A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF APPRAISALS OF TWO TEXTS ON OPINION COLUMN IN THE JAKARTA POST EXPOSING THE BAILOUT OF BANK CENTURY (Based on Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach)

This research is a qualitative research employing descriptive comparative method. It is aimed to describe and compare the appraisals applied by the writers in writing the two texts exposing the bailout of Bank Century entitled The Fallout of the Century and Why the Bank Century Bailout was a Correct Decision?, based on Systemic Functional Linguistic Approach. The source of data in this research was the opinion column of the Jakarta Post taken from www.thejakartapost.com . Total sampling technique was carried out in this research in taking sampling. The data used in this research were all clauses that consist of attitudes taken from the two texts. In collecting data, four kinds of analysis called domain, taxonomy, componential and finding cultural values were applied. The data were observed and analyzed to find the kinds of attitudes, genre, prosody, ideology and cultural values behind the use of the attitudes in the texts. The results of the analysis can be seen as follows. First, in terms of kinds of attitudes, both the first text and the second one employ three kinds of attitudes, namely: affect, judgement and appreciation. Second, the genre of the first text is analytical exposition. This can be seen from the thesis of the text which employs negative appreciations as well as the reiteration. Meanwhile, the genre of the second text belongs to discussion since the writer tries to discuss the issue from both the writer‟s and the reader‟s side. Third, Dealing with prosody, the first text tends to be more subjective since most of attitudes employed in the text come from the writer‟s own point of view. Meanwhile, the prosody of the second text tends to be more objective. This is because the attitudes employed in the text come from the writer and the other participants in the text. Fourth, the ideology of the first text is left antagonist since the text challenges the issue by employing negative attitudes which come mostly from the writer‟s own point of view. On the other side, the ideology of the second text is right protagonist since the writer supports the issue and employs two-sided analysis. Fifth, generally, the reason why the attitudes are employed in the first text is that the writer would like to express his disapproval toward the issue, in this case, the bailout of Bank Century. Meanwhile, the writer of the second text supports the issue and tries to prove that the bailout of Bank Century was a correct decision