CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter explains about the reason why
choose this topic in background of the
study, the problems of the study which are investigated, purposes of research in objectives of the
study, expectation for some target readers in significance of the study, scope and
limitation and definition of the key terms.
1.1. Background of the Study Since a baby is born,
he or she has social needs and one of these social needs is the need of communication. In normal
circumstances, the human infant is certainly
helped by the typical behavior of the adults in the home environment (Yule, 1996: 177). Adults here can be parents,
brother, sisters, a babysitter, and other
caretakers in order to bring the language faculty into operation with a particular language (Montgomery, 1986: 9).
Obviously, children cannot
acquire the complexities of language easily. As a result, adults often make necessary
adjustments to make sure that children understand
them. They often use simple sentences and a lot of repetition in order to ensure that children understand what they
are saying. Adults also tend to speak more
slowly and use many pauses between their utterances to make the children understand their goals (Clark and Clark, 1977:
296). With this in mind, the adults should
go on considering the language of the children (Halliday, 1992: 27).
Concerning this issue, the adults who interact
in children‘s social life have the
responsibility to inform the language system. According to Clark and Clark (1977: 320), what adults say to children gives
them information about structure and
function of language they are to acquire. The problem is that young children know very little about structure and function
of adults‘ language. Several words can
have different meaning for children from those of adults (Dale, 1972: 139).
Relating to these facts, adults
tend to use different types of speech to converse with little children (Dale, 1972: 144). They
will modify their speech to the point where
children give some evidence of listening, talking in what is said and responding appropriately. Thus, it is related
to the general goal of speakers, i.e. to get listeners to comprehend what they are
saying (Clark & Clark, 1977: 320).
Adults definitely should make
such adjustments in their speech very often when talking to children with special educational
handicap, specifically with autistic
children. Children with autism, like other children, have a unique personality and combination of characteristics
(Ruswan, 2005: 2). They have difficulties
communicating, maintaining a conversation or keeping a conversation going. In general, an autistic child has
problems in understanding what he is talking
about. At the same time, an autistic child also has problems to understand what adult say.
Leo Kenner, a psychologist from
John Hopkins University, introduced the term
―autism‖ for the first time. He used the term
―autism‖ to refer a child who socially did not want or could not interact
with other and is only interested in his own world. This child has to try very hard to
master verbal language (Yuliawan, 2003).
Their language develops slowly or not all. However, they are still capable to learn. Children with autism learn
considerably less from the environment.
Therefore, parents, teachers,
relatives, even peers must consider that autistic children need a very structured environment of
learning, such as to learn to read, write
and do arithmetic (Ruswan, 2005: 2).
Autistic children needs help from
other people such as; parents in home, therapist
in autistic therapy, and teacher in school. It is because they spend a lot of time helping autistic children to learn how to
do something or how to understand a word
by making some adjustment in their utterances (Anderson, 1989). In talking autistic children; parents, therapist, and
teacher use special ways which are different
when they are talking to normal children like use a simple sentence, clear voice, and sometimes using low and soft tones
(Caldwell, 2010). According to Yule
(1985: 177), the characteristically simplified speech style adopted by someone such as mom, dad, granny and grandpa,
who spends a lot of time interacting
with a young child is called caretaker speech. As the definition suggest, one of the characteristics of the
caretaker speech must be simple, which means
simple sentence structures. People that talk with autistic children have to modify their speech when talking with autistic
children. They must be able to gain the
trust of the child and create an environment in which the child enjoys having them around (Ruswan, 2005: 2). In general,
they will enrich autistic children‘s knowledge in improving their sentences and
developing their awareness of what the
purpose of language function is. Based on Halliday‘s theory (1992: 11), there
are seven classifications of functions
of language. They are instrumental functions, regulatory function, representational function, interactional
function, personal function, heuristic function,
and imaginative function. Each of those functions has its own characteristics and purposes; also, all of
them are usually used by adults to know the
child‘s image of language, so they can modify their language when communicating with children.
The study about language function
is studied by Discourse Analysts.
―Discourse analysts study
language in use: written text of all kinds and spoken data, from conversation to highly
institutionalized forms of talk‖ (McCarthy,
1991: 15). The examples of
written discourse are articles, novel, short story, and so on. Meanwhile, speech, lecture, dialogue,
debate, conversation, and so on are considered
as spoken discourse. More particularly the study about language function in lecture is studied by conversation
analyst as an approach to analysis of spoken
discourse.
As cited by Kessler from Olsen,
language functions refer to the way we can
use language to achieve communication process, 1.e. to get listeners to understand what we are saying (Kessler, 1992:
92). We use language, specifically sentences,
as a tool to help us to say what we have in mind to others. Barnes (1973) makes a distinction that sentence
performs two functions at once. It conveys
the overt message and at the same time sets up or confirms the social identity and relationship of the people who
are speaking or writing to one another (Holmes,
1978: 139). In this case, functions of language are
chosen to be analyzed because language
itself serves a range of functions, such as: for the media of personal relationship, for creating the imaginary
systems and so on. An utterance may have one or more functions depending on the context
of the situation, while variation in sentence
forms may carry the same function (Kessler, 1992: 92). As said Dale, most of people who have had experience
speaking with little children have strong feelings that their speech with little is
quite different from their other speech (Dale,
1972: 37). Considering those facts, the researcher found a film which demonstrates conversation process between
adult as a caretaker and autistic twin children,
under the title ―Miracle Run
.
Miracle Run is a 2004 Lifetime
Television film starring Mary-Louise Parker,
Zac Efron, Bubba Lewis, and Aidan Quinn. The social stigma and discrimination of autistic children is present
in the movie Miracle Run. The reason of
choosing this film as object of this study is because it tells about the way people communicate with autistic children
until the autistic children can do anything
that any other child could do. This film also based on a true story so, it is more helpful to study about the way language
functions used in talk with autistic children.
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