Political Pragmemes on Billboards in Indonesia’s 2024 Election
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21512/lc.v20i1.14444Keywords:
pragma-stylistics, commissive speech act, figurative language, political discourse, campaign billboardsAbstract
This study investigates the pragma-stylistic features of Indonesian legislative campaign billboards during the 2024 general election, focusing on how promises are articulated as commissive speech acts through figurative language, visual design, and cultural symbolism. Campaign billboards, as multimodal texts, compress political identities into succinct slogans and imagery that aim to persuade, legitimize, and establish trust with voters. The research interprets campaign promises not merely as linguistic forms but as context-sensitive communicative events embedded in electoral rituals. A qualitative method was employed by Mey (2001)’s theory of pragmemes by analyzing 57 billboards collected along major roads in late 2023 and early 2024. Data were categorized according to the framework of figurative language, including personification, symbolism, overstatement, metaphor, synecdoche, and allegory. The analysis demonstrates that figurative devices intensify the persuasive force of commissive acts by embedding them in cultural narratives, national symbols, and ideological discourses. The findings reveal that billboard discourse operates across linguistic, visual, and ideological dimensions, aligning with the semiotics of myth and the view of discourse as an ideology-laden practice. Figurative language and symbolic resources not only ornament campaign texts but also legitimize candidates, mobilize solidarity, and reinforce cultural values. The findings contribute to Indonesian political communication by demonstrating how campaign messages strategically combine linguistic and semiotic resources rooted in national culture, providing an integrated model for analyzing how political persuasion is culturally framed in Indonesian elections.
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