Sebuah Kajian Pustaka: Pasaribu: Hate Speech on Joko Widodo’s…. 56 HATE SPEECH ON JOKO WIDODO’S OFFICAL FACEBOOK: AN ANALYSIS OF IMPOLITENESS STRATEGIES USED BY DIFFERENT GENDER Arsen Nahum Pasaribu arsen.pasaribu@uhn.ac.id UNIVERSITAS HKBP NOMMENSEN MEDAN ABSTRACT This study aims to reveal how hate speech was realized by netizens of different gender commenting on the Covid-19 pandemic issue posted on the official Facebook fan page of President Joko Widodo. This research was a qualitative descriptive. The research data consisted of 100 netizens’ comments selected from Joko Widodo's Facebook fan page. The data were divided into two categories: 50 comments made by male netizens and 50 comments by female netizens. Data were analyzed based on impoliteness strategies developed by Culpeper. The findings show that male netizens tend to use bold on record impoliteness strategies to express their hatred towards Joko Widodo, followed by positive, negative, and sarcasm impoliteness, respectively. On the other hand, female netizens preferred to use positive impoliteness, negative, sarcasm, and bald on record impoliteness strategies. These findings indicate that male and female netizens differ in expressing their hate speech towards Joko Widodo. Male netizens tend to be clearer, more harsh and straightforward than female ones in expressing their hatred. Keywords: Impoliteness, hate speech, speech act, gender, facebook A. INTRODUCTION The practice of hate speech has lasted for a long period of time and its forms, methods, and effects have been investigated, defined, and explained for decades before digital era. The description of its practice in society is relatively the same as the power domination over minority throughout hostile speech or rhetoric that can cause dehumanization. This consequence can intensify hastily when hostile rhetoric reaches large audience by means of newscast, print or digital media and cause harmful hate crime in real life. The rapid development of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Path has contributed to the rising cases of hatred, humiliation, and other forms of racism among social media users. Social media platforms offer a low-cost communication medium that permits someone to reach millions of users in a glance. Accordingly, in these platforms, everyone can post and comment everything they want, and this could be evoked some negative impacts. Pasaribu: Hate Speech on Joko Widodo’s…. 57 According to Siddiqui & Singh (2006), there are several negative effects of social media on society: (1) it causes netizens addicted. People use large numbers of time in social networking sites which can distract the concentration and focus from the main duty. (2) Social media may bring negative behaviors to children and teenagers. They can easily access photos or videos containing porn or violence. (3) Social media can interfere people’s privacy and personal zones. (4) Some social media fraud can occur any time. (5) Some people can misuse their images or videos in social sites for their own benefits. In addition, (6) people now use social media as a means of bullying, intimidating, and humiliating others by expressing hate speech. Several studies have been conducted on hate speech in social media. For example, Kimotho & Nyaga (2016) scrutinized the nature of digitized hate speech by describing the forms of racial hate speech on social media. They uncovered that Facebook and Twitter were the main platforms used to express ethnic hatred. In the similar vein, Ben-David & Matamoros- Fernández (2016) studied hate speech and discriminatory practices in social media. Using longitudinal multimodal content and network analyses, they revealed that political parties mainly incriminate discrimination, which is then taken up by their followers who use unconcealed hate speech in the comment space. The investigation of hate speech in Indonesian social media was represented by Al Fajri (2018). The study was about the representation of a blasphemy protest in Jakarta in both local and international press by using transitivity. This study exposed that global newspapers have a inclination to delegitimize the protest by depicting it as discrimination towards minorities and a benefit for terrorist groups. This study focused on the hate speech in social media by male and female netizens. The interest in this topic since it has long been studied that men and women communicate differently in different contexts. Some scholars have interests in male and female differences in social media communication, particularly in hate speech matter. Some studies revealed that male and female students had differences in expressing hatred in classroom (Emilia et al., 2017; Viriya & Sapsirin, 2014; Salikin, 2019). However, Keong et.al., (2012) proved that gender had no influence in delivering hate speech. Therefore, the different ways of gender in expressing their thought especially in the way of expressing hatred is a dispute and still interesting to be explored. This paper tried to discover the hate speech used by netizens when commenting on the pandemic covid-19 issues on the President Joko Widodo’s official Facebook account. The special interest was focused on the way of male and female netizens expressed their hatred about the issues posted. B. LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Pragmatics Pragmatics is a study how people understand and create a communicative act or speech act in a real speech condition. Yule (2019) explains that pragmatics as the study of the meaning of language conveyed by the speaker or how the hidden meaning must be understood by interlocutors even though sometimes it is not stated explicitly. Therefore, communication between people is based on a shared understanding of what is being discussed and what is meant. Furthermore, Levinson (1983) states that pragmatics is a a study of aspects of language that require references rom language users to interpret what is being discussed. In other words, Levinson wants to say that pragmatics is the study of the language meaning of the speaker which is based on a context that is shared, both the speaker and the listener. This ELTIN Journal, Volume 9/No 1, April 2021 58 is confirmed by the statement from Finch (2000) which states that pragmatics is the meaning of the speaker’s utterance. From some of the definitions of pragmatics above, it can be concluded that pragmatics is the study of the meaning of the speaker’s utterances which are based on a context that is both understood by the speaker and the hearer. Pragmatics then developed along with research conducted by linguists. So that pragmatics is divided into several branches of meaning studies, such as Speech Act, Cooperative Principle, Presupposition, Impoliteness and Politeness. 2. Impoliteness Impoliteness is a development of Brown & Levinson (1987) politeness theory. As the theory of politeness was initially discovered by Leech (1983) and Watts (2003), Culpeper (1996), however in its journey, politeness theory is more well-known than impoliteness theory. Culpeper (1996) tries to explain the fundamental difference between politeness and impoliteness theories from two factors. Firstly, Culpeper (2005) argues that linguistic and non-linguistic signs do not create impoliteness. In other words, linguistic and non-linguistic signs basically do not contain impoliteness, but are caused by factors from outside the linguistics themselves such as power, social relations and context. Secondly, prosody has an important role and has a very big influence on politeness and impoliteness. He added that impoliteness can be expressed not only verbally but also non- verbally such as gestures on the face, hands and other body parts. Paralinguistic can also determine impoliteness in social interactions. According to Culpeper (1996), impoliteness is defined as a communication attitude that causes the “face loss” of the hearer or the target. Culpeper divides impoliteness into 5 categories: (1) Bald on record impoliteness, (2) positive impoliteness, (3) negative politeness, (4) sarcasm or mock impoliteness, and (5) withhold impoliteness. The terms used by Culpeper (2011) in the sections of impoliteness above are similar to the terms in the politeness theory used by Brown & Levinson (1987). a. Bald on Record Impoliteness Bald on Record Impoliteness is a type of impoliteness in the form of a clear statement from the speaker attacking the face of the hearer. The face threatening act (FTA) is implemented in a straight, clear, unequivocal and concise way where face is relevant. For instance, “Jokowi is a liar.” This expression is obviously and intentionally stated by the speaker. b. Positive Impoliteness Positive impoliteness is the use of strategies designed to harm the addressee’s positive face wants. Positive face means a person's desire to be respected, needed and responded to by others. Culpeper (1996) explains that to realize this strategy, a person can take the following actions: (1) insulting others, such as ignoring one’s presence; (2) isolate other people from an activity; (3) discerning from others, such as avoiding sitting together with other people; (4) not showing interest, caring and sympathy; (5) using the name or identity inappropriately, for example if a person has a close relationship he uses a title and surename, or if the relationship is distant then only a nickname is used; (6) use secret language, such as the use Pasaribu: Hate Speech on Joko Widodo’s…. 59 of jargon words, secret codes that are not known by others; (7) makes others uncomfortable; (8) using harsh words, curses and taboos; (9) calling someone's mockery name. c. Negative Impoliteness Negative Impoliteness is the use of strategies designed to harm the addressee’s negative face wants. Negative face means a desire not to be bothered by others. Strategies are used to avoid disturbing someone for the actions he / she takes. It is often termed the desire for freedom of action (Culpeper, 2011). This strategy can be realized in various ways, such as: (1) scaring someone from doing or not doing something; (2) Design, scorn or mock. This action can take the form of mocking others or belittling others; (3) controlling other people's places/space, like trying to get close to other people in terms of relationships; (4) associating other people with negative things, such as the use of the words 'you' or 'I'; (5) keeping in secret the kindness of others. d. Sarcasm or Mock Politeness Sarcasm is face threatening act with the use of politeness strategies that are obviously insincere, and thus remain surface realizations(Culpeper, 1996). Someone can use sarcasm for expressing his / her opposite feeling which means not the real meaning of what he or she says. It can be concluded that the realization of sarcasm is employing untruthfully politeness. For instance, someone says "congratulations on one’s victory" even though he actually feels disappointed over the defeat of others. e. Withhold Politeness Withhold Politeness is the absence of politeness work it should be expected. As Culpeper (1996) gave the example that falling to thank someone for a gift may be taken as deliberate withhold politeness. In addition, withhold politeness is a strategy used not to perform as expected politeness strategies. The hearer tends to keep silent in responding the speaker’s utterances. C. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This study was qualitative descriptive. It described the hate speech used by different gender on the President Joko Widodo’s official Facebook account. The official Facebook account can be identified by the blue tick on the top right corner of his Facebook account. Data of research were 100 comments containing hate speech selected from Joko Widodo’s official Facebook. The comments were concerned with several issues posted on the Joko Widodo’s official Facebook wall in January 2021. The data were divided into 50 male comments and 50 female comments. The identification of comments, whether they belong to male or female netizens, was based on the profile name and pictures of the Facebookers (people who own the Facebook accounts). The data analyses were based on the impoliteness strategies developed by Culpeper (1996). ELTIN Journal, Volume 9/No 1, April 2021 60 D. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION A total of 100 comments were collected for a month through the Joko Widodo’s official Facebook account. The findings show that from five impoliteness strategies proposed by Culpeper (1996), four types of impoliteness were found, namely: bald on record impoliteness, positive impoliteness, negative impoliteness, sarcasm or mock impoliteness. However, withhold impoliteness was not found in data of the hate speech by netizens. Following are the results of the impoliteness analysis data carried out on 100 netizen comments containing hate speech. Table 1. Impoliteness strategies used by male and female netizens No Types of Impoliteness Male Female Freq. % Freq. % 1 Bald on Record Impoliteness 20 40% 5 10% 2 Positive Impoliteness 14 28% 12 24% 3 Negative Impoliteness 10 20% 17 34% 4 Sarcasm / Mock Impoliteness 6 12% 16 32% 5 Withhold Impoliteness 0 0% 0 0% Total 50 100% 50 100% Table 1 shows the results of data analysis how male and female netizens convey hate speech on issues posted on Joko Widodo's Facebook page in the January 2021 period. The results shown in the table above revealed that male netizens are more dominantly using Bald on Record impoliteness which consists of 20 comments (40%), followed by Positive impoliteness 14 comments (28%), then negative impoliteness 10 occurrences (20%), and the least Sarcasm impoliteness, 6 occurences (12%). Meanwhile, the types of impoliteness strategies employed by female netizens are clearly different from the strategies developed by male netizens. Female netizens predominantly use Negative Impoliteness, which is 17 comments (34%), slightly more than Sarcasm Impoliteness, which is 16 comments (32%), followed by Positive Impoliteness, which is 12 occurrences (24%), and the least strategy used is Bald on Record Impoliteness, which is 5 occurrences (10%). From the results of the analysis above, it is obviously seen that the difference between the impoliteness strategies performed by male and female netizens. To further clarify these differences, the following will illustrate more clearly how the types of impoliteness strategies chosen by the two genders in expressing their hate speech towards President Joko Widodo through his Facebook account. 1. Bald on Record Impoliteness Bald on record impoliteness is a strategy that in its delivery is direct, clear and straightforward to attack the face of the hearer. This type is used by a speaker who has greater power or a higher social status than the hearer. Face threatening acts are done on purpose by the speakers. Pasaribu: Hate Speech on Joko Widodo’s…. 61 M: Suntik mati Jokowi! (Inject Jokowi to death!) The statement "Inject Jokowi to death!" is a loud and clear expression of how a male netizen shows his hatred for Joko Widodo. In a post displayed on Joko Widodo's Facebook fan page, the President was seen being injected for the covid-19 vaccine by the presidential doctor. From this picture, the netizens spontaneously told Jokowi that he should just be euthanized. This expression indicates that he is someone who is disappointed in Jokowi and his policies. M: BAKAR Jokowi, Penggal Jokowi (BURN Jokowi, Slaughter Jokowi!) This expression also shows the type of bald on record made by a male netizen to express their hatred for Joko Widodo. This statement is clearly very harsh and vulgar, especially when it is addressed to a president. The use of capital letters in the word “BAKAR” (BURN) shows the emphasis on burning Joko Widodo alive. F: Jokowi Bohong. (Jokowi is a liar.) The expression "Jokowi is a liar" was conveyed by a female netizen. It is a straightforward, clear and unambiguous statement that attacks the face of the hearer. This statement is classified as very harsh, vulgar and very bold when conveyed to a president. This statement may have been made because of the speakers' disappointment over the president's broken promises. By comparing the comments made by the male and female netizens above, we can see a clear difference in the bold on record impoliteness of their strategies. Male netizens tend to use more harsh and vulgar expressions than the expressions made by female netizens. This is in line with the results of the studies done by (Emilia et al., 2017), (Viriya & Sapsirin, 2014) and (Salikin, 2019) that male and female forms of communication differ in expressing their thoughts and feelings. 2. Positive Impoliteness Positive impoliteness is a strategy used by a speaker to damage the addressee's positive face wants. This strategy has characteristics, such as: the speaker ignores or isolates the hearer, keeps someone away from an activity, refuses to have something in common with others, not interested, does not care, and is not sympathetic to others, uses names and titles when they have good relations with others, using certain jargon, using taboo words, using derisive nicknames, and using taboo words, profane and other offensive languages. M: 11 Trilliun dikantong bapak masih adakah? Atau jgn2 sudah di Garong Partai Tikus (11 trillion is it still in your pocket? Or have already been stolen by Rat Thief Party) The comments above are an emotional expression of netizens regarding the corruption that occurs in the social department. Minister of Social Affairs, Juliari Batubara, of corruption in social aid for handling the covid-19 pandemic. Juliari Batubara is known as a member of the PDI-P Party. The PDI-P party is also known as the party that support Joko Widodo to become president of Indonesia. The PDI struggle was given the nickname Garong Party of Rats (Rat Thief Party). ELTIN Journal, Volume 9/No 1, April 2021 62 F: Om joko. (Uncle joko) The words "Om joko" indicate that the speaker seems to be familiar with Joko Widodo. The nickname "Om" and the use of the lowercase initials "j" in the name "joko", and only mentioning the first name shows an attitude of humiliation and contempt for President Joko Widodo. This expression will look appropriate if replaced by "Mr Joko Widodo". 3. Negative Impoliteness Negative impoliteness is a strategy used to harm the address's negative face wants. Negative face is a condition that refers to the need of not being imposed upon or intruded on by others. This strategy is carried out by frightening someone not to do an action that is not in Accordance with the wishes of the speaker. In addition, this strategy can be done by belittling someone for the work they do. The following is an example of a strategy that is included in negative impoliteness. M: Gk mau disuntik ah nanti jadi titan. (I don't want to get injections; I don’t want to become a titan). The statement “Gk mau disuntik ah nanti jadi titan” (I don't want to get injections; I don't want to become a titan) is included in the negative impoliteness strategy category, because the sentence implies if someone is injected with the covid-19 vaccine, then he will become a titan. Titan is a giant creature that resembles a human. Titan has an ugly appearance like a monster. This statement is an act of scaring others from being injected with the covid-19 vaccine. M: Eh gblg presiden ini oon gua tau lu wibu. (eh, stupid presiden, stupid I know you are a liar.) F: Pak presiden dipaksin daerah aku bnyk obat palsu banyak yg meninggal dunia. Kita yang penting taat sama Alloh ga dipaksin juga ga akan mati kalo belum waktunya meninggal. (Mr. President, vaccinated in my region, a lot of fake vaccin, many of them died. The important thing is that we obey Allah. If we are not vaccinated, we will not die if it is not the time to die.) The statement above is included in the category of negative impoliteness strategy, because this statement implies downplaying the consequences of the Covid-19 virus. The speakers tried to provoke others to reject the covi-19 vaccine. He used the argument that if God did not want it, then we would not die even though we were attacked by the Covid-19 virus. 4. Sarcasm or Mock Impoliteness Sarcasm or mock impoliteness is a strategy related to insincerity. The statement scontradicts reality. The purpose of this strategy is to make fun of or sarcasm for an event that is expressed in a different way from the reality. Following are the commentaries of netizens that fall into this category. M: KEMANUSIAN YANG ADIL DAN BERADAB (Fair and Civilized Humanity) Pasaribu: Hate Speech on Joko Widodo’s…. 63 This statement is classified into sarcasm or mocking impoliteness because this sentence has the opposite meaning of what the speaker meant. The speakers assumed that there was an injustice that occurred in the covid-19 vaccine assistance. He considers that the little people also have the same right to get access to the covid-19 vaccine. The use of capital letters is considered that the speaker emphasize the issue. F: Asli ga tuh (It is genuine.) This expression is categorized as sarcasm or mock impoliteness because the meaning contained in the sentence is to question the authenticity of the Covid-19 vaccine from China. The speakers assumed that the vaccine was fake because it came from China, where the Covid-19 virus originated. But he uses the reverse claim that the vaccine is genuine. 5. Withhold Politeness Withhold politeness is a strategy where someone is absent or avoids taking acts to be polite. In other words, when someone should express politeness but failed to do it. For example, when someone forgets to say thank you for a help or gift from someone, it is considered withhold impoliteness. As the form of communication using Facebook is one-way, Withhold impoliteness is not found in netizens’ comments. The owner of President Joko Widodo's Facebook account did not respond to comments from netizens so that the implementation of withhold impoliteness strategy by netizens were not realized. E. CONCLUSION This research is about impoliteness strategies used by netizens in commenting on issues related to the Covid-19 pandemic that are posted on the official Facebook page of President Joko Widodo. This comment contains hate speech against Joko Widodo's policies and also Joko Widodo's person. This form of hate speech is analyzed based on the category of impoliteness strategies developed by (Culpeper, 1996). Comparison of the impoliteness strategy used by female and male netizens is also a concern and focus of research. From the results of the data analysis, we find that there are four strategies used by the two genders in conveying their hate speech, namely: bald on record, positive and negative impoliteness, and sarcasm or mock impoliteness. Meanwhile, withhold impoliteness was not found because the form of communication between netizens and Joko Widodo through his official Facebook account went in one direction. It does not allow withhold impoliteness to occur in that setting. Besides that, the impoliteness strategy used by both genders looks very different. Male netizens tend to use bold on record impoliteness strategies to express their hatred towards Joko Widodo, followed by positive, negative, and sarcasm impoliteness, respectively. For the meantime, withhold impoliteness was not found. Female netizens prefere positive impoliteness, followed by negative, sarcasm, and balance on record impoliteness strategies. Withhold impoliteness is also not found. These findings indicate that male and female netizens differ in expressing their hate speech towards Joko Widodo. Male netizens tend to ELTIN Journal, Volume 9/No 1, April 2021 64 be harsh, clear and straightforward in expressing their hatred. Meanwhile, female netizens tend to employ a more polite and indirect delivery F. REFERENCES Al Fajri, M. S. (2018). The representation of a blasphemy protest in Jakarta in local and international press. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 7(3), 705–713. https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v7i3.9821 Ben-David, A., & Matamoros-Fernández, A. (2016). Hate speech and covert discrimination on social media: Monitoring the Facebook pages of extreme-right political parties in Spain. International Journal of Communication, 10, 1167–1193. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. In British Library (First). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587263 Culpeper, J. (1996). Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics, 25(3), 349–367. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(95)00014-3 Culpeper, J. (2005). Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The Weakest Link. Journal of Politeness Research, 1(1), 35–72. https://doi.org/10.1515/jplr.2005.1.1.35 Culpeper, J. (2011). Impoliteness Using Language to Cause Offence (First). Cambridge University Press. Emilia, E., Moecharam, N. Y., & Syifa, I. L. (2017). Gender in EFL classroom: Transitivity analysis in English textbook for Indonesian students. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 7(1), 206–214. https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v7i1.6877 Finch, G. (2000). Linguistic Terms and Concepts (First). Palgrave. Kimotho, S. G., & Nyaga, R. N. (2016). Digitized Ethnic Hate Speech: Understanding Effects of Digital Media Hate Speech on Citizen Journalism in Kenya. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 7(3). https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.7n.3p.189 Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. In Longman (First). Longman. Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. In British Library (First). Cambridge University Press. Salikin, H. (2019). Factors affecting male and female Indonesian EFL students’ writing anxiety. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 9(2), 316–323. https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v9i2.20229 Siddiqui, S., & Singh, T. (2006). Social Media its Impact with Positive and Negative Aspects. International Journal of Computer Applications Technology and Research, 5(2), 72–75. Viriya, C., & Sapsirin, S. (2014). GENDER DIFFERENCES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING STYLE AND LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(2), 77–88. Watts, R. J. W. (2003). Politeness. In Library of Congress (First). Yule, G. (2019). The Study of Language. In The Study of Language (Sixth Edit). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108582889