CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD
A. Research Design
This research employed the descriptive-qualitative method, because tit emphasized on describing the phenomenon of the use of language in its context by
inerpreting the data. As stated by Vanderstoep and Johnston 2009: 166-167, a qualitative research is a research that
is based on people‘s interpretation of their own experience. Related to its purpose, the qualitative research is more about how
to make description than prediction of the data. That is why a depth understanding of researcher‘s point of view is the goal of this research design.
Hancock 2002: 2 states that a qualitative research is a type of research that tries to seek for the answers of several questions which start with: why? how?
and in what way?. The objects of content analysis approach become clear whether it written or verbal texts, for example: books, essays, interviews, informal
communication and any form of communicative language. It is also clear that this approach is aimed at identifying and making inferences of the text. In other
words, the goal of this approach is to reveal the meaning of the text itself. The method used in this research was qualitative content analysis since the
data are nonnumeric. The data taken for this research are used to show the themes, sub-themes, and the types of themes also to find out the themes contributions to
children development. Thus, the analysis of the data the identification and
30
inference can be used to describe the research well and to make the reader understand it well.
B. The Main Data Sources
The main sources of the data is taken from Are You There Go? It’s Me
Margaret which was published in 1970 and consisting of 25 chapters and 149 pages. The research data were the words, phrases, clauses and sentences expressed
in this novel by Blume. The main theories in this research are New Criticism theory and
Children‘s Literature theory. However, some supporting information from articles, books, journals, and websites from internet about children‘s literatures
was also taken to get information about new criticism, the elements of literature, and chil
dren‘s literature. The researcher read and used
A Crtitical Handbook of Children’s Literature written by Rebecca J. Lukens in 1999. Besides, the researcher took the
secondary data source from books, articles and information either written or electronic such as An Introduction to Fiction Stanton: 1965, Literary Critics: An
Introduction To Theory and Practice Bessler: 1999, The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature Nodelman: 2008, Exploring Children’s Literature:
Teaching the Language and Reading of Fiction Nikki Gamble and Sally Yates: 2002 and the other related sources to support the analysis on the main data
source.
C. Data Collecting Technique