“Assalamu’alaikum dan Salam Sejahtera” in President Barrack Obama’s Speech at the University of Indonesia - Power or Solidarity?

Muh Fajar, Fabiola Kurnia, Suharsono Suharsono

2017

Abstract

There is a sharp-contradictory opinion toward President Obama’s speech at the University of Indonesia when he uttered Indonesian’s greetings ‘Assalamualaikum dan salam sejahtera’. The meaning of his greetings stimulated the people of Indonesia to give their opinion differently whether he showed power or solidarity to the people of Indonesia and the Muslim throughout the world. This is understandable because the greetings raised an ambiguity or paradox in meaning. This study, however, applied Tannen’s power and solidarity and Coupland’s phatic communication to minimize the ambiguity of the greetings. It aims at examining (1) how President Obama enacted the greetings to show his social relationship to the addressees and (2) how the meaning of his greetings are determined to power or solidarity. This is a qualitative research method. The greetings were selected in President Obama’s speech at the University of Indonesia in 2010 as data of this research. The data were analyzed employing a qualitative content analysis. The results showed that President Obama’s greetings were determined to low power or quasi solidarity. It means that President Obama used the greetings in order that Indonesian people will accept him (America) as a friend, to show that there is no fight between America (western people/Christian) and Indonesia (Moslem world). Moreover, Obama applied the expressions are to secure the America’s politics against for terrorism, America wanted that Indonesia will be its friend to fight terrorism and Moslem radicals, and Indonesia will be big new markets for the American’s goods. Thus, the phenomenon of using Indonesian’s greetings, in this sense, cannot be meant only that President Barrack Obama was familiar and close to Indonesia people, but he has another agenda to extend the speaker’s membership of ‘in-group’ in order that the US interests in Indonesia will be accepted by The Indonesian People.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Fajar M., Kurnia F. and Suharsono S. (2017). “Assalamu’alaikum dan Salam Sejahtera” in President Barrack Obama’s Speech at the University of Indonesia - Power or Solidarity?.In The Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and The Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with The First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education - Volume 1: CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE, ISBN 978-989-758-332-2, pages 854-859. DOI: 10.5220/0007176508540859

in Bibtex Style

@conference{conaplin and icollite17,
author={Muh Fajar and Fabiola Kurnia and Suharsono Suharsono},
title={“Assalamu’alaikum dan Salam Sejahtera” in President Barrack Obama’s Speech at the University of Indonesia - Power or Solidarity?},
booktitle={The Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and The Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with The First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education - Volume 1: CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE,},
year={2017},
pages={854-859},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0007176508540859},
isbn={978-989-758-332-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - The Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and The Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with The First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education - Volume 1: CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE,
TI - “Assalamu’alaikum dan Salam Sejahtera” in President Barrack Obama’s Speech at the University of Indonesia - Power or Solidarity?
SN - 978-989-758-332-2
AU - Fajar M.
AU - Kurnia F.
AU - Suharsono S.
PY - 2017
SP - 854
EP - 859
DO - 10.5220/0007176508540859