A STUDY OF TRANSITIVITY IN BARACK OBAMA’S SPEECH DELIVERED IN JAKARTA ON NOVEMBER 10th, 2010: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Abstract

The speech of Obama has become quite phenomenal since his visit to Indonesia in Asian Tour 2010. The speech got more enthusiasm from the audience, especially the young people in the University of Indonesia. It is interesting to investigate the factors behind the success of his speech and the power he serves to recover his image and the United States in the perspective of Indonesian people. The goal of this study is to examine the language used by Obama in his speech in serving power. This study is conducted to expose the production of power used by Obama on the behalf of his country to present the United States and Indonesia. It also investigates the existence of inequality and power abuse used in the speech. The investigation is based on the theory of SFL proposed by Halliday (1994) from the point of processes include in transitivity. Moreover, the theory of CDA along with the theory of power is offered in this study to examine the existence of inequality and power abuse. This study applies the mixed method (both qualitative and quantitative methods) to analyze the data. The primary data are taken from The White House website (http://www.whitehouse.gov/) accessed on November 11, 2011 at 5:45 am. The primary data are collected by using stratified sampling. Next, the data are analyzed by using transitivity analysis and the result is presented in the form of statistical analysis.