Metonymy in Indonesian Political Discourse.

Author: Muhammad Adam (Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Balikpapan, Indonesia)
Speaker: Muhammad Adam
Topic: Language Ideologies
The (SCOPUS / ISI) SOAS GLOCAL CALA 2020 General Session

Abstract

This study will focus on the use of metonymy in Indonesian Political Discourse in media. Metonymy is one the persuasive tools in media discourse to gain reader attention. Examples of metonymy include the use of Teheran to refer to the Iranian Government, or White house to refer to the US government; In the Indonesian political context, “beringin” and “ka’bah” are used to refer to a political party, and the use of “Cendana” to refer to all things associated with the Indonesian second president – Soeharto. The aims of this study are to analyze the most common metonymy in Indonesian political discourse and to discuss the conceptual connection between the metonymic word or phrase with its referent, in relation to larger global political discourse. A further investigation will also be carried out to identify the conventional and the novel metonymy, the former refers to a more familiar and readily interpretable metonymy, whereas the latter refers to an unfamiliar metonymy, which is more difficult to interpret. Thus, “cendana” is an example of a conventional metonymy, as this word has been used for more than 30 years in Indonesian political and media discourse, whereas “ka’bah” in a particular context is an example of novel metonymy.

The methodology of this study is qualitative descriptive within a Conceptual Metaphor Framework. The research has collected news from political sections of Indonesian online news websites, Detik and Tempo and identifiesy the metonymy which will be analyzed further to find referents and to discuss the conceptual connection between the metonymic word/phrase with its referents. The more frequent and more common particular items of metonymy are classified as conventional metaphors.

Keywords: Metonymy, Politics and Media Discourse, Conventional and Novel Metonymy.