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c. Broadening
Broadening is the way that basically also puts the existing words in a language to the new uses. In this case, the uses of the words become broader than
before Akmajian, et al., 2001. The word “cool” is an example of this concept. According to Akmajian, et al. 2001, “cool” was previously used to describe a
specific artistic style of jazz. However, nowadays the word “cool” is not only used to describe something in the music field but also anything that is conceivable. One of
the words in Bahasa Indonesia that undergoes that process of broadening is Ibu. Previously, the word Ibu was only used to refer to the biological mothers. However,
nowadays, the word Ibu is used miscellaneously to all women who are older than the speaker or the women who are honored in the society.
d. Narrowing
According to Akmajian, et al. 2001, narrowing process treats the use of the words to be narrowed so that they nowadays only serve the functions in a certain
context. One of the words undergoing this process is “meat.” In fact, the word was previously used to mean anything consumable. However, today the speakers of
English only use the word to describe the edible solid flesh of animals Akmajian, et al., 2001. It is also found that one of the words in Bahasa Indonesia that is included
as a narrowing word is sarjana, which previously meant “those who were intelligent.” However, nowadays the word sarjana is narrowed so that it only refers
to “those who hold the bachelor degree.”
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e. Semantic Drift
Semantic drift is defined as the process in which the meanings of words are shifted or changed Akmajian, et al., 2001. One of the words that undergo the
process of semantic drifting is “washable,” which means “able to be washed.” However, in fact the word “washable” could not be applied to all the things that can
be washed. It instead can only be applied to the things that are usually fabrics, such as washable cloth rather than washable car Akmajian, et al., 2001. The explanation
above depicts that semantic drift allows the meanings of the words to go beyond the composite of the base words. In fact, it is rather difficult to find the phenomenon of
semantic drift in Bahasa Indonesia due to the limitation of information source. However, the writer believes that the case of semantic drift may also happen in the
daily usage of Bahasa Indonesia.
f. Reversal
Reversal allows certain words to have the shift of the sense turned into positive or negative. Akmajian, et al. 2001 provide the word “bad” to explain this
concept. They says that “bad” previously meant “emphatically good.” However nowadays, people use the word “bad” to mean anything that is not desirable. One of
the words in Bahasa Indonesia that undergo the process of reversals is pembantu. Basically, the archaic use of the word pembantu depicted a good meaning as anybody
were really happy to announce himself as pembantu presiden or the assistant of the president. However, nowadays the meaning of the word pembantu is reversed to the
negative meaning as it is associated with somebody that takes care the house. From
36 the explanation above, it can be concluded that basically reversal deals with the
meaning of words that undergo the process of reversing the meaning into good- meaning words or bad-meaning words.
4. Cockney