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CHAPTER I
This chapter consists of three sections. The first is the background of the study, the second is objective of the study, and the last is the definition of terms.
A. Research Background
Media can influence people to imitate what they see or read in mass media. Huesmann had studied the influence 1960 up to nowadays and it shows non
ceasing influence especially related to violence. Huesmann 2007 states that since early 1960s, evidence has been accumulating suggesting that exposure to violence
in television, movies, video games, cell phones, and on the internet increases the risk of violent behavior as well as if they grew up in an environment filled with
real violence Huesmann, 2007. Huesmann‘s finding states that being exposed to violence is as dangerous as living in violence Huesmann, 2007. This means that
even only getting exposed to violence people can behave violently without living in an environment filled with violence, in other words people imitate violence that
is exposed towards them. Another less severe conclusion can be made that not only violence; lifestyle, mindset, or even the way people speak can be suspected
as a product of mass media influence. During this high-speed-widespread internet connection era people even are
able to access materials that are considered taboo and internalize them into their mind. Once they get into people‘s mind, they would easily manifest into people‘s
infected behavior, altered attitude and probably progress into deviated speech such as swearing. Accordingly, the influence of the mass media is best viewed as one
2 of the many potential factors that help to shape behavior, including aggression
Anderson et. al, 2003, journal. Wilson 2005 proposed that swearing is highly ―contagious‖. “You can also remember swear words about four times better than
other words ” Wilson, 2005. The fact that swearing is highly contagious is quite
upsetting. There are so many movies broadcasted every year even in the television. Moreover, the cheapest and the most effective entertainment in the
researcher community are movies. It is possible that people internalize swear word more than they learn good values through movies, especially when people
are attracted to movies. Swearing is not a phenomenon that has just happened recently. However,
people seem to avoid discussing it. We can find swear word in almost every movie, even mild swear word from movies for children. In several occasions
people convert their swear word into words that is not considered offensive like ‗shit‟ into ‗shoot‟ but that would not justify people from swearing using mild
swear word. We couldn‘t deny that some cartoons uses euphemisms McEnery: 2006, p.39 in their swearin
g like Nickelodeon‘s Spongebob Squarepants often said, ―mustard‖ instead of ―bastard‖.
As a present day student, the researcher is also being exposed to mass media and especially violence. The researcher, as a student of Sanata Dharma
English Language Education Study Program ELESP, witnesses several people around the researcher involved in swearing activity. It is because the researcher
and other students live in mass media environment filled with uncensored violence in the past several years, especially film. As suggested by Bordwell and
3 Thompson in their book named Film Art in 2008, ―Films are designed to have
effects on the viewers‖, it can be deducted that another means of violence exposure is through movies. Before entering senior high school, the researcher
and his friends at his own age are exposed to movie broadcast from TV stations that occasionally broadcast movies containing small-to-massive amount of
violence and swear words. Some of them, including the researcher, also play console games that do contain violence. When a game is displaying violence,
most often it also display swear words. Another reason why students of ELESP Sanata Dharma University got exposed to swearing is because movies are easy to
get and they provide affordable entertainm ent during students‘ spare time.
Why people swear and how people swear has been interesting topic to discuss. Several of the researcher‘s friends have studied this phenomenon, one of
them is Erda Kurniawan 2015 in his study related to George Carlin‘s monologue about seven words you can‘t say on television topic. Another example of English
Language Education Study Program‘s student discussing about swear words are Muhammad Aditya Setiawan 2016 in his study related to swear words in 21
st
Jump Street movie and Bonifasius Puguh Kurnianto 2015 in his study related to the evaluation on acceptability of swear word translation in Indonesian subtitle
found in Crank 2: High Voltage movie. The researcher also reviewed several studies done by people from Europe and America related to swearing. Bylsma,
Vingerhoets and de Vlam 2013 in their study also discuss about swearing in terms of interpersonal functions of swearing and neurological, psychosocial and
contextual factors that may contribute to person‘s swearing behavior. Williamsson PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
4 2009 have done studies about differences of swearing activity related to sex, age
and social class of the respondents. Uniquely Schippers 2013 studied swearing expletives and gender in reality television Jersey Shore, Geordie Shore. Lie
2013 had done a corpus based contrastive study concerning the translation of swearing and other taboo words in movie subtitles. Thelwall 2008 uniquely
conducted a study related to swear word in MySpace pages. From the above studies, only five studies are related to movies or television shows and all of them
are in English. The researcher would like to provide another study related to swear word and movies but in Indonesian language, especially in a well known
Indonesian movies. Furthermore Ljung 2011 stated that ―McEnery‘s typology
features 15 different categories to a great extent based on a detailed study of the spoken component of the BNC British National Corpus‖ Ljung, 2011. Based
on Ljung statement above, the researcher would like to conduct a study about swear word in movies and McEnery‘s typology called ―The categorisation of bad
language‖ found in McEnery‘s Table 2.1 in his book entitled Swearing in English 2006, p.27
There was a well known movie called The Raid directed by Gareth H. Evans, and starred by Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Donny Alamsyah, Yayan Ruhian
and many more. The film was monumental for it being out of the box for Indonesian action movies. Besides, it received so many positive criticisms and
even nominated in Movie Festival in Toronto as reported by Liam Lacey for The Globe and Mail at www.theglobeandmail.com in 2012. It was a great hit
worldwide, so many people know this movie especially in English speaking PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
5 nations. Internet Movie Database on his website awarded this movie with 7.6 out
of 10 stars, and this movie received 85 tomatometer in Rotten Tomato website www.rottentomatoes.com. However, for it is an action movie, there was a lot of
violence and of course swear words. Moreover The Raid itself has a sequel, and the sequel is full of violence as
well. This movie was criticized as ―although its high – energy plot and over – the
– top violence may play better with genre aficionados, The Raid 2 definitely delivers more of everything audiences loved about its predecess
or‖ www.rottentomatoes.commthe_raid_2. It was also receive positive criticism
and having 79 rating of tomatometer and 87 of audience score of Rotten Tomato website. This second movie is a sequel of the first one. The director of
this movie is still Gareth H. Evans with the same storyline development. This movie continued the story of a police officer named Rama to pursue the one who
killed his brother, Andi. If the first movie timeline only span for at most twenty four hours, from the beginning where Rama asked permission and blessing from
his wife to join a mission until the evening where only three out of twenty officers survived the operation. The second movie happened in a much longer time span,
more than two years. Rama is still the main character even though in the movie he was disguising as a man named Yudha. For these two movies of The Raid can be
considered as one unity, it is great to have these as the data of this study. It would give broader and holistic views of the occurrence of swear word in Indonesian
movies for McEnery‘s classifications of bad language to be applied to Ary, Jacobs, Sorensen, 2010.
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B. Research Question, Purpose and Limitation
