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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
This chapter will be divided into 3 sections, they are object of the study, approach
of the study and method of the study. A.
Object of the Study
The object of the study is a novel entitled The Help by Kathryn Stockett. This novel is published by Penguin Group and firstly released in 2009. This novel
consists of 464 pages. The author is a white American who writes about the life of black housemaids.
This novel is inspired by the life story of her brother’s black housemaids, Abileen Cooper. Her life story about being a housemaid inspired her
to make a novel and also inspired her to name the main character in the novel as Aibeleen.
This novel successfully wo n the readers’ hearts, it was proven by becoming
the New York Best Seller in 2011. In 2011, this novel was also adapted into a film with the same title, The Help. This film also made the role player, Octavia
Spencer, who acted as Minny, won Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The film was also nominated into three categories in Academy Award, for Best
Pictures, for Best Actress for Viola Davis who acted as Aibeleen, and for Best Supporting Actress for Jessica Chastain as Celia Foote.
This novel is about the life of black housemaids in 1960s. The life of the black housemaids that have to face separation from the white people. There are
three main characters in the novel. Two are the black housemaids, they are Aibeleen and Minny. They are good friends. The other main character is a white
young lady named Skeeter. Aibileen and M inny works as housemaids in Sketeer’s
friend house. Skeeter works as a journalist, and she wants to change the life of black housemaids through the book she writes. She asks for help to Aibeleen and
Minny to tell their life story about being black housemai ds, that’s not an easy job,
because at that time white and black people cannot easily contact to each other or the black will get into trouble. In the ending, Skeeter successfully publishes her
book and the names of the black housemaids are kept confidential.
B. Approach of the Study
In order to analyze the work, the approach used in this analysis is the contrastive linguistics approach. A contrastive linguistic approach in this thesis is
aimed to compare two or more languages or dialects, and then it is to find the differences and the similarities.
This approach is the most suitable approach to achieve the purpose of this research, which is to compare African American Vernacular English and Standard
English. The linguistics features of African American Vernacular English compares to the linguistics features of Standard English. The linguistics features
including syntactical, phonological, and lexical. By comparing the linguistic features, we can know the differences between these two varieties of English.
This approach is also beneficial to find out the causes of two different cultural communication among the characters in the novel. This approach is used to
compare the dialogues between a black housemaid and a black housemaid, a black housemaid and a white master, a white master to a white master so the causes can
be found out.
C. Method of the Study
The method used in this study was contrastive linguistic study. The data to conduct the analysis were taken from novel The Help, from the dialogue of the
characters from chapter one until chapter four. Then those data were elaborated by some theories from books and internet websites.
1. Data Collection
The data were collected from the novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett. First
thing the writer did was to read the whole novel. While reading the novel, the writer decided to look for the linguistic features including syntactical,
phonological and lexical features. For the linguistic features of African American Vernacular English, the data were taken from two black housemaids, Aibileen and
Minny in chapter one to chapter four. This thesis used sampling method because these four chapters had represented the linguistic features needed in the analysis.
Then, the writer re-read the novel carefully and marked the linguistic features shown in each page of the four chapters.
Not only marking on each page, but the writer also made tables of the linguistics features shown in the novel. It would be easier for the writer to
organize the data. The writer also tried to find out the causes of two different cultural communication among the characters. For the causes, the data were taken
from the conversations between the characters in chapter one until chapter four. The two different cultural communications were taken from between the black
housemaid to the black housemaid Aibeleen to Minny Minny to Aibeleen, between the black housemaid to the white master AibeleenMinny to Miss
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