Discursive Strategies and Political Identity Construction in Prabowo Subianto’s Public Discourse

Abstract

Digital media has transformed political communication by creating dialogic spaces where political identity and legitimacy are actively constructed through language. This study examines how political identity is discursively produced in President Prabowo Subianto’s public discourse as presented in Presiden Prabowo Menjawab, a long-form political interview broadcast on YouTube. The research aims to analyze the linguistic strategies through which political authority is negotiated in a contemporary digital setting. Employing a qualitative design grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis, this study applies Ruth Wodak’s Discourse Historical Approach to a verbatim transcript of the program. The analysis identifies five interrelated discursive strategies: nomination, predication, argumentation through inclusion and exclusion, perspectivization and framing, and intensification and mitigation. The findings reveal that these strategies operate synergistically to anchor leadership claims in biographical experience, moral credibility, experiential authenticity, and quantified performance, while simultaneously managing discursive risk in relation to sensitive issues. The study confirms that political power in digital public discourse is not merely exercised but continuously constructed and negotiated through systematic linguistic practices embedded in specific socio-historical contexts. As a contribution to discourse studies, this research extends the application of the Discourse Historical Approach to long-form digital political interviews and highlights the central role of language in shaping political identity and legitimacy in contemporary digital democracies.