DELIBERATE USE OF ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS TERMS METAPHOR IN INDONESIAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE AND THE POTENTIAL SEMANTIC DEROGATION

Abstract

The use of metaphor is salient in everyday discourse including in political discourse. As one of the common target domains of conceptual metaphor, politics uses various source domains which enable speakers or writers to describe various aspects of politics using a more concrete description through the use of conceptual metaphor. This study focuses to examine the deliberate use of Islamic religious terms as the source domain of metaphor in Indonesian political discourse. The aims are to describe the aspect of the deliberateness of the metaphor use, the mapping of the elements from the source domain to the target domain of politics, and the potential semantic derogation that occur from the use of the metaphors. Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Deliberate Metaphor Theory (DMT) is used as the theoretical framework. DMT that is proposed by Steen (2011) is used to analyze the intentional use of metaphors by the speakers, whereas the CMT which is proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) is used to analyze the elements mapping between the source domain and target domain to identify the transferred elements that enable Islamic religious terms used in particular context when speaking about the political situation. The study is qualitative with five news articles on Political topics from Indonesian online media as the source of the data. The data shows that Islamic terms such as shalat, makmum, masbuk, murtad, berjamaah, and talak, are used deliberately by the speakers to highlight particular elements behind each term to describe a political event. The use of the metaphors are intended to provide a more vivid and more concrete description of the discussed topics, furthermore, the speakers are mostly from the Islamic party and are deliberately used the terms to enable their supporters to understand the situation in a more concrete by using a concept from the source domain that they understand well. Despite that, there will be a potential semantic derogation that may occur during the metaphorical use of Islamic religious terms in political discourse, as mostly, the metaphors are used in a more negative context.