Positive discourse analysis of the Indonesian government spokesperson's discursive strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic that is sweeping across the globe has caused increased anxiety. Studies in linguistics have found a variety of language expressions that convey people's anxiety and fear. However, there are only a few researchers that studied the use of language used in communication...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2020
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/16825/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/16825/1/40056-143265-1-PB.pdf |
| Summary: | The Covid-19 pandemic that is sweeping across the globe has caused increased anxiety. Studies
in linguistics have found a variety of language expressions that convey people's anxiety and
fear. However, there are only a few researchers that studied the use of language used in
communication by the government, to enhance the citizens' morale and help them recover from
psychological distress from the Covid-19 pandemic. This study focused on investigating the
discursive strategies used by the Indonesian government spokesperson at daily press
conferences during the Covid-19 pandemic. This study employed the Positive Discourse
Analysis (PDA) framework. A total of 28 recorded press conference sessions that lasted
between 25-45 minutes were analyzed through the identification, interpretation, and
explanation stages. Identification was carried out through careful reading of the transcription
of the government spokesperson’s speech to find out the discursive strategy used by the
spokesperson. The interpretation was done by grouping similar quotes with the same themes,
based on the context of the discourse. The explanation was done by explaining, in a macro
way, the situational aspects and social contexts that provide the background for the texts’
production and relating them to the pandemic. The results of the study showed that the
spokesperson made use of nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivization and
intensification, and mitigation strategies to deliver information to the public. The entire
discursive strategies are used to improve the public’s optimism and build solidarity of the
citizens as a moral force to face the pandemic. Suggestions for future research about analysis
of pandemic discourse employed by the government include corpus analysis, power
representation and framing. |
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