Exploring Tenor Configuration in Legislative Members’ Discourse

This study aims at discovering the employment of tenor-configuration, how it is realized in linguistic features, and why it is realized as they are in an interaction involving legislative members. This study utilized qualitative content analysis. The data were taken from the interaction among the legislative members of the House of Representatives of Medan during the working meeting with the mayor of Medan city in acknowledging the budget in 2020. The data were in the form of transcripts of utterances. Having analyzed the data, it is found that there are four types of tenor configuration. The type [formal/unequal/positive/infrequent] becomes the dominant type totaling to 56.40%. The data show that the formality used is formal, the status is unequal and equal, the affect is positive and negative, while the contact is infrequent. The formality is observable since the meeting is conducted in a formal situation. Then, the unequal status is identified since the members address other interlocutors by using addressing terms, and the equal status is recognized through the use of pronouns such as ‘we’. The positive affect is signaled by the use of positive tone words, while the negative affect is signaled by the use of negative tone words. The contact is infrequent since the formal language is used during the meeting. The use of those configurations is acceptable since they meet in a formal setting attending by the members of the House of Representatives, mayor-deputy mayor, and other parties. Besides, positive and negative affect were employed as the evaluation of the government’s work. Keywords—tenor configuration, legislative members,