ABSTRACT
Joko Widodo, the 7th president of Indonesia and one of the most popular politicians in Indonesia, is highly recognized for his controversial choices. Nomination of alleged corruption figures, cabinet reshuffles and death penalty of seven foreign drug convicts are some examples of Widodo’s controversial choices. In an educational context, the discontinuation of the National Educational Curriculum 2013 and the abolition of the National Final Examination are a number of controversies undertaken during Joko Widodo’s administration. In regard to the controversial choices made by President Joko Widodo in the education sector, this research aims to reconstruct Joko Widodo’s ideologies of national education. In order to achieve this objective, the writers conducted a descriptive qualitative research on Joko Widodo’s policies (which were reflected through the presidential speeches on education, legislation, and presidential and government regulation). Fairclough’s three dimensional frameworks include 1) the linguistic description of linguistic elements, 2) the interpretation of discursive practice, and 3) socio-cultural explanation applied to answer the research question. To support the analysis, the writers analysed the linguistic elements by using Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), incorporating three linguistic meta-functions (ideational, interpersonal, and textual). This research is expected to contribute to the improvement of discourse analysis studies and the Indonesian education system.
