System of modality on the text of Indonesian presidential candidates debate on the period of 2014 – 2019

Abstract

The text modality system is a set of views, judgments, and opinions of a tenor on the linguistic phenomena. The tenor's view of discourse lies in a core position called the modal arena and is reconciled with two polar namely positive and negative polar. There are three linguistic phenomena underlying the study of the modalities of the text of the presidential candidate debate, i.e empirical, practical, and theoretical phenomena. The objective of the study was to describe the text modality system of Indonesian presidential candidate debate on the period of 2014-2015. The theory used in this research namely the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) which was initiated by M.A.K Halliday (1985, 1991, 2004, 2014). The research approach is qualitative descriptive approach with the linguistic phenomenological paradigm. The types of data include words, phrases, clauses, a group of phrases, and text units. The data comes from the TDC audio recordings of stage I and II. The research instrument used text validation tables and contexts. Furthermore, the data collection stage used the method of documentation and observation along with some advanced techniques. Stage of data processing was done through classification, segmentation, and data codification. The analysis stage includes several stages, namely reduction, presentation, and verification. The results show that the PS has a tendency to use the probabilistic 'probable' modality, frequency 'usual', must 'mandatory' tendency to 'wish' with the subjective-implicit action orientation, while the JW tends to use the modulation of the probability type of 'certain', frequency 'always', must 'required', tendency 'fixed' with an objective-explicit action orientation. 1. Introduction The presidential election is a process that is commonly conducted in all countries embracing presidential system. Various series of presidential election activities are conducted by every government in the world. One of the activities in the process of presidential candidate debate. The presidential debate is an activity which shows off arguments, views, and ideas or ideas to build the nation and state. There are many examples of presidential debates around the world, such as a debate between Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016 where they argued over taxation policies (Bhattarai, et al., 2018), presidential political disruption in Lebanon (Potter, 2016), community conflict in the election of the governor of the province of Lagos, Nigeria (Ajilore, 2015), President Buhari's political speech in response to the parliamentary chaos in Nigeria (Koussouhon & Dossoumou, 2015), and various political issues of presidential elections in the United States that often debate the issue of race, group or community, the handling of immigrants, etc. (Benoit & Airne, 2005). The process of presidential candidate debate is included as political activities. Each conversation has political intention. Politics has the nature of power, so it is often used by the tenor of discourse to achieve power. The presidential debate is a meaningful language activity, and anything meaningful can be said as text. In the meantime, the presidential candidate debates are texts, meaning that they are a collection of political information concerning the policy of the presidential candidate in leading the nation and state. Orwell (1986) in Jones and Wareing (2007: 63) states that the text of a political language is constructed to make a lie sounding true, the murder sounding noble, and the nonsense sounding convincing. It means the representation of reality in political conversation, such as the presidential debate needs serious attention to reveal the truth or the facts behind the speech. Do the speakers say the reality or it is just political promises? For example, the debate of presidential candidates in Indonesia in the period 2014-2019 brought together presidential candidates Prabowo Subianto and Joko Widodo. Based on this example, it reveals several functions and the nature of language in political conversation, there are three factors which make the researcher being interested in researching the phenomenon of language in the presidential debate (presidential candidates) in the 2014 presidential election, namely empirical, practice, and theoretical way. The empirical phenomenon that attracted attention in the conduction of presidential debate in 2014 is the social language attitude of the presidential candidates, the involvement of the media in the process of supporting the presidential candidate, and the political and social conditions of the society. Various linguistic contents of the presidential candidates which are persuasive and euphemistic tend to trigger excessive fanaticism in society. The society becomes divided into mass or coalition of pros and cons of both candidates. The same thing also happens to the smallest community in society, namely family life