vi. Social issues
The vocabulary under the term social issues covers words that include social interest within in a governmental stage. The term refers to economy,
politics, prosperity, liberty, democracy, and many more. Since the vide is a political campaign video, the social issues vocabulary is important to be studied.
2. Theory on Political Campaign
A political campaign is merely a kind of advertising which purpose is to make people know the person and the idea heshe purposes. The main goal is to
persuade people to elect the candidate, in this case is Obama. In analyzing Obama‟s presidential video campaign “Forward”, the
researcher needs the theory on advertising to conduct a reliable analysis. According to Arens,
Advertising is the structured and composed nonpersonal communication of information, usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature, about
products goods, services, and ideas by identified sponsors through various media 2006: 7.
In brief, an advertisement is the effort of a group or a person to create a
persuasion effect toward the people who watch of printed and audio-visual type of advertisement to achieve a certain goal. In his book, Larson 2010: 282 also
stated that there are three types of campaign. They are product campaign, person campaign, and idea or ideology campaign. These campaigns mostly use media in
delivering their persuasive message. Obama‟s presidential video campaign “Forward” is a political campaign
because the purpose is to persuade people to elect Obama in 2012 presidential election. Larson writes,
In the person- oriented political campaign, the focus is on an individual‟s
name and the purpose associated with the name. For politicians it is always election to office or nomination to office 2010: 282.
There are many ways in perceiving the goal the political party or the
politician want to achieve, the strategies, as defined by Larson, can be by including a third party that mainly is the opposing candidate or party and blowing
the disadvantage of choosing the opposing party. The strategy, for example, is by ignoring the opposition and linking the
issue to the opposing party‟s decision to go to war in Iraq and made the country lost a lot of money to pay for the war. Then, the political party
will make a wise decision in the future to avoid wars Larson, 2010: 282-
283. In this study, the researcher found that there are various use of textual
features especially the Grammatical features that refers to the form of the video campaign as a political campaign. The political use of the textual features cover
the various purpose as below: a.
Eliciting an idea Elicit, as defined by Hornby, is an action “to get information or a reaction
from somebody, often with difficulty” 2005: 494. By eliciting an idea, the utterance is meant to get a desired reaction from the people who watch the video
campaign. The video campaign utters ideas to get a significant reaction such as a contra toward the Republican party.
b. Conveying an idea
Convey, is def ined to be an action “to make ideas, feelings, etc. known to
somebody” Hornby, 2005: 336. The term “convey” is meant to state an idea
toward the people such as stating that Obama is a person who has a determination and is a hard worker.
c. Emphasizing an idea
Emphasizing is described to be an action “to give special importance to something” Hornby, 2005: 499. The use of an emphasis toward certain words in
this video campaign is meant to give the persuasive message toward the people.
3. Theory on Persuasion Strategies
