CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF REPORTING ON “INDONESIAN LEADER, MR. AHOK, AS THE PUBLIC FIGURE” IN THE JAKARTA POST NEWSPAPER

Abstract

This research discusses the news reporting on Ahok’s news in his gubernatorial election especially about the language used by the journalists or the editors of the English Jakarta Post newspaper which is based on Fairclough’s theory (2003) of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), it views language as a powerful means through which specific ideologies, identities, and culture become dominant in a society. The data in this research are six articles entitled ‘Ahok tries to win Muslim voters’ hearts’, ‘Ahok still beatable as swing voters grow’,‘Amien Rais steps up attacks on Ahok’, ‘Secretanism simmers as Jakarta election approaches’, ‘Anies may challenge Ahok’ and ‘The Profile of The Jakarta Post Newspaper’. The purposes of this study are (1) to describe the aspects of language used in reporting Ahok, (2) to describe the relationship between the discursive processes and the text in the language used, (3) to describe the situations of social, political, and cultural that backing up the language used. The analysis is elaborated with some linguistic tools of analyzing language consist of naming and describing, agency and transitivity, negating, representing other’s speech, equating and contrasting, and modality.