The Recontextualization of Political News Discourse in Jakarta Post’s Articles

The Recontextualization of Political News Discourse in Jakarta Post’s Articles

1. Introduction

• Background

Mass media is one type of communication that catches main attention of public, there are various type of mass media, such as video, audio, online media, and printed media. Due to the rapid development of technology; nowadays, people did not have to buy printed newspaper to get the up-to-date news. Through their gadget, they can have access an online media in every place. “The influential people in the society are the people in power, that is, opinion leaders, court judges, celebrities, newspaper editors, prominent national figures, among others” (Osisanwo 2011:1) (as cited in Oyeleye 2013). From the excerpt, it is clear that newspaper editor/writer has the power to imply his/her ideology through their work whether it is conscious or unconscious, people who read their work will be influenced by their ideology. This paper will be important for newspaper’s readers for they will be more aware if they read political discourse in media. Since this paper is going to recontextualize the political discourse in an online media news, the approach of critical discourse analysis will be used in analyzing the data. The method that is suitable for this research is the work of Van Leuuwen (2009) which is Discourse and Recontextualization.

CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Discourse is often used to mean an extended stretch of connected speech or writing—a ‘text’. Van Leuuwen (2009), quoting Michael Foucault, Jurgen Habernas, Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, Niklas Luhmann, or many others. Thus, discourse means anything from a historical monument, a lieu de memoire, a policy, a political strategy, narratives in a restricted or broad sense of the term, text, talk, a speech, topic-related conversations, to language per se. (as cited in Wodak and Meyer, 2009). Hence, discourse analysis means the analysis of the text. Critical discourse analysis is a further theory of discourse analysis; it means that it has to be critical when analyzing the discourse. According to Wodak and Meyer (2009) “CDA sees ‘language as social practice’ (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997), and considers the ‘context of language use’ to be crucial”. They quote one definition which has become popular among CDA researchers: “Describing discourse as social practice implies a dialectical relationship between a particular discursive event and the situation(s), institution(s), and social structure(s), which frame it: The discursive event is shaped by them, but it also shapes them”.

DISCOURSE AND RECONTEXTUALIZATION

The term recontextualization was first introduced by Bernstein in 1981 then Van Leuuwen stated an idea that discourse is the recontextualization of social practice, he introduces elements of social practice that are transformed when it is represented in a discourse. The elements which are contained in actual social practice are: actions, actors, performance mode, presentation styles, times, space, resources, and eligibility. Among all these elements, the ones which are emphasized in the approach are actors and actions.

Van Leeuwen (2008, p. 6) defines social practices as “socially regulated ways of doing things” (as cited in Rycker 2014). They can be analyzed in terms of the following eight elements:

1. Actions

A set of actions formed a social practice, which may or may not have to be performed in a specific order.

1. Performance Modes

These actions may have to be performed in specific ways. (“Stage directions” as to how to carry out a particular action in the practice)

1. Actors

Social actors participate in practices in one of a number of roles – as ‘agents’ (doers of action), ‘patients’ (participant to whom actions are done) or ‘beneficiaries’ (participants who benefit from an action, whether in a positive or negative sense)

1. Times

Social practices (or parts of them) will take place at more or less specific times.

1. Spaces

Social practices (or parts of them) also take place in specific spaces, chosen or arranged as a suitable environment for the practice. (Locations)

1. Resources

Tools and materials.

1. Presentation Styles
2. Eligibility Conditions 

What qualifies a person, an object, a location, etc. to play their role in the practice.

As mentioned before, this study will only focus on the actors, the actions, and the performance modes as they are the most important elements to recontextualize the discourse.

• Purposes of Research

• To find out author’s tendency in the texts
• To identify the social actors in the texts
• To discover how the social actors are represented in the texts

• Statements of Problems

The research questions formulated on this research are:

1. Who are the social actors that mentioned in the text?
2. How the social actors are represented in the text?
3. What is the author’s tendency of the issue in the text?

• Clarification of terms

• Social Actors: The ones who participate in practices in one of a number of roles – as ‘agents’ (doers of action), ‘patients’ (participant to whom actions are done) or ‘beneficiaries’ (participants who benefit from an action, whether in a positive or negative sense).

1. Review of Related Literature

Previous studies have examined the media representation yet in different media and using different approach. For instance, the work of Taufani (2015). She analyzed the media representation of Ariel Sharon in two news media Al-Jazeera and Press TV, using socio-semantic approach by Van Dijk. The result showed that the two media have different perspectives regarding Ariel Sharon, and it is also contrastive.

Another work is from Van Dijk (1983). He analyzed the development and application of discourse analysis to the structure of the news. He showed that news discourse in the daily press can be described systematically and explicitly on the basis of results of text linguistics and discourse analysis. Moreover, he also showed that surface structure (stylistic) analysis, as well as the analysis of local and global coherence (macrostructures) and a specific news schema, may be relevant in an account of mass media "messages.