LANGUAGE, SOCIAL MEDIA, AND REPRESENTATION OF RIDWAN KAMIL POLITICAL IDENTITY: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Abstract

The use of language by a politician in social media is very interesting to study because it has a big effect on his electability. The language of a politician is heavily influenced by his identity and political interests. The purpose of this research is to find out how the forms of power language Ridwan Kamil; how Ridwan Kamil’s identity influenced his language of power; how the language of power was used by Ridwan Kamil in building his power alliance; and how Ridwan Kamil’s expertise influenced the language of his authority as regional head. The theory used is critical discourse analysis theory so that the texts produced by Ridwan Kamil are analyzed using a critical and constructive approach. The data were taken from the texts of Ridwan Kamil’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. The method used was descriptive analytical. The results showed that 1) the Sundanese text delivered by Ridwan Kamil appeared in two forms, namely (a) the text which was mainly in the form of Sundanese sentences and (b) the text in the form of certain words in Sundanese that were present together. with words in Indonesian (mixed code); 2) texts in Ridwan Kamil’s status and tweets can be grouped into several types, namely the distribution of power, imperative forms, power verbs, forms of prohibition, use of aspects and modalities, intellectual authority, and symbolic violence; 3) what Ridwan Kamil did with the language of power and representations of his political identity, was actually his efforts to form an alliance with members of the public, with his prospective voters in the regional head elections. The development of Ridwan Kamil’s political alliance was carried out in several ways, namely inviting, paying attention, providing assistance, opening space for dialogue, sympathizing, showing politeness, and feeling one thought. The various forms of alliance-building can be identified by the choice of words