288. Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

In daily life, human as a social creature needs a media to communicate each other. The media is called language. Without language, human cannot communicate and interact. Language is one of the important things in human life. Language is arbitrary sound symbol system used by humans for communication and interaction each other. 1 Not only verbal language, But also sign language and gesture are often used by human to communicate at certain moment. 2 Verbal language related to word, phrase, and sentence. Realization of verbal language is conversation. Conversation means a cooperative activity in the sense that it involves two or more parties. Each of whom must be allowed the opportunity to participate. 3 Conversation is a human way to build the social relationship. Through conversation, human can identify, recognize and know the characters each other. From the definition above, it can be concluded that conversation consists of two or more people who get and exchange information each other. One is called speaker and the other is called listener. A Speaker is a person who is speaking or 1 Harimurti Kridalaksana, 2005, “Bahasa dan Linguistik” in Kushartanti, Untung Yuwono and RMT Lauder Ed, Pesona Bahasa: Langkah Awal Memahami Linguistik , Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama p. 3. 2 George Yule, 2006, The Study of Language : Third Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 172 3 Ronald Wardaugh, 1986, An Introduction to Sosiolinguistics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell

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expressing the ideas and listener is person who listens what the speaker say and wait for the turn to speak. In conversation, the position of participants speaker and listener is not static. It means that they will alternate each other. Pay attention for the example of this conversation below: 1 A : Are you doing anything important right now? B : No, not really. A : Okay, then, can you do this letter for me? I need it in a hurry B : Yes, I can. 4 From the example 1, when “A” is the speaker, “B” is waiting for the turn. When “B” as the speaker, “A” as the listener and wait for the turn to speak. The changing or replacement position of speaker to listener and listener to speaker that occur in conversation above, it is called turn-taking. The basic unit of the conversation is the turn. Turn is a shift in the direction of the speaking flow which is characteristic of normal conversation. 5 Sack said, as quoted by Mey that “A central feature of conversation is that exactly one person at least one and no more than one talks at a time”. 6 Actually, the rules that conversation is found to obey, however, turn out to be more like the rules that people had devised for other social activities. But in the fact, participants do not always speak in their turn. Sometimes, one of them is still speaking and the other follow to speak without waiting the turn. So it causes overlapping in conversation two or more 4 Ibid., p. 295 5 Jacob L Mey, 2001, Pragmatics: An Introduction. Second Edition. Oxford : Blackwell Publishing p.139 6 Ibid. participants talk in a time. In order to make conversation flows smoothly, the participants have to know the mechanism of turn taking itself. Ordinary conversation employs no such pre- allocation: the participants just “normally take turn”. 7 The mechanism of turn-taking relates to organization of conversation. Conversation has a good organization if turn-taking rules are obeyed. But in daily conversation, it does not always follow the rules so some analysts use conversation analysis to find out what occurs in conversation, how mechanism of turn-taking, overlapping, back chanelling, interruption etc that occur in conversation. Conversation cannot be avoided in daily activity of human life conversation face to face or by phone. Conversation Analysis is a technique developed relatively recently for examining and exploring spoken language. 8 Conversation analysis is studied in pragmatics. Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics which studies about language structure as a communication tool between listener and speaker. It also studies the use of language in human communication as determined by condition of society. 9 In pragmatics, there are many theories such as speech act, maxims, relevance and conversation implicature. All those theories might happen in conversation. As mentioned above that conversation is one of realization of verbal language spoken language. People use spoken language to communicate directly but to communicate with others who are removed in time and space, or for those 7 Ronald Wardaugh, Op.Cit p. 289 8 Shirley Reay, 1998, “Conversation Analysis” in Alison Wray, Kate Trott and Aileen Bloomer. Project in Linguistics : A Practical Guide to Researching Language. Bristol : Arnold Publisher. p.54 9 Jacob L. Mey, Op.Cit p.6 occasions on which a permanent or semi permanent record, people use written language. Verbal or spoken language can be transfered to be a text as a written language record. 10 All of people communicate in conversation everywhere, such as conversation between doctor and patients, conversation between teacher and students, conversation between host and guest in talk show and so on. Talk show is a television program where someone or a group of people come together to discuss about a particular topic in a relaxed but serious condition and guided by a host. 11 People who invited are the famous, experienced, and who experts in particular topic which is recently discussed. There are many talk shows on television programs. One of talk show is Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN. It is hosted by a British Tabloid Journalist and television personality Piers Morgan. Piers Morgan Tonight replaces the legendary Larry King Live. 12 Such another conversation, turn-taking also occurs in the conversation on the talk show. But, sometime the rules of conversation are not obeyed by participants. The mechanism of turn taking does not occur orderly. There are some violations in turn-taking rules such as interruption and overlapping. See the example below: 2 Piers Morgan : That’s going to really eat away at Robe lowe. You’re younger. [You’re better looking] 10 David Nunan. 1993. Introducing Discourse Analysis. London: Penguin English p. 8 11 Morissan, M.A. 2008. Manajemen Media Penyiaran: Strategi Mengelola Radio Televisi. Jakarta : Kencana.p.212 12 The Associated press.2010. http:www.today.comid39060518nstoday- today_entertainmenttpiers-morgan-larry-kings-cnn-replacement accessed on 10 April 2014 Bruno Mars : [That’s my goal life] From the conversation above, Robe Lowe is a guest in the previous session in Piers Morgan Tonight Talk Show. Piers Morgan makes a joke about Robe Lowe and Bruno Mars. He said that Bruno Mars will defeat Robe Lowe because Bruno Mars younger than Robe Lowe. And about the turn taking mechanism is not orderly because when Morgan has not given a floor yet to take a turn, Mars direct speak without waiting Morgan finishes his word, so it is caused overlapping between them. The symbol of overlapping is [word]. 13 This research focuses on conversation analysis of turn taking mechanism in Piers Morgan Tonight Talk Show on January 6, 2012 and Bruno Mars as a guest by analyzing discourse in the transcript of Piers Morgan Tonight ’s Talk Show. The Analysis of Turn Taking Mechanism consists of yielding the floor, taking a floor starting up, interruption, overlapping, holding the floor, TRP and back channeling. 14 This research Explains the reasons and the kinds of Turn Taking Mechanism are mostly used in conversation and tells the reasons of the turn-taking that occur in conversation. Piers Morgan Tonight is chosen because language is used in it is natural language such as informal language.

B. Focus of the Study