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In a story, a conversation takes only a few parts. The conversation is usually followed by descriptions of who is talking, how the person acts, and the
feeling of the person. These descriptions are used as an explanation during the conversation. In drama, the conversation is the main content. A conversation in a
drama is more like a conversation in daily life because a drama is made to be performed. There are also descriptions in a drama but it is lesser than in a story.
Both a story and a drama contain description inside, while in a comic strip, it is almost nothing. Instead of the description, pictures are used to explain the
situation. One of comic strips written by Art and Chip Sansom, The Born Loser is
one of the examples of comic strip that tells about people’s daily life that contains conversation inside. The Born Loser is one of the comic strips that The Jakarta
Post chooses to publish inside their newspaper along with some other comic
strips. This comic strip tells about Brutus Thornapple’s life. Brutus Thornapple is the main character in this comic strip. There are also other characters; they are
Gladys Thornapple, Wilberforce Thornapple, Rancid W. Veeblefester, Ramona Gargle, and Hurricane Hattie OHara.
In this paper, the writer intends to analyze the conversation in a comic strip. In order to analyze the conversation, a conversation analysis is needed to see
how to analyze the preference structure used in the comic strip. The writer also intends to reveal the patterns of dispreferred response that Brutus uses as the
response to the first part, here the writer uses the series of optional elements of dispreferred response by Yule as the guidance. Through this study, the write
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wants to inform the readers about the preference structure of the comic strip The Born Loser
and what the patterns of dispreferred response that Brutus uses as the response to the first part are.
B. Problem Formulation
Two problems are formulated to analyze the topic, they are: 1.
What kinds of conversation structure are used in the comic strip? 2.
What are the patterns of dispreferred response that Brutus uses as the response to the first part?
C. Objectives of the Study
Since the conversation analysis helped on the understanding of utterance meaning by showing how large proportion of the situated significance of
utterances can be traced to their surrounding sequential environment, it is necessary to know the preference structure of the conversation in the comic strip
to know how the characters react to certain utterance. Therefore, the first objective of the study is applied to identify the preference structure used in the comic strip
The Born Loser .
By finding the preference structure, the dispreferred response of the first part in conversation can be found. This finding may help to study the second
objective of the study, the writer uses the series of optional elements of dispreferred response by Yule as the guidance to find the patterns of dispreferred
response that Brutus uses as the response to the first part.
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D. Definition of Terms
There are four definitions of terms used in this topic. They are conversation, conversation analysis, dispreferred, and comic strips. It is important
to know the terms in order to avoid the misunderstanding. 1. Conversation
Conversation is discourse mutually constructed and negotiated in the time between speakers: it is usually informal and unplanned. Cutting, 2003: 28
2. Conversation Analysis Conversation Analysis is an approach that studies the way that: what the
speaker says dictates the type of answer expected, and that speakers take turns when they interact. Cutting, 2003: 24
3. Dispreferred Dispreferred is the structurally unexpected response or next act. Yule,
1996: 79 4. Comic Strip
Comic strip is a series of drawings inside boxes that tell a story and are often printed in newspapers. Hornby, 2002: 253
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CHAPTER II THEORITICAL REVIEW
This chapter is divided into three parts. The first part is Review of Related Studies. In this part there are two reviews given by two people. The second part is
Review of Related Theories. This part discusses theories that are going to be used in this study. The third is Theoretical Framework. This part explains the use of the
theories in order to solve the problem formulation.
A. Review of Related Study
Miller in
Conversation Analysis
and the
Book of
Jonah: A Conversation
tried to analyze the conversation in Raymond Persons book In Conversation with Jonah
with Conversation Analysis. She found that Person succeeds in analyzing the conversation in Jonah, and Person also succeeds in
highlighting that dialogue and the structure of biblical narrative is important. Nonetheless, the analysis of conversation in Jonah which Person has
presented has been successful in a number of respects. He has highlighted the importance of dialogue and its structural significance for biblical
narrative. He has shown how the first part of an adjacency pair produces the expectation of a relevant and acceptable response; where a response is
absent, a gap is opened up which the reader must attempt to fill. He has shown that the linear order of narrative may be displaced chronologically
in order to place the second part of an adjacency pair immediately after the first
part http:www.arts.ualberta.caJHSArticlesarticle2.htm
6 September 2009.
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Miller tried to show how Person analyzed the narrative using Conversation Analysis that could help him in finding that in the narrative the order of the linear
order can be changed from the second part of an adjacency pair immediately after the first part.
The other related study comes from Andi Muhammad Yauri S. Koherensi dalam wacana komik the born loser Coherence in The Born Loser Comic Discourse.
In his writing, he analyzed the coherence of the conversation in the comic The Born
Loser . He used linguistic tools such as reference, substitution, deletion,
conjunctions and lexical. From his analysis, he found that the cohesive in discourse that is marked with a device is used to create the harmony of in the
comic discourse
http:www.scribd.comdoc46177755Koherensi-Dalam- Wacana-the-Born-Loser-Artikel-Tesis 6 September 2009.
Just like Miller and Yauri S., the writer also analyses conversation in a comic strip that is The Born Loser. The analysis that the writer is going to reveal
is about the dispreferred response of the preference structure in the comic strips. It is similar to Miller analysis but the writer here wants to analyze the structure of
the conversation in the comic in order to see the pattern of dispreferred response that Brutus uses as the response to the first part.
B. Review of Related Theories
In this review of related theories, the writer will use two theories, they are Conversation Analysis and Preference Structure. First, in the theory of
Conversation Analysis there are three parts of Conversation Analysis that the
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writer will use to analyze the conversation in comic strip The Born Loser, they are turn-taking, adjacency pairs, and sequences. Second, the theory of Preference
Structure, they are preferred and dispreferred.
1. Conversation Analysis
Cutting in Pragmatics and Discourse: A resource book for students 2003: 27, 28 stated that Conversation Analysis takes a „bottom-up‟ approach: it begins
with the conversation itself, and then leads to the structure of the conversation. Conversation Analysis looks the conversation as a process. It looks at the flow of
the event little by little and what it implies from the conversation between speakers. Conversation itself is a discourse that formed by different speakers at a
time that is unplanned and usually informal 2003: 28. In conversation analysis there are 3 parts, they are turn-taking, adjacency
pairs, and sequences. Those three parts may help to find the structure of the conversation. Below are the explanations of those parts.
a. Turn-taking
In most countries and cultures there is only one person speak at the time. It naturally happened when someone is speaking, the other is listening. The people
take turns; when the first speaker finishes talking, another speaker begins to talk. “All cultures have their own preferences as to how long a speaker should
hold the floor, how they indicate that they finished and another speaker should hold the floor, how they indicate that they have finished and
another speaker can take the floor, when a new speaker can start, whether the new speaker can overlap and interrupt, when speaker can pause and for
how long.” Cutting, 2003: 29
