Gossip News Text INTRODUCTION

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G. Gossip News Text

„Gossip‟ is a “rumor or talk of a personal, sensational, or intimate nature”, or “talk about other peoples affairs, not always truthful” the freedictionary.com. Meanwhile, „news‟ is “information about recent events or happenings, especially as reported by newspapers, periodicals, radio, or television”. However, it is not only in newspaper, radio or television, but also internet, magazine, and mobile phone. From Merriam-Webster Collegiate ® Thesaurus Version 1.0, 2005, gossip is “a person who habitually retails private, scandalous, or sensational and often inaccurate information”. Gossip also refers to rumor or report of an intimate nature. Gossip does actually not belong to news genre. It is because gossip news does not suitable with the all characteristics of information news genre, as discussed on the previous sub-chapter. Gossip does not only give information to the reader as the social function of information news genre Gerot Wignell, 1994, but also gives opinion within the text, similar to the social function of exposition, discussion, or narrative genre, whereas, a good information news may not employ appraisal item. It means, news must be written very objectively, but gossip is not always so. Before inserting the definition of text, the researcher will explain the definition of discourse first. The meaning of discourse is the most complete unit of language that is asserted orally, such as speech, talk, sermon, and dialogue, or written such as short story, novel, book, letter, and written document. Discourse has a cohesive characteristic if it refers to the aspect of form and coherent characteristic if it refers to the aspect of meaning. Sumarlam, 2003: 15 commit to user 49 Willis Edmondson 1981 from Sumarlam states that “a discourse is a structured event manifest to linguistic and other behavior ”, while “a text is a structured sequence of linguistic expressions forming a unitary whole”. In this research, the source of data is written discourse, that is, text. A text is “the actual structure of words in a piece of writing; wording” thefreedictionary.com. Or, a text is “main body of a book or printed page contrasted with notes, diagrams, illustr ations, etc.”, Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary of Current English. Eggins explains as well that the term text refers to linguistics product of everyday language. It is a complete linguistic interaction spoken or written, preferably from beginning to end. It is because the purpose and structure can not be described from the sentence only. Eggins, 1994: 5

H. Mass Media