Public Responses to the Indonesian National FootballTeam Player Naturalization Program: Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis.

Abstract

This study is aimed to help determine the public response to the naturalization program of Indonesian national team players by PSSI and understand the social factors and ideologies of the community that give rise to these responses. This study uses a corpus approach to process large amounts of data, the theory of Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis, to categorize public comments into support, ambiguity, or rejection. Then, the theory of Critical Discourse Analysis by Van Dijk is applied to examine the factors or ideologies that underlie public responses. The study results indicate that comments of support for the naturalization program are influenced by pragmatic values, professionalism, and legitimacy triggered by the satisfactory results of naturalization. Meanwhile, comments of ambiguity provide conditional support for the naturalization program not to rely too much on this program and to improve the quality of the local league and players. It is influenced by the failure to improve the local league and players. Finally, comments of rejection that view naturalization as a pragmatic solution, harm local players and ignore the value of nationalism are influenced by politicized policies. This study contributes to understanding public discourse in sports and examines policies from a community perspective.