RIDWAN KAMIL'S CAMPAIGN STRATEGY ON INSTAGRAM MEDIA

Abstract

The political atmosphere in several regions of Indonesia is heating up ahead of the 2018 regional elections, including in West Java. Various methods are being employed by all gubernatorial and vice-gubernatorial candidates to achieve victory. Numerous negative campaigns and impolite remarks are being used to discredit opposing candidates. Ridwan Kamil is one of the gubernatorial candidates in West Java with relatively high electability. Based on this, the researcher is interested in understanding the campaign strategies employed by Ridwan Kamil from a linguistic perspective. This paper will analyze the speech act strategies, politeness, and propaganda in Ridwan Kamil's official Instagram captions. This paper uses Searle and Austin's illocutionary speech act theory to uncover the types of utterances used by RK in his campaign. Furthermore, Leech's theory is used to identify the politeness strategies and indicators used by RK. Finally, the propaganda strategy theory developed by Lee & Lee is used to uncover the propaganda strategies behind RK's utterances. The research results show that the most frequently used speech act strategy is assertive; the most frequently used politeness strategy is the maxim of approbation with a majority of benefit/cost politeness scales; and the most frequently used propaganda strategy is glittering generality. Based on the research results, the image that RK wants to build in his campaign on Instagram is one of high integrity, wisdom, populism, and noble aspirations.