The Persuasive Utterances in a Political Discourse (The Case Study of the Regent Election Campaign of Pasuruan, East Java-Indonesia)

Abstract

This article describes the result of the research study of persuasive utterances used by the campaign speakers of the Regent and vice Regent election at Pasuruan, East Java. The specific aim of the study is to describe the patterns, strategies and culture-social norms of persuasive utterances used in the political campaign based on the pragmatic perspective. Theoretically, persuasive utterances are defined as the ones to influence and convince the hearers to do the acts wanted by the speakers. Therefore, the utterance types can be categorized into ‘directive-speech acts’. Having been pragmatically studied, however, the persuasive utterances which have been functioned as ‘directive-speech acts’, are not merely used in ‘directives’ but also in other speech-acts such as: assertive/representatives, commissives, expressives, and declaration. That’s why, they can be classified into ‘directives’ in the form of direct utterances and ‘directives’ in the form of indirect utterances. Then, in this study direct utterances are categorized into ‘directives’ while indirect utterances are categorized into combination forms such as: assertive-directives, commissive-directives, expressive-directives, and declaration-directives. Besides reflecting the patterns, these speech-acts also reflected the strategies of utterances in which the norms of culture and social life of the local people can be described. These norms can be identified based on the utterance forms and strategies that the speakers used and also the attitudes or social behaviors that they showed, such as: politeness, the harmony of the team work, and their obedience to kiai or ulama (Moslem scholars) in determining their political wisdom. Thus, the persuasive utterances and persuasive acts produced by the speakers can be said to have an impact to the norms of positive and negative politeness of speakers and hearers.