A STUDY OF METAPHORICAL REFERENCE IN PEANUT STRIPS IN RELATION TO HEADLINE ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN THE JAKARTA POST
A STUDY OF METAPHORICAL REFERENCE IN PEANUT STRIPS IN RELATION TO HEADLINE ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN THE JAKARTA POST AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By SURATININGSIH
Student Number: 044214107
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME DEPARTMNET OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2009
A STUDY OF METAPHORICAL REFERENCE IN PEANUT STRIPS IN RELATION TO HEADLINE ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN THE JAKARTA POST AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By SURATININGSIH
Student Number: 044214107
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME DEPARTMNET OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2009
Your dream is your gold For my husband Ståle Angen Rye And my best friends Uke and Senny
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to everyone who has given me the possibility to achieve the moment when I started to think that everything can be possible if I will. My greatest thanks to Allah SWT for His grace. This thesis would never be written without countless help and supports from wonderful persons. I very much thank Adventina Putranti S.S, M. Hum, my perfect advisor, for her guidance during the writing process and for giving me the opportunity to know about pragmatics and its fun. I also thank Dr. Francis Borgias Alip, M.Pd., M.A, for his comment and critic in order to make my writing even better. I also thank Sanata Dharma University of Yogyakarta and its staffs for every wonderful moment I have got during my study.
Thank you to my mother and grandmother who have through their life given me lot of opportunities to learn how life should be. Their words, attitude and behavior have influenced me and cheered me up to keep going on in this life. To my wonderful best friends Uke and Senny, I would say this moment is for the three of us. I want to say thanks to both of you for sharing laugh and tears during this last five years.
I send my gratitude to Frank Robert Haugan in the land of Norway for his kindness which made it possible for me to achieve this bachelor’s degree. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to understand the world of literature and linguistics. Without your support, I would never have written this acknowledgements. I also want to thank Ibu Kustati, that is how I call her, and Pak Kasyanto my teachers from high school. You were supporting me and did not let me down when I wanted to give up to learn language. I remembered your words when I should talk in front of my class from SMKN 4 Yogyakarta. “The most important is that you are not afraid to make a mistake, and just speak up!” Those words have meant a lot to me and your spirit to struggle for your goal has inspired me since then. You are wonderful.
To my “paijo” Ståle Angen Rye, I would say that there is no word to describe how much you mean to me. Thank you is just not enough. That is probably why it is difficult for me to say that words. Thank you for being there and helping me getting through all of difficult times, for you wonderful heart being very patient with me, and for all of your great support you have given to me. This thesis has taught me a lot much because of you.
Thank you to the “dolls” in A “Doll’s House”, “Fashion”, “Trifles”, and “The Flattering Words” for the beautiful moment we have shared together. Finally to everyone, take time to write your thesis! It is just about having fun.
Suratiningsih
24. May, Kristiansand, Norway
C
ONTENTS
b. Theory of Speech Act and Events ...................................................... 12
b. Data Analysis ..................................................................................... 22
a. Data Collection ................................................................................... 21
C. Research Procedure ................................................................................ 21
20 B. Method of the Study .............................................................................. 21
CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY A. Object of the Study ...............................................................................
18 C. Theoretical Framework .......................................................................... 19
f. Theory of socio political influne of comix
e. Theory of Linguistic Context ............................................................. 17
d. Theory of Relevance .......................................................................... 14
c. Theory of Metaphor ............................................................................ 13
9
TITLE PAGE ………………………………………………………………. i APPROVAL PAGE ………………………………………………………... ii ACCEPTANCE PAGE ……………………………………………………. iii MOTTO PAGE …………………………………………………………...... iv DEDICATION PAGE …………………………………………………....... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENT S .…………………………………………….... vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ………………………………………………….. vii ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………........ ix ABSTRAK ………………………………………………………………...... x
9 a. Theory of Communication Concept ...................................................
8 B. Review of Related Theories ...................................................................
7 CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW A. Review of Related Study ........................................................................
7 b. Comic strip .........................................................................................
6 c. Comics ................................................................................................
5 b. Headline Articles ................................................................................
5 a. Metaphorical Language ......................................................................
5 D. Definition of Terms ................................................................................
5 C. Objectives of the Study ..........................................................................
1 B. Problem Formulation ..............................................................................
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. Background of the Study ........................................................................
CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS ........................................................................... 25
A. Speech Acts Classification, Implied Meaning, and Metaphorical Language ...............................................................................................
24
a. Frieda and Snoopy .............................................................................. 24
b. Charlie Brown and His Baseball Team .............................................. 27
c. Frieda in the Baseball Match .............................................................. 30
d. Charlie Brown and His Speech .......................................................... 33
e. Charlie Brown in the First Day of the Game ...................................... 35
B. Metaphorical Language in Relation to the Headline in The Jakarta Post .........................................................................................................
38
a. Frieda and Snoopy .............................................................................. 39
b. Charlie Brown and His Baseball Team .............................................. 40
c. Frieda in the Baseball Match .............................................................. 43
d. Charlie Brown and His Speech .......................................................... 45
e. Charlie Brown in the First Day of the Game ...................................... 47
f. Peanut Strips and Actual Events ......................................................... 48
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION ...................................................................... 50 BIBLIOGRAPH ............................................................................................
53 APPENDIX ..................................................................................................... 54
ABSTRACT
Suratiningsih. A Study Of Metaphorical Reference In Peanut Strips In Relation To Headline Articles Published In The Jakarta Post. Yogyakarta. Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University, 2009.
This thesis analyses how comic strips, as a medium of communication, use and maintain metaphorical language and expressions. It is explored how such strips, particularly Peanuts which are published in The Jakarta Post newspaper, can contribute to convey the meaning of headline news of the same newspaper. Following McCloud, comics is considered a medium of communication used to portray social phenomenon as well as being human’s daily language.
Out from the above mentioned background, two problems were formulated. The first problem raises the question about what the conversations of Peanuts are about and how the metaphorical languages occur within these conversations. The second problem is related to how metaphorical languages occurring in Peanuts strip convey the meaning of The Jakarta Post’s headline articles.
Using the theory of speech acts, as suggested by Yale, the strips conversation were examined to explore what the speaker intends to say. This was done through determining the purpose of the utterances and related it to the idea of the basic shared of knowledge. Thereafter, by using the headline news of the newspaper as the context for the strips conversation, the aim is, based on Goatly’s theory of metaphor, to analyze how Peanuts is related to the issues discussed in the headline news. This analysis is done through exploring the similarity between the strips and the headline articles.
From analyzing both Peanut and how it is related to the headline news, it is found out that the strips do not always convey meaning of the headline news. Yet, it may convey meaning to other social and political issues in different contexts not covered in the headline news. All together it is concluded that whatever metaphorical language occurs in a comic strip depends on the context where the reader place the strip.
ABSTRAK
Suratiningsih. A Study Of Metaphorical Reference In Peanut StripS In Relation To Headline Articles Published In The Jakarta Post. Yogyakarta. Jurusan Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2009.
Dalam penelitian ini ditunjukkan bagaimana komik strip, sebagai salah satu alat komunikasi, mengaplikasikan penggunaan bahasa metafora. Dalam penelitian ini juga dijabarkan bagaimana komik-komik strip tersebut, khususnya Peanuts yang terbit setiap hari di harian The Jakarta Post, dapat menyiratkan makna dan isi tajuk utama surat kabar harian tersebut. Penelitian ini ditujukan untuk mengembangkan pendapat McCloud bahwa bahasa sehari-hari yang digunakan dalam komik menunjukkan bahwa komik sebagai alat komunikasi digunakan untuk memenyampaikan fenomena-fenomena yang terjadi di masyarakat.
Berdasarkan pada latar belakang tersebut, terdapat dua permasalahan yang timbul. Permasalahan yang pertama adalah apakah isi dari percakapan strip Peanut dan bagaimana penggunaan metaphor dalam percakapan-percakapan tersebut. Permasalahan yang kedua adalah bagaiamana penggunaan metaphor dalam strip Peanuts dapat menunjukkan makna dari isi tajuk utama harian The Jakarta Post.
Dengan menggunakan teori speech acts yang di tawarkan oleh Yale, percakapan dalam strip Peanuts dipelajari untuk menjabarkan apa yang sebenarnya disampaikan oleh si pembicara. Peneltian ini dilakukan dengan menentukan tujuan dari setiap ucapan didasarkan pada basic shared knowledge. Selanjutnya, mengacu pada teory Goatly tentang metaphor dan dengan mengacukan pada kontek tajuk utama, tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk meneliti bagaimana Peanut bisa dihubungkan dengan tajuk utama harian The Jakarta Post. Dalam hal ini penelitian dilakukan melaui pencarian persamaan antara strip dan tajuk utama.
Dari penelitian ini dibuktikan bahwa komik strip Peanut tidak selalu menyiratkan isi dari tajuk utama. Namun, komik Peanut akan selalu menggunakan bahasa metafor apabila diterapkan pada kontek yang berbeda selain tajuk utama. Selanjutnya, dapat disimpulkan bahwa bagaimanapun metafora dapat ditemukan dalam setiap komik strip dengan berdasarkan pada kontek dimana pembaca meletakan komik strip tersebut.
CHAPTER
I INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study Comics is a popular and persuasive medium for communication.
Throughout the world, this form has been regarded a part of art and cultural production (Varnum & Gibbon, 2001: xvii). Varnum and Gibbon say that comics is a human artifact used to represent the reality to the understanding of an observer and to mediate his or her experience of the world. Further, they explain how comics itself has been developed in several forms. In modern life comics is categorized into visual art production which is in form of comic books, single- panel cartoons, wordless comic, and animated cartoons. Another form of comics is a comic strip where images and words are important (Varnum & Gibbon, 2001: xvii). Hence, it is reasonable to take comics as an object of this study and specifically comic strip which involved words since this study is designed for linguistic purposed.
A comic strip, as explained in encyclopedia Britannica, is series of adjacent, drawn images that are designed to be read. It is essentially a mass medium, printed in a magazine, newspaper or book (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2007). However, i n daily life, comic strip readers are often trapped by the images and words. They are typically attracted to see the surface of the strip only.
Consequently, the contents, which are more important than the figure, may be accidentally ignored. Perhaps, they do not mean to ignore the message or criticism the real context of the dialogue. This is also claimed by Wertham who said that readers are provided with ready-made images so that comics encouraged laziness and undermined the reading skills (Wertham, 1953:119-145).
On the other hand, understanding comic strip, in fact, is not an easy task since we have to see both the image and the words. These two elements are necessary for the completion of meaning. As suggested by McCloud, in comic strip, words and pictures are like partners in a dance and each one takes turn leading (McCloud, 1993:156). The reader has to analyze the text to understand the image as well as understand the image to get the idea of the text. Consequently there are several difficulties that appear when reading comic strips such as determining the meaning of the vocabulary, understanding the context of the conversation through the character’s expression, and last but not least understanding the language of the dialogue.
Taken as an example, see the dialogue below: Charlie Brown : I have a suggestion, Linus. Why don’t you let me try to find sort of substitute for your blanket? May be I could get you a dishtowel or something…. Linus : Would you give a starving dog a rubber bone?
(The Jakarta Post, 2008) When readers are served the above dialogue which was taken from a comic strips, they might only see it from the structure of the sentence. The common understanding of the conversation is that Charlie Brown is offering Linus a help. However, the question may be raised whether it is really true that he intends to help Linus, or Charlie Brown is criticizing Linus. actions are pretty much related to the utterances. This circumstance is in this thesis called speech act.
Referring to McClauds who states that a comic is designed to be read and Wertham who in a way says that a comics should be read deeper than what it occurs, I can conclude that comic itself is designed with an implied meaning. This argument also refers to one of concepts, that comics is often design to make a critic (McCloud, 1993: 178). Hence, I further come up with an assumption that comics uses metaphorical language since it implies other meaning to which I refer Goatly’s idea that metaphor occurs when a unit of discourse is used to refer unconventionally to an object, concept, or process (Goatly, 1997: 8)
In daily conversations, meanwhile, it is obvious to use metaphorical language requires deep understanding between the speaker and the listener to criticize or express something. It, however, should be seen from the context of the language and the conversation when metaphorical language is intended to use in.
It is to follow Fein and Kasher who say “….we have some understanding of the ways of words, of how to do things of certain kinds with words of suitable types within appropriate contexts.” (Fein & Kasher, 1996: 1). Due to this background, I use the pragmatic approach since pragmatic is the study of contextual meaning (Yule, 1996: 3). Pragmatics also allows us to study what the speaker actually means through the utterance.
To study the conversation in comic strip and how the metaphorical language occurs in the conversation, I have narrowed down the study and focus on comic strip published in one of Indonesian newspaper, The Jakarta Post, basically newspaper using English to present accurate daily records of Indonesia today. It covers economic, social, political issues and many more (Chandra, 1983: 1). This newspaper publishes several kinds of comic strips daily. As the rest of the newspaper’s articles, the strips are also published in English. These strips are Grafield, Peanuts, The Born Looser, Rose is Rose, and Ferd’nand.
Unlike other strips, Peanuts is considered the most successful American
th
comic in the 20 century and the only semiautobiographical experiences. Peanuts writer, Charles Schulz channeled what he had experienced in his army days and the frustrations of everyday life into Charlie Brown, the main character of the strip. Besides, Peanuts seems to be the most influential comic existing in modern art proven by its adaptation in television, stage, and two-featured length animated film written by its original writer Charles Schulz (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2007).
Among the five strips published in The Jakarta Post, Peanuts is the only strip whose characters Snoopy and Charlie Brown were brought to the outer space by an astronaut in Apollo X. It shows that Peanuts has drawn a special attention from the world which results in awards given to this strip such as the best humor strip of the year in 1962. Due to the above reason, I have chosen Peanuts as the object of this study.
I did not choose particular time of when the strips were published because this study can basically be applied in any kind of strip and whenever it is published. However, the strips that are used in this study were chosen due to important events that portrayed in the headline articles such as the Beijing Olympic, general election etc. Those events were at the time when this study was
Furthermore, this study was aimed to develop linguistic study especially in pragmatic so that people, specifically students will encourage themselves to find out and understand deeper a communication tool such as comic strip.
B. Problem Formulation
Using pragmatic approach, this study is done to answer problems formulated as follow:
1. What are the conversations of Peanuts about and how do the metaphorical languages occur within these conversations?
2. How do these metaphorical languages convey the meaning of The Jakarta
Post headline articles?
C. Objectives of the Study
This study is to find out how conversations are governed following the rule of conversation. Further, by using pragmatic approach I will find out how the conversations contribute to the use of metaphorical language, so that the reader will be able to understand the passage beyond the conversation. Later on, these conversations are used to see what the implied meanings are by relating them to The Jakarta Post articles.
D. Definition of Terms
a. Metaphorical Language
Since this study is about metaphorical language, it is very important to define what metaphorical language is. To make it easier in understanding about Goatly’s definition from his book The Language of Metaphor. In his book, Goatly says that metaphor occurs when a unit of discourse is used to refer unconventionally an object, process or concept e.g. ‘The mind is an ocean' and 'the city is a jungle' are both metaphors. In the meantime, metaphorical is the adjectival form of metaphor meaning describing language which contains metaphor. It can be defined as not having real existence but symbolic and showing some truth about a situation or other subject. Thus, metaphorical language can be defined as a language which is metaphorically used (Goatly, 1997:1-5).
b. Headline Articles
According to Suhandang, headline in a newspaper is basically designed to present the topic of an article (Suhandang, 2004). He further explains that a headline news is usually written in a big letter to attract readers’ attention. The form of a headline itself varies. Based on the importance of the news there are four different kinds of headline, which are:
1. A banner headline which is used for the most important news or article. This headline is written with the biggest and thickest letter in the newspaper.
2. A spread headline is purposed for important news but less important than the banner headline. The size of the letter is smaller than banner headline but bigger than secondary headline.
3. A secondary headline is used for the less important news. The size of the letter is usually small but not the smallest.
4. A subordinated headline is for the news that is not important at all which sometimes the appearance is considered to fill up an empty page.
c. Comics
According to McCloud, comics is written in plural form, used with a singular verb. It is juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response to viewer (McCloud 1999: 20). On the other hand, Grainger suggests most comics combine words with images, often indicating speech in the form of word balloons (Grainger, 2004: 66-67).
d. Comic strip
It is a format used in comics, a sequence of drawings that tells a story (Grainger, 2004: 66-67).
CHAPTER
II THEORETICAL REVIEW
A. Review of Related Studies
According to Forceville, Lakoff and Johnson’s dictum that a metaphor is primarily a matter of thought and action and only derivatively a matter of language has given rise to numerous studies investigating how a metaphor’s verbal manifestation relate to their cognitive origins (Forceville, 2001: 1). Refaie, as an example, explores the grammar of visual metaphors. She argues that visual metaphors cannot be described adequately in formal terms only. She further argues that they must be considered as visual representations of metaphorical thoughts or concepts. To give a clear explanation regarding her argument, she uses political newspaper cartoon from an Austrian newspaper as the object of the study. One of the drawings she discusses shows a family holding a Kurdistan flag.
In this matter, she emphasizes that even if we consider the drawing of the family in isolation from the context of the rest of the cartoon, it still cannot really be described as an iconic representation of a family. Refaie argues, that it is, however, should be described without ignoring the whole drawing in the cartoon.
For example, it should be seen how the figure of the family is described, what political interest of the creator might be applied, etc (Refaie, 2007).
At the end of her writing, Refaie concludes that her analysis of political cartoon highlights the difficulty of distinguishing between literal and a processes and partly from the recognition that all visual signs are based on a process of creating analogies. Because of this, the differentiation between a literal image and a visual metaphor is never absolute but it will always depend on the discourse context and on the degree to which particular metaphors have become accepted the natural, commonsensical way of representing certain meanings (Refaie, 2003: 90).
In this study, I follow Refaie’s conclusion regarding how to understand metaphor by emphasizing contextual aspect. However, what also raises my interest is her lack of analysis regarding verbal metaphors even though it is to compare verbal and visual metaphors. This study, therefore, is a follow up of Refaie’s study of ways of understanding metaphor by putting the focus on verbal metaphor works in different cartoon, particularly comic strip. Since Refaie claims that we should involve all elements in the cartoon, I emphasize that so it does on verbal metaphors. The word used in comic strip dialogue should not only be described as the word with its semantic feature supporting the idea, but it should rather be described using the context of the dialogue.
B. Review of Related Theories
In studying and finding out what the Peanuts strip published in The Jakarta Post and whether it has a relation to the headline news that is published in the same date as the Peanuts strip, several theories are applied. Those theories are as follows:
a. Theory of Communication Concept
applied such as by understanding when an expression is judged literally or metaphorically.
It can be said that a metaphor is used in everyday language and it is important to understand since it involves human thought in relation to social context to which this study discusses about. Goatly states in his book The
Language of Metaphor: “…. metaphor is something that can be easily confined,
but indispensable basis of language and thought.” (Goatly, 1997: 1). He further explains that studying metaphor demonstrates, in an exaggerate way, how all linguistic classification constructs as representation of experience on the basis of selective perception and selective aspects of world. Goatly argues that there is no strict boundary between metaphor and literal expression and that the differences between metaphors and literal expressions are only more or less tied to a conventional meaning (Goatly, 1997: 14-15).
Hence, to understand and find out whether a conversation in a communication system contains metaphorical language, we first have to identify how the communication works. In brief, we have to find out how speaker’s thought is delivered to hearer’s without any fatal wrong interpretation. In his book
The language of Metaphor Goatly suggests to begin with a simple provisional
model of linguistic communication in five stages as seen in table 1.Suppose a speaker wishes to describe something in the real world to a hearer, the discourse process has a starting point (A), a physically observable state of affairs which already exist in the actual world. By means of perception and cognition (1) we pass to (B), which is the speaker’s thought, which is mental and proceeds (2) to form the proposition, (C), which is the most relevant for conveying his/her thought. In order to communicate this proposition, which is still mental, she/he has to make it accessible to his/her speakmate, and he/she can more or less achieve this by using the language code, (3). She uses conventional linguistic signs to pair her meanings with physical forms in a text, (D). The hearer can perceive the text, decode it in fill it out (4) to convey a full proposition, (C), and then interpret it (5) by guessing what thought of the speaker it is most likely to convey, (B). If this five-stages process is successful, then the hearer will be entertaining thoughts resembling those the speaker originally entertained, and thereby will receive a message about a state of affairs in the world which the speaker experienced but which the hearer did not (Goatly, 1997: 14-15).
Table 1: Concept of linguistic communication A STATES OF AFFAIRS PHYSICAL |
1 ↓ B THOUGHT MENTAL | ↑
2
5 ↓ | C PROPOSITION MENTAL | ↑
3
4 ↓ | D TEXT PHYSICAL
(Goatly, 1997: 14)
I can draw a conclusion that the process of delivering message is the process of encoding and decoding similar to Stuart Hall (Hall, 1973). The process when the speaker is delivering the thought, is in this mater stage B, 2, and C may be called encoding. This process is conducted to get the text; D of the thought information and knowledge in order to get what the speaker’s thought; stage 4, C, and 5, can be called decoding.
According to Sperber and Wilson, the areas of the diagram which concern us most are the relationship between the propositional form and the thought of the speaker where they locate metaphorical process. Thus my main concern will be approaching stage B, 2, and C.
b. Theory of Speech Act and Events In the process of communication, people attempt to express their thought.
In his book entitled Pragmatics, Yule says that people do not only produce structured utterances which contain words, but also serve actions by the way of those utterances (Yule, 1996: 47). In a work situation for example, a manager has a power over his officers. Thus, his utterance may more than just a statement.
Actions performed via utterance, according to Yule, are generally called speech acts which are labeled apology, complaint, compliment, promise or request.
In any circumstances, the action performed through the utterances will consist of three related acts which are locutionary act, illocutionary act, and
perlocutionary act. An utterance belongs to locutionary act when it has a
meaning. On the other hand, the utterance belongs to illocutionary act when it requires purpose which what we normally do when we create an utterance.
Furthermore, we do not create an utterance only with a function, yet to have an effect as well. Thus whenever an utterance affects the listener, it means the utterance has a perlocutionary effect.
In regard to perlocutionary act, speech acts are classified into five different
1. Declarations: speech acts that change the world via utterance. It is typically uttered by those who have power e.g. a priest, a referee, a teacher.
Specifically, declaration aims to change the world via words.
2. Representatives: speech acts that state what the speaker believes to be the case or not e.g. statement of fact, assertion, conclusion, and description.
3. Expressives: speech acts that state what the speaker feels. This is related to psychological states that can be statement of pleasure, pain, dislikes, likes, joy, or sorrow.
4. Directives: speech acts that speakers use to get someone do something. They can be commands, orders, requests, suggestions which can be either positive or negative.
5. Commissives: speech acts that speakers use to commit themselves to some future action. They express what the speakers intends.
Yule further explains how to distinguish the types of speech acts through the basis of structure. He suggests that there is a recognized relationship between the structural forms; declarative, interrogative, and imperative, and the general communication function which are statements, question and command/request.
c. Theory of Metaphor
To understand when metaphorical language is applied, Goatly explains several approaches to identify metaphor such as Vehicle, Topic, and Ground terms or which he calls VTG-term. In this section I am going to explore what
VTG-terms is and how it works to identify metaphor. In VTG-terms several aspects are involved such as root analogy, relevance, assumption, and implicature
First of all, it will be helpful to define what metaphor is. I will follow Goatly who says in his book:
“Metaphor occurs when a unit of discourse is used to refer unconventionally to an object, process or concept, or colligates in an unconventional way. And when this unconventional act of reference or colligation is understood on the basis of similarity, matching or analogy involving the conventional referent or colligates of the unit and the actual unconventional referent or colligates” (Goatly, 1997: 8).
According to Goatly, the term “colligate” applies to one kind of collocate. Collocation is any kind of co-occurrence of words in text, but colligation is a syntactic relationship between the two words. Thus, Goatly adopts Richards’ (1965: 96-7) substituting the word Topic:
a. The conventional referent of the unit is the Vehicle
b. The actual unconventional referent is the Topic
c. The similarities and/or analogies involve are the Grounds To a better understanding see an example below: The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
The concept ‘foreign country’ is the Vehicle, the concept ‘the past’ is the Topic and the similarity, the Grounds, is the fact that in both foreign countries and in the past ‘things are done differently’.
d. Theory of Relevance
In regard to the theory of speech act and events, offering whether an utterance is a direct or indirect speech acts should be based on theoretical perspective. The relation between a word and the word it refers to have to be recognized. Here Goatly offers a perspective through the theory of relevance
“…metaphorical understanding depends on the process and principles involved in the interplay between knowledge and the language system, knowledge about the context: situation and co-text, and background of schematic knowledge: factual and socio cultural (Goatly, 1997: 137)” In his book, The Language of Metaphor, Goatly further explains that in our real life, there is no limitation of existing metaphor which allows us to have various contextual assumptions in our short term memory activated by the situation and the co-text. In addition we have many of inactivated assumptions stored in our long term memory as factual or socio-cultural knowledge. In reaching the contextual implications of an utterance we have to choose from among these assumptions whose which are most relevant (Goalty, 1997: 139). For example:
I see a an ice cream shop and think a. If I have money I will by a vanilla ice cream.
b. I have my T-Shirt dirty I check my wallet There is Rp. 10.000,- bill.
We will choose which assumption, (a) or (b), to use in the interpretation of “There is Rp. 10.000,- bill” on the basis of relevance. Thus, (a) will be more relevant than (b). Therefore, we must recognize that not only is relevance important in measuring contextual implication, but also in accessing existing assumptions. Hereby, the assumption basically based on common sense and what Tsui is called shared knowledge (Tsui, 1994)
Moreover, metaphors demand considerable interpretative work besides the decoding of their semantics. Semantic decoding simply gives us the Vehicle concept. To establish the Topic- what V term is referring to- and to explore the metaphorical understanding depends on the process and principles involved in the interplay between knowledge of the language system (1), knowledge about the context; situation and co-text (2), and background of schematic knowledge; factual and socio cultural (Goalty, 1997:137).
Thus, we can draw the conclusion that metaphorical language in a way should be seen from knowledge of surrounding text, and the physical and social ground knowledge about the world, and the society of our language community. Hence, this theory of relevance helps me to identify how the metaphor works in Peanuts strip in the context of The Jakarta Post headline issues.
With regard to the theory of metaphor and theory of relevance suggested by Goatly, I come up with a new mode which I call concept of metaphor as seen in the figure below: Figure 1: The concept of understanding metaphor.
Context 1
Text with literal
Mental process Mental processor metaphorical
SpeakerReceiver of encoding meaning of decoding
Context
2

The figure above is a developed model of the model of linguistic When analyzing the first problem stated in the problem formulation, the speaker and the receiver are found within the strip, which are the characters of Peanuts.
Thus, the context used to analyze it is set to within the strip as well. In the figure above, this context is described as Context I.
In the meantime, to answer the second problem, the speaker is set to the newspaper (The Jakarta Post) and the receiver is the newspaper reader.
Furthermore, to find out the metaphorical language in relation to the social or actual issue regarding the second problem formulation, the context is, in this thesis, the headline news of The Jakarta Post. This context is in the figure labeled in Context II.
Nonetheless, these two contexts do not close possibilities of any other context/s. There may be context III which is seen from the receiver point of view.
In this thesis, however, I will just focus on contexts, I and II.
e. Theory of Linguistic Context
To understand how metaphorical language works in the headline news, I follow Refaie, who adopts Roland Barthes’ theory suggesting that the meaning of images is always related to a linguistic message. The most common function of the linguistic message is what Barthes calls anchorage: because images are by nature polysemous, implying a floating chain of signifies (Refaie, 2007: 86). Barthes further suggests that Language is needed in order to fix both the denoted and the connoted meaning of the visual by identifying and interpreting what the image is showing.
To develop Barthes’ theory, I use Goatly to find how actually metaphor construct a scientific reality. Thus we need to concentrate on the ways in which metaphors are used to construct reality as a means of maintaining or challenging power relations in society (Goatly, 1997: 155)
f. Theory of Sociopolitical Influence of Comics
Comics has often been described as a collection pictures drawn in small box which has an easy and sometimes stupid story. However, this common paradigm, as suggested by McCloud, is too narrow. In his book, The Language of Comics, McCloud says that people often failed to understand the impact of comics in the society. As any other media of communication, comics is also made with a purpose. Typically there is a comics artist that want to tell something about life through his work. A problem is that people are often not often aware of this (McCloud, 1993:178)
Following this, as has been discussed in the introduction of this thesis, comics, as a media of communication, is also used to give a comment or critics toward what is happening in the society. The comics have long held a distorted mirror to contemporary society, and almost from the very beginning have been used for social and political comment. For this purpose, comics has to be placed where it can reach a large part of their reading public, and has for a long period of time been placed in newspaper (Walt, 1992). Walt gives an example of comics’ use to portray the society, which is Dilbert. Dilbert is sometimes found in the business section of a newspaper instead of comics’ page because of the strip’s commentary about office politics.
C. Theoretical Framework
To follow up Refaie’s study about metaphorical language seen through media of communication, this thesis aims to show how metaphorical language is applied in everyday language as seen in comic strips such as Peanuts. Through Peanuts this thesis also aims to highlight how the strip contributes to the understanding of the headline news of The Jakarta Post where the strip is published in.
In analyzing Peanuts’ conversation and how it conveys the meaning of The
Jakarta Post headline news, the theory of speech acts and event is used to find out
what the conversation is about and what is implied through the conversation. In analyzing what is implied through the conversation the theory of relevance, as outlined by Goatly, is used. He suggests the idea of using the context to support Yale’s theory of speech act and event. He argues that to understand the class of speech acts, context of the text is needed.
Further, following Goatly’s theory of metaphor, when an utterance refers to something else, this utterance can be said metaphorically. Thus, finding out the classification of speech acts is also to find out how the utterances of the strip turn to metaphorically. In the meantime, in the theory of metaphor Goatly is also used to find out how the metaphorical language in Peanuts strip contributes to reveal the meaning of the headline news of The Jakarta Post.
CHAPTER
III
METHODOLOGY