CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1
Background of The Analysis
Language is
an instrument for conveying meaning and communicating some ideas. People use language to interact to
each other. They use it to express their
feeling, message, knowledge and desire toward anyone. Sapir (1921:8) says that language is a purely human and non-instinctive
method of communicating ideas, emotions,
and desire by means of a system voluntary produced symbol.
It means that language is used when we interact
with other people socially or emotionally,
to indicate corporation, friendliness, pain, or to express idea, desire, hope, and thought. In other word, language is
a medium of communication which plays a
vital role in human communication as once suggested by Palmer (1976:6), “That
linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguistics has important role
to components of language that include
sound, the arrangement of words and meaning.”
There are four branches of linguistics
study. They are phonology, morphology,
syntax, and semantics. Semantics is the technical term used refers to the study of meaning (Palmer: 1976:1).
Semantics focuses on the meaning of words,
phrases, or sentences in language. The understanding of meanings is really needed for the reader or hearer because it
will be a problem if the hearer or reader can not understand what the speaker or the
writer means. In other words, the hearer
or the reader will get difficulties to understand or to know the meaning.In semantics, meaning can be
divided into two parts. They are literal meaning and non-literal meaning. Literal
meaning means what exactly someone says or
based on the real or lexical meaning of the utterance. Lexical meaning denotes what the speaker means according to
the dictionary usage. We can find the
meaning in the dictionary. Look at the examples below: 1) You are a good boy 2) He is a smart student.
Both examples above have literal
meaning as the real meaning according to
the dictionary usage. The first sentence means that “You” isgood, kind, or well-behaved. The second sentence
means that “He” is smart, clever, and has
good knowledge.
Non-literal meaning always has
different meaning from the literal one. It occurs when the sentence or word has hidden
meaning besides the lexical meaning of the
sentence or the word; when a speaker or a writer means something different from the lexical meaning of the word
or the sentence. It is what we called as
the non-literal meaning. We can find it in daily conversation when a speaker means something different from the
lexical meaning of the utterance.
Look at the examples of
non-literal meaning below; 1) I loose my
head.
2) I had no eye at the accident.
Both sentences have non-literal
in meaning. They express additional layer
of meaning. At the first sentence, “I loose my head” implies that the subject “I” looses the logical sequence of thought.
While in the second sentence implies that
“I” did not see anything what happened at the accident.
It is important to understand and
distinguish literal and non-literal meaning
because it may help people to avoid misunderstanding in daily conversation. People with no understanding
about non-literal meaning may have difficulty
when they talk with people who has. So, in this thesis I try to analyze the non-literal meaning as the subject of
analysis, because I think it is really important
to understand it more and it is very useful for people to keep communication work well.
If we talk about non-literal
meaning, of course, we will be closely related to literary works, because most of them
contain non-literal meaning. There are so many kinds of literary works that adopted the
non-literal meaning, such as novel, prose,
short story, or poem. It is effective to use non-literal meaning in a literary works to beautify the language and make its
sounds elegant and give the magnificent
words to attract the readers or audiences.
Poem is defined as a piece of
writing in verse (Oxford Advanced Learner’s
1995: 890). There are many people like to read poem. They are also tried to express their feeling through the
poem. The writers usually use non-literal expression to beautify the poem. We can see
the difference between poem with non-literal
expression and poem that use literal or direct way. It is more interesting for readers to read those with
non-literal meaning.
In this thesis, I am interested
in analyzing the non-literal meaning found in poems. Poems convey something to the
readers through the poem; sometimes it is
very difficult to understand a poem for it may contain so many expressions with
non-literal meaning. This thesis
discusses non-literal meaning that found in poems and tries to interpret the meaning by using
semantics theory.
The poems I analyze are the once
written by Emily Dickinson. I choose these
poems because there are so many
figurative expressions that could be analyzed
from semantics point of view. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson is one of the most popular poets in English literature. She
was an American poet writer. She was
born December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. One of her most famous poems is Hope is The Thing With Feathers. This
title shows a non-literal meaning.
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