1.1 Background of the Study - Action And Its Realization In Nelson Mandela Speech Text
1.1 Background of the Study
People are social creatures who need other human beings to live their life. In dealing with other human beings, people speak a language as a medium. When people talk and write in order to communicate with others, consciously and unconsciously they produce language. People usually use language to speak and to deliver what is in their mind either doing something or asking a thing.
In linguistic, there are speech acts or also known as speech functions; they are (1) statement, (2) question, (3) command, and (4) offer. The function of statement is giving information and question is asking information. Command and offer share goods and services in cases where command is asking goods and services and offer is giving them. According to language function, language is to do something or doing action as Saragih (2003: 64), said that language is used to perform a deed or action, such as making a statement, question, offer and command. We can conclude that statement, question, offer, and command are action.
All the four actions then will be realized in the tone of the conversation at 3 level of grammars which is technically called mood. As the realization of the action of the stage of grammar, mood consists of declarative, interrogative, and imperative. Action of “statement” is realized by declarative, action of “question” is realized by interrogative, and action of “command” is realized by imperative. Action “offer” does not have a definite mode of realization; it can be realized by declarative, interrogative, and imperative.
Normally finding the action and its realization in the language is by analyzing a text. Text can be found in oral (verbal) and written (non verbal) form. If the text is in non-verbal form, it is called written text and if the text in the form of verbal will be referred as an oral text. However, there is also someone who is simultaneously doing both speaking and writing, for example in the class if somebody explains what he/she intends by writing a topic and explaining about it orally it is also considered as text.
As we know text contains much information like entertainment, politics, health, botany, crime, and many else. The text which is in written form, for example; journal, newspaper, short story, novel or in oral form like spontaneous spoken text and the preparation verbal spoken with reading a text which is prepared to be read aloud in front of all-important public event, for example a speech.
Usually speech is written in order to be spoken but also could be written down from
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audio tape or video tape such as Nelson Mandela speech taken in April 20 1964 at the Palace of Justice, Pretoria Supreme Court Pretoria South Africa. The court was recorded by the State on cassettes for which there is now no playback equipment. Mandela’s statement from the dock was digitized with the assistance of the British Library, and this digital recording now in the custody of the National Archives of South Africa. This recording was used to transcribe the speech. The speech is approximately 2 hours and 56 minutes long with titled "I'm Prepared to Die".
This speech tells about Nelson Mandela said that justice was established, how black and colored Africans were enslaved in their own homeland, separated from the standard worth of a human life and their family, even be killed arbitrarily anywhere in the name of apartheid. He had to struggle to explain why violence is inevitable for his way to freedom by using guerilla warfare and demands to the government who should distribute education and equal job to both colored and white people because that is the way to root poverty out in South Africa.
Nelson Mandela is a South African anti-apartheid activist, revolutionarist and politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, the first to be elected in a fully representative, multiracial election. He is also the one who has responsibility of dismantling apartheid's legacy, and cutting racism, poverty and inequality in South Africa. In performing a speech, Nelson Mandela uses structured and persuasive words to posses’ people to believe and budge sympathy.
In the Nelson Mandela speech (1964: 6 ) he says: “At the beginning of June 1961, after a long and anxious assessment of the South
African situation, I, and some colleagues, came to the conclusion that as violence in this
country was inevitable; it would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue
preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the Government met our peaceful demands
with force”The sentence implied that Nelson Mandela decided to start against South Africa Government with no longer use peace or non-violence way. When we associate action and what was mentioned by Nelson Mandela above, the sentence has to separate into clauses in process getting the meaning.
Here are the clauses: 1. At the beginning of June 1961, 2. After a long and assessment of the South Africa situation, I, and some colleagues, came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable.
3. It would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the Government met our peaceful demands with force.
After the clauses are separated, then they are divided the clauses into type of action. The clause (1) is giving information about time explanation so the type is “statement” action. Clause (2) is giving information so this is a “statement” action and clause (3) is also a
“statement” action which told about stay in peace are irrational. All the clauses are giving information that Mandela intends to against violence from National Party (NP) goverment.
Moreover, he said that the non-violence way is wrong from the beginning government torture the black people physically and using weapon to kill.
This study is about how to interpret action and its realization in Mandela’s “I’m Prepared to Die” speech text. Because, after deciding the actions of the clauses it is very important to find the realizations in order to understand the meaning. In Halliday’s theory, the realizations are divided into three kinds. They are declarative, interrogative and imperative.
The form for its realizations is listed below: 1.
Statement →→ Declarative 2.
Question →→ Interrogative 3.
Command →→ Imperative 4. Offer
→→ one of above The complete action and its realization of the clauses are listed below 1.
At the beginning of June 1961. This clause is giving information so the type of action is “statement” action and it realization is Declarative.
2. After a long and assessment of the South Africa situation, I, and some colleagues, came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable. This clause is giving information so the type of action is “statement” action and it realization is Declarative.
3. It would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the Government met our peaceful demands with force.
This clause is giving information so the type of action is “statement” action and it realization is Declarative.
All the type of clauses above is statement or “statement” action. The clauses are giving information to convince the audience or reader that Mandela and his colleges are decide to war with a lot of preparation and discussion. Mandela made them become his supporters by persuading them to think that now it is the right time for South Africa's independence.
As explained above, action which is found in the statement clauses will be realized as declarative but when looking back the meaning of clauses no 3 (It would be unrealistic and
wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the
Government met our peaceful demands with force) it also has meaning as polite command.
This clause was encouraging the Africans to stop peace and start to fight back with war or violent in this case sabotage and guerilla warfare. This means that the “statement” action for this clause changed to “command” action which is realized as imperative.
The situations that happen in this clause are known as mark realization. Mark and unmark realization happens because the realization of the action is in the strata of semantic and grammatical relations is not a 'one to one' (biunique relations); meaning is that the semantic action 'statement' is not always realized by the declarative mode only, 'statement' by only interrogative, and 'command' by simply imperative (Saragih 2003:72).
This study is about how to interpret action and its realization in speech by Nelson Mandela’s speech text “I’m Prepared to Die”. In this speech text, mark realizations are found and the researcher find this speech is important to be studied, since action and its realization in the speech text has never been discussed. Generally, speech text use a lot of command clauses, but inside this speech the command clauses should be easily found or explicit. In fact instead found implicit in the meaning of statement clause by searching carefully.
The speech is chosen because the speeches are revealed how Mandela freed apartheid in South Africa. This speech has a lot of contribution to the struggle of Nelson Mandela because this was his last speech before he spent 27 years of his life in prison on Rodden Island. Rodden Island is famous as one of ten most horrible prisons in the world (http://www.takepart.com/photos/worst-prisons-locked-up 18/11/13 15:38). The speech gave inspiration to Jerry Dammers to create a song entitled “Free Nelson Mandela” in 1983 and this song is sung by The Special AKA and rearranged by Elvis Costello for concert “A Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute” released in 1988. The song reached No.9 in the UK charts and enwas immensely popular in Africa.
Sometimes it is difficult to understand the meaning of a text unless the language and context are known. In understanding the meaning of the text we have to apply a proper theory. The suitable theory for this study is Systemic Functional Linguistic which has specific attention to relate language and context. Based upon those issues, finding action realized in the clauses in Mandela’s speech text is necessary to study.
1.2 Problems of the Study
In doing the study, the problems would be listed below. Then, through the background of the study, the questions which are going to be discussed are:
1. How is the action realized in Nelson Mandela’s speech text? 2.
What kind of action is prominent?
1.3 Objectives of the Study
After arranging the problems of this study in order to make the analysis in this study becomes accurate some objectives used as guidelines are necessary. They are:
1. To describe the realization of action used in Nelson Mandela’s speech 2.
To describe what action is prominent in Nelson Mandela’s speech
1.4 Scope of the Study In discussing a problem, giving a limitation of the explanation of problem is needed.
The limitation or the scope is making the writer more focus to the problems discussed and theory used to solve. This study deals with the interpersonal meaning of language that is specific for Nelson Mandela’s speech entitled “I’m Prepared to Die”. The scopes that are proposed here are the action in Nelson Mandela’s speech found in clauses in order to get its realization.
Through this scope of analysis it will be more easily for the readers to figure out the problems and the ideas systemically. The writer decided to take all the clauses found in the data source, because the writer wants to get the specific result about actions and its realization used in speech text.
1.5 Significance of the Study
In studying this study hopefully could give worth significances:
1. This study could enrich the scientific research of action/speech function/speech act and gives a wider view in interpersonal meaning analysis.
2. This study could give some information about action contained in Nelson Mandela speech.
3. The results of this study can be useful as a comparison of other writer which addresses the interpersonal meaning in speech.
4. This study is the result of the writer amazement expression or sympathizes for Nelson Mandela personality who cares about other people and willing to fight for them in cases he could be apathetic.