CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
This chapter describes the object of the study and also the methodology which was used by the writer in analyzing the problems. The object of the study
will be discussed in the first part and the methodology will be in the second part. The object of this study was the tense choices which were used in The Jakarta
Post headlines news and published in November 2007. Furthermore, the methodology conducted in this research included data collecting and data analysis.
A. Object of the Study
This research is concerned about the tense choices which were used in the news writing and the writer took the samples from The Jakarta Post on November
2007 especially the headline news. The object was analyzed based on its tense. As stated in Chapter II, tense is a verb form that expresses actions which occur on
certain time in the past, present, and future Murcia Freeman, 1983:62. Basically there are only two tenses in English, present tense and past tense. Each
tense can have a simple form and each can be combined with either progressive aspect or with perfective aspect or with both R.A. Close, 1977:241 and every
combinations of tense have different grammatical meanings from another. In a typical news story, tense is very relevant. Therefore, the writer took
the data from straight news, especially the headline news. As a form of straight news, the headline news must be an actual report and must deal only with fact and
39 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
the news served contains who, what, when, where, why, and how. The tense choices are very important in the news report because the tense convey the time
element or when element of the news report. The choice of tense in a news story is also significant to make the news more precise and to give more understanding
about the news especially the time element to the readers. The headline news was chosen as the object of study because the headline news is the most important
story of today’s newspaper Reddick, 1941: 250. The headline news always presents current and becomes the exclusive news, and those make them interesting
to be analyzed. As mentioned in the Chapter II, the format of headline news consists of
four parts, the headline, the text of the news story, the picture which illustrates the story, and also the caption, a few clear and well-chosen words to show the essence
of the picture story. The writer only took the headline and also the text of the story as the data because the significance of tense choices in news writing could only be
found on the headline and also on the text of the story. The
writer chose
The Jakarta Post as the source of the data because The Jakarta Post is the largest English newspaper in Indonesia with average
circulation of around 35,000 copies www.thejakartapost.com. The Jakarta Post has become a trusted newspaper in Indonesia in 1983 and had been read by
41,049 subscribers in December 1998. It means that The Jakarta Post must be able to offer the facts confidently and offer something that can be proven to gain
reader’s trust. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
In doing this study, it is impossible to take all the headline news articles of The Jakarta Post, therefore the writer limited the data based on the time of the
publication. The time limitation was used in order to focus the writer in collecting the samples of data. The data were taken from The Jakarta Post which was
published in November 2007. The November 2007 editions were chosen because these editions were easily available during the research. There were 30 articles of
headline news in The Jakarta Post issued in November 2007 and the writer took all of those articles to be analyzed further.
In conducting this study, the writer analyzed the tense choices on every finite clause of the articles rather than analyzed the tense choices in every
sentence. In news writing, some of the news are in the form of quotations and complex sentences and usually every quotation or complex sentence contains
more than a finite clause, that was why the writer preferred to analyze every finite clause rather than the sentence. According to Quirk et al 1973: 310, a finite
clause is a clause whose verb element is a finite verb phrase and a finite verb is a verb that can be limited in some way, such as in person, number through the use
of the concords, time relation through the use of tenses, and manner of conception through the use of mood.
B. Method of the Study
The analysis of the tense choices in The Jakarta Post headline news was categorized as a descriptive study. According to Sprinthall et al 1991: 98,
research is typically called descriptive when primary purpose of the research is PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
description. Since this study is descriptive, the aim of this research was describing the grammatical reasons of the tense choices in every finite clause, and the impact
toward the readers. This study also observed on how the pattern of language used in written and spoken language. The written language was observed through the
report written in the headline news, and the spoken language was represented by the direct speeches or the quotations which were recorded in the headline news.
In this study, the writer did a library research which is done by studying and analyzing some written sources. That was why, the writer needed to decide
any body of text as the corpus of the study. The corpus of the study was considered through samplings and representatives by constructing a smaller
sample of the whole variety. In other words the writer used a sample of a much larger population McEnery and Wilson, 2001: 78.
In this study, the population which was analyzed by the writer was all of the headline news. Because it was impossible to take all of the headline news as
the corpus of the study, the writer needed to decide the sampling frame. According to McEnery and Wilson 2001: 78, a sampling frame is the entire
population of text from which we will take our samples. Therefore, the writer decided The Jakarta Post headline news published in November 2007 as the
sampling frame. In this research, The Jakarta Post headline news published in November
2007 were used to represent all of the population of the headlines news. As mentioned in the object of the study, the writer took the November editions
because it was easier available during the research. The November editions were PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Kategori