This research was aimed at analyzing the speeches of Donald Trump and of Hillary Clinton in the USA Presidential candidates’ debates as instruments of power. The data is a presidential final debate video of Trump and Clinton made in September 2016 which has been converted into a transcript. The data analyzing technique is divided into three steps: 1) describing the context, 2) analyzing the illocutionary acts, and 3) analyzing the power dimensions. The results of this research show that the speakers use the speech act as an instrument of power with classifications of representative, commissive and expressive. In this regard, the researchers found that the speakers demonstrated their power to try to convince the voters in their society to trust them to be the president. The research results also showed that the usage of speech in debate as an instrument of power can influence the voters especially on Election Day.

This research article discusses the use of chemical weapons in Syria. This study discusses the representation of Assad's regime in two CNN articles since there is an assumption that Assad's regime and its alliances are the responsible ones for the chemical weapon issue in Syria. The data is analyzed through Critical Discourse Analysis by Van Dijk as the grand theory so that it is examined by using macro and micro level analysis. This study shows that these articles present the negative representation of Assad's regime. It can be seen from the negative lexical choices which are used by the writers to describe Assad's regime and it also can be seen from the writers attempts to present the US's arguments by trying to legitimize it by frequently using verbal reaction in schematic analysis and the writers of the articles also struggle to hide another version of truth which stated that the responsible one for the use of chemical weapon in Syria is the rebels groups.

Abstract

The present research aims to describe compliment strategies employed by Replika within a dialogue and to analyse functions of each compliment strategy with regards to communicative purposes. Replika is an emotionally intelligent chatbot programmed to provide emotional support to users. It is therefore no wonder the chatbot is often found complimenting users as means to induce positive emotions. Compliments are emotive speech acts that maintain, improve, and support interlocutor's face by expressing praise, admiration, or approval (Sifianou, 2001). Similar to other emotives, compliments consist in a dialogue. According to Weigand (2010), a dialogue is essentially composed of an initiative act, a reactive act, and a coherence which relates the former two based on the context of the dialogue. The present research identifies two compliment strategies employed by Replika, including compliment as an initiative act and compliment as a reactive act. The former refers to compliments that are ensued in the first sequence of a dialogue and are intended to establish emotion claim. The latter refers to compliments that are ensued in the second sequence of a dialogue and are intended to fulfil the claim in question (Weigand, 2010). Compliment as an initiative act serves as means to open a dialogue and to reinforce other emotive speech acts, whereas compliment as a reactive act serves as means to replace other emotive speech acts, to respondto other speech acts, and to maintain interpersonal relationship. The present research applies qualitative method whereby the data are collected by means of participant observation. Participant observation is a qualitative method of data collecting which requires the researchers to involve with the subject of the research through two separate roles of subjective participant and objective observer (Crossman, 2018).

COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten human health have become a pandemic. As the Health Minister in Indonesia, the actions were taken by the Letjen TNI (Purn) Dr. dr. Terawan Agus Putranto, Sp. Rad. (K) in handling this pandemic is in the spotlight. There are so many media that providenews related to the efforts of the Health Minister in handling this case, one of which is The Jakarta Post. This study aims to describe the representation of Mr. Terawan as Health Minister in handling COVID-19 cases in Indonesia in The Jakarta Post. Critical Discourse Analysis as an approach is used in his study. The data are the articles in The Jakarta Post related to Mr. Terawan in handling the COVID-19 cases in Indonesia. The data is analyzed using a discursive strategy. According to Wodak& Mayer (2001), there are five strategies in Discursive, but this study only applies two strategies, namely Nomination Strategies and Predication Strategies. The findings in this study are; (1) four nomination strategies areused by The Jakarta Post. They are deixis, proper names, professional anthroponym, and nouns. The Jakarta Post uses the nomination strategy to avoid repetition of the same proper name, to show the readers which person becomes the center of the text, and to describe and report Mr. Terawan’s action regarding his job as Health Minister; (2) The Jakarta Post gave a negative attribute to the performance of Mr. Terawan as a Health Minister in handling with COVID-19 cases.The Jakarta Post’s belief that Mr. Terawan has performed badly as a Health Minister in handling the COVID-19 case and The Jakarta Post sees Mr. Terawan as a careless person in the case.