CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter consists of research
context, focus of the study, objective of the study, scope and limitation study,
significance of the study, and also operational of the key terms.
1.1 Research Context A modality is a part of interpersonal elements
in analytic tools of critical linguistics.
Modality can be considered as comment or attitude (Fowler, 1991:85).
It can be differentiated into
four types of comments, namely truth, obligation, permission and desirability. Truth means that
the speaker or writer must always indicate
a commitment to the truth (or otherwise) of any proposition she/he utters.
Next, obligation means that the
speaker or writer stipulates that the participants in a proposition ought to perform the actions
specified in the proposition. Permission means that the speaker or writer gives
permission to do something on the participants
(ibid. 86). The last is desirability which means that the speaker or writer indicates agreement/disagreement of the
state of affairs communicated by the
proposition.
Another linguist has similar
opinion with Fowler. Richardson (2007:59) states that modality refers to
judgments, comment, attitude in text and talk. Modality provides a more step in the analysis, showing
that it links not only between form and
content, but also between content and function. Further, he states that modality is expressed in two principle forms,
namely truth modality and obligation
modality. Truth modality varies along a scale of options from the absolutely categorical through to varying
degrees of hedging and reduced certainty,
and obligation modality refers to future events and specifically the degree to which the speaker or writer believes
that a certain course of action or certain
decisions should be taken.
Modality is very important for
both relational and expressive values in grammar. Fairclough (1989:126) divides two
dimensions of modality, relational and
expressive modality. He also states that modality is not only expressed by modal auxiliary verbs, such as “may, might,
must, etc” but also by various other formal
features, including adverbs and tense (ibid. 127). Similarly, Simpson in Richardson (2007:59) also states that modality
actually refers to the speaker‟s attitude. He defines modality as speaker‟s attitude towards, or opinion about the truth of a proposition which is expressed by a
sentence. That statement indicates that
modality is used to know the attitude which is expressed in their sentences.
So, based on the description of
definition all above, I can conclude that modality may indicate what actually the comment or
attitude that is performed by the speaker
in their sentences.
Based on the previous
description, I focus this study on modality from CDA‟s angle. Critical discourse analysis relates
with power, hegemony, ideology, discrimination,
etc which is expressed by the language. As what Richardson (2007:26) states that CDA is a study about
power in discourse and power over discourse.
In addition, van Dijk in Wodak and Meyer (2001:96) states that CDA is actually concerned with social problems and
especially the role of discourse in the production
and reproduction of power abuse or domination. According to Fairclough (1995:2) CDA is consolidated as a
three dimensional framework where the
aim is to map three separate forms of analysis on one another analysis of language: written or spoken form, language
texts analysis of discourse, and analysis
of discursive events as instances of sociocultural practice.
In analyzing discourse
critically, we have to focus on many aspects. As what Wodak&Meyer (2001:2-3) state that in
analyzing discourse critically, it focuses on not only text, spoken, or written
as objects of investigation but also on theorization
and description of both the social process and structures which gives rise to the production of the text, social
structures, and process in which individuals
or groups as social historical subjects, create meanings in their interaction
with text. Therefore, in CDA, we must make choice and select those structures for closer analysis which are
related for the study of social issue (ibid.
99). Fowler (1991:67) further
states that in critical linguistics, any aspects of linguistic structure that can be analyzed, it
can be from phonological, syntactic, lexical,
semantic, pragmatic or textual can carry ideological significance. He also explains that the best model for examining the
connection between linguistic structure
and social values is the functional model developed by Halliday and his colleagues. He agrees with Halliday‟s model because it is true that language performs functions in a specific practical
sense. There are three functions of language,
namely ideational, interpersonal and also textual function (Fowler, 1991:69). Ideational function is a function
that the speaker or writer represents his experience of the phenomena of the world of
his own consciousness. The interpersonal
function is that the speaker is using language as the means of his own intrusion into the speech event. The
textual function is that language makes links
with itself and with the situation and discourse becomes possible, because the speaker or writer can produce a text and
the listener or reader can recognize one
(ibid). For Fowler, the three functions above are sets of social options, not areas of privileged personal choice. He
divides three functions above into several elements, such as transitivity syntactic
transformations of the clause, lexical structure,
modality, and speech act. The theory of Fowler focuses on linguistic tools in analyzing critical linguistic
studies, such as transitivity, modality, etc.
Furthermore, he also puts
grammatical and its usage practice to know the practice of ideology (Eriyanto, 2001:133). Therefore,
from the explanation above, I use Fowler
s theory to be applied in this study.
Here, I choose Crash movie as my
subject. I analyze the utterances which contain
and show modality that is produced by the main and supporting characters through
their sentences. I choose Crash movie for this study based on several considerations. First, this movie tells about
multicultural conflicts between African-American,
Mexican, Persian, Caucasian, and Korean. Every conflict in Crash is racially motivated, and having hit on
this key to human inhumanity, the director
pursues the line with extreme prejudice (Chocano, 2005), so the utterances which produced by them are influenced
by their social status, cultural background,
racial, and also physical feature which is important because it is considered as the source of conflict. Second,
this movie is about racism and prejudice
aspects produced through the sentences to show that there is inequality social between them. It is proved through the
sentences produced by them that there
are many situations involving racial differences, which mostly use rude words, violence, or a sexual act. The example
of prejudice expression is performed by
Caucasian male as the owner of the firearm store calls “Osama” to Persian. That word of course has negative
meaning because the word “Osama” is indicated
as terrorist in US. So, indirectly, Caucasian male accuses Persian as a terrorist. In this movie, the writer tries to
give a new breakthrough by involving multicultural
backgrounds. Therefore, based on the reasons above, critical discourse analysis is suitable for the present
study.
Related to this research, there
are some previous researchers who conducted their studies using this approach. Shidiq
(2008) focused on analyzing a microstructural level of analysis of discourse on
Barrack Obama
s political speeches.
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