Multimodal rhetorical strategies of Asep Sunandar Sunarya’s Wayang Golek performances: multimodality-based genre analysis

Abstract

This study reveals how Asep Sunandar Sunarya, a well-known Sundanese Dalang (the puppeteer), told stories in his Wayang Golek shows. It explores how he told stories to audiences by examining the storytelling strategies through dialogue sequences, combined with two other elements used during the shows: Wayang Golek’s movements and different voice modulation. In the analysis, it utilizes Labov’s narrative elements theory (1972) to classify the sequence moves of Asep’s storytelling strategies, van Leeuwen’s social semiotics theory (2005) to analyze Asep’s Wayang Golek’s movements, and Python’s coding process to analyze Asep’s voice color modulation for each character of Wayang Golek he was playing in his 3 (three) performances videos. As a result, this study shows that Asep, when telling stories, used two rhetorical strategy types, obligatory and additional, in 6 (six) narrative moves. All the rhetorical strategies used are multimodally cohered with Wayang Golek’s movements and his different voice color modulation to tell stories to the spectators. This study is expected to contribute to a better understanding of the structural and rhetorical characteristics of Wayang Golek performances, particularly those exemplified by Asep Sunandar Sunarya. Such findings can serve as a reference for future studies or for practitioners who seek to analyze, preserve, or learn from Asep’s performance style.