THE STRUCTURES OF ARGUMENT IN INDONESIA PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES 2014

Abstract

President is a person whom people can rely on to lead the country. In Indonesia, presidential debates are quite new to start as a medium to campaign, yet it is powerful. In 2014, the presidential debates even were more appealing as there were only two candidates. Therefore, this research deals with the structures of arguments used by Jokowi and Prabowo in presidential debates 2014. I utilized the model of argumentation by Toulmin (2003) in order to get the result of this qualitative research. The results show that Jokowi and Prabowo both produced varied structures.From the first debate to the last debate, the completeness of the structures increased. Prabowo has shown better argument structure in “Pembangunan Demokrasi, Pemerintahan yang Bersih dan Kepastian Hukum” and “Politik International dan Ketahanan Nasional”, while Jokowi is more superior in“Pembangunan Ekonomi dan Kesejahteraan Sosial” and “Pangan, Energi dan Lingkungan”. Those results were based on the occurence of the strong structures Prabowo and Jokowi utilized in the debates.