Background of the Analysis

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Analysis

Language plays a great part in our life. It means that every human being in every nation needs and has language. Language is a way of conveying or sharing ideas to others and getting them to grasp new facts. As a fundamental means of communication, language is used to express human’s needs, wishes, desires and intentions. Many people use language to express their thoughts, feeling and information to negotiate or interact in economic and politic activities. Communication exists with language, that’s why the human being cannot be separated from language. According to Sapir 1921: 8, “Language is purely human and non instinctive method of communication ideas, emotion, and desires by means of system voluntary produces symbols”. In addition, Mario Finochiaro 1974: 20 says, “Language is a system of arbitrary, vocal symbol which permits all people in a given culture, or other people who have learned the system of that culture to communicate or interact”. From definitions of language above, we may conclude that language is system of arbitrary produces symbols to express the ideas, emotions, and desires in communicating each other. Language consists of three levels or strata, namely Phonology, Lexicogrammatical, and DiscourseSemantic. Halliday 1978: 40 says, “…any text represents an actualization a path through the system at each level : the level of meaning, the level of saying or wording, to use the folk of linguistic term for the lexicogrammatical system, and of course the level of sounding or writing.” In other words, language is a system of semiotic that expressed by PhonologyGraphology Universitas Sumatera Utara sounding or writing, Lexicogrammatical saying or wording and DiscourseSemantic. One level of language is discourse. Concerning with discourse, there are many writers who define about discourse. Some of them are mentioned below : 1. Kress 1985 : 27 says, “Discourse is a category that belongs to and derives from the social domain, and text is a category that belongs to and derives from the linguistics domain. 2. Stubbs 1983 : 10 says, “Discourse is language above the sentence or above clause. 3. Hartman and Stork 1972 says, “Discourse is a text which forms a fairly complete unit, which is usually restricted to the successive utterance of a single speaker conveying a message. From the definition of discourse above, we may conclude that “discourse is a study related to language, texts, sentences, clauses and units in a written or spoken passage and has a fairly complete unit”. There are many kinds of discourse, such as prose, poems, speech, conversation, composition, lyric of song, radio script, film, symbol, text in a book, newspaper articles, magazine and newsmagazine articles. Language has three functions or metafunction of language Halliday, 1994 they are : 1. Ideational Function 2. Interpersonal Function 3. Textual Function The Ideational function consists of logical and experiential function. The experiential function is realized by the transitivity system. Transitivity is normally understood as the grammatical feature which indicates if a verb takes a direct object. Universitas Sumatera Utara In the concept of transitivity found in Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar, there are three components of what Halliday calls a transitivity process : - The process itself realized by a verbal group - Participants involved in the process realized by a nominal group - Circumstances associated with the process realized by adverbial group or prepositional phrase The process consists of Material Process process of doing, Mental Process process of sensing, Relational Process process of being, Verbal Process process of saying, Behavioral Process the combination of psychological and physiological behavior, and Existential Process represents that something exist and happen. The participants are directly involved in the process : the one who 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 This thesis only concerns with the Ideational function. In the ideational function there is a system which is called transitivity. Transitivity system is a presentation of meaning in a clause. The research about transitivity has been done before by some people, e.g “An Analysis of Transitivity Clause in the Headlines of The Jakarta Post” Fahreni,1999, “An Analysis of transitivity process in the English script of Kangguru radio” Mandasari,2005 and “An Analysis of Two Types of Transitivity Process in George Bush’s Speeches Susanto,2007. Because of this, I choose the article of newsmagazine to be analyzed. I take the Worldview’s article of Newsweek to find the six types of transitivity process and get the most dominant Universitas Sumatera Utara process which characterizes this article, whether it is same or not with the previous research. Newsweek is an international newsmagazine which is published weekly by NEWSWEEK, Inc., 251 west 57 th street, New York. It has five main topics : Society and The Art, World Affairs, Special Report, Department and Business. In Department topic, there are five articles: Periscope, Perspective, Worldview, The Tip Sheet and Last World. My research is focused on Worldview’s articles written by FAREED ZAKARIA which tells about what has happened over the world on real situation. I only take three Worldview’s articles of 2008 as the data in my thesis. In analyzing the data, I use the Systemic Functional Linguistic Approach Theory SFLT of Halliday as the bases of analysis. I choose SFL theory because this theory often appears in social situation or our daily life, either spoken or written. This theory focuses on the purposes and uses of language. This theory also claims that language is functional and language use is unique and can be explored. Universitas Sumatera Utara

1.2 Scope of the Analysis