Power of Metaphor in Political Contests of Indonesian Public Intellectuals

Abstract

This research shows the power of powerful metaphors in a language or linguistic perspective. It aimed at examining the important factors like reproduction of metaphors according to the theme of contestation, its duration, use of electronic media and problems associated with their forms, class and syntactic structures in a linguistic perspective. This study used a descriptive qualitative research method to examine metaphors used by the contestants in Indonesian public intellectuals’ platform. It conducted a content analysis (Creswell & Miller, 2000) and identified themes namely how metaphors occur, why living metaphors are used productively, and what the implications of the metaphor used. The study sampled 14 video recordings (of 15 debate opponents) from 04/04/2018 to 22/12/2019, from the electronic media, related to hot issues, and trending topics in Indonesia. The selection criteria were the use of metaphors and by contestant who were in competition with Rocky Gerung in political debates. The results showed that metaphors reflect the power, culture, and greatness of speakers in processing language and common sense. The contestation used an average time duration of 13.55 minutes contains many syntactically structured metaphors (phrases, clauses, and sentences). Each metaphor depicted the intensity of language and its structure. The implications of using metaphors make learning intelligent, imaginative, expressive, scientific, poetic, effective, and powerful ways of thinking. Contestants in the debate in pragmatic dialogue are very attractive to the attention of their listeners.