23 represented without any displayed picture. In brief, the collected data consisted of
two forms – audio MP3 and written forms song lyrics. The aim of collecting
both forms is to obtain the conformity between sound symbolic words found in written lyrics and their audio version.
D. Research Instruments and Data Gathering Technique
Since this research applied qualitative research, specifically content analysis as its method, there were two instruments employed here. First, the
researcher played an important role as a human instrument which is a characteristic of qualitative research, as stated by Merriam that
“the researcher is the primary instrument for data collection a
nd data analysis” 2009, p. 15. Thus, the researcher played the major role in interpreting the result of collected data and
analyzed data. The second instrument was two observational tables used to present the data collected by the researcher.
There were two steps in gathering all data for this research in outline. First, the researcher searched English children songs along with their lyrics provided by
various educational websites; in other words, it was the process of transcribing songs. The researcher then sorted them into two types, namely lullabies and play
songs, as stated by Trehub and Trainor 1998. However, the researcher did not limit the topic coverage of songs as long as they met one or more categories of
sound symbolism; its purpose was for enriching the discussion of this research findings.
24
Table 3.1 Lyrics of Lullabies Play Songs LULLABIES PLAY SONGS
No. Title
Lyric
1. 2.
3.
Table 3.1 is used to record the whole lyrics of songs. Each lyric was obtained by copying them from their original sources. Besides, the researcher also
searched their MP3 or audio version. Since a number of song lyrics showed in the sources were not the same as their audio version, the researcher made some
revision or transcribed them manually to result the fixed and final lyrics. In other words, the researcher did some cross-checking process to ensure the accuracy
between the songs and their lyrics. Then, when there were words indicating sound symbolism found in the lyrics, the researcher marked the words in bold type to be
more visible for the readers.
E. Data Analysis Technique
To analyze the collected data, there were several techniques implemented. After the data gathering process, the researcher determined which sound
symbolism category fitting the words marked in bold type by referring to the theory of sound symbolism stated by Hinton et al. 1994. This step was regarded
as the classification technique of this research. To conduct this classification, the researcher created a table comprising a number of columns consisting of the songs
