Forms and Meanings of Conjunctive Relation in Adult, Teenage, and Children Indonesian Popular Magazines and Their Impact on Language Styles: A Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach

• Main Author: Santosa, Riyadi
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: P Philology. Linguistics
• Online Access: http://etd.uum.edu.my/2098/1/Riyadi_Santosa.pdf; http://etd.uum.edu.my/2098/2/1.Riyadi_Santosa.pdf; http://etd.uum.edu.my/2098/

The objectives of this study are firstly to determine the forms and meanings of conjunctive relation (CR) in six children, teenage, and adult Indonesian popular magazines and secondly the impacts of CR on the style in the magazines. These also include describing the roles of CR in developing text structures of the texts in the magazines, in which the text structures can characterize the types of texts or the genres. The final objective of this study attempts to explain the underlying values of the use of CR in the six selected magazines: INO, BOBO, GADIS, ANEKA YES, KARTINI, and TEMPO, covering 36 selected pieces of texts on views, 35 selected pieces of texts on features, and 35 selected pieces of texts on news. The present study employed qualitative methodology, applying discourse analysis and ethnographic design. The data involved the primary data consisting of CR used in the six magazines and the information behind the use of CR in the magazines, taken by using structured and in-depth interviews to the chief editors of the magazines. The secondary data of the research were information about the profiles of the six magazines taken from official reports of the government and private agencies. This study implemented Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as the perspective as well as the methods of content analysis in combination with the Miles' and Huberman's (1992) interactive model of analysis and Spradley's (2006) ethnographic interactive stages of content analysis: domain, taxonomy, componential analysis, and finding cultural values. The findings, firstly, indicated that there are more comprehensive categories of CR forms and meanings in the magazines. The forms of CR in the magazines consists of three different types:conjunction (external and internal), continuative, and metaphor (logic as process, logic as circumstance and logic as thing). The CR has four types of meanings in external and internal conjunction (addition, comparison, time and consequence), three types of meanings in continuative (addition, comparison, and time), and four types of meanings in logical metaphor. The findings also showed a number of interesting new categories in comparison external conjunction, time continuative, and addition, comparison, and time logical metaphor despite a number of missing categories in consequence internal conjunction. Secondly, the other significant finding of this study revealed that the style of the magazines, in general, tend to use more spoken styles. However, the style varies across the macro genres (views, features, and news) as well as across the age-based groups of magazines (children, teenage, and adult magazines). This is due to the use of more external conjunctions and less logical metaphors in the magazines, which cause the use of more clause complexes and less incongruent lexis systems (nominalization). In addition, this study also showed that the magazines apply two role-based types of CR: external and internal (not only conjunction but also continuative and metaphor) to unfold texts in the three macro genres: views, features, and news. Interestingly, the findings in this study also indicated that the use of external and internal CRs in the magazines typically coincides with particular genres. The external CR in the magazines is dominantly used in news and features, covering description, report, recount, and explanation micro genres, to order events and link things and quality, as well as to explain consequences of events. Meanwhile, the internal CR is mainly used in views, covering exposition and discussion micro genres, to organize arguments, evidence, and to draw conclusions. Finally, this study concluded that the choice of use of CR in the more spoken style and genres are appropriately employed across the macro genres and the age-based magazines. The more spoken style decreases gradually from views, features, to news in the magazines. This is because views apply more logical metaphors than features and news. In addition, in the children magazines, the choice of certain CR, more spoken style and the given genres is used as parts of introduction to Bahasa Indonesia literacy. In the teenage magazines, the choice of the linguistic realities is exploited by the young writers and journalists to express the teenagers' self identity. In the adult magazines, the choice realizes the magazines' ideology. Thus, the findings imply that to portray the whole use of CR in context, further research on CR has to cover the use of CR in different genres, styles, and age, may be gender as well, in different media and different languages. This study also suggests that genres, styles, and their CR should be deliberately incorporated in any curriculum introducing language teaching as a part of language intellectualization and sophistication programs in Bahasa Indonesia.