114 “clickety-click” to mean “sixty six” because the word “six” sounded alike to the
final part of the word “clickety-click.” From the explanation above, it could be said that onomatopoeia words in
Cockney was not always used to describe the sound of nature. It was many times used as the words that replaced the intended words in English so that it would
burden the lay people to understand the conversation among the speakers of Cockney. The writer also found that besides the impression of words and
onomatopoeia words, such as “pub” and “rub-a-dub-dub,” the reasons to employ onomatopoeia words in Cockney was also because of the rhyming sounds
between the words in English and the onomatopoeia words, such as “clickety- click” and “six.”
3. Meaning Modification in Cockney and Bahasa Binan
Changing the meaning of words deals with the effort of the speakers to enrich the vocabulary by varying the meanings of words in a language. There are
some processes of changing the meaning of words, namely conversion, metaphorical extension, broadening, narrowing, semantic drift, and reversal. The
explanations below elaborate the processes of changing the meaning of words found in the study.
a. Conversion in Cockney and Bahasa Binan
Akmajian, et al. 2001 define conversion as the process of word formation by changing the meanings of words through modifying the word
category. This process enables the speakers of a language to use a noun as a verb without even adding any affixes to the noun. One of the English words that
115 undergo the process of conversion is the word “ponytail.” It turns out that the
word “ponytail” could perform both as a noun and as a verb without any morphological modification or affix addition. Therefore, the speakers of English
then could use both “a ponytail” and “to ponytail” in their conversation. However, the case of conversion in Bahasa Indonesia appeared as a rare
phenomenon to observe. Bahasa Indonesia is well known for its nature that adds the affixes to form a noun into a verb. This fact is clearly depicted in the word
mengancingkan whose stem was kancing, which meant “a button.” In fact, the speakers of Bahasa Indonesia must add some affixes, namely the prefix me- and
the suffix –kan to the word kancing in order to say “to button.” Therefore, it could be said that case of conversion in Bahasa Indonesia was rarely found. The case of
conversion in Cockney appeared as various as the conversion case in English as it is seen in Table 4.24.
Table 4.24: Conversion in Cockney
Word Part of
Speech Meaning
Part of Speech
Meaning
alderman’s nail noun
tail verb
to tail boat race
noun face
verb to face
bucket and pail noun
jail verb
to jail blackbird and
thrush noun
brush verb
to brush
It was seen that most of the time the conversion in Cockney was in the form of binary expressions. In other words, it could be said that many times the
conversion in Cockney never appeared in single words. However, those binary expressions or the phrases behaved as words in Cockney. Therefore, even though
116 the word “Alderman’s nail” was in the form of a phrase, the phrase was regarded
as a word in Cockney. In conclusion, it could be said that “Alderman’s nail” was in the same level as the word “tail” in English.
From Table 4.24, it was seen that all the binary expressions were in the form of nouns that could also perform as verbs without any attachment of affixes.
This phenomenon was seen in the word “Alderman’s nail,” which was used to mean “a tail” or “to tail” in English. In fact, the speakers of Cockney could both
say “to Alderman’s nail” and “an Alderman’s nail” in their conversation without any morphological modification to the word.
The writer saw that most of the time the thing that drove the speakers of Cockney to have a word as a conversion was simply because the binary
expression rhymed with the intended meaning or the word to say. Thus, the speakers of Cockney preferably used the word “to Alderman’s nail” to convey “to
tail” merely because the word “Alderman’s nail” rhymed with the word “tail” in English. It was also seen that the speakers of Cockney often clipped the binary
expression to ease the communication. Therefore, the speakers of Cockney frequently used “to Alderman” instead of “to Alderman’s nail” to mean “to tail”
because the word “to Alderman” was simpler to use. The same case also happened to the other words listed in Table 4.24. The
word “boat race” basically acted both as a noun and as a verb without any attachment of affixes in Cockney. Thus, the speakers of Cockney could actually
use both “to boat” and “a boat” to mean “to face” and “a face.”
117 The word “bucket and pail” and the word “blackbird and thrush” were
other phrases or binary expressions that behaved as nouns and verbs in Cockney. Therefore, these words enabled the speakers of Cockney to use “to bucket” or “to
bucket and pail” to mean “to jail” or to use “to blackbird” or “to blackbird and thrush” to mean “to brush” despite of their basic functions as nouns of “a jail” and
“a brush.” Therefore, it could be concluded that basically the phenomenon of the conversion in Cockney was driven by the existence of the rhyming sounds
between the words. This fact was seen clearly by looking at the second words in each binary expression that always rhymed with the intended words or meanings
in English, such as the words “nail,” “race,” “pail,” and “thrush,” which rhymed with the words “tail,” “face,” “jail,” and “brush” in English.
The case of conversion in Bahasa Binan turned out to be different when it was compared to the case of conversion in Bahasa Indonesia. The writer found
that there were some Bahasa Binan words that were regarded as conversions. Some of the words are depicted in Table 4.25.
Table 4.25: Conversion in Bahasa Binan
Word Part of
Speech Meaning
Part of Speech
Meaning
bawang noun
onion adjective
smelly belalang
noun grasshopper
verb to buy
bisikan noun
whisper verb
be able to
It was seen that the words bawang, belalang, and bisikan, which originally performed as nouns both in Bahasa Indonesia and in Bahasa Binan, turned out to
also perform as adjectives and verbs in Bahasa Binan. The noun bawang, which
118 meant “onion” in English, in fact also behaved as an adjective “smelly” in Bahasa
Binan without any process of affix addition. The similar case also happened to the nouns belalang and bisikan, which behaved as verbs in Bahasa Binan. Therefore,
the speakers of Bahasa Binan would say “Akika tinta belalang baju,” which meant “I did not buy a cloth.” and Akika benci belalang,” which meant “I hate a
grasshopper.” Therefore, it could be said that the word belalang was acceptable to use either as a noun that meant “grasshopper” or as a verb that meant “to buy.”
The word bisikan actually could also be used in sentences without any word modification processes. In other words, it could be said that the speakers of
Bahasa Binan could say Akika bisikan nerong dan nyenyong, which meant “I can dance and sing,” and Akika demen bisikan diana, which meant “I like his
whisper” in their conversation. Therefore, it could be said that the Bahasa Binan word bisikan could convey both “a whisper” and “be able to or can” in English.
The writer found that many times the reasons to do the conversion in Bahasa Binan was because of the existence of the rhyming sounds between
words. This conclusion was drawn by comparing the word bawang to the word bau, which refer to the word “smelly” in English. It was seen that the word
bawang and the word bau actually rhymed in the initial parts of the words. Thus, the speakers of Bahasa Binan used the word bawang to refer to the word “smelly”
for the sake of avoiding the speakers of Bahasa Indonesia to understand the speech of Bahasa Binan’s speakers.
This strategy turned out to also happen in other words listed in Table 4.25, such as belalang and bisikan. The word belalang was in fact used to replace the
119 intended words beli in Bahasa Indonesia while the word bisikan was used to
replace the word bisa in Bahasa Indonesia. This fact signified that the speakers of Bahasa Binan actually used the words belalang and bisikan instead of beli and
bisa to avoid the lay people to understand the speech of the speakers.
b. Metaphorical Extension in Cockney and Bahasa Binan
