Discourse as Social Practice on Abdul Qodir Jaelani (AQJ) Case

Abstract

This study aims at describing social practices and explaining social agents’ thought and belief in the discourse of Abdul QodirJaelani (AQJ). It uses a descriptive qualitative approach in the form of discourse analysis, by utilizing the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and appraisal devices as instruments. The data obtained were 10 written newspaper textsof AQJ case taken from the Jakarta Post online newspaper. The units of analyses of the study are the whole texts in general and the clauses in particular. The results show that in situational level, the news productions are based on the continuity of situational development of AQJ case; in institutional level, the economic media of the Jakarta Post is more stable and the politics media involves the journalists’ ideology stance in which represent readers’ ideology; in the social level, the news attempt to attract readers’ critical thinking of the AQJ case. Moreover, the social agents employed all three resources of attitudes that tend to be negative in terms of judgment, appreciation and affect. In sum, this study shows that meanings were realized through the representation of social agents and social events, afterwards the evaluation of kinds of attitudes were also negotiated in the news texts of AQJ. Keywords : appraisal system, discourse analysis, news articles, social agents, social practice