LEXICAL CHOICES OF POLITICAL NEWS HEADLINE IN THE JAKARTA POST CYBER-NEWS
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LEXICAL CHOICES OF POLITICAL NEWS HEADLINE
IN THE JAKARTA POST CYBER-NEWS
Ni Putu Ayu Kartika Sari Dewi
(Jurusan Sastra Inggris Fakultas Sastra)
Abstrak
Headline (judul berita) merupakan hal yang pertama dilihat oleh pembaca ketika membaca sebuah berita. Pilihan kata yang menarik pada judul berita diharapkan mampu menarik minat pembaca untuk melanjutkan membaca keseluruhan isi berita. Berdasarkan teori yang dikemukanan oleh M.A.K Halliday ‘Cohesion in English’ (1995), pilihan kata yang singkat, padat serta menarik perhatian sering kali digunakan pada judul berita. Pilihan kata tersebut tidaklah semata-mata untuk menarik perhatian pembaca, namun memiliki makna yang merefleksikan keseluruhan isi dari berita tersebut. Pada tulisan ini dapat ditemukan bahwa pilihan kata yang digunakan dalam judul berita bersifat unik. Hal tersebut dibuktikan dengan adanya penyingkatan nama maupun penggunaan istilah yang merujuk pada julukan seseorang. Selain itu, hubungan antara judul dan isi berita (lead) bersifat lexical cohesion.
Kata kunci: Pilihan kata, judul berita, kohesi
The news is one of the press media which has means of communication. It influences in creation of new words and expression in the language used. Many new words, especially slang and acronyms, are used by society because they are read in the news and then used, though sometimes people do not really know the exact meaning of the new expressions.
In reporting the news, journalists are free to use words and expressions, language style and linguistic structure. It is quite hard to understand the news headline, due to the fact that they are displayed in such a ‘different’ construction of English language. Many reductions occur in terms of grammar and the choice of special words. The aim of such a noticeable construction is to attract people to read the news.
As one of news component to attract reader’s attention, Headline must be arranged in short, attractive and can reflect the summary of the news. In this case the interrelatedness between headline and lead of news is looked by means of cohesion.
Halliday and Hasan (1995) Cohesion divides into two types, those are grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion. Each item of grammatical and lexical cohesion called as the cohesive devices. The cohesive devices act as a signal for giving the interrelatedness between the sentences.
Related to this study, it is focus on one aspect of cohesion that is lexical cohesion. This topic is chosen because of the phenomenon of the headline that arranged from any uniqueness lexical are choice to attract reader’s attention.
Referring to the background above, the research problems can be formulated as follows:
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1. How are the lexical items presented in news headline?
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2. What is the relation between the news headline and lead of the news?
Every scientific paper has scientific aims, in this case to activate knowledge in English language. The purposes of this paper are:
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1. To know the lexical items which are presented in news headline in the English language newspaper The Jakarta Post.
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2. To investigate the relation between news headline and the lead of the news.
Research method the main requirement in research; it is about what data will be collected and how they are analyzed. It consists of three elements; data source; data collection and data analysis.
The English language data sources used in this study were online news media items on www.thejakartapost.com, Focused on the political news topic that Rhoma Irama (‘dangdut’ singer) was running for president in the 2014 election.
The data in this research were collected by purposive sampling, in order to get political headlines to be used as data. All selected were read carefully, lexical choices used in news headline was found and were identified the relation between the news headline and the lead of the news.
The data found through data collections were analyzed qualitatively and descriptively based on the theory of Cohesion in English proposed by M.A.K Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan (1995) and also supported by the theories proposed by Nunan (1993). The collected data were analyzed based on the lexical choice occurring in headlines. Then, data analysis was presented descriptively to describe lexical cohesion and grammatical cohesion that occurred in the relation between the headline and lead of the news.
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5. The Analysis of Lexical Choices in Political News Headlines in The Jakarta Post Cyber-news
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5.1 Lexical Choices
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1. ‘Dangdut’ king ready for presidency
(www.thejakartapost.com, Wednesday, November 14 2012, 9:35 AM)
The headline of news has a different structure from the Standard English. News headlines are often written in a special style, which is different from ordinary English. In headline (1) above, the writer used quotation marks on the word dangdut, because that word does not have a suitable match in English, as the word has a special meaning. The writer used quotation marks because he wanted to show the singers character as a dangdut singer’s in Indonesia. The quotation marks were used to emphasize the famous figure and that he was well known as the ‘king of dangdut’. The phrase dangdut king was used because Rhoma Irama has been more popular as a singer than as the politician. Lexical choice used in this headline was a part of making or creating an image of someone in the public eyes.
Headlines often leave out articles and it is reflected in the headline (1) ‘Dangdut’ king ready for presidency. This headline could be changed into The Dangdut King ready for presidency in order to be a Standard English sentence.
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2. By the way…The King and the president
(www.thejakartapost.com, Sunday, November 25 2012, 10.08 AM)
News headline are very often written in a special style to express messages to the reader. This special style of headline too exaggerates from what news content actually is. The use of the phrase by the way in headline (2) has the meaning as the question phrase or emphases something uncertain.
Sometimes, the choice of word in the headline contains ambiguous meaning for the reader. This headline (2) has the ambiguous meaning in the phrase The king and the president. This phrases has two different meanings. First, both of the king and the president are both of phrases with the meaning that ‘the president and the king of dangdut’ are different persons in the different duties’. Therefore the conjunction and between those two phrases was used as the linking word. The second meaning, the context of the news is used to create the meaning the king and the president. Based on the content of news the meaning is that ‘the king of dangdut would run to the president’ (becoming president), therefore the king and the president are the one person who has his ambition to be president. That means that the conjunction and does not refer to the linking word, but it is also as the comparison between two phrases the word or.
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3. PKB in talks with Rhoma Irama
(www.thejakartapost.com, Monday, December 03 2012, 7.16 AM)
News headline are often written as short as possible. The news reporters and editors tend to use abbreviations or acronym to correspond to originally longer words. The shortening was used to economize space without changing the original meaning. From the headline structure above, the writer used the shortened word by taking first letter of each word. The shortened PKB in both of the headline above has meaning The National Awakening Party (PKB). The shortening of ‘PKB’ in this headline, includes as well metonymy news headline. Metonymy appeared because PKB the party supported by many politicians. However, when individual members of PKB were in talks with Rhoma, it was metonymy to say PKB in the headlines news, as the individual talking with Rhoma Irama.
In this case, the verb talks in headline (3) was used in simple present tense. Therefore, this headline shows the time when the subject (PKB ) was talking with Rhoma Irama. The transitive verb ‘talks’ was explained clearly by using the prepositional phrase to explain the object of the headline. In headline (3) the
preposition ‘in’ is found, which is based on grammatical rule, is incorrect. Based on the grammatical rule, the proposition ‘in’must be followed by a gerund, so if the writer wants to preserve the verb talks, the preposition keep it concise ‘in’ can be omitted. On the other hand, the preposition ‘in’ in headline (3) has the function to emphases the action that has been done by the subject.
The most important part of the story is exposed in the first paragraph of the news known as the lead of news. Therefore, the headlines represent what is said within the lead by using shorter construction
Believing in the democratic value that everyone has the same right to be a presidential candidate, Rhoma Irama, the country’s king of dangdut music, says that he is ready to go the distance in the 2014 presidential election.
Based on the headline above, the lexical cohesions appear in the relations between headline and the lead of news.
|
HEADLINE |
÷ |
LEAD |
|
Dangdut king |
÷ |
Rhoma Irama |
|
Ready |
÷ |
Ready |
|
For presidency |
÷ |
to go the distance in the 2014 presidential election |
The phrase Dangdut king in the headline refers to the Rhoma Irama, the country’s king of dangdut because Rhoma Irama has been well known as king of dangdut singer in Indonesia. The phrase Dangdut king in the headline and its reference Rhoma Irama in lead of news is categorized into collocation term. This link is called collocation term because of the lexical reference to the identity of specific person in the lead of news.
Then, the verb ready is linked in the same word ready in the lead of news. This verb ready in the headline belongs to ‘reiteration’ term focused in the ‘repetition’ type, because the word ready in the headline is repeated in the lead of news without changing the meaning. However, the adverbial phrase for presidency has reflected the meaning to go the distance in the 2012 presidential election. This link between headline and lead is that the headline is the summary of the meaning in the lead of news. The lexical cohesion ‘collocation’ is also shown in the phrase for presidency in the headline, and is fully described as to go the distance in the 2012 presidential election in the lead of news.
Grammatical cohesion also appears between headline and lead of news.
|
HEADLINE |
÷ |
LEAD |
|
Dangdut king |
÷ |
Rhoma Irama, he |
Based on the grammatical cohesion between the news headline and the lead of news, the phrase dangdut king refers to the name of Rhoma Irama in the lead of news. Besides, the phrase dangdut king is also related with to reference he in the lead of news. Because the reference person is the subject, this grammatical cohesion called ‘personal reference’.
Everyone’s having a grand time lampooning dangdut King Rhoma Irama after he announced he was heeding his “calling” to run for president in 2014. In the name of good journalism, he has been given ample space and time to share his reasons. “I rejected requests to run for president in 2009,” he said, adding that he initially rejected renewed requests for the next election.
This headline and lead of news above are related by lexical cohesion and grammatical cohesion. The lexical cohesion between the headline and lead of news is shown below.
|
HEADLINE |
÷ |
LEAD |
|
The king |
÷ |
dangdut King Rhoma Irama |
|
The president |
÷ |
to run for president |
Rhoma Irama is well known as the king of dangdut singer therefore the phrase the king in the headline refers to the dangdut king Rhoma Irama. This type of lexical cohesion is called the ‘reiteration’ because one word refers to another word which is repeated in the lead of news. Then the phrase the president in the headline is the simple way to express that Rhoma is running for president. The headline is written in a simple a way, and therefore the phrase the president in the headline refers to the phrase to run for president in the lead of news. Based on this data, the phrase the president and its reference, in the lead of news are categorized into type of lexical cohesion called ‘collocation’ because the phrase the president contains the implicit meaning based on the context of the news to run for president.
The phrase by the way in the headline has meaning to emphasis the confusion of the writer about the news, meanwhile this phrase also attracts the curiosity of reader to read the news. Additionally, the conjunction and which is used in the headline, besides its use as a link between two phrases in the same level, also has function to compare two phrases.
Grammatical cohesion between headline and lead of news above occur in the limited terms.
|
HEADLINE |
÷ |
LEAD |
|
Rhoma Irama |
÷ |
he, his, I |
The type of grammatical cohesion occurring between headline and the lead of news in termed as personal reference. The pronoun used in the lead function as the ‘subject’ in the news, the pronoun his as ‘the possessive pronoun’ of Rhoma Irama’s statements, and the pronoun I are used in the ‘direct statement (direct speech’) of Rhoma Irama who said that he rejected requests to run for president in 2009.
The national Awakening Party (PKB) has confirmed that it had held in meeting with the self-styled king of dangdut Rhoma Irama. Who had previous announced his attention to run for 2014 presidential election.
In terms of types lexical cohesion, the relations between headline and the lead of news are presented below.
|
HEADLINE |
÷ |
LEAD |
|
PKB |
÷ |
The National Awakening Party (PKB) |
|
Rhoma Irama |
÷ |
King of dangdut Rhoma |
The abbreviation PKB was used in the headline above to refer to The National Awakening Party (PKB). This condition belongs to the type lexical cohesion called ‘collocation’. Collocation was used because the shortened word PKB in the headline can be more clearly and specifically described in the lead of news. Then, the name Rhoma Irama in the headline described clearly in the leads becomes the king of dangdut Rhoma Irama. This link is also termed as ‘collocation’, because in the leads the name Rhoma Irama is described clearly as famous dangdut singer rather than as the politician who runs to be president in election 2014.
Grammatical cohesion also appeared between headline and lead of news. The relation between headline and lead of news in term of grammatical cohesion are shown below.
|
HEADLINE |
÷ |
LEAD |
|
In talk |
÷ |
It |
|
Rhoma Irama |
÷ |
who, his |
The verb talks in this headline represents ‘demonstrative reference’. The reference it emphasizes the message that, PKB has confirmed having talks which were held when meeting with Rhoma. Meanwhile, the verb talks in this headline is in present form, while it should be written in present prefect tense have been talking to explain about the thing that has been done and it is still being done. Then, the name Rhoma Irama in the headline has ‘personal reference’ his in the sentence his attention to run for 2014 presidential election.
Headlines were written as short as possible, because the news reporter and editor tend to create abbreviation to correspond to originally longer words. Besides, there are common situations for the news media to omit ‘to-be’ in news headline. It is obvious that the point of the omission is to attract people to read the news.
The relation between headline and lead of the news are proved with the lexical cohesion occurr between headline and lead of news. Lexical cohesion is the shortest ways to find out the relation between headline and lead of the news, because headlines consist of uniqueness lexical were chosen and that lexical choices reflect the message of the news.
Barus, Sedia Willing. 1996. Jurnalistik, Petunjuk Praktis Menulis Berita. Jakarta: CV. Mini Jaya Abadi
Halliday, M.A.K and Ruqaiya Hasan. 1995. Cohesion in English. New York:
Longman Group Limited
Nunan,David.1993. Introducing Discourse Analysis. Victoria:Penguin English
Tiono, Nani I. 2003. “An Analysis on Syntactic and Semantic Factor Found in Newspaper Headline”. An Journal was download on December 9 2012 in (http://puslit2.petra.ac.id/ejournal/index.php/ing/article/view/15497)
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