The rhetorical elements on Political articles in Jakarta Post

ABSTRACT

Political article is any kinds of literary composition about political condition of the country it includes essay or opinion. Today, people do not need to express their idea verbally, because there is an effective way to express the idea that is writing. Moreover, to obtain the goal of the idea the writer should pay attentions to the rhetorical elements, namely rhetorical context and rhetorical structure. Because of knowing the rhetorical elements will help the writer to communicate clearly and effectively to the reader.

This research attempts to investigate the rhetorical elements including the rhetorical context and structure on political article in Jakarta Post, because both of them are important to be learned. The rhetorical context is the reason that the essay or article exists and rhetorical structure is the way the writer arrange the essay or article. The rhetorical context has function in order to make easy when we want to write, meanwhile, the rhetorical structure will help us to determine any rhetorical context. The research problems are what kinds of rhetorical context and rhetorical structure are used by the writer of the political article in Jakarta Post. The objectives of the study are to describe the kinds of rhetorical context and rhetorical structure which is used by the writer of the political article in Jakarta Post. The significance of this research is expected to know how the writers used the rhetorical context and structure on opinion column in Jakarta Post.

The researcher uses the descriptive qualitative method because the writer attempts to arrive at a rich description of words, phrases, and sentences on political article in the Jakarta Post. The data source of this study is text taken from English opinion column of Jakarta Post during 1st up to 15th April, 2009. The researcher limits the data that is only the political article in the opinion column. In analyzing the data this study used the theory of Donald Pharr and Santi V. Buscemi. This study also employs the researcher herself as the primary instrument to gather data.

Based on the 10 data above the researcher found that the purpose of the rhetorical context consists of three kinds there are to express feeling or an idea, to inform, and to persuade. The audience is the general audience and specific audience. Besides, the rhetorical structure which is found is argument and blended option.

Finally, the researcher expects that the result of this study is hopefully used by English learners, lectures, students, and people who are interested in writing an article. The last, to the next researcher of the similar area, the result of this research is hopefully can be used as a starting point to analyze more deeply or specific about only the rhetorical context or only the rhetorical structure and to fulfill the gaps of the study on opinion writing or article.