1
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter introduces the background of the study, reasons for choosing the topic, the research problems, objectives of the study, significance of the study, limitation of
the study, and outline of the study.
1.1 Background of the Study
Language plays an important role in human life. People use language to express their ideas, feelings, or concepts to other in the proses of social interaction.
“Communication in society happens chiefly by means of language. However, the users of language, as
social beings, communicate and use language on society’s premises that means society controls their access to the linguistic and communicative means
” May: 2001. It means that society such as place or environment, time, situational setting, and the relationship
between the people in particular situation influence the language to communicate. In communication, people work together to create text which should be
meaningful because in communication people exchange meaning. According to Halliday and Hasan 1985:10,
The important thing about the nature of a text is that, although when we write it down it looks as though it is made of words and sentences, it is really made of
meaning. Of course, the meanings have to be expressed, or coded, in words and structures, just as these in turn have to be expressed over again
– recorded, if you like
– in sounds or in written symbols. It has to be coded in something in order to be communicated: but as a thing in itself, a text is essentially semantic unit.
It is clear stated that a text must be meaningful which means that the meanings have to be expressed so that the communication can run well. Besides, a text is a semantic
unit which means that it has a semantic relation which is related to a clause or sentence. The ability to create text both of spoken and written is called communicative
competence. According to Canale and Swain as cited by Bagaric 2007, communicative competence is a synthesis of an underlying system of knowledge and
skill needed for communication; e.g. knowledge of vocabulary and skill in using the sociolinguistic conversation in a given language. Knowledge means what one knows
consciously and unconsciously about the language. There are five areas of knowledge and skill for communicative competence: sociocultural competence, discourse
competence, linguistic competence, formulaic competence, interactional competence, and strategic competence Celce-Murya: 2007.
Sociocultural competence refers to the speaker’s pragmatic knowledge, i.e. how to express messages appropriately within the overall social and cultural context of
communication. Discourse competence concerns the selection, sequencing, and arrangement of words, structures, sentences, and utterances to achieve a unified spoken
or written text. Linguistic competence comprises the basic elements of communication: the sentence patterns and types, the constituent structure, the morphological inflections,
and the lexical resources, as well as the phonological and orthographic systems needed
to realize communication as speech or writing. Formulaic competence refers to those fixed and prefabricated chunks of language that speakers use heavily in everyday
interactions. Interactional has three sub-components of competence: Actional competence, conversational competence, and nonverbalparalinguistic competence.
And strategic competence refers to the knowledge of communication strategies and how to use them in a conversation.
A text or discourse has texture or textuality which distinguishes it from something that is not text. In other words, texture or textuality is entirely appropriate
to express the property of being text Halliday and Hasan: 1976:2. According to Renkema 2004: 49-51,
“textuality has formulated into seven criteria that are cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativeness, situationality, and
intertextuality ”.
From those criteria, cohesion is the most important criterion because cohesion can distinguish between text and non-text. Cohesion distinguishes texts from non-texts
and enables readers or listeners to establish relevance between what was said, is being said, and will be said, through the appropriate use of the necessary lexical and
grammatical cohesive devices. Halliday and Hasan remark that: Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the discourse is
dependent on that of another. The one presupposes the other, in the sense that it cannot be effectively decoded except by recourse to it. When this happen, a
relation of cohesion is set up, and the two elements, the presupposing and the presupposed, are thereby at least potentially integrated into text. Halliday and
Hasan, 1976:4
From this idea cohesion can be defined as the links that hold a text together and give it meaning. It can be said that cohesion is used to analyze discourse on how the
connection between elements make such unified text since it functions as a device to keep cohesiveness within a text.
There are two kinds of cohesion which help to create text or the property of being text. They are grammatical cohesion, referring to the structural content, and
lexical cohesion referring to the language content of the piece. Halliday and Hasan 1976:16 identify the general categories of cohesive devices that create coherence in
a text: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. Reference is the specific nature of the information that is signaled for retrieval of the referential
meaning, the identity of the particular thing or class of thing that is being referred to. Reference can be divided into three types: personal reference, demonstrative reference,
and comparative reference. Substitution is the replacement of one item to another. There are three types of substitution that are nominal, verbal, and clausal substitution.
Ellipsis means the omission of an item. The types of ellipsis are nominal, verbal, and clausal ellipsis. Conjunction is an advice to reach out into the preceding or following
text and to express certain meanings, which presuppose the presence of other component in the text. It is divided into some types: addictive, adversative, causal,
temporal, and continuative conjunction. The last is lexical cohesion that means the cohesive affect achieved by the selection of vocabulary. There are two types of lexical
cohesion that are collocation and reiteration. Reiteration is subdivided into repetition, synonym, super ordinate, and general words.
Based on the style of delivery, a text is divided into spoken and written. Halliday and Hasan 1976:1 point out that a text is used in linguistics to refer to any
passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole. Spoken text is a text which is created to be heard and written text is a text created to be read.
In this study, I focus on spoken text because speaking is an important skill which should be mastered when we want to communicate to others. One type of speaking is speech.
Speech is a spoken text produced by a speaker before audience. Creating speech may be more challenging rather than writing because, in order to create speech, the speaker
should make sure that the hearer or audience will understand what heshe has said. Therefore, the speaker should make a cohesive speech so that it can be understood
easily. Sophomores are students in the second year of study at college. In other word,
English major sophomores are the third semester of English department students. In Indonesia, the third semester of English department students are expected to make a
good speech since they have been trained to make cohesive speech from junior high school. Brown points out that there are 16 microskills of oral communication which
one of them is using cohesive devices in spoken discourse. It means that cohesion is taught to make a good speech. Based on my experiences, when I was junior and senior
high school, my teachers asked me to make cohesive speeches and present it in front of class. I also did the same thing to my students when I was doing my teaching practice
in one of senior high school in Batang. I asked my students to make speeches to be presented in front of class to get their speaking scores. Besides, they also are trained to
speak intensively in the first semester in intensive speaking class, second semester in interpersonal and transactional conversation, and third semester in speaking for general
purposes class. In addition, other subjects which they have joined in the college, support them in speaking.
However, although cohesion is taught from junior high school, the students of English Department still face problem in applying cohesive devices. It was proved by
Sri Suprapti 2009 who did the research by using the junior students of English Department of UNNES as the subject. In the research, she concluded that there were
some cohesive problems in the investigated data both of grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion. The problems in the grammatical cohesion could be sub-categorized
into: a wrong use of conjunction; b wrong use of demonstratives; c wrong use of pronominals. Then, the lexical cohesion problems are in forms of a lexical repetition
with irretrievable referents within the texts; b naming: the use of a more specific term subordinate term in place of a more general super-ordinate one.
From the above consideration, it is essential to acknowledge to what extent the third semester students
’ speeches are cohesively produced, especially the unified text, using cohesive devices, and what kinds of devices are found in their speeches.
1.2 Reason for Choosing the Topic
