SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF HJ-STORY.COM
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SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF HJ-STORY.COM
by
I PUTU ARI KASTINA
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF LETTERS AND CULTURE
UDAYANA UNIVERSITY
Abstrak
Di era modern ini perkembangan teknologi meningkat dengan pesat. Manusia cenderung untuk menggunakan perangkat yang canggih dan sederhana demi menunjang pekerjaan mereka. Salah satu produk teknologi canggih tersebut adalah telepon pintar seperti BlackBerry yang diproduksi oleh Research in Motion Limited (RIM). Perangkat ini menyediakan berbagai macam fitur pesan singkat yang diantaranya paling populer dikenal dengan BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). BBM didesain sebagai fitur pesan singkat ke satu bahkan ke banyak orang dalam satu waktu dan memungkinkan pengguna untuk mengirimkan gambar, pesan suara, data bahkan lokasi dalam peta. Salah satu hal yang paling menarik adalah Display Picture atau tampilan gambar pada BBM yang sering kali digunakan pengguna sebagai ajang mengekspresikan perasaan mereka. HJ-story.com adalah salah satu situs yang menyediakan berbagai gambar unik dan menarik untuk dipajang sebagai tampilan gambar BBM dikalangan remaja. Gambar-gambarnya dapat mewakilkan perasaan cinta, sedih, rindu, kesal dan lain-lain. Karya tulis ini bertujuan untuk mengidentifikasi tanda-tanda verbal dan visual dalam gambar HJ-story serta mencari fungsi dan makna tanda-tanda tersebut dengan menggunakan teori dari Peirce dan Leech. Hasil analisis dari keenam data didapatkan bahwa tanda-tanda verbal dan visual pada gambar Hj-story bertujuan untuk mengekspresikan rasa cinta, sayang, sedih, marah, berani, sabar dan lain-lain. Fungsi dan maknanya adalah sebagai fungsi ekspresif untuk menunjukkan perasaan kita yang sebenarnya lewat rangkaian kata maupun gambar dengan cara yg lebih menarik dan atraktif.
Kata kunci: HJ-story, verbal, visual
HJ-Story is the most popular display picture website in South Korea. It was launched in 2010. HJ-story started as a blog on Tumblr earlier in May 2010. It all began with a bunch of little photo messages that the creator sent to his girlfriend for fun. He was never very good at expressing true spoken words; therefore, he made various funny pictures in form of story to tell about what he
felt to his girl. This study tried to identify the verbal and visual signs that occur in several pictures of HJ-story and analyze the messages that the author of HJ-story wants to convey. This study is important to be conducted since the way of someone interprets a picture is different from one another. Therefore, it is useful to consider several factors including the verbal and visual signs in the pictures using some theories of meanings to figure out the appropriate message that the author wants to convey. Besides, the theory of meaning and function can help us to understand deeper about the content of the pictures.
Based on the explanation above, the problems which are raised in this writing are formulated as follows:
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1) What verbal and visual signs occur in HJ-Story pictures?
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2) What are the functions and meanings of verbal and visual signs in HJ-Story pictures?
The aims of this study are:
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1) To find out the verbal and visual signs used in HJ-Story pictures.
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2) To explain the functions and meanings of verbal and visual signs in HJ-Story pictures.
The research method which is used in collecting data was library research since there were no respondents to be involved in this study. The data source was taken from the internet in www.HJ-story.com. While descriptive qualitative method was used in analyzing. This method was used since the research was intended to achieve an understanding of phenomena, named social phenomena such as how to interpret the appropriate meanings behind a picture the using semantic theory.
The main discussion in this section was delivered from the problems of the study. The problems were finding the verbal and visual signs occurring in HJ-Story Pictures and explaining the meaning of verbal and visual signs in it. The
chronology of the analysis was started with the analysis of verbal and visual sign and continued with the meaning, function and the relation between both signs. Here is an example of the data analysis.
The verbal message of picture 1 can be seen in the table as follows:
|
COMPONENT |
SIGNS | |
|
SIGNIFIER |
SIGNIFIED | |
|
Headline |
Love is courage |
This statement states that love can change someone’s personality from a coward become a brave man. |
|
Signature line |
Giving information about the publisher of this picture. | |
According to Chandler (2001:27), the word not only describes things, communicate feelings and attitudes, but also bring ideas to our minds. The table above shows about the headline and the signature line of the HJ-Story picture. In
the headline, the statement Love is courage means that love has an incredible power even changing someone’s personality from being coward into brave one.
Meanwhile, the signature line shows us about the publisher of that picture. www.HJ-Story.com is one the famous website from South Korea.
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5.1.2 Representation of Non-verbal Signs
The representation non-verbal signs of the picture 1 can be seen in the table as follows:
|
COMPONENT |
SIGNS | |
|
SIGNIFIER |
SIGNIFIED | |
|
Illustrations |
There is a boy who seems shocked and afraid to see the mouse. |
A boy named Joo is actually a coward since he is very afraid with the mouse. Therefore, he seems very shocked to see it. |
|
A man who is brave to face a big devil to protect his girl. |
Because of the power of love, Joo gains his courage to protect his girl from a big devil even in former picture seen that he is a coward who afraid with the mouse. | |
|
Represent in the red color of devil. |
The red color is usually associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love. Red is a very emotionally intense color therefore, the devil color is red. | |
According to Pierce (1997:25) in term of analyzing the non-verbal signs, it can be seen that there is a boy named Joo who seems afraid to see a mouse. It
shows his original personality. There is also a symbol of exclamation in that picture which means a fear or frighten of something.
The second illustration is a boy named Joo with his girl named Kate who is seeing a big devil. Joo who is frightened to the mouse becomes brave to face the devil since he feels that he should protect his girl, Kate. It illustrates that love gives Hae Joo power in order to protect his girl from any danger even when he is afraid too.
In addition, the red color of the devil means harm or danger. Red also means fear, full of power, war, and courage. Red is also a very emotionally intense color.
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5.2.1 Function
According to Leech (1974:47-50), the function of this picture is expressive function since it expresses its originator's feeling and attitudes. It shows Joo’s feeling who consider that love has given him power and courage in the danger situation.
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5.2.2 Meaning
According to the theory of meaning proposed by Leech (1974), the analysis of meanings found in picture 1 is explained as the following:
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1. The Headline Analysis
In this headline section there is a sentence "Love is courage" which reflects connotative meaning in which the publisher uses the words that have meaning beyond their original meaning. This sentence means that love has an incredible power to change someone’s personality. Hae Joo is actually a coward who is frightened with only a little mouse but he becomes so brave to a big devil when he is with his girl. It means that love can give power and courage to someone who is being in love like him.
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2. Signature Line Analysis
The signature line of this picture is placed in the bottom. www.HJ-Story.com reflects conceptual meaning because the publisher uses the words that show exactly their original meaning. HJ-Story is the most popular display picture
website in South Korea and it was launched in 2010. HJ-story started as a blog on Tumblr earlier on May 2010.
From the previous discussion, there are two conclusions which can be drawn as the following:
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1. The pictures searched on the www.HJ-story.com convey some messages that intend to make people more aware about how important to show our love, compassion, awareness to others especially the one who we love. Sometimes, people feel embarrassed to show it. More people are not able how to express it. Therefore, HJ-story pictures in one of creative ways that people can use to convey their personal messages comfortably. The message itself is represented in verbal signs which in the form of statement or texts and non-verbal signs in the form of picture or using some attractive colors.
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2. All of the HJ-story’s pictures have expressive functions since they were used to express the originator’s felling and attitudes. Those functions are referred to make people more attracted in seeing and using it as the expression of their love to his or her soul mate. The meanings behind HJ-story pictures are intended to get more appreciations from others. Besides, they are also intended to remind people about how love can give positive effects and bring peace in our social life because Love is not always about how to show it but it needs words to make it more complete.
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