The Background of the Analysis

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Background of the Analysis

Human beings live in the world in togetherness, and they live in relationship to others as social creature. They make contact by communicating and associating each others. All of these are best performed by language. As a fundamental means communication, language is used to convey or share ideas and express thoughts, human’s needs, wishes, intentions and desires. Communication types can be a verbal or written. Both types of communication is a purposeful activity. Communication can only take place successfully if the means of communication is agreed upon by its users, and thus language has a social, and conventional aspect. Communication exists with language. “Language is a system of semiotics. It means language is realized in symbols or sign that has meaning”. Halliday, 1978:44 In addition, Language is purely human and non instinctive method of communication ideas, emotion and desires by of system voluntary produces symbols”. Sapir, 1921: 8. From definition of language above, it can be concluded that language is a system of arbitrary produced symbols to express the ideas, emotions, and desires in communicating each others. Language is a social phenomenon, it has the tendency as means of doing than knowing. Language consists of three levels, namely Phonology sounding and writing, Lexicogrammatical saying or wording and Discourse Semantic.“……., any text represents an actualization a path through the system at each level: level meaning, the level of saying or wording, to use the folk- Universitas Sumatera Utara linguistic term for the lexicogrammatical system. And of course the level of sounding or writing” Halliday 1978:40. In other words, the level of meaning, the level of saying or wording, and the level of sounding or writing in language are the system of semiotic expressed by Lexicogrammatical, Phonology, and Discourse. In the last few decades, language has been studied in scientific way. Many linguists are appeared and interested in analyzing how language is structured and used in conveying which are known as system for they establish a theory called Systemic Linguistics. This theory stresses on communication. In other words, it concerns with relation between language and context in which it is used. The branch of linguistics that concerns with text is Discourse Analysis. Discourse Analysis concerns with the relationship between language and situation. Discourse is defined in two ways, a particular unit of language above the sentence a particular focus on language use. A particular unit of language that is larger than sentence is a structure way and the use of language for social, expressive and referential. Then, a structure way is called structuralism and the realization of functions is called functionalism. Discourse Analysis has to be found on a study language system. The main reason for studying the system is to throw light on discourse, on what people say, write, listen, and read. Both system and text have to be in focus of attention. By starting from the system we can see the text in its aspect as a process. Language has three functions of metafunction of language. The ways in which human beings use language are classified into three broad categories. Universitas Sumatera Utara a. Language is used to organize, understand and express perception of our own consciousness. Ideational function is classified into two sub functions. The experiential and the logical. The experiential function is concerned with content or ideas, while the logical function is concerned with the relation between ideas. The ideational metafunction consist of logical that is realized by the clause system. b. Language is used to enable us to participate in communicative acts with other people, to express and understand feelings and attitudes. This function is called as the interpersonal function. The interpersonal metafunction is realized by the mood system. c. Language is used to relate what is said or written to the real world or to other linguistics events. It involves the use of language to organize the text itself. This is called as the textual metafunction is realized by the system. These metafunctions have a systemic relationship with the lexicogrammar of the language Halliday,1978:109 In the concept of transitivity Halliday, 2004:107 proposes three components of a transitivity process: a The process itself realized by a verbal group b Participants involved in the process realized by a nominal group c Circumstances associated with the process realized by adverbial group or prepositional phrase. The process consists of Material process process of doing, Relational process process of being, mental process process of sensing, Behavioral process process of physiological and psychological behavior, Verbal process Universitas Sumatera Utara process of saying, and Existential process represents that something exists or happens. The participants are directly involved in the process :the one that does, behaves, senses, says, is or exists, participants are also centrally involved in the process by being affected by it, the one that is done to, sensed etc. While circumstances are typical adjuncts. They answer such questions as when, where, why, how, how many and as what. They realize meanings about time, place, manner, cause accompaniment, matter and role. This study only concerned with the ideational function. In the ideational function there is a system which called transitivity. The system of transitivity is a presentation of meaning in a clause. The writer chooses the articles of magazine to be analyzed. The writer takes “Arts” articles of Time Magazine to find the transitivity process and get the most dominant process which characterizes this article. Time The International Magazine of Events Magazine is a weekly general interest magazine. It was founded in 1923 by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce. It is in America. Time has seven main topics: Briefing, Commentary, The Well, Life, Global Business, Arts, and Cover Story. The writer only takes “Arts” articles in February and March 2009 as the data of this study. In analyzing the data, the writer uses the Systemic Functional Linguistic SFL of Halliday as the basic of the analysis. The writer chooses SFL because this theory often appears in social situation or our daily lives, either spoken or written. This theory focuses on the purposes and the uses of language. This theory also claims that language is functional and language use is unique and can be explored. 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1.2 The Scope of the Analysis