Language Politeness In Political Communication: Analysis of Leech's Politeness Principal on the Aceh Governor Candidate Debate in 2017

This study aims to analyze the realization of linguistic politeness in political communication of governor candidates’ debate. One form of current campaign is a candidate debate. The Independent Electoral Commission (KIP) in Aceh also began conducting the first candidate debate in the 2017 governor election. It is hoped that from the debate, the people can choose their prospective leaders more objectively by looking at their vision, mission, strategy, and policy through the debate. Furthermore, the community also assessed their attitude, behaviour and speech acts of the candidates pairs. Speech acts reflecting the use of the candidate's language, in other words language is one of the main means of politics. The study was conducted by analyzing the data of candidate pair debate in Aceh involving 6 candidate pairs competing in the 2017 election in Aceh province. The data were then analyzed based on Leech's linguistic principle. This research shows that there are some violations of linguistic politeness during the debate process. Linguistic politeness strategy should be a serious concern for candidate pairs in the upcoming campaign, because language in the political dimension is one powerful tool to gain and retain power.