Linguistic Relativity in language Ideology on the Barack Obama’s annual Presidential Speech, State of The Union, 2012 in Washington DC

ABSTRACT

Linguistic relativity is the influence of language on thought. When a language is closely related to the way of thinking, it is necessarily concerned with such belief, norm, notion, culture or even an ideology. A language ideology is a systematic construct about how particular ways of using languages carry or are invested with certain moral, religious, social, and political values, giving rice to implicit assumptions that people have about a language or about language in general. The concept of language can affect the way of thinking matches the way how people’s language brings out a certain moral, religious, social and political values.

In this research I proposed the latest annual presidential speech conveyed by the president of America, Barack Obama, 2012 in Washington DC. This study is performed to investigate the linguistic relativity used by Barack Obama in speech on language ideology perspective. The data has in abundance of ideology and is proposed by a man whose words can affect his people due to his position as the president of the USA.

This research used the descriptive qualitative design. I described and explained the linguistic relativity employed by Barack Obama on his speech. I collected the data taken from the transcript of the speech. There are at least four steps in analyzing the data: describing the data classified based on the theory of linguistic relativity on language ideology perspective, interpreting and discussing the data based on linguistic relativity on language ideology angle, and drawing a conclusion based on the findings.

Based on the data, Obama creates ideological point of view through any strategies and policies to invite America for better future. The idea presented is his own effort unconsciously to show his own way of thinking. How he conceptualizes the political real is noticed through the ideology on his language. The emerge of ideological tip on political issues presented on Obama’s language is the context of prior cases that background the issue. The case in Tucson politically urges Obama to decide a policy to keep out Arizona more than before. On taxation system, Obama decided to increase the payback for rich American to balance the economical counterpoise. The emersion of political ideology on the language produced is immediately from language itself. The political ideology is seemingly the consequent of the language presented.