1
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter consists of four parts, namely the background of the study, problem formulation, research objectives and research benefits. Each part
contributes important points to this thesis.
A. Background of the Study
Language varies according to its uses as well its users, according to where it is used and to whom, as well as according to who is using it Holmes,
2001: 223. Therefore, the addressees and the context will affect the choices of code or variety. The code and variety itself can be in form of language, dialect or
style. The illustrations about the choices of variety can be seen in the example about three different requests for information as follows:
1. From a friend Where were you last night? I rang to see if you wanted to come to the party?
2. In a court from a lawyer Could you tell the court where you were on the night of Friday the seventeenth
of March? 3. From a teacher to his pupils in school on the day after Halloween.
I know some of you went ‘trick-or-treating’ last night and so I thought we might talk a bit today about how you got on. Did you go out last night Jimmy?
Holmes, 2001: 223
The three examples above are actually asking the same matter. The addresser, the one who is asking the question, asks the addressees whether they are out at night.
The difference between the three utterances are stylistic differences. Style in linguistics has gained prominence in at least two branches of
linguistics, sociolinguistics and stylistics. The focus of style in those two branches of linguistic is different depending on the point of view. In sociolinguistic, style of
language may have the effect on the society since sociolinguistic studies the
2 language which is used by society. Furthermore, stylistic features also reflect
people’s group membership. Moreover, it also reflects the contexts in which language is used. The context here means the context of the addressee. Addressee
plays important role in deciding someone’s style, especially the age of addressee and the social background of the addressee Holmes, 2001: 223.
Related to the age of addressee, many speakers use different styles in addressing different people. In addressing elderly people, whether in spoken or
written text, people will use more complicated words and use longer and more complex sentences. In the other hand, in addressing the youngsters especially
children, people tend to use more common words and use shorter and simpler sentences. Therefore, it can be concluded that different addressees clearly
influence the language used Holmes, 2001: 226. Further, Holmes also gives examples on how social background of the
addressee can also affect the people’s style of language. This fact is illustrated by the utterances pronounced by newsreaders from different radio stations in
Australia. The pronunciation has been recorded and scripted as follow: 1. Last week the British Prime Minister Mrs Margaret Thatcher met the
Australian Premier Mr Bob Hawke in Canberra…Their next meeting will not be for several months.
2. Las’ week British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher met Australian Premier Bob Hawke in Canberra…Their nex’ meeting won’t be for sev’ral months
Holmes, 2001: 228.
The illustrations above show some differences in terms of pronunciation and grammar. In example b, compared to example a, there is simplification of
consonant clusters, so the word last [lɑːst] becomes [lɑːs] and the word next [nekst] becomes [neks]. Furthermore, in example b, the definite article the is
3 omitted before the titles Prime Minister and Premier and the honorifics Mrs and
Mr disappear and there is the contraction won’t Holmes, 2001: 228. As an addition, the utterances above are performed by newsreaders in
different radio stations in New Zealand. Example a is performed by a newsreader in a prestigious National Radio Network whose audiences are older
and better-healed. Meanwhile, example b is performed by a newsreader in a middle-of-the-road station whose audiences are from the lower and end of
spectrum. In other words, it can be said that the audiences for example a is more educated and they have a higher social status compared to the audiences for
example b. Based on the example, it can be seen that although the news is the same but the style of the newsreaders is different due to the different audiences as
well. This illustration is able to proof that different addressees or audience is a very significant influence on a speakers’ style Holmes, 2001: 228.
To this point, it can be seen that the concept of style in linguistic field has an extensive existence in sociolinguistic field. However, as far as the writer can
note, the concept of style occurs not only in sociolinguistics but also in stylistics itself. Outside the boundary of linguistics, the concept of style also occurs, as for
instance in the history of art and in literary criticism, and it also exists as an everyday term with a rather imprecise meaning and ambiguous edges Jucker,
1992: 1. Thus, it is very common to use the word style with reference to the shape or design of something, for example the minimalist style of a house. Or
else, it is very common to use the word style to describe the way something is presented and to describe someone’s manner of writing, speaking or performing.
Finally, style can be used to say the quality that someone owns on fashion,
4 smartness or a superior manners, like ‘He dresses in style’ or ‘They live such a
luxurious style’ Verdonk, 2002: 1. Due to its ambiguous meanings edges, the concept of style should be defined appropriately depending on the area of
discussion. In linguistics, in spite of the differences between the concept of style, it is
generally agreed that “style is a comparative concept in that it describes some relevant differences between a text or a discourse and some other texts or
discourses; or, in some methodological frameworks, with some kind of implicit or explicit norm” Jucker, 1992: 4. Therefore, style generally applies to language
that has been produced by speakers with their beliefs, aims and goals in specific situations and in particular physical, social and temporal environments. In other
words, the concept of style applies to real language or parole Saussure, 1965 and performance Chomsky, 1986. Based on this definition, the concept of style
can always be found in the final product of speakers’ performance, such as in written texts and spoken discourse since it is the realization of the language
knowledge that speakers have owned. According to some experts in linguistics such as, Chomsky, the study of
the real language is not interesting at all and it gains no significance and it has no status at all in linguistic theory Jucker, 1992: 4. Furthermore, Chomsky explains
why real language is not interesting at all. The reasons are because “it appears to have no significance and it has no status in linguistics theory” Jucker, 1994: 1.
However, the realization of the real language in written texts or spoken discourse has a systematic variation and it is highly organized. These two points, the
variation and the organization of the texts and discourse, may lead to stylistic
5 investigation. Therefore, a stylistic investigation is “addressed first and foremost
to the problem of uncovering some of the regularity underlying the variation and seeming unorderliness of E-language” Jucker, 1994: 1.
Hence, it can be said that style in linguistics has gained prominence in at least two branches of linguistics, sociolinguistics and stylistics. The focus of style
in those two branches of linguistics is different depending on the point of view. In sociolinguistics, style of language may have the effect on the society since
sociolinguistic studies the language which is used by society Jucker, 1992: 4. However, in traditional stylistics, the focus is on the style itself. Style here means
the language features which are used in certain literary texts. Those language features are distinctive and they are also thoughtfully chosen by the authors.
Therefore, stylistics, the study of style, can be defined as the analysis of distinctive expression in language and the description of its purpose and effect
Verdonk, 2002: 4. Distinctive expression in a text may have different forms. The forms
might be in the forms of typography, repeated vowels and consonants, choice of words, grammatical structures and many others. Writers who understand and
appreciate the rules of the language know how to break the rules to create certain distinctive features in a text. Poets, for example, break the rules with unorthodox
indentations, mid-sentence capitalization and other departures from Standard English which serve their purposes Itule and Anderson, 1999: 176.
Therefore, this research aims to explore one of the language features which is distinctively found in a text, especially in the newspaper article. The
reason why newspaper articles are chosen is that news writers, like poets, have
6 their own rules to depart selectively from the ‘standard English’ which is
emphasized in composition courses. Another reason is that newspaper language has often been the subjects of linguistic investigations. Study on newspaper itself
can be considered as a media study. As O’ Keeffe 2011 says that media itself is a very board term since it compasses print and broadcast genres, that is anything
from newspaper to chat show. The academic area of media studies cuts across a number of disciplines including communication, sociology, political science,
cultural studies, and philosophy. According to O’Keeffe as well, the study of media also comes under the radar of linguistics because “at the core of these
media is language, communication and the making of meaning, which is obviously a great interest to a linguist.”
Over the years, many studies of language and the media have been focused on the written genres, particularly newspapers. The reason why
newspapers are used is that they are more readily available for analysis compared to spoken media discourse. The investigations are either using just one newspaper
or comparing two different newspapers usually a broadsheet paper and a tabloid. Some experts have conducted some studies on newspaper language. O’Keeffe
2011 notes down several studies of written texts, Toolan 1988 examines the language of press advertising, Wallace 1977, Ghadessy 1988 and Bhatia
1993 examine sport reporting in newspapers. McQuail 1994 and White 1997 examine how newspapers have created a model of social order.
One of the distinctive features that can be examined in written texts is grammatical features Crystal, 2006: 8. According to Crystal, grammatical
features means, “the many possibilities of syntax and morphology, defines in
7 terms of such factors as the distinctive use of sentence structure, word order, and
word inflections.” As an addition, grammatical features are also considered as one of the categories in stylistic study Leech and Short, 1981: 6. This study is
conducted to explore more on one of the grammatical features which can be found in the written texts, the determiner deletion. Thus, it will try to explore more about
determiner deletion in English language newspapers. Determiner deletion here means the dropping of the articles like ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’.
The dropping of the articles and other linguistic items is called as ellipsis. In the interest of economy in written communication, especially in newspaper
reporting, good usage of English accepts the omission of certain pattern or words. However, the omission should obey certain rule in order to enhance the meaning
Ayodele, 1988. In newspapers, where the nature of communication is in a hurry and governed by time deadlines and timelines and by space story size and item
position, often practices ellipsis and one of the items which is omitted is the determiner. This pattern will not be seen clearly, unless depth observation is
conducted. Therefore, this thesis aims to observe the phenomenon of the deletion in English language newspapers, especially those which can be found in
Indonesia. There are three English language newspapers which are going to be used
as the objects of this study, namely The Jakarta Post, The Jakarta Globe and International New York Times. The first two are local English newspapers and the
last one is a global English newspaper. The writer of this research is going to take only five articles from each newspaper. The length of each article itself is more
less 800-900 words. International New York Times is used in this research as a
8 comparison to the local newspaper. The reason is due its status as a global
newspaper. Therefore, the news writers who write for International New York Times are native speakers of English or people who have a very good mastery of
English. Then, International New York Times can be compared to the local English-language newspapers whose news writers are mostly Indonesian.
For that reason, this research aims to find out about what determiners are used in the articles, which determiner deletion occurs in those three newspapers
and what are the possible effects from the determiner deletion. Later, the findings are also hoped to show the different style between Indonesian news writers and
foreign news writerss in terms of determiner deletion.
B. Problem Formulation
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