Udayana Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, p-ISSN: 2549-6956, e-ISSN: 2621-9107

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24843/UJoSSH.2020.v04.i02.p05

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An Analysis of Idiomatic Expressions Found in ‘A Dog’s Journey’ (2019) Movie Script

Herman1, Vivi Rohani Nirmana Hasibuan2

  • 1English Education Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas HKBP Nommensen, Indonesia

Email: herman@uhn.ac.id

  • 2English Education Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas HKBP Nommensen, Indonesia

Email: vivirohani02@gmail.com

Abstract This research is conducted in purpose to identify types of idiomatic expressions found in “A Dog’s Journey” (2019) Movie Script. The researchers used Lim’s theory (2004). The source of data was the script of movie entitled A Dog’s Journey. The methodology which used in this research was qualitative research which specifically referred to document content analysis method. Method of collecting the data was searching the movie, downloading, watching and understanding the whole movie. After collecting the data, the researchers did data preparation, data reading, data confirmation, and calculation as the data analysis. After investigating the types of idiomatic expressions found in A Dog’s Journey (2019) movie, the researchers found 36 idiomatic expressions. The idiomatic expressions in A Dog’s Journey (2019) movie have been analyzed in types; there were 17 phrasal verbs with percentage 47,2%, 3 phrasal prepositional phrase with percentage 8,3%, 3 prepositional phrase with percentage 8,3%, 3 idioms with noun as keywords and with percentage 8,3% , 5 idioms with verb as keywords and with percentage 13,8%, 4 idioms with adjective as keywords and with percentage 11,1% and 1 idiomatic pairs with percentage 2,7%. The conclusion of this research was the dominant of idiomatic expression used in A Dog’s Journey (2019) movie is phrasal verb

Keywords—Analysis, idiomatic expressions, movie, meaning, semantics.

  • I.    INTRODUCTION

Language is the system of human communication which consists of the structured arrangement of sounds (or their written representation) into larger units, e.g. morphemes, words, sentences. Language can express our feelings, ask questions, make requests, protest, criticize, insult, apologize, promise, thank, say hello and goodbye.

According to Amaliyah (2017:2), Language is one of the result humans cultures which has the highest value, because by language human can communicate and interact with society around world. By language human can develop and abstract several causes that occur in their environment. And language has very important rule in social life clearly. Communication can be going fluently if the target language was used correctly.

Futhermore, Sapir (1921:8), as cited in Herman (2017:72) defined language is purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols. It means that language is own of human only in which is acquired through learning, implemented in form of sounds, produced by human organ of speech in sentences realities.

Based on the definition above, the researchers stated that language is the key to human life. By using language, a person can communicate with others and convey his ideas among the people either written or spoken.

There are many languages in the world. One of them is English. English is one of the international languages used in countries throughout the world, including Indonesia. According to Pardede and Herman (2020:65), English is an international language, almost people from all over the country use English for their communication, that is why English very important language. As an international language, English is very important because it is required as a bridge of communication. In Indonesia, English is a foreign language. English is full of knowledge and information and used for connecting people having different tongues. Based on the definition above, the researchers stated that English is one of the international languages used in countries throughout the world, including Indonesia. With English language we can communicate with people who have different languages.

Also, in English there was a lesson that learns deeply about meaning called semantic. According to Filip (2008:8) in Agung (2016:4), semantics is the

study of meaning expressed by elements of any language, characterizable as a symbolic system. It is the goal of linguistic semantics to describe the meaning of linguistic elements and to study the principles which allow and exclude the assignment of meaning to combinations of these elements. A semantic unit whose meaning cannot be deduced from the meaning of constituents called idiom. Idioms have their own meanings. An idiom is an expression whose meaning cannot be predicted based on the meaning of its components. According to McCarthy and O’Dell (2010), idioms are expressions which have a meaning that is not obvious from the individual words. It means that the meaning of idioms is not literal meanings, but they have non literal meanings. The best way to understand idioms are by looking at the contents. For example, “drive somebody” is an idiom meaning “make somebody angry or frustrated”

As a learner of a second language, researchers are aware of the difficulty of acquiring and understanding second language idioms. Different from people who grew up with English as the first language must have understood the meaning of the idiom. But for those of us who study or use English as a second language (ESL / English as a Second Language) it will be difficult to understand the meaning of idioms spoken by people who are English as their first language. For example when you don’t understand idioms and other people say to you, “Break a leg” surely you will be confused why that person told you to break your legs when the real meaning is “good luck”. The conclusion from the problems that exist in this study and research that has been done before is that people who use English as a second language will have difficulty understanding the meaning of idioms.

The statement above is supported by several previous researches. If the previous researchers used theory from Fitria Awaliyah (2019) she conducted a research with the title “An Analysis Of Lexical And Contextual Meaning On The Idiomatic Expressions Found In Jalalluddin Rumi’s Poems”. The result of their researches showed how are the acceptability degrees of idiomatic expression’s in movie interpretation and the meaning types of each idiomatic expression in movie, but different from the results of this research. The results of this research showed types of idiomatic expressions are mostly found in the A Dog’s Journey (2019) Movie.

Idiomatic expressions are usual to be found in a movie script, such as in a movie entitled “A Dog’s Journey” that will be analyzed by the researchers. Definitely, each idiom that appears in the dialogue of the movie script has a certain meaning itself. In watching the movie, a lot of people will hardly understand the meaning of the idioms appeared in the movie, because the meaning of the idioms cannot be predicted from its grammatical rule. Moreover, the aim of the idioms in the movie script can be

accomplished only because words have certain meaning. According Lim’s theory (2004) in Adisetia (2013:21) there are seven types of idiomatic expressions, namely phrasal verb, phrasal prepositional phrases, prepositional phrase, idioms with verbs as keywords, idioms with noun as keywords, idioms with adjectives as keywords, idiomatic pairs. The researchers will separate the idioms appeared in the movie script and analyzed the types of the idioms.

In addition to the explanations above, the researchers are interested conducting a research entitled “An Analysis of Idiomatic Expression Found in “A Dog’s Journey”(2019) Movie Script“

  • II.    RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

  • A.    Research Design

This research is qualitative research design. Qualitative research seeked to understand a phenomenon by focusing on the total picture rather than breaking it down into variables (Ary, 2010:29) as cited in Herman (2015:45). Based on Ary et al (2010:29), they are different types of qualitative research consider briefly eight of the most widely used approaches : basic interpretative studies, grounded theory studies, ethnography studies, phenomenological studies, case studies, historical studies, narrative inquiry and content analysis

The researchers used document or content analysis research method. As Ary et al (2010: 457), explained that content or document analysis is a research method applied to written or visual materials for the purpose of identifying specified characteristics of the material. The materials analyzed can be textbooks, newspaper, web pages, speeches, movie, advertisements, musical compositions, or any of a host of other types of documents.

  • B.    Data Source

Data source is source where of data are collected. According to Arikunto (2010:129).”the source of data in the study in subjects from which the data can be obtained. In this research, the researchers used document as the sources of data, because it is written material. Thereby the data of this study are words, sentences or utterances containing with Idiomatic Expression Used in “A Dog’s Journey” Movie script by W. Bruce Cameroon that was released on July 2019.

“A Dog’s Journey” Movie is chosen because the movie is one of the most popular movie and it has obtained so many awards. Besides that, almost of the dialogue spoken by characters contain variety of idiomatic expression.

  • C.    Instrument

Instrument is tools that are required to get information. Instrument make researchers did the

research project easily on the other hand it can be clearer, complete and systematic. This part is also very important in any form of research. According to Ary, Jacob Sorensen (2010: 431), the most common data collection methods used in qualitative research are observation, interviewing, questionnaire, and document or artifact analysis. In this research, the researchers used document to obtain the data. this is american comedy movie released in 2019 entilted “A Dog’s Journey” which can be downloaded from youtube. In addition to that, the technique of data collection is document or content analysis. Hence, media can be used to support the data collection process is pen, book, smartphone, internet, youtube, speaker, and laptop.

  • D.    Techniques of Data Collection

According to Noor (2011:138), technique of collecting data is the way of collecting the necessary data to answer research problem. In qualitative research, there are three kinds of data collection: interview, observation, and documents. So, for this study documents is a kind of data collection.

In conducting this research, there are several steps to be taken:

  • 1.    Searching the movie and the script of A Dog’s Journey (2019) movie

  • 2.    Downloading the movie and the script of A Dog’s Journey (2019) movie from the internet.

  • 3.    Watching A Dog’s Journey (2019) movie to comprehend the whole story.

  • 4.    Reading and understand all A Dog’s Journey (2019) movie script which was transcribed by W. Bruce Cameron.

  • E.    Techniques of Data Analysis

The data will then be analyzed using the theory of Creswell (2009). There are essentially six steps in analyzing the data, they are as follows:

  • 1.    Data preparation

At the beginning, in preparing the data, the researchers chose the movie to be identified. Furthermore, the researchers identified it so that they can be related to the focus and formulated problems.

  • 2.    Data Reading

After preparing the data, the researchers read the whole movie script carefully in order to find out and the types of idiomatic expressions found within the selected movie.

  • 3.    Data Confirmation

After all types of idiomatic expressions are certainly found, the data are then confirmed by using the theory of Odell (1996). It is used to determine the types of idiomatic expressions found so that they can be classified correctly and appropriately into their own types.

  • 4.    Frequency and Percentage Calculation

After all the data are classified, the researchers finally calculated the data in order to know the

frequency of the most dominant type of idiomatic expressions found within the movie.

  • F.    Triangulation

Thevalidity of a qualitative research can be seen by triangulation. To make the data valid, triangulation was employees. In fact, there are many different approaches to “triangulation” and there are articulate proponents for each approach. According to Meijer et al (2002: 146) there are five kinds of triangulation in qualitative research:

  • 1.    Triangulation by data source (data collected from different persons, or at different times, or from different places);

  • 2.    Triangulation by method (observation, interviews, and documents);

  • 3.    Triangulation by researchers (comparable to inter rater reliability in quantitative methods);

  • 4.    Triangulation by theory (using different theories, for example, to explain result);

  • 5.    Triangulation by data type (e.g., combining quantitative and qualitative data).

In this research, the researchers used theory triangulation to help interpret and explain the data gained from the study in order to be valid and reliable. The triangulation used is that involves considerations of how the phenomenon under study might be explained by multiple theories.

  • III.    RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

  • A.    Research Findings

In this research, the researchers classified the data based on types of idiomatic expression. The researchers found idiomatic expression in various types and dominant types for the types the researchers analyzed by using Lim’s theory.

  • 1.    Types of Idiomatic Expression

There are seven types of Idiomatic Expression found in A Dog’s Journey Movie based on Lim’s theory, they are : Phrasal Verb consist 17 data (47,2%), Phrasal Prepositional Verb consist 3 data (8,3%), Prepositional Phrase consist 3 data (8,3%), Idiom with Noun as Keyword consist 3 data (8,3 %), Idiom with Verb as Keyword consist 5 data (13,8%), Idiom with Adjective as Keyword consist 4 data (11.1%), Idiomatic Pairs consist 1 (2,7%). Involving the total data are 36 data.

Table 1. the percentage of seven types of Idiomatic Expression

No

Types of Idiomatic Expression

Frequ ency

Percenta ge

1

Phrasal Verb

17

47,2 %

2

Phrasal Prepositional

Verb

3

8,3 %

3

Prepositional Phrase

3

8,3 %

4

Idiom with Noun as Keyword

3

8,3 %

5

Idiom with Verb as Keyword

5

13,8 %

6

Idiom with Adjective as Keyword

4

11,1 %

7

Idiomatic Pairs

1

2,7 %

Total

36

100

%


The Most Dominant Types of Idiomatic Expression



■ Phrasal Verb


■ Phrasal Prepositional Verb


Chart 1. Types of Idiomatic Expression

  • 2.    The Dominant Types of Idiomatic Expressions

Based on the data above show the percentage of the seven types of idiomatic expression. The types of Phrasal Verb are 47,2%, the types of Phrasal Prepositional Verb are 8,3%, the types of Prepositional Phrase are 8,3%, the types of Idiom with Noun as Keyword are 8,3%, the types of Idiom with Verb as Keyword are 13,8%, the types of Idiom with Adjective as Keyword are 11,1 %, and the last is the types of Idiomatic Pairs are 2,7%. So, based on percentage the dominant types of Idiomatic Expression found in A Dog’s Journey Movie Script is Phrasal Verb.

Chart 2. The Percentage the Most Dominant Types of Idiomatic Expression

  • B.    Discussion

After analyzing the data researchers would like to discuss some topic about the research. Researchers summarized the discussions as follows :

The researchers conducted discussion to answer the research problem in this research. And the research problem in this research to find out the types of idiomatic expressions and to find out the dominant types of idiomatic expressions Found in A Dog’s Journey movie .The researchers found 36 data of types of idiomatic expressions. 17 phrasal verbs, 3 phrasal prepositional phrase, 3 prepositional phrase, 2 idioms with noun as keywords, 5 idioms with verb as keywords, 4 idioms with adjective as keywords and 1 idiomatic pairs can be found. And this research, the researchers found the dominant types, namely phrasal verb has 17 data.

There are some similarities and differences with the previous relevant research that conducted by Zaid (2019) “An Analysis of Idiomatic Expression Used by Characters in Hotel Transylvania Movie”. The similarity between the previous research with this research is to find out the types of idiomatic and the differences are the object of the research, the second problem of the research namely to interpret the real meaning of idiomatic expression and the theory used.

  • IV.    CONCLUSIONS

Based on the findings and discussions, the researchers concluded as follows :

  • 1.    Based on the analysis of the idiomatic expression found in “A Dog’s Journey” Movie script, there were found 36 idioms. They are: 17 phrasal verbs, 3 phrasal prepositional phrase, 3 prepositional phrase, 2 idioms with noun as keywords, 5 idioms with verb as keywords, 4 idioms with adjective as keywords and 1 idiomatic pairs can be found.

  • 2.    From the seven types of idiomatic expression found in A Dog's Journey Movie script there is one type of idiomatic expression that high frequently used in the movies, namely phrasal verb. The data showed that from 36 (thirty-six) idiomatic expressions 47,2% of them contain of phrasal verb. These because phrasal verb is an idiomatic phrase Comprised of a verb followed by an adverb or Preposition used in every conversation.

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