An Analysis of Language Style in the Presidential Campaign Slogans

Abstract

Language is the main aspects of human life to cummunicate ideas, information and
people’s emotions or feelings by using sounds, gestures, and signals that have paterns. This
can submit people to convey or receive information. Language style is a variation of the
language based on factors such as, address, setting, task or topic (Stewart and Vailette, 2001:
337 ). The variation of language is not only found in daily communication but also in slogan,
magazine, newspaper, short story, novel and another. However, this research focus on
analyzing the language style used in presidential compaign slogans. Slogan is a brief
attention-getting phrase used in advertising or promotion (Merriam-Webster online, 2019 ).
Advertising is a business in which language is used to persuade to do thing. In the
presidential campaign, the slogans used various style to persuade and motivate people to vote.
The language used can be standard and non-standard language in terms of formal and
informal style. The slogans used the different style to convince people about the ideas that
can persuade people to do thing and vote. Because of that, This study aims to find out the
types of the language style in the presidential campaign slogans and to describe the
functions of the style in the presidential campaigan slogans.
In this research the writer used the sociolinguitics approach. Sociolinguistics is a study
of language use in society. In the society people use various forms of words to communicate
ideas or things. The theories used refer to sociolinguistic theories stated by Holmes (2013).
Holmes states that there are many ways to say something by considering the social factors; and
language also has many variety in terms of non standard language and standard language.
Standard language is the language which has the structural patterns of subject (s), verb (v), and
object (o). Besides that a non standard language is a language which not has the structural in
the writing. Joos (2007) states that there are five types of language style, those are; frozen,
formal, consultative, casual, and intimate. The particular speech functions are expressed in a
veriety of contexts, identifying the range of linguistics forms they take (Holmes, 2013). The
functions of language is not only found in speaking (oral ) but also in written text. However,
this research also apply the functions of speech in the presidential campaigan slogans. There
are a number of functions used in the speech, namely expressive function, it refers to
individual feelings or emotions to express the idea; directive function, it is giving orders or
making requests by using imperative statement or utterances attempt to request someone to do
somethings; referential function, it relies on the balance between given and presupposed
information; metalinguistic function, it is replacement of the uknown and verified in the
structure aand content of the object in interpretation or it uterances comment on language
itself; poetic function, this is using poetic features such as metaphor, metonymy, alliteration,
rhyme, ambiguity, repetition, silime, and antisthesis; and phatic function, it refers to the
utterances that express solidarity and empathy with others, it consists of greetings,
complements, gossip, etc).
Data used in this research were taken from the website of the top 15 campaign
slogans made by presidential hopefuls and 99 creative political slogans & buttons to help get
elected in terms of the written text of the presidential campaign slogans in America. In
collecting the data, the writer observed all of the language styles used in the slogans, wrote all
of the varieties, classified the data based on the purposes of the research, analyzed the
classified data, interpreted based on the theories used and got the conclusion. In representing
and analyzing the data, the writer used descriptive qualitative method that explain in informal
method. Informal method is the way used by the writer to interpret and analyze the data by
using words, determined all types and functions of language style in the presidential campaign
slogans which related to the purpose of the study. Then, the writer obtained the conclutions
from the data analysis based on the types and functions of language style in the presidential
campaign slogans.
From the data analysis, the results show there are two types of language style; standard
language and non standard language. Then, from the two types used, the writer found both of
the types used in terms of standard language and non standard language used in the presidential
campaign slogans, And, from the types, the type of non standard language style is more
dominant used in the campaign slogans. Futhermore, there are six functions of speech used in
the campaign slogans, they are; expressive function, directive function, referential function,
metalinguistics function, poetic function, and phatic function. From those functions, the writer
only found three (3) functions of speech in the presidential campaign slogans, those are;
expressive function, directive function, and referential function, in which the referential
function is mostly used in the presidential campaign slogans. So, from the analysis of language
style in the presidential campaign slogans dominantly used non standard language and
referential function to make public interest to vote the presidential slogans. In conclusion, the
results show the varieties of language style in terms of the standard language that can be used in
formal situation that refers to formal style or frozen language and in informal situation that
refers to casual style. The study gives the information for people especially for English students
about types of language style and functions of using the various style in the presidential
campaign slogans.
Finally, the contributions of this study, especially for linguistics study, it can give
information about language style itself and to give contribution to development of
sociolinguistics research and can enrich people knowledge in learning language use in the
society that consist of varieties. Overall, the writer hopes this research can avoid the
misunderstood about the words used in the presidential campaign slogans. For further research,
there are still various language style that can be analyzed in other types of slogans, such as
business and advertising slogans.
Keywords: type of language style, functions of language style, political slogans