Strategic Lexicalization in the Vision and Mission Statements of the 2024 Indonesian Presidential Candidates

Authors

  • Rio Nur Rachmad Universitas Gadjah Mada

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31503/madah.v16i2.1059

Keywords:

election, political discourse, president statement, strategic lexicalization

Abstract

Strategic lexicalization functions as a rhetorical mechanism in political campaigns serving to instill ideology and shape public perception. Thus, the present study examines the strategic lexicalization in the vision and mission statements of Indonesia’s 2024 presidential candidates by analyzing how language conveys ideologies and influences voters’ perceptions. This study investigated the frequency and distribution of verbs, adjectives, and modals in the vision and mission statements of Anies–Muhaimin, Prabowo–Gibran, and Ganjar–Mahfud. This study employed a descriptive qualitative approach with a corpus of 42,021 tokens processed by means of AntConc 4.3.1. The findings reveal distinct lexical patterns and illustrate further how distribution and choice of lexemes impact ideological polarization in electoral contexts and frame policy agendas among the candidates.

References

Abuelwafa, M. A. (2021). Legitimation and manipulation in political speeches: A corpus-based study. Procedia Computer Science, 189, 11–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2021.05.066

Adam, M., Rahman, F., Abbas, H., & Sahib, H. (2024). Corpus-based diachronic study of war metaphor in Indonesian political discourse. International Journal of Religion, 5(7), 515–523. https://doi.org/10.61707/3w7d4v38

Afzaal, M., Zhang, C., & Chishti, M. I. (2022). Comrades or contenders: A corpus-based study of China’s Belt and Road in US diplomatic discourse. Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 7(3), 684–702. https://doi.org/10.1177/20578911211069709

Al-Fajri, M. S., Abdul Rahim, H., & Rajandran, K. (2024). Portraying people with disability in Indonesian online news reports: A corpus-assisted discourse study. Media Asia, 51(4), 548–569. https://doi.org/10.1080/01296612.2024.2310891

Amaireh, H. A., & Rababah, L. M. (2024). Bidenian and Harrisian metaphors: A corpus-based analysis of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ political discourse. Jordan Journal of Modern Languages & Literatures, 16(3), 651–671. https://doi.org/10.47012/jjmll.16.3.5

Az-Zahra, R., & Roselani, N. (2024). A critical discourse analysis of sexual violence narratives in The Jakarta Post. Lexicon, 11(1), 34–42. https://doi.org/10.22146/lexicon.v11i1.93145

Baker, P., & Levon, E. (2015). Picking the right cherries? A comparison of corpus-based and qualitative analyses of news articles about masculinity. Discourse & Communication, 9(2), 221–236. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481314568542

Blunter, R. (1998). Lexical pragmatics. Journal of Semantics, 15(2), 115–162. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/15.2.115

Brookes, G., & Chalupnik, M. (2022). “Real men grill vegetables, not dead animalsâ€: Discourse representations of men in an online vegan community. Discourse, Context & Media, 49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2022.100640

Brochhagen, T., Franke, M., & van Rooij, R. (2018). Coevolution of lexical meaning and pragmatic use. Cognitive Science, 42, 2757–2789. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12681

Brookes, G., & McEnery, T. (2020). Correlation, collocation and cohesion: A corpus-based critical analysis of violent jihadist discourse. Discourse & Society, 31(4), 351–373. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926520903528

Chałupnik, M., & Brookes, G. (2021). ‘You said, we did’: A corpus-based analysis of marketising discourse in healthcare websites. Text & Talk, 41(5–6), 643–666. https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0038

Cheng, L., Liu, X., & Si, C. (2024). Identifying stance in legislative discourse: A corpus-driven study of data protection laws. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03322-9

Cohen, J. E. (1995). Presidential rhetoric and the public agenda. American Journal of Political Science, 39(1), 87–107. https://doi.org/10.2307/2111759

Collins, S., & DeWitt, J. (2023). Words matter: Presidents Obama and Trump, Twitter, and U.S. soft power. World Affairs, 186(3), 530–571. https://doi.org/10.1177/00438200231161631

Du, L. (2021). Different discursive constructions of Chinese political congresses in China Daily and The New York Times: A corpus-based discourse study. Critical Arts, 35(5–6), 224–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2022.2055593

Dorsey, L. G. (2008). The presidency and rhetorical leadership (Vol. 6). Texas A&M University Press.

Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and text: Linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 3(2), 193–217. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926592003002004

Fairclough, N. (2013). Language and power (2nd ed.). Longman. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315838250

Farwell, J. P. (2012). Persuasion and power: The art of strategic communication. Georgetown University Press.

Fu, Y., Afzaal, M., & El-Dakhs, D. A. S. (2024). Investigating discourse markers “you know†and “I mean†in mediatized English political interviews: A corpus-based comparative study. Frontiers in Communication, 9, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1427062

Hamed, D. (2021). Keywords and collocations in US presidential discourse since 1993: A corpus-assisted analysis. Journal of Humanities and Applied Social Sciences, 3(2), 137–158. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHASS-01-2020-0019

Hamouda, W., Hashmi, U. M., & Omar, A. (2023). Muslim preachers’ pandemics-related discourses within social media: A corpus-based critical discourse analysis. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2023.2205729

Hayes, N., & Poole, R. (2022). A diachronic corpus-assisted semantic domain analysis of US presidential debates. Corpora, 17(3), 449–469. https://doi.org/10.3366/cor.2022.0266

Heritage, F., & Baker, P. (2022). Crime or culture? Representations of chemsex in the British press and magazines aimed at GBTQ+ men. Critical Discourse Studies, 19(4), 435–453. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2021.1910052

Huan, C. (2023). China opportunity or China threat? A corpus-based study of China’s image in Australian news discourse. Social Semiotics, 34(5), 808–825. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2023.2196716

Khafaga, A. (2023). Strategic lexicalization in courtroom discourse: A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2023.2217585

McNaughtan, J., Louis, S., García, H. A., & McNaughtan, E. D. (2019). An institutional North Star: The role of values in presidential communication and decision-making. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 41(2), 153–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2019.1568848

Nazeer, I., Yousaf, S., & Anwar, N. (2023). Analyzing linguistic shifts in political discourse: A corpus-based study of political rhetoric in the digital age. Pakistan Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 11(4), 3924–3933. https://doi.org/10.52131/pjhss.2023.1104.0661

Oddo, J. (2011). War legitimation discourse: Representing ‘us’ and ‘them’ in four US presidential addresses. Discourse & Society, 22(3), 287–314. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926510395442

Painter, D. L., & Fernandes, J. (2021). They’re not just words: The verbal style of U.S. presidential debate rhetoric. Communication Studies, 72(5), 899–914. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2021.1975145

Paterson, L. L. (2024). Defining, labelling and evaluating poverty: A corpus-based discourse analysis of category construction in The Times newspaper 1900–2009. Discourse & Society, 0(0), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265241288872

Pérez, M. C. (2023). The representation of migration in parliamentary settings: Critical cross-linguistics corpus-assisted discourse analyses. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02496-y

Santoso, D., & Wardani, A. (2021). A critical discourse analysis on Jokowi and Prabowo’s tweets during the 2019 presidential election. International Journal of Communication and Society, 3(2), 120–129. https://doi.org/10.31763/ijcs.v3i2.379

Smith, C. A., & Smith, K. B. (1994). The White House speaks: Presidential leadership as persuasion. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Suhaili, A., Suganda, D., Darmayanti, N., & Yuliawati, S. (2024). A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of the Iranian people in the corpus of Donald Trump’s social media texts. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 14(1), 88–97. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1401.10

Tulis, J. K. (2017). The rhetorical presidency: New edition. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Wicke, P., & Bolognesi, M. M. (2024). Red and blue language: Word choices in the Trump & Harris 2024 presidential debate. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.13654

Windayani, N. K. H. T. (2023). Lexical cohesion used in Donald Trump’s campaign speech. PRAGMATICA: Journal of Linguistics and Literature, 1(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.60153/pragmatica.v1i1.13

Zarefsky, D. (2004). Presidential rhetoric and the power of definition. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 34(3), 607–619. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27552615

Downloads

Published

2025-10-31

How to Cite

Rachmad, R. N. (2025). Strategic Lexicalization in the Vision and Mission Statements of the 2024 Indonesian Presidential Candidates. Madah: Jurnal Bahasa Dan Sastra, 16(2), 142–157. https://doi.org/10.31503/madah.v16i2.1059