioned in his campaign’s nine -program Nawacita.

30. We join them in urging President Jokowi not to lose the support of the millions who see no choice but to place their hopes in him.

No. Items Attitude

31. ..., President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's down-to-earth leadership platforms will determine the direction of his foreign policy in the next five years, ...

32. Jokowi's first meeting with the senior diplomats is very timely and strategic because they are his official representatives abroad.

Appreciation-Reaction

33. It would be much more productive if the ministers were to take more time to listen to than to brief the participants.

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30 Text 7 - Editorial: Jokowi and the foreign press

Text 8 - Editorial: Jokowi’s early return

No. Items Attitude

34. Back in May both national and international media greeted President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's decision to lift decades-long restrictions on foreign media access in Papua, calling the move a step in the right direction toward Indonesia's full commitment to press freedom.

Judgment-Social Esteem, Appreciation-Reaction

35. It is indeed beyond our imagination if Jokowi, dubbed a media darling during the presidential race and after his rise to power, will have the heart to stifle the press, especially foreign journalists.

Appreciation-Reaction, Judgment-Social Esteem

36. We don't think Jokowi has forgotten his own words while visiting the country's easternmost region Merauke in May that 'foreign journalists, as of today, are allowed to enter Papua as freely as they enter other provinces'.

37. We only demand that he realize his promise. Judgment-Social Esteem

No. Items Attitude

38. Without any hesitation, it must be his decision to cut short his first American tour.

bring to justice all those who started the forest and peatland fires.

41. In terms of urgency, Jokowi's direct involvement in overseeing firefighting measures is understandable.

Judgment-Social Esteem, Appreciation-Reaction

42. Jokowi's meeting with Obama at the White House was certainly strategic, even though the latter will complete his second and final term next year.

43. ..., Jokowi should pay careful attention to the next US administration.

44. He has promised to immediately visit the affected people in Sumatra and Kalimantan and provide the much needed help.

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31 Text 9 - Editorial: Wrong on APEC

No. Items Attitude

46. We hope that the President can set aside his short-term pragmatism, at least for a while, and make the effort to attend the multilateral meeting.

47. We understand that President Jokowi has committed to resolving problems on a domestic level before paying attention to Indonesia's role in the international community, ...

Appreciation-Reaction, Judgment-Social Esteem

48. While we do share the President's concern about such pressing agendas at home needing his direct involvement,...

Judgment-Social Sanction, Appreciation-Composition

49. We do hope that such a suspicion is baseless, but the government needs to clarify the issue.

Judgment-Social Sanction, Judgment-Social Sanction 50. For the sake of Indonesian interests, we hope the

President changes his mind.