MODALITY IN THE DELEGATION’S SPEECHES OF ASIA AFRICA CONFERENCE 2015

This study explores modality employed in the delegation’s speeches of Asia Africa Conference 2015. Modality is either expressed as the speaker’s judgement of the probabilities or the obligation involved what is saying. There are many speeches delivered in the conference but only four speeches delivered by President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, President of China Xi Jinping, Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe and President of Iran Hassan Rouhani as the speakers at Asia Africa Conference 2015 in Jakarta and Bandung that would be analyzed. The aim of Asia Africa Conference 2015 was to strengthen cooperation among Asia African countries. There are three problems in this study, namely: types of modality in Asia Africa Conference delegation’s speeches, the dominant modality and the explanation on the modality context. The data were taken from the four speeches of Asia Africa Conference 2015 namely the speech from Indonesian president Joko Widodo, the President of China Xi Jinping, the Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe, and the President of Iran Hassan Rouhani. The speech transcriptions were analyzed by applying the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The occurences of modality were qualitatively analyzed by changing them into percentages to determine the portions namely modalization and modulation. The findings of this research can be drawn as follows : (1) All types of modality, namely modalization with sub-types probability and usuality and modulation with sub-types obligation and inclination were applied in the four speeches. (2) The modality was used by describing the value and orientation of modality and modulation-obligation was the dominant type in the usage. (3) The modality was used in the context of Asia Africa conference 2015 in which the delegations mostly used modulation-obligation. This can be a way for the delegations to show the same vision as the leaders of Asian African countries.