Background of the Analysis

I. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Analysis

Speech means communication or expression of thought in spoken words Crystal 1980:327. It is a general word for a discourse delivered to an audience. Through speech, speaker conveys a message to the audience either it is to convey information or insight, to persuade or to motivate. A speaker must engage his or her audience with a central idea or propositions. If a speaker does not have a clear reason to give a speech, the speech should not be given. Discourse is a stretch of language larger than a sentence Crystal 1980:115. It is natural spoken or written language, with meaning being transferred through a sentence of a text, in context. Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the context in which it is used McCarthy 1991:5. Some words and expression are used to show discourse is constructed. They can show the connection between what has already been written or said and what is going to be written or said. They can indicate what speakers think about what they are saying. The various linguistic devices that create a text should be ‘coherence’, the way a sentence makes sense, and ‘cohesive marker’ which create link across the boundaries of sentence and also chain related item together. One of linguistic devices is discourse markers. Discourse markers are words or phrases that mark a boundary in discourse and indicate discourse relations like ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘but’ and a like. As Universitas Sumatera Utara what Schriffin 1987:49 says “Discourse markers are part of the more general analysis of discourse coherence-how speaker and hearers jointly integrate forms, meaning, and actions to make overall sense out of what is said”. Discourse markers signal relationships between segments of a discourse. Discourse markers signal how the current utterance related to prior discourse. They organize and extended stretches of discourse helping to make text cohesive and coherent. It also has contribution to the message. Related to these principles, the writer found that there are many discourse markers such as markers of connectives in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s speeches. The writer considers that discourse markers are important to be analyzed in order to show the function and the influence of using them in written text of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s speeches. Sometimes they are just said without meaning but otherwise they show a cohesion relationship between the markers and the sentence said when the markers are presented. Thus, the title of this thesis is The Use of Discourse Markers in Written Text of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Speeches.

1.2 Scope of the Analysis