THE REPRESENTATION OF THE IDEAL SUNDANESE, ACCORDING TO KANG DEDI MULYADI YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Celebrity, including politicians, is often seen as the epitome of one specific culture. Dedi Mulyadi attempts to present himself as an ideal Sundanese for his viewers through his YouTube channel. With almost 4 million subscribers, the politician has become an internet sensation as his Sundanese characteristics reach many viewers. This article tries to elaborate on the idea of being Sundanese according to Dedi Mulyadi's YouTube Channel. There are many ways to elaborate on this idea; this article focuses on his utterances in interacting with certain people. Thus, the pragmatic approach covering mixing code, speech act, and the representation issue is applied in this article to break down the selected conversation. Eventually, the findings show that Dedi Mulyadi uses conversational pragmatics to represent himself as an ideal Sundanese. According to his videos, the caring, compassionate, yet assertive leader is what it means to be an ideal Sundanese.


Introduction
Arguably one of today's most influential Sundanese men, Dedi Mulyadi constantly portrays his Sundanese identity through his YouTube channel.Starting with the thumbnail of his YouTube channel, his picture wearing Sundanese attire appears in his profile picture.Alongside the picture, the tagline Bapak Aing "Ngurus Lembur Nata Kota," roughly translates to Our Father "Minding the Rural Planning the Urban," is right below his official YouTube channel name Kang Dedi Mulyadi Channel.However, in his 2,462 videos per November 2022, almost none of the titles is written in Sundanese (Basa Sunda).These mixed codes lead to the goal of this research on how Dedi Mulyadi uses Basa Sunda to portray his identity as an ideal Sundanese.
Dedi Mulyadi has an excellent career in the political world, especially in West Java.His peak career was as a Bupati Purwakarta.When he was sitting in the Bupati office for two periods, he issued some controversial policies that made him publicly well-known, not only in West Java but also in Indonesia.Now, as a member of the People's Representative Council of the Republic of Indonesia, he continues to build his legacy by showing videos of his daily activity on YouTube.His YouTube channel attracts many people, as each of his videos attracts approximately 1 million viewers.At a glance, the daily activities as a Sundanese political show that Dedi Mulyadi wants to appear friendly yet professional.He becomes aggressive when encountering a social or urban issue and turns his personality to be humorous at social events.This article doesn't want to challenge the existence of Dedi Mulyadi's identity but an attempt to comprehend how Dedi Mulyadi's identity is 'seen' clearly at first sight.
Language plays a significant part in his characteristics shifting and the particular identity he wants to perform.Considering him a powerful man, Yule (1996) argues that their words are usually more than a statement.Therefore, some conversations between Dedi Mulyadi and his audience are analyzed using the pragmatics approach focusing on speech acts.
Moreover, Hall (1990) states that reality is always mediated by and through language, so this article tries to connect his inconsistent use of language with the identity he wants to perform.Grossberg (2012)strengthens this notion.In his opinion, identity is merely a cultural and linguistic construction.At last, Wilson (1990) describes the connection between pragmatics and political discourse involving power, ideologies, and social representation.And still, according to him, political speech and language work cannot be done independently of those concepts.
Previously, research covering the relationship between local language and identity has been done in many ways in Indonesian scope; Sudaryat (2015);Chintawidy and Sartini (2022); Citraresmana, Wahya, and Djajasudarma (2019); Ardiati (2022); Locher (1996); Indrayani (2011) and Muller-Gotama (1996).The previous research generally focuses on basa Sunda as a tool to represent social or group identity.On the other hand, the study of the local language has also occurred in Africa, South Asia, and Europe.Their research mainly focused on the relationship between local language, power, and politics in the context of education and mass media.Hornikx, van Meurs, and de Boer (2010) and Krishna and Ahluwalia (2008) state that local language significantly impacts the audience's perception of understanding the advertisement's message.Vernaudon (2015) and Toomet (2011) mentioned that learning the local language is challenging in Russia and Polynesia due to the stigmatization of the colonial period.Khare (2002) and Tardy (2011) reveal the linguistic policy of local language inside and outside the classroom.Several articles also focused on the study of the local language in Africa.It mentioned that, in Africa, the students are free to learn the chosen local language as a form of political regulation (Albaugh, 2007).Still, in the educational field, it also mentioned that the local language helps students fight illiteracy in African countries (Trudell, Cheffy, & Trudell, 2019).In addition to the political context, local language reports enrich the political knowledge of Kenyan society (Ismail & Deane, 2008).
While offering a similar concept to the mentioned articles, this article specifies the research object to feasibly a famous Sundanese man in the digital world.This linguistic and cultural research doesn't involve local language as being spoken by a large group of people.The research discusses the local language and its power that is driven by a single speaker.Being well-known as a language equipped with the speech level (Locher, 1996), Basa Sunda quickly shows both the speaker and the Addressee's Identity.In short, this article emphasizes the relationship between Bahasa Indonesia, Basa Sunda, and identity.This research is based on a pragmatic approach focusing on speech acts and their classification.Thus, context and deixis are an integral part of this research, as Citraresmana et al. (2019), quoting Citraresmana et al. (2019) and Levinson, stated that context plays an essential role in defining the speaker's meaning and intention.This research does not stop revealing the speaker's meaning.Often seen as text, Dedi Mulyadi's utterance is discussed in Hall's representation framework.To Hall (1990), the text is a central place and produces a representation of 'the real,' which the viewer is positioned to take as a mirror reflection of the real world.In other words, Dedi Mulyadi's utterance contains an idea of how he wants to be recognized as having a particular identity.

Method
This research uses a pragmatic approach.The selected conversation is analyzed by the types of speech acts coined by Yule (1996) found in Dedi Mulyadi's speeches.Code-mixing and code-switching are also part of the analyzing process.Moreover, the mainly studied speeches are also discussed in the sense of representation coined by Hall (1990).After passing the discussion phase, this article will provide the specific identity of Dedi Mulyadi in his YouTube channel.
Some clips containing Sundanese-Indonesian utterances (speeches) are collected from Kang Dedi Mulyadi's YouTube Channel.The selected clips arguably have different speech acts and speeches with code-mixing and codeswitching.As a part of the analyzing process, the contextual situation is included, such as the place, time, audience, speaker's mood, and specified conversation goals.We identified the analysis to determine the use of commissive, directive, assertive, and expressive as the consideration of Dedi Mulyadi is a member of the House of Representatives and has influence or supremacy among Sundanese.We assume the conversation (Indonesian-Sundanese and vice versa) contains code-mixing and code-switching as Dedi Mulyadi's communication strategies to smoothen the communication process and to display his particular Sundanese identity in every video.With approximately 2,500 videos on the channel, searching for clips containing the mixing codes focuses on the highest video views.In short, the procedure to collect data are:  Categorizing the videos based on the highest views  Cutting clips containing Sundanese and Indonesian languages or vice versa  Analyze the conversation speech acts along the explanation of the context  Analyze the effects of his speech acts and the reasons behind them. Analyze the reasons for Dedi Mulyadi to switch codes and mix codes. Discuss the construction of Dedi Mulyadi's Sundanese identity.

Findings and Discussion
After taking a glimpse into Kang Dedi Mulyadi's YouTube Channel, we found several mixing codes and code-switching in the videos.We highlight the crucial part of the conversation to show Dedi Mulyadi's Sundanese Identity.The corpus is displayed in the table below to help the reader understand the analysis process.When displaying the conversation transcript, we consistently use 'S' (speaker) to refer to Dedi Mulyadi and 'A' (addressee) to refer to his audience.Also, to mention low-level Sundanese, we use Kasar and Lemes to say high-level Sundanese.The conversation happened on the sideway around Cikopo Street, West Java.There was nobody except the older man.In this video, Dedi Mulyadi, the speaker, expressed sympathy for the exhausted lonely older man without a client.Therefore, he addressed him.Generally, Sundanese will use polite language when they meet someone new or someone more senior than the speaker.However, in this conversation clip, Dedi Mulyadi uses unrefined Sundanese to a stranger older man he met for the first time.It shows that the awareness of the social relationship between two interlocutors influences language selection.In short, Dedi Mulyadi chose an informal speech to communicate with the older man because he realized his power over the addressee.The addressee, however, did not feel offended.Contextually speaking, it happens because not only did he realize that the speaker was a celebrity, but also the tone that Dedi Mulyadi uses expresses compassion.In short, the chosen intonation may affect how the addressee responds to the speaker.
On the addressee side, the addressee responds with the same level of Sundanese language as the speaker.The speaker and the addressee share the knowledge that the speaker's intention from the utterance "Geus kolot markiran keneh!' is taken into the form of a perlocutionary effect.The speaker recognizes the impact that is intended.Thus, the beginning utterance of the conversation, "Geus kolot markiran keneh!' is intended to show compassion to the addressee and not to make the addressee quit the job.This conversation happened in Cahyadi's house, and the speaker senses the addressee's needs.Dedi Mulyadi offered the 70-year-old man with an economic situation to buy some clothes.Like the previous conversation, the speaker uses what Muller-Gotama (1996) called unrefined Sundanese or bahasa kasar while communicating with the addressee.It may sound impolite to talk with older people using unrefined Sundanese, but the addressee doesn't feel offended.
On the contrary, the addressee shows enthusiasm and joy because the speaker wants to fulfill his basic economic needs.Although the speaker warns the addressee to anticipate that he needs to take a ride, the addressee seems not to bother at all as he will do what the speaker says.It shows that his popularity affects how the addressee responds to his order.Without hesitation, the addressee follows the speaker's direction because the addressee realizes that the speaker has good intentions despite using unrefined Sundanese expressions.In this context, Dedi Mulyadi defends a Sukasari villager.Without permission, one of the villagers discovers that the local government has cut his bamboo.Dedi Mulyadi meets some PICs of the deforestation program and the officials of Indonesian Forestry representatives in a traditional shop on the sideway of Sukasari in Purwakarta.The villagers make a crowd and join the meeting as well.Using Bahasa Indonesia, the speaker expresses his anger by threatening the addressee.His utterance goes," Pidana lo Pak! Dan saya hari ini mau mendatangi Polres dan melapor.' (It's a crime!And today I'll go to the police station and report it).We categorize the utterance into a commissive speech act.Commissive, according to Yule (1996), is a speech that commits the speaker to further action.In short, the threat comes from the speaker as a form of defense and support to the audience.What happened here is the speaker insists on saying there should be any permits before taking legal action-the speaker points to the older man sitting beside him.Dedi Mulyadi seems bothered by the reforestation program in Sukasari, Purwakarta.(Yule, 1996) believes a representative speech act is a speech act in which the speaker wants to deliver his belief on specific matters.Gaining support from the audience, the speaker freely conveys what the speaker thinks is right.Thus, the speaker uses his power not to give the addressee a chance to reply to the utterance.As a result, we see that the leader of the PIC is trying to clear up the matter, or we can conclude that the action the speaker has taken fits his narrative.Still, with the same context from the previous corpus, the addressee seemed to think of a more comfortable way of discussing with the speaker.The addressee appears uncomfortable with the audience's support of the speaker, so the addressee cannot deliver his entire idea.The addressee is aware of the speaker's position and power.Dedi Mulyadi is publicly known as a persistent figure when he replies with, "Nggak ada lagi diskusi, Pak." (No more discussion, Sir) he confirms his public persona.After the reply, the speaker finished the utterance with hand gestures.In short, we can conclude that Dedi Mulyadi's persistence influences the addressee to do something through his speech act.Even though the verb doesn't exist in his utterance, the speaker still manages to make the addressee follow his order.His speech act type in this clip is categorized as a directive by Yule's (1996) definition, as the speaker intends to get the addressee to do something.The speaker displays his power in his utterances.We can mention three hints of power.First, the speaker asked the addressee in Bahasa kasar (unrefined Sundanese), not Bahasa Indonesia.Second, the speaker questioned the official knowledge that considered rude given that the official usually has complete and updated information about the subject matter.Third, he expresses his disbelief directly to the addressee by asking," Ngarti teu?" or "Do you understand" in Bahasa kasar.Conforming to Yule (1996), this utterance belongs to the perlocutionary category.The speaker shows confidence while delivering his opinion because the result fits his prediction.Moreover, as the speaker's prediction speaks for itself, without giving orders, the speaker asks the addressee to stop the ongoing activity.

Sudanese Identity
The conversation sample taken from Kang Dedi Mulyadi's YouTube channel shows the identity that Dedi Mulyadi wants to represent.Moreover, the conversation sample indicates the symbolic power comes with those representational practices.According to Gramsci and Hall, the conversation involving Dedi Mulyadi and the addressee proves the idea of power.Power always operates in unequal relations or what Gramsci refers to as the difference of classes, said Hall (1997), and Dedi Mulyadi displays his power through the conversational strategy.
Dedi Mulyadi uses several speeches that act on the pragmatics level: directives, commissive, and representative.Dedi Mulyadi is free to narrate his idea in the form of order, threat, and explanatory situation.Most of his utterance is an illocutionary act, meaning Dedi Mulyadi constantly appears as a leader who gives orders, whether direct or indirect.It indicates that Dedi Mulyadi has power among his audience in society's equal and lower levels.Therefore, the addressee follows the direction in various moods.Also, speaking Basa Sunda helps Dedi Mulyadi to be close to the public, especially in a lower-level society.
Still drawing from the pragmatic approach, the context impacts Dedi Mulyadi's communication structure.Beginning with the daily life of a politician/celebrity, Dedi Mulyadi tends to speak indirectly.Based on corpus Dedi Mulyadi always give order to his addressee.However, five of them are indirect orders.This practice agrees with the Obeng (1997) notion that politicians usually avoid candid or blatant statements and prefer to communicate indirectly.Gruber (2022) explains that politicians speak indirectly to create and maintain a favorable public appearance while facing a political opponent.As Yule (1996) explains, indirectness is related to politeness, leading to another context: Dedi Mulyadi is a Sundanese.Sundanese is considered to be polite (Sudaryat, 2015).Even though the voice and tone display his bold character, Dedi Mulyadi still holds the behavior not to give orders directly.In addition, this practice also happens when Dedi Mulyadi argues in Bahasa Indonesia, and the speaker complies.
Dedi Mulyadi constantly changes the language from Bahasa Indonesia to Basa Sunda or vice versa (switching codes) in all video samples.The practice affects the speaker's identity.As Grossberg (2012) puts it, "identity is always a temporary and unstable effect of relations which define identities by marking differences."Thus, according to Grossberg, Dedi Mulyadi tries to build the most appropriate identity for his audience.To develop his identity, Dedi Mulyadi follows some Sundanese speech-level norms and rejects some of them.Wessing quoted Satjadibrata (1956) defines the use of Sundanese speech-level norms.Dedi Mulyadi agrees with one of them: "Higher Status persons speak Kasar (low level/unrefined/impolite) down to lower Status persons," which Dedi Mulyadi often uses while communicating with lower status audience.On the other side, Dedi Mulyadi challenges two of Wessing's notions "the speaker uses Kasar to refer to a close friend of Same Status," and "some people (i.e., lower class) speak Kasar among themselves." To put it in another way, while some may raise their eyebrows seeing how Dedi Mulyadi communicates in Sundanese, as it happens, Dedi Mulyadi displays a unique version of being friendly to everyone.With his conversational strategy, Dedi Mulyadi wants lower-level people to claim that he is close to them.The way we see it, the addressee finds him as a leader with humility and humorous traits.The strategy gives him an advantage in being a politician to access different layers of society.In short, Dedi Mulyadi differentiates himself from other Sundanese politicians and gains the identity he wants to perform to the audience.
On the other hand, he switches to speaking Bahasa Indonesia when he faces the audience at an equal social level.The corpus shows the difference in identity performed by Dedi Mulyadi while speaking Bahasa Indonesia and Basa Sunda.Bahasa Indonesia to Dedi Mulyadi means to stand as a politician, leader, and mediator.For Dedi Mulyadi, saying Bahasa Indonesia denies the existence of his identity.This kind of practice leads to Bourdieu's argument that everyday activities are always related to language, and it becomes a pattern that leads to speaker persona identification by others (Blommaert, 2015).In other words, using Bahasa Indonesia for Indonesian is normal, but Dedi Mulyadi only speaks Bahasa Indonesia to show dominance over the addressee.His Sundanese identity traits fade and turn into professional characteristics.
Eventually, the conversation and its strategy present Dedi Mulyadi as a powerful man.The power is structured within what Fiske (2010) calls the power to gain meanings simply by the action of the acceptance of society.His identity and status as a powerful leader are established and transmitted orally.Powerful status may be associated with the dominance of economics, often seen in this conversational context.However, Fiske (2010) adds that semiotic power exceeds economic power.That is the power to construct meanings of oneself and social relations.Given one of his persona as a celebrity, Dedi Mulyadi has the privilege to present himself as his wish with the help of his popularity among Sundanese people.Overall, fame, economic domination, and appropriate conversation strategy construct Dedi Mulyadi's identity as seen and received by people today.

Conclusion
From the discussion above, we can note both Basa Sunda and Bahasa Indonesia give different images to Dedi Mulyadi.From his YouTube channel, the images of Sundanese identity are so 'real' yet so blurry.His YouTube dashboard represents the ambivalent identity between Basa Sunda and Bahasa Indonesia.The use of Bahasa Indonesia overshadows the Sundanese identity in this YouTube channel and vice versa.We take it as a communication strategy to show that even though the channel covers and discusses a primarily Sundanese issue, the videos may still attract board viewers from outside Sundanese people.The identity construction of his YouTube channel supports the positive images of Dedi Mulyadi that can reach every layer of society.To be publicly known is essential for politicians; the strategy applies not only to the YouTube channel but also to the conversational process on each video.In short, his YouTube channel represents his identity accurately.While speaking Basa Sunda, Dedi Mulyadi appears humorous, easy-going, and considerate.These identity traits agree with the idea of the Sundanese mindset.In keeping with the notion, being humorous, indirect, and sensitive are some characteristics of being Sundanese.In contrast, Dedi Mulyadi contradicts some Sundanese identity traits when he speaks Bahasa Indonesia.To conclude, Dedi Mulyadi displays himself as a caring and compassionate person yet an assertive leader.This identity constantly appears in most of the videos on his YouTube Channel.The details of the conversation may be less than expected.However, we assume the selected clip can cover the central part of Dedi Mulyadi's conversational strategy as a Sundanese politician.On a further note, Dedi Mulyadi also works on his artistic side on his YouTube Channel, and it is another research object for identity and political discourse research area.