Background of the Research

5 Regardless of the kinship concern, additionally, other matters such as age and social status reflected in the movie series possibly affect the production of interruption by the characters. Interruption perhaps emerges during the conversation between the teachers and the students or between the employers and the employees in the movie series apart from how close their relationships are. The interruption might be exerted by one of the two parties who has a higher position or holds the authority.

B. Research Focus

For many years, conversation has become one of the central issues in the language study. In accordance with this, an approach called Conversation Analysis has been developed to assess various phenomena related to conversation. In this research, interruption as one conversational issue is taken to be the main concern of the research. When dealing with the phenomenon of interruption, there are some aspects which can be explored as stated below. In its occurrences, interruption may have diverse forms. The interrupters or the people who interrupt can execute their interruptions in various ways. They are commonly not aware of how they will practice their interruptions in advance so the interruptions produced by them can possibly be different from each other. They might commence speaking, for example, in the middle of the interruptees’ utterances, at a period when the interruptees’ utterances are almost completed, or when the interruptees pause their utterances in the process of talking. Due to the fact that the occurrences of interruption are varied, there must be more than one type of interruption taking place in conversation. In this case, examining the types 6 of interruption may be necessary to know how interruption typically appears in conversation. Furthermore, people who do interruptions could have certain intentions of performing their acts. They do not simply disrupt the main speakers during their turns, but do have specific purposes behind their interruptions. The purposes actually represent the functions served by the interruptions. In factual cases, the functions can be either advantageous or disadvantageous to the speakers who are interrupted. In connection with this, a lot of theoretical sources mention that interruption normally fulfils functions which are cooperative and disruptive. Some literatures even also state one additional function called neutral function. At this point, analysing interruption in terms of their functions might be worth doing. Moreover, every group of interruption probably has its own characteristics which distinguish it from the other. In several studies, some researchers observe the characteristics of certain kind of interruption through the analysis of prosodic features. Prosodic features are non-linguistic components in relation to the quality of sound made by the interrupters during their interruptions which can consist of intonation, pitch, amplitude, tone, and volume. Nonetheless, the study of prosodic features is apparently quite complicated as it necessitates the application of special instruments to capture the production of speech in detail that are commonly used in advanced studies. It is usually conducted by experienced researchers who have acquired profound knowledge of inspecting acoustic structures and special skills in using the special devices. 7 With regard to the explanation mentioned earlier, it seems important to scrutinize the whole matters since they are still linked to each other. Nevertheless, considering the limited time, the knowledge and ability of the researcher as well as for the sharpness of the analysis, the researcher limits the research investigation to two points of problems, i.e. the types and the functions of interruption found in High School Musical movie series. Based on the limitation of the problems, the problems of the research are formulated as follows. 1. What are the types of interruption in High School Musical movie series? 2. What are the functions of interruption in High School Musical movie series?

C. Research Objectives

In reference to the research problems, the objectives of the research are: 1. to describe the types of interruption in High School Musical movie series, and 2. to identify the functions of interruption in High School Musical movie series.

D. Research Significance

The research is expected to make contributions theoretically as well as practically. 1. Theoretical Significance By means of the research, the researcher expects that she can impart valuable information to readers in general and linguistics students in particular related to the phenomenon of interruption in conversation. The results of the 8 research are expected to provide concrete instances of how interruption generally takes place during conversation and of what impacts interruption may have on the course of conversation. In addition, the research is also supposed to be a useful reference for future researchers who are about to undertake research projects on interruption. 2. Practical Significance The research findings are expected to offer learning materials that can be used as an authentic example for teachers or lecturers in explaining the concept of interruption to the students. Furthermore, the researcher expects that the results of the research can help readers deal with the problem of interruption in their daily conversation. After reading the research, readers are supposed to be able to recognize which kind of interruption is considered less offensive and more tolerable to be produced in conversation in the hope that inconvenience resulting from performing inappropriate interruptions can be avoided in the future. 9

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter elucidates the literature review of the research into three major parts. The first part explains the theoretical background of the research. The second part shows some previous studies relevant to the research. Moreover, the third part of this chapter demonstrates the conceptual framework of the present research.

A. Theoretical Background

This part presents theories of Conversation Analysis along with its fields, turn-taking, interruption, and a brief description of High School Musical movie series. In addition, interruption as the focus of the research is parted into several sections: definitions of interruption, types of interruption, and functions of interruption.

1. Conversation Analysis

Conversation is a vital ingredient in human interaction as it enables people to impart information, to share ideas and feelings, and more importantly, to socialize and maintain their relationships with each other. Broadly speaking, the term conversation is usually referred to as any form of ordinary and informal talk taking place in everyday settings. As Levinson 1983: 284 defines, conversation is a talk carried out by two or more persons who freely exchange their ideas, which normally happens outside such specific institutional settings as courts, classrooms, religious services, and so on. Moreover, Cutting 2002: 28 views conversation as an informal and unplanned talk which is mutually created and