Background of the Research

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Research

Literature is an abroad media to express people’s feeling. People can express their feelings, thoughts, experiences and also to share each other by using literature. Moreover, with Literature they express their thoughts not only use ordinary language but also they can use extraordinary language, because literature is the art of language. It uses languages as a mean to communicate their understanding of life or experiences. Literature has two aspects, its type or form and its content. The type or form is the things related with objects and essence of literature, such as someone’s life experiences in social and culture, art, characteristic of society and so on. Semi said that the essence of literature or literary work is a form and creation of the creative art with people and their real life as the object, then language is the medium. 1 Literary works convey the author’s thoughts as hisher reflection from real life that it has been seen, read, heard, and experienced. Literary also can be viewed as something which has any correlation with identity of nation or a group of society. Literary is unique language which is used in systematic pattern to express the complex feeling and ideas of the author. One of the easiest kind of Kinayati Djojosuroto, Analisis Teks Sastra dan Pengajarannya, Yogyakarta: Penerbit Pustaka, 2006 p. 17 literary work people make is lyric or song lyric which convey feelings, thoughts, life or real life experiences related with social life. Today, song lyric can be said as a literary work offers a model of real life as well as the literary work, it also a part of poetry, because it is constructed by intrinsic elements, such as plot, theme, character, setting, point of view, and consist of messages. Moreover, the extrinsic elements include the author’s background, the environment conditions, social life, and politics ideology and so on. Therefore, those elements make song lyric more factual to audiences. They as if had faced trouble of life chronology with plot so that they get the whole meaning and sense of the song lyric. Lyric can be defined as subjective poems, often brief, that express the feelings and thoughts of a single speaker who may or may not represent the poet. The lyric is more a poetic manner than a form. 2 Lyric is called poetry because it is conducted to express joy, sadness, doubt, wonder, decision, and surprise. Thus, lyric is a simplest poem of language. Poems which are commonly called lyrics have been written to express joy, sadness, doubt, decision, ennui, wonder, disappointment, and surprise. The lyric is the most common of all poetic forms. When people think of poetry, that which comes most readily to mind is a lyric poem. Lyric are among simplest poems of the language 3 . Lyric is taken from French “Lyrique” that firstly taken from old French of a lyre, also taken from Latin “Lyricus”, and from Greek “Lurikos” from word 2 Robert DiYanni, Literature; Reading fiction, Poetry, and Drama, New York: McGraw Hill,2002 p. 684. 3 P. Albert Duhamel and Richard E. Hugest, Literature Form an Function, New Jersey: Englewood Cliffs, 1965, p.214. “Lura”, “Lyre”. The word lyric was used for the words of a popular song about 1876 for the first time. 4 Song lyric is as well as lyric in poetry is a creation including author’s subjective feelings and expressions. It originally designed to be sung to a musical accompaniment. For some people, music is considered as a reaction of art which is made to entertain the human in the happy and sad situation. Music becomes one of the entertainment media for them. For song writers, music is one of the media to communicate their restiveness, anger, disappointment and hopefulness to something that has happened or will be happened around them. It usually has implicit and explicit meaning even it can be the abstract as to be completely unintelligible. It consists of words written as well as music going together or as the additional in music itself. Having different characteristic, song lyric differs from a message and it needed special approach to interpret its meaning and essence a song lyric. As the result, it is not easy to see when someone likes and hears a song lyric we could not say that he or she gets the meaning and messages that have within the lyric. As literary works, song lyric has proportion as the art that having rich meaning and relatively to understand by everyone. It containing of composition of words that is delivered by rhythm and convey messages contain problems of human life, such as: social condition, politics, history of wars, family, social status, etc. It is an expression of author’s feeling; nerves, anger, disappointment, and expectation to everything has happened around him or her. The author 4 . Song and Lyric, Wikipedia, free encyclopedia. Accessed on Mei 5, 2009. http:simple.wikipedia.orgwikisonglyric, conveys hisher thoughts and feeling within stanzas so as to audiences get the messages of the lyrics. It can be a real life condition and the environment, society, sadness and disappointment to the leader and government, and refusing protest toward politics policy. The authors represent every troubles and deviation that occur in real life through the lyric. So, lyric is one of the media to communicate their ideas or feeling. In short, lyric cannot be separated with literary and it can be analyzed by using one of approaches of literary criticism like sociology of literature. An author is also the member of society, who has to establish a communication between the author and the reader. Through the communication, the literary work can distribute to the reader as the devotee of literature. In the communication process, the author has been sending a message to the reader. The author rests on extrinsic elements that includes social and cultural aspects, and completed by intrinsic elements such as plot, character and characterization, setting, point of view and so on as the object of their works. Eminem is one of authors or songwriters often conducts lyrics containing of his life experiences, his social environment, and his family troubles and also he makes politic as his objects to put it on his lyrics. Eminem born Marshall Bruce Mathers III on October 17, 1972 is an American rapper, and both a Grammy and Oscar-winner. He is of mostly Scottish-American descent, and lives in suburban Detroit. Eminem is known as one of the most skillful and controversial rappers in the industry, becoming a crossover sensation. Eminem often writes lyrics consist of his life experiences, such as his environment, his childhood, and his family, even; his lyrics concern with society and political problems occur in the society. Among his lyrics that consisting of social phenomena are “Mosh”. While generally avoiding overtly political tones previously or if they were mentioned it was in passing, in late 2004 before the presidential election, Eminem released the song Mosh which harshly criticizes President George W. Bush. He protests toward Bush’s politics policy about aggression and war, especially in Iraq. He also raps about terrorisms and terrorists that have attack on September 2001. This lyric included on album Encore, Mathers fourth major-label album, was released later that year. Eminem considers himself neither a militant nor a political artist; he did have his own Hip Hop Political Convention as a parody of the national political conventions held in 2004. 5 Moreover, the lyric shows that he as citizen of the nation could not get the proper life as human life. He is the representation of all people who lives in poverty and unhealthy life tries to speak up and express his voice to against government that could not give the good quality life for the people especially poor people. For Eminem, the song lyrics are reflection of social life phenomena. He tries to represent the social phenomena in his lyrics. Expressing music through lyric, it is same that he communicated his language on lyrics, or described the social life in the language of lyrics, so that, language is a symbol which influences 5 Eminem Biography. Accessed on October 15, 2009 ttp:www.eminemlab.comeminembiography.html. social behavior. This is can be related with sociology of literature which sees that literary work as the mirror of human life and society conditions. Therefore, the writer interested to conduct a research of lyric related with sociology of literature that is one of the approaches of literary criticism. Based on explanation above, hence, the writer interested in Eminem’s song lyric ‘Mosh’ in ‘Encore’ album to be analyzed. According to the writer, the song lyric tells so much about social problems so it becomes interesting to choose it as the unit of analysis in this research. He decides to use the approach his research—sociology of literature that concern on social problems related with the author.

B. Focus of the Research