“Assalamu’alaikum dan Salam Sejahtera” in President Barrack

Obama’s Speech at the University of Indonesia

Power or Solidarity?

Muh Fajar, Fabiola Kurnia and Suharsono

Suharsono

Literature and Language Education, Postgraduate School, the State University of Surabaya, Indonesia

muh.fajar@unesa.ac.id

Keywords: Critical discourse analysis, Phatic communication, Power, Solidarity.

Abstract: There is a sharp-contradictory opinion toward President Obama’s speech at the University of Indonesia when

he uttered Indonesian’s greetings ‘Assalamualaikum dan salam sejahtera’. The meaning of his greetings

stimulated the people of Indonesia to give their opinion differently whether he showed power or solidarity to

the people of Indonesia and the Muslim throughout the world. This is understandable because the greetings

raised an ambiguity or paradox in meaning. This study, however, applied Tannen’s power and solidarity and

Coupland’s phatic communication to minimize the ambiguity of the greetings. It aims at examining (1) how

President Obama enacted the greetings to show his social relationship to the addressees and (2) how the

meaning of his greetings are determined to power or solidarity. This is a qualitative research method. The

greetings were selected in President Obama’s speech at the University of Indonesia in 2010 as data of this

research. The data were analyzed employing a qualitative content analysis. The results showed that President

Obama’s greetings were determined to low power or quasi solidarity. It means that President Obama used

the greetings in order that Indonesian people will accept him (America) as a friend, to show that there is no

fight between America (western people/Christian) and Indonesia (Moslem world). Moreover, Obama applied

the expressions are to secure the America’s politics against for terrorism, America wanted that Indonesia will

be its friend to fight terrorism and Moslem radicals, and Indonesia will be big new markets for the American’s

goods. Thus, the phenomenon of using Indonesian’s greetings, in this sense, cannot be meant only that

President Barrack Obama was familiar and close to Indonesia people, but he has another agenda to extend the

speaker’s membership of ‘in-group’ in order that the US interests in Indonesia will be accepted by The

Indonesian People.

1 INTRODUCTION

There was interesting phenomenon that attracted the

audience both in and out of the room where President

Obama delivered his speech at the University of

Indonesia, November 20

2010. In his early speaking,

he addressed the audiences by employing most

familiar greetings ‘Assalamualaikum dan salam

sejahtera’. What made these greetings interest is they

were uttered by President Barrack Obama as the

President of the US. The next is what he really

intended to utter the greetings? The researcher is

interested to conduct a research of examining his

greetings whether they referred to power or solidarity.

It is not easy job to determine whether his greetings

are power or solidarity, or both. To explore this, it is

better to cite what Fiske in Nahrkalaji (2009, p 496)

said,”Our words are never neutral”. It means that

words can be manipulated according to the speaker’s

interest. The manipulation here means that the

speaker can control or influence the hearers by

employing language use. He employed language use

to denote power and create solidarity. Power means

to control or influence others, but solidarity means to

impress others. The impression and influence have

relation to power and solidarity. Power makes

inequality position between speaker and hearer, but

solidarity makes equality position between speaker

and hearer.

There are some stages in studying power and

solidarity. They are “how power and solidarity can be

measured, what processes underline the formation of

power and solidarity, and how these processes are

related to speech features” (Ng, 1993, p. 5). Besides,

determining power and solidarity in President

Obama’s speech needed hard job to identify. Some

854

Fajar, M., Kurnia, F. and Suharsono, S.

“Assalamu’alaikum dan Salam Sejahtera” in President Barrack Obama’s Speech at the University of Indonesia - Power or Solidarity?.

DOI: 10.5220/0007176508540859

In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference

on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 854-859

ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2

people may have different understanding. It can be

understood that language is always ambiguous.

President Obama’s greetings are no exception. It is

not easy job to discover the meaning of his greetings

from words alone. As an example, when he greeted

the audience by saying “assalamua”alaikum”. The

greeting he used in his speech will have another effect

for the Indonesian people. The expression used by

Obama will have some effects of his interests to the

Indonesian people. This can mean that President

Obama wants Indonesian people accept him

(America) as friend, to show that there is no fight

between America (western people/christian) and

Indonesia (moslem world). Moreover, Obama

applied this expression is to secure the America”s

politics against terrorism, America wants that

Indonesia will be its friend to fight terrorism and

moslem radicals, and Indonesia will be a big new

market for the American”s goods. Thus, the

phenomenon of solidarity, in this sense, cannot be

meant only that President Barrack Obama was

familiar and close with Indonesian people, but he has

another agenda in order that the US interests in

Indonesia will be accepted by The Indonesian People.

This phenomenon must be raised to confirm

transparency of his greetings’ meanings of what he

really said. This study is important for readers, special

for the Indonesia people to help them in

understanding the real meaning of President Obama’s

greetings at the University of Indonesia related to

power and solidarity discussion.

President Obama’s greetings in his speech at the

University of Indonesia can be called as social

practice. In the social practice, he consciously or

unconsciously employed language use to demonstrate

his identity, his belonging to certain group and his

desire to come close or distance himself from the

addressees (Formentelli in Al Abdely, 2016, p. 1).

Furthermore, there is social relationship in the social

practice. This is understandable when a speaker used

language, the way he talked to others reflected social

relationship. This social relationship is the core of

learning power and solidarity.

Based on the description above, the researcher

was intended to examine President Obama’s

greetings in terms of (1) how President Obama

enacted the greetings to show his social relationship

to the addressees and (2) how the meaning of his

greetings are determined to power or solidarity.

1.1 Power and Solidarity

Power and solidarity are like two sides of a coin.

There will be an ambiguity of determing power or

solidarity used by one participant to another in

delivering utterances. The utterance of participants in

a communication event could account for the

particular variety that are related each other. Holmes

(2001, p. 8-10) states, “there are four factors

influencing the particular context existed in the

communication events”. They are the participants, the

setting, the topic and the function. The participants

relate to the users of language, reflecting the identity

of the participants both as who is speaking to whom;

the setting relates to the social context of the

communication accounting for the place they are

speaking; the topic or the purpose of the

communication relate to what is being talked about

and the function of the communication relate to why

they are talking about. Each of the participants will

use the strategies reflected in the use of linguistic

choices as well as the speaker delivered his speech in

the monological paradigm in which the message

directed from the speaker to the hearer (Ng, 1993, p

5). The four factors will account for in describing and

analyzing the communication events and the factor of

participants hold on important roles as well as other

factors.

We cannot say that if one speaker uses common

language, it means that he or she is equal with other

participants as proposed by Tannen that all linguistic

strategies are potentially ambiguous as Tannen

(1993, p.22) states that:

“Any show of solidarity necessarily entails of

power, in that the requirement of similarity and

closeness limits freedom and independence. At the

same time, any show of power entails solidarity by

involving participants in relation to each other”.

From the quotaion above, the researcher can

display the ambiguity of closeness as the following:

power solidarity

asymmetry symmetry

hierarchy equality

distance closeness

Figure 1: Unidimensional model byTannen.

From the figure 1., the researcher can explain that

closeness entails solidarity, then, the power relations

between participants can be symmetry and equal.

“Assalamu’alaikum dan Salam Sejahtera” in President Barrack Obama’s Speech at the University of Indonesia - Power or Solidarity?

855

power solidarity

asymmetry symmetry

hierarchy equality

closeness distance

Figure 2: Unidimensional model adapted from Tannen (by

Fajar).

From figure 2., the researcher can examine that

closeness entails power untill the power relations

between participants can be asymmetry and

hierarchy. Giving the definition of power and

solidarity is an easy job but we will find some

problems or difficulties when we try to measure the

two terms in the actual interactions of the participants

in the communication events. The examination of

power and solidarity was initially done by Brown and

Gilman (1960) stated that the two persons will not

have same level of power because one of them is

assumed to have the power to control the talk over

another. This explanation influenced so much toward

the researcher’s understanding on power and

solidarity. Power can be defined as the way one

interlocutor positioned asymmetrically over other

interlocutors. In order words, he or she lays his

opponent in the communication as his or her

subordinate. This understanding is based on whoever

has more power compared to others, he or she will

manipulate his language use to identify that he or she

has different position over others implicating

inequality in the social relationship. Conversely,

solidarity shows there is symmetrical relationship

between interlocutors in the communication events.

There is no subordinate in this paradigm.

1.2 Phatic Communication

In communication, everyone has their own way to

negotiate a word or expression in interacting with

others according to the certain situation. So we know

that different speakers will apply different strategies

in order to enact power and solidarity in a

communication. One of the strategies that can be

used by communicator is by applying phatic

communication. There is a development of discussing

phatic communication years to years. The term of

phatic communication firstly was introduced by

Malinowski (in Coupland and Coupland, 1992, p

207).

He defined the concept of the phatic

communication is generally used to refer to

utterances that are said to have exclusively social,

bonding functions like establishing and maintaining

a friendly and harmonious atmosphere in

interpersonal relations. These utterances are

understood as a means for keeping the

communication channel open. Furthermore, Zegarac

(1999) states that phatic communication refers to “a

kind of communication that is not aimed at obtaining

any meaningful information but merely to arouse

pleasure among the participants involved”.

2 METHOD

Since the study aims at determining the meaning of

President Obama’s greetings in Indonesian style

‘Assalamu’alaikum dan salam sejahtera’, thus, the

writer employed qualitative method that is suitable

with the characteristics of the qualitative one. The

data of this research was taken from a part of

President Obama’s speech at the University of

Indonesia in terms of using greetings as phatic

communication. He applied qualitative content

analysis in analyzing the greetings.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The fact that President Obama used phatic

communication in negotiating his words choices in a

relaxed situation is to establish solidarity through

several ways when he addressed his speech at the UI.

The data on phatic communication can not only be

analyzed independently according to its paradigm but

those can also be analyzed simultaneously with other

theories such as critical discourse analysis and

intertextuality. To strengthen the analysis of President

Obama’s speech at the UI, then, the researcher linked

his two other speeches, in Cairo and inauguration in

2009. It is important to know how he transformed his

thinking when he delivered a speech on the subjects.

At the beginning of his speech at UI, he used

phatic communication quite a lot to attract the

enthusiasm of the audience. Analyzing his speech at

UI from the perspective of phatic communication is

very different from the other perspectives. The

researcher may not be trapped in what appears on the

surface when he used the word choice giving the

impression to the people of Indonesia that he is the

one who wants to engage with the audience because

he has an agenda that must be achieved through his

speech. This corresponds to what is suggested by

Scollon and Scollon (2001, pp. 46-47) that can be

used to detect what is conveyed by President Obama

in his speech at the University of Indonesia, seems to

CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology

Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

856

indicate power, but at the same time can show a

solidarity.

When he used phatic communication, of course,

President Obama has negotiated a selection of words

that correspond to the audience both in the room and

outside the room. President Obama’s style when he

had to use phatic communication in front of the

audience of the University of Indonesia, seemed very

close to the audiences and they often gave applause

when he delivered his speech in accordance with the

values and beliefs of the people of Indonesia. So this

has given the impression to the audience that he had

a closeness or intimacy to the people of Indonesia.

This can be understood because he had lived in

Jakarta for some when he was a child so that he has

more or less already known the life and culture of the

people of Indonesia. Consequently when he

addressed the people of Indonesia, he is not awkward

anymore, he spoke like talking to their own people.

President Obama not only expressed

Assalamualaikum dan salam sejahtera” but also

some greetings in two languages, Indonesian and

English, such as “Terima kasih. Terima kasih, thank

you so much, thank you, everybody. Selamat pagi in

Indonesian as well as “thank It is wonderful to be here

at the University of Indonesia” in English, the

greetings show gratitude to the audiences. He

expressed these different expressions, in response to

the warm welcome because of his visit to Indonesia.

The audiences looked very happy of his attandence in

the University of Indonesia. The expression “terima

kasih and selamat pagi” can be called as phatic

communication. The main function of the phatic

communion is that of establishing a social contact

between the participants in communication as

suggested by Malinowski (1999 [1926], p. 303).

Thus, President Obama uttered those to show the

atmosphere of togetherness.

3.1 Low Power (Quasi-Solidarity)

However, there are two paradoxical meaning of these

greetings, whether President Obama was really

involvement or independence with his audiences as

explained by Scollon and Scollon (2001, pp. 46-47).

He explained that there are two sides of the greetings

which appear to be in contrast. On the one hand, in

human interactions, President Obama has a need to

be involved with other participants and to show them

his involvement. On the other hand, President Obama

needs to maintain some degree of independence from

other participants and to show them that he respected

their independence. Besides, President Obama also

expressed “It is wonderful to be here at the University

of Indonesia”. This expression is declarative clause.

It shows that President Obama was very happy to

visit Jakarta, Indonesia. It is understandable that he

ever lived in Jakarta when he was a boy. Thus, it can

be explained that the beginning and opening words in

his speech aimed to win the attention and good will

of the audience. In other words, President Obama

started his speech by giving thanks and greetings to

the audiences before introducing the cases in an

interesting and favorable light.

In addition, President Obama also greeted the

people of Indonesia in his speech by greeting the use

of the Arabic language as well as Indonesian

language ie, “assalamualaikum dan salam

sejahtera”. “Assalamualaikum” greeting typically

used by Muslims met a Muslim, while greeting

“salam sejahtera” used typically by Indonesian

people welcomed his friends from different religions.

The meaning of ‘assalamualaikum’ according to

Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia refers to

“keselamatan (kesejahteraan, kedamaian) untukmu

(biasanya diucapkan pada awal dan akhir pidato,

saat bertemu dengan seseorang, dan sebagainya)”.

According to the understanding of the Indonesian

people, especially Muslims, it has meaning that is

more in a kind of prayer as well as the use of the name

of God. Thus, before it is spoken, it is necessary

understanding of the cultural sign of Muslim life.

Based on this explanation, it can be stated that

President Obama understood and was aware of this

culture of Indonesia. Thus, when he greeted the

audiences by saying ‘assalamualaikum’, it means that

he applied a cross-cultural approach as a way of

understanding Indonesian culture to get response

from the audiences as group of humans who majority

are the Muslims on the certain environment, in this

case, at the University of Indonesia, in order to meet

needs and make involvement or intimacy in a range

of interaction process during his speech.

The use of greeting assalamualaikum will have

different meaning when it is spoken by a non-moslem

as well as a president of superpower country. The

greeting he used in his speech will have another effect

for the Indonesian people. The expression used by

Obama will have some effects of his interests to the

Indonesian people. This can mean that President

Obama wants Indonesian people will accept him

(America) as friend, to show that there is no fight

between America (western people/christian) and

Indonsia (moslem world). Moreover, Obama applied

this expression is to secure the America”s politics

against for terrorism, America wants that Indonesia

will be its friend to fight terrorism and moslem

radicals, and Indonesia will be a big new markets the

“Assalamu’alaikum dan Salam Sejahtera” in President Barrack Obama’s Speech at the University of Indonesia - Power or Solidarity?

857

American”s goods and President Obama used this

expression to have an overt topic-priority relevance

that he provided a formal early oportunity to the

hearers to make some current state of being a matter

of joint priority concern. Thus, the phenomenon of

closeness, in this sense, cannot be meant only that

President Barrack Obama was familiar and close with

Indonesia people, but he has another agenda in order

that the US interests in Indonesia will be accepted by

The Indonesian People. Thus, what and how he

speaks will affect the Indonesian people”s thinking

way that can be called as the US hegemony toward

the Indonesian people.

The construction of President Obama as an

individual having much knowledge of other country’s

culture can be found in his utterances when he greeted

the audience ‘assalamu’alaikum dan salam

sejahtera’ that can be called as phatic

communication. He used this greeting to attract the

enthusiasm of the audience to show his solidarity in

starting a conversation as suggested by Jumanto

(2014). Explicitly, he used phatic communication

showing his high intelligent to identify the situation

he faced when he delivered his speech. To give the

impression to the people of Indonesia that he is not

the enemy but he is the person who wants to engage

with the Indonesia people. This phatic

communication can be concluded that based on the

analysis of the surface level, it showed his solidarity

but implicitly showed his ‘soft power’ to influence

the emotion of the Indonesia people to accept him as

the member of their group.

Then, he constructed himself as an individual of

having much experience when he was still a boy and

ever lived in Jakarta in talking about his neighbors,

friends and religion life. This identity cannot be

substituted by others meaning that his individual

experience of living together and harmony with

Muslims could make him feel at home. This

experience by him could be an example to show the

people around the world that they can live harmony

without regarding their faith and belief because they

think that faith and belief are their business to God.

Furthermore, his exercise of solidarity can also be

known from the data ‘I am so glad that I made it back

to Indonesia and that Michelle was able to join me’

and ‘We had a couple of false starts this year, but I

was determined to visit a country that’s meant so

much to me’. In these utterances, President Obama

applied the prounoun ‘I’ in the beginning of his

speech and combined the pronouns of ‘I’ and ‘we’ in

these utterances. It means that he changed his identity

both as personal and institutional. It can be explained

that he wanted to activate the audiences’ emotions by

doing personal approach to show his both identity.

His identities played important roles to show his

solidarity by including oh his positive politeness

directly to the addressees by saving Indonesia’s faces.

The use of positive politeness strategies in

appropriate can help him succeeded in showing his

solidarity. Thus, President Obama strongly realized

this so he chose words to respect the audiences by

demonstrating intimacy and solidarity to

strengthening them feel good and be friends by saving

Indonesia’ faces as suggested by Jumanto (2014). His

strategies of using direct positive politeness to get in

touch with the Indonesia people is also supported by

his positive lexicalization as in the utterances from

the datum,’ Let me begin with a simple

statement: Indonesia bagian dari didi saya’. The

utterances are so effective to influence and control the

addressees’ mind about his visit to Indonesia. They

activated the Indonesia people’s emotion that his visit

will not threaten the existence of Indonesia both

cultural and authority. There important pronouns of

the utterances, they are ‘I’, ‘President’, ‘Friend’ and

‘our’. The pronouns are simultaneously arranged

with the adjective phrase showing direct positive

politeness and positive lexicalization in the datum,

‘So today, I return to Indonesia as a friend, but also as

a President who seeks a deep and enduring

partnership between our two

countries. (Applause.) ‘. These data showed that

President Obama shifted his identities as portrayed in

the use of pronouns ‘I’, ‘President’ and ‘Friend’

reflecting the multiplicities of both individual and

institutional identities then he used the pronoun ‘our’

construct the identity of the Indonesia people as the

member of his in-group although he did not explicitly

express based on the analysis of the surface level of

the utterance. These shifting reflected the changes of

identity from the ‘self’ as individual into the

collective ‘self’ as a member of a group. It means that

President Obama requested the Indonesia people’s

reactions to ask them agree with his proposal of

making partnership between two countries.

Of the above argumentation, the meanings of the

greetings referred to low power or quasi-solidarity. It

indicates that there is no real solidarity. This can be

understood because what a speaker says in surface

performance is like showing his or her solidarity to

addressees, but if the analysis showed there is a

hidden agenda to extend the membership of the

addressees into the speaker’s in-group, meaning the

utterances refer to low power. This finding is also

related to the hegemony, in this sense, that America

would like to gain support for itself from other

CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology

Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

858

country (Indonesian people) in taking into

consideration “the interests and tendencies of groups

over which hegemony is to be exercised” (Gramsci,

1971, p. 161). Furthermore, President Obama has any

concessions that he should do this in order to

“demonstrate” that America would like to teach their

moral, their ideas, their values and political leadership

in the general public, particulary their central claim to

political legitimacy.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Based on the analysis, the researcher could conclude

power and solidarity reflected in the use of greetings

in President Obama’s speech at UI can be explored by

applying critical discourse analysis. The use of

greetings ‘Assalamu’alaikum dan Salam sejahtera’

has the meaning of low power or quasi-solidarity to

show America’s hegemony toward Indonesia and

solidarity to minimize the gab between America and

Indonesia. President Obama used power and

solidarity in order that Indonesian people will accept

him (America) as friend, to show that there is no fight

between America (western people/christian) and

Indonsia (Moslem world). Moreover, Obama applied

the expressions are to secure the America’s politics

against for terrorism, America want that Indonesia

will be its friend to fight terrorism and moslem

radicals, and Indonesia will be a big new markets for

the American’s goods. Thus, the phenomenon of

solidarity, in this sense, cannot be meant only that

President Barrack Obama was familiar and close with

Indonesia people, but he has another agenda in order

that the US interests in Indonesia will be accepted by

The Indonesian People.

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