Background of Study INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Study

As social human being, people couldn’t be separated from the influences of the others, and almost all of their activities connected to another people. The accepted from for aspects of behavior through which people influence and react to each other is Social Interaction. 1 Its one way which could be brought into reality is verbal communication form. The one of purposes of verbally communication according to Purwo as cited by Gunarwan is deliver information to another people. Besides that, the important one of communication purpose also to keep social relationship and this is universal communication necessity. 2 To keep the social relationship, in human life there are rules and norms which be obeyed by them. If someone wants to speak or say something, he must consider all of factors which related to the rules and norms that be found in society. Commonly, the speaker doesn’t speak directly without paying attention to the factors that influence their speech such as how the situation is going on, who are the interlocutor, where the place is, and what the subject or topic which is being talked. In this case, the speaker must speak and deliver his idea in “good way” in order to make the social relationship getting better. 1 Hudson, R. A. 1980. Sociolinguistic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.108 2 Ibid. One of way to keep the good social relationship in verbally communication is the speaker must avoid the term or the word which can insulting the listener, embarrassing the interlocutor, attaching the listener’s self esteem or in another word make the listener loss his face. The term is known as “dangerous word” or the “Taboo word” or “dysphemism”. Taboo word is a word known to speakers but avoided in some, most, or all, forms or contexts of speech, for reason of religion decorum politeness, etc. 3 It is clear that when we use the taboo word its mean we attack the listener or make the listener undergoes loss his face. According to Allan Burridge the subject of taboo can vary widely like in sex area, bodily effluvia, bodily function, death, religious matter, dangerous animal, political issue even, diseases etc. For example, peoples feel difficult to mention the specific organ for reproduction because the name of specific organ is taboo to be mentioned and they choose to change the name of specific organ with another term. We also can find in our life there are many words that used by people to deliver their condolence without using the word “die”, because ‘die’ is considered as taboo word. Because the “taboo word” is forbidden to mention and give the bed effect, so people create the new word or rename and repackage that word to getting “better sound” but still have a meaning that related to it. That’s a reason why they apply “Euphemism”. According to Allan Burriage, Euphemism is used as an alternative to a dispreferred expression, in order to avoid possible loss of face: either one’s own face or, through giving offense, that of the audience, or of some third party. 4 3 Pieter, Mathews, The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. p.371 4 Ibid. p. 11 Rawson said that euphemism are powerful linguistics tools that “are embedded so deeply in our language that few of us, even those who pride, themselves on being plainspoken, ever get through a day without using them”. The need for euphemism is both social and emotional, as it allows discussion of “touchy” or taboo subject such as sex, reproductive processes, personal appearances or religion, etc without enraging, outraging, or upsetting other people, and acts as a pressure valve whilst maintaining the appearance of civility. For example we can take these euphemism word from “Jennifer’s Body” scripts, the word “womb” for “cunt”, “hot one” for “sexy woman”, “PMS” for premenstrual syndrome, “J.C” for “Jesus Christ”, “going somewhere or gone” for “died”, “butt” for ass or arse and so on, All these euphemism appeared naturally in the process of everyday usage. People instinctively try to avoid the word not offend or to hurt one’s feelings. So euphemism is synonym that aims to at producing a deliberately mild effect. When people use them in proper situations, it means that they care about other people. Similarly, euphemisms are used to express taboo, as we feel, on some instinctual level, that the euphemism keeps us at safe distance from the taboo itself. Another use of euphemism is to elevate the status of something e.g. using “sanitation engineer” sound more exalted then does “garbage collector”, “underprivileged” sound much better than “poor and needy”, as does “senior citizens” rather than “old people” ; but in general, euphemism are used to express what is socially difficult to express in direct terms. These euphemisms surely give rise to language change trough the emergence or loss of some sense of lexemes, or suitable replacement in the higher style. Many euphemisms are figurative; many have been or are being the cause of “semantic change”. 5 These semantic changes lead the new meaning to be broader, narrower, more favorable, or less favorable. Besides that, the other meaning may change because of the exchange of perception or the similarity of characters. 6 Although each lexeme undergoes semantics change, it is still tied by meaning relation. Hence, together with the above explanation, the writer has in mind to bring about the research An Analysis of Semantic Change in Euphemistic Terms in the script “ Jennifer’s Body” movie. In this thesis, the writer intends to describe in detail what kind of euphemistic its self, how do meaning relation and semantic change undergone by euphemism terms that used in that movie based on the theory cited in theoretical framework.

B. Focus of the Study