The Connotative Meanings In “The Internship” Movie’s Dialogue: A Semantics Study
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Udayana Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol. 6 No. 1, February 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24843/UJoSSH.2022.v06.i01.p03
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The Connotative Meanings In “The Internship” Movie’s Dialogue: A Semantics Study
I Made Mei Jayana
English Department, Faculty of Humanities, Udayana University, Denpasar, Bali Indonesia Email: Jayana.mei15@gmail.com
Abstract: This study aims to describe and analyze the connotative meanings of the internship movie's dialogue. The researcher divides the data into two parts which are primary and secondary data. The primary data consists of the movies and the script was taken from the internet. The method used in this study is the qualitative descriptive and documentation technique. The main theory that the researcher used is the theory of semantics proposed by leech (1991). The result of this study shows that the connotative meaning of the internship movie's dialogue consists of three types of connotative meanings both positive, negative, and neutral connotations. Furthermore, this study shows that the word or the phrase selected and used by the characters in the movie depended on the condition or situation and with whom they are talking.
Key Word: Connotative Meaning, The Internship Movie
INTRODUCTION
According to Cambridge Advanced, Learner's Dictionary linguistics is the systematic study of the structure and development of language in general or particular languages. Furthermore, Adrian (2001: 1) stated that the field as a whole represents an attempt to break down the broad questions about the nature of language and communication into smaller. Furthermore, the study topics of linguistics are phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.
According to Leech (1991: x), semantic is central to the study of communication, and ad communication becomes more and more a crucial factor in social organization. Besides, semantics are also at the center of the study of the human mindthought process, cognition, conceptualization-all these are intricately bound up with how we classify and convey our experience of the world through language.
Leech (1991) divided seven types of meaning if people want to interpret text, they are denotative, connotative, stylistics, affective, reflected, collocative, thematic meaning. However, this research focused on analyzing the dialogue of The Internship movie containing connotative meaning. Connotative meaning is shifting an idiosyncratic, association, which a word may have for some speakers but no other (as supposed to the fixed and generally accepted meaning of a word). Furthermore, connotative meaning is the communicative value an expression has under what
it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content. Therefore, using connotative meaning can make the dialogue or conversation more colorful and deeper, because the meaning of the word or phrase is not just what it means literally. However, the meaning can be developing. In addition, by using it we can avoid offending someone we are talking to directly. On the other hand, the use of connotative meaning also can be misunderstood by the speaker and speaker because the meaning of value expression has under what it refers to.
Most studies of connotative meanings are only focused on song lyrics and short story such as Desy (2020) that used "Ariana Grande's Song lyrics," as the object research, and Arsiska (2003) with her study entitles "Denotative and Connotative Meaning in One direction's Song Lyric: A Semantic Perspective". However, this study is interesting because this study is focused on analyzing and describing the use of connotative meaning in the movie's dialogue among the characters. The Internship movie's dialogue is taken as the data because it contains a lot of data that support this study.
This study aims to describe and analyze the use of connotative meaning in the movie's dialogue among the characters and also give a deeper understanding of how the connotative meaning is applied in our daily life. The movie is a recording of moving pictures and sound that has been made on a long narrow strip of magnetic material inside a rectangular plastic container, and which can be
played on a special machine so that it can be watched on television. Furthermore, the movie reflects real life and is based on the experience or it is the imagination of the author. The movie contains conversation or dialogue among the characters and is interesting to be discussed because it contains the data needed in this study.
The Internship movie is taken in this study because it contains data that is needed. Its movie told us two people that have to stop working in their company because the company has been closed. It also told us the struggles they and how they can escape and even solve their problems. There are some values that we can have from that movie, first humanism that shows how we respect one another, then how we have to escape our problems and not easily give up.
Finally, this study can be used as a reference for the reader, especially the students of the English Department, Faculty of Humanities, Udayana University. This study also can be useful for those who want to know more about connotative meaning, especially the types and how it is used in the dialogue of a movie. This study is far away from flawless, thus the writer needs comments and suggestions to improve this study.
METHOD AND THEORY
A research method is a systematic plan for conducting the research. In addition, it is the ways of procedures of understanding the objects that become the target of the subject. The research method of this study is divided into four following aspects: determinations of data sources, method and technique of collecting data, method, and technique of analyzing data, and method and technique of presenting data. This study used a Qualitative Descriptive method and documentation and notetaking techniques.
The data sources are divided into two parts: primary data and secondary data. The primary and secondary data were taken from the internet in the form of The Internship movie and the movie script as the primary data. The previous undergraduate thesis and international article were taken as secondary data to support this study. The data chosen was The Internship movie because it contained connotative meaning and the story of the movie is very interesting to be discussed.
According to Wikipedia The Internship movie is a 2013 American comedy film directed by Shawn Levy, written by Vince Vaughn and Jared Stem, and produced by Vaughn and Levy. The film stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as recently laid-off salesmen who attempt to compete with much younger and more technically skilled applicants for a job at Google.
The nature of this study is library research, in which the data were collected by documentation
method. The data were taken from the movie's dialogue among the characters within The Internship movie. The main instrument of the study is the researcher. This method was followed by some techniques, are:
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a. Downloading the primary data in the form of movie and subtitle or script were downloaded from the internet through the website http://149.56.24.226/.
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b. Then, the movie was watched wisely and accurately with the focus on the connotative meaning used by the characters among the conversation of The Internship Movie.
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c. Making a note or note-taking the scene and conversation have been conducted by the characters in The Internship movie for making the process easier.
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d. Classifying and relating the scene of the conversation in The Internship movie with the subtitle, and taking the data in form of word and phrase.
According to Creswell (2014) in qualitative research, inquiries employ theory as a broad explanation. Thus, the data were analyzed by using the Descriptive Qualitative method and semantic theory proposed by Leech (1991) to analyze phenomena and analyze the use of words including finding connotative meaning contained in the movie's dialogue. The data were watched and read all the story of the movie by the movie subtitle, then analyzed by using concepts and theoretical framework that is relevant to the topic.
In this study, after data were collected both primary and secondary data. Then the data were listed first and analyzed by using semantics theory by Leech (1991) and Cruse (2000). The data would be analyzed by comprehending those theories and link to the situation in The Internship movie where the data were taken that contained connotative meaning.
A Descriptive method was used in presenting the data on this study for making it easier to answer based on the research questions. The data analyzed were presented in an informal descriptive method. In which they explain descriptively a clear interpretation of connotative meaning found in The Internship movie’s dialogue. The data were presented based on the types of connotative meaning and its functions based on the theory of semantics proposed by Leech (1991) and Cruse (2000).
This study discusses the connotative meaning in the present day. This study analyzes the usage of connotative meaning in The Internship movie’s dialogue. There are some concepts and theories that need to be explained to understand this study better. They have semantic and connotative meanings.
Theory of Semantics
Semantic is a branch of linguistics study, in which semantics is the study of meaning and expression, as well as language. According to Cole (1991), “The determination of conventional (or literal) meaning involves semantics”. The study of the linguistic significance of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences is called semantics, “Fromkin stated (2001). Lexical semantics, which is concerned with the meaning of words and the meaning relationships between words, are subfields of semantics, and phrasal or sentential semantics are concerned with the meaning of syntactic units larger than the word. It is therefore argued that semantics is the analysis of the meaning of terms (lexical semantics) and combinations of fixed words (phraseology) and how they interact to form the meanings of phrases.
Types of Connotative Meaning
As mentioned before, the research is interested in connotative meaning which is the communicative value an expression has by the feature of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content. Connotative importance, as can be seen from the description, necessarily overlaps with certain elements of the conceptual context. Connotation is an additional meaning for a word or phrase, thus the examples are endless. As mentioned, many words will share the same literal meaning but may connote different feelings or ideas. The connotation can be divided into three parts depending on the are used.
A word whose connotation indicates or refers to positive emotions and associations. Positive or pleasant connotative meaning is also honorific, words that people feel good (Cruse 19917). People often use a form of speech called euphemism to try and buy the same thing more positively or pleasantly. And do not offend someone's feelings. For example, "the aroma of my money" produces a positive association because the word "aroma" implies that the smell is pleasing and inviting.
A word whose connotation indicates or refers to negative emotions and that provokes a denotative emotional response (Cruse, 1997). If we exchange the adjective "aroma" in the sentence above so that it now reads "the stench of my grandmother’s cooking” the meaning changes completely. Though both “aroma” and “stench” mean smell. However, “stench” has a negative connotation. Therefore, the meaning sounds much less appealing.
A word whose connotation is neither positive nor negative. For example, when we speak about a pet, the word “dog” has a neutral connotation.
However, the word “mutt” has a negative connotation, and the word “purebred” has a positive connotation.
The Nature of Word Meaning
According to Cruise (2000: 87) in a descriptive introduction to meaning such as a word, it is inevitable that the meanings of words should loom large, even though in more formally oriented accounts, word meanings are left largely unanalyzed, or are reduced to mere skeletons of their true selves. There are more or less reputable justifications for such neglect. However, most (linguistically innocent) people have an intuition that meaning is intimately bound with individual words, indeed this par excellence is what words are for. While such an intuition seriously underestimates other aspects of meaning, it is not, in itself, wrong, and an adequate introduction to meaning should not shrink from the slipperiness and complexity of word meaning simply because it cannot be neatly corralled into a favored formalization.
As has already been stated, the approach to meaning is not to deny that there are (presumably important) relations between linguistic forms and extralinguistic reality. Our approach is, however, based on the assumption that the most direct connections of linguistic forms (phonological and syntactic) are with conceptual structures, and until these links with the outside world.
Concepts have the status of categories that they classify experience and five access to knowledge concerning entities that fall into them. These are two approaches that dan be describing the concept of a word:
The classical approach to categorization, which goes back at least to Aristotle, but is still often taken for granted, defines a category in terms of a set of necessary and sufficient criteria (or conditions, or features) for membership.
The main thrust of Rosch's work (1975) has been to argue that natural conceptual categories are structured around the best examples, or prototypes of the categories and that other items are assimilated to a category according to whether they sufficiently resemble the prototype or not.
RESULT AND DISCUSSION
This chapter is concerned with the analysis of the data that is the movie’s dialogue and movie’s subtitle entitled The Internship movie. The data used because it was interesting to be analyzed and relevant to the topic and containing the data that were needed by the researcher. According to Wikipedia, The Internship movie is a 2013
American comedy film directed by Shawn Levy, and written by Vince Vaughn and Jared Stern, and produced by Vaughn and Levy. The film stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as recently laid-off salesmen who attempt to compete with much younger and more technically skilled applicants for a job at Google.
Types of Connotative Meanings
Based on the concept and theoretical framework in which connotative meaning was the communicative value an expression has by the feature of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content. Connotative was very important, as can be seen from the description, necessarily overlapping with certain elements of the conceptual context. The connotation was an additional meaning for a word or phrase; thus, the examples are endless. Connotative has different feelings or ideas, instead of many words that share the same literal meaning. The connotation can be divided into three parts that are positive connotation, negative connotation, and neutral connotation.
Positive connotation indicates or refers to positive emotions and associations. According to Cruse (1997), Positive or pleasant connotative meaning is also honorific, words that make people feel good. Here were the underlined words and phrases that had been selected as positive connotations.
(3-1) Good Lord. How old does that make all of us?
The connotative meaning can embrace the 'putative properties' of the referent, due to the viewpoint adopted by an individual, or a group of people, or a whole society, Leech (1981: 12). Denotatively, in this case, the phrase Good Lord is classified as a positive meaning because it refers to pleasant things that make people feel good. However, connotatively, in this case, the character of the movie tried to explain how he was thankful to God for saving and blessing his life. God is the almighty that controls the universe.
(3-2) Yeah.. yeah, she's sprouted.
According to Leech (1981: 11), connotative meaning is the communicative value an expression has under what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content. The word sprouted denotatively in this context does not mean only someone was growing up, however connotatively the word itself referred to a complimenting expression to someone that has been growing well, therefore it is considered as a positive connotation.
(3-3) Yeah, yeah, yeah, Skyler's slimming down.
The phrase slimming down is considered as a positive connotation because it referred to something liked by everyone caring about their body and health. Connotatively, in this context the character tried to express that psychical of Skyler’s was very well. That most of the people liked to have a slim body that fat because it was considered as good people that always caring about their health.
(3-4) On a squirrel, diet could end up doing.
According to the sentence above the phrase squirrel diet indicated has a positive connotation that described the body of its animal that slim and good looking. Connotatively, in this context the character of the movie suggested a good method of constructing our body that was easier than doing exhausted exercise by using a diet method.
(3-5) Your.. your business has.. been folded.
The connotative meaning can embrace the 'putative properties' of the referent, due to the viewpoint adopted by an individual, or a group of people, or a whole society, Leech (1981: 12). According to the sentence above the word folded did not mean a business already flipped. However, in this context, the word folded means a business or company that could not run anymore. The word itself also is considered a positive connotation, because it referred to a polite word compared with others words such as corrupt or error, or collapsed.
Negative connotation refers to negative emotions and associations. According to Cruse (2000), negative connotative meaning is often pejorative, words that provoke a denotative emotional response. Here were the italic words and phrases that had been selected as negative connotations.
(3-6) What the shit is this?
Based on (CALD) the word shit meant the solid waste which is released from the bowels of a person or animal. In addition, connotative meaning can hold the 'putative properties' of the referent, due to the viewpoint adopted by an individual, or a group of people, or a whole society, Leech (1981:12). Furthermore, it was commonly used to indicate something that was distracting or annoying. Therefore, it was considered as a negative connotation.
(3-7) I know it’s pricy, but I want
In this context, the character in the movie tried to explain something that dealt with the price. Denotatively, if we defined the word pricy conceptually meant costing a lot of money (CALD). However, connotatively it was commonly used to
denote people who did not have enough money to buy or in other words as poor people. Therefore, it was considered as a negative connotation.
(3-8) I’d send your raggedy-ass back out to the car
In this context, the character in the movie tried to explain that if his friend lied to him, then he would be kicked out of the car. In addition, according to (CALD) if we defined the word raggedy meant in a not good position. However, in this context, the character delivered it harshly. Therefore, it was considered as a negative connotation.
(3-9) Let me hip you to page two
According to Leech (1981: 12), connotative meaning can hold the 'putative properties' of the referent, due to the viewpoint adopted by an individual, or a group of people, or a whole society. In this context, the word hip meant he would tell the information on the second page. However, connotatively it referred to the area below the waist and above the legs at either side of the body. Therefore, it was considered as a negative connotation.
(3-10) Oh, it feels good to laugh about Alzheimer’s.
Denotatively, the word Alzheimer referred to a disease of the brain that affects especially old people. Connotatively, in this context the character in the movie expressed how pleasant his mind talking about something gone so fast and could not be memorized. Therefore, it was considered as a negative connotation.
(3-11) What the fuck, me?
According to Cruse (2000), negative connotative meaning is often pejorative, words that provoke a denotative emotional response. The word fuck in this context was commonly used when expressing extreme anger. Connotatively, in this context it word is used to emphasize the intended meaning of the character. Therefore, it was considered as a negative connotation.
Neutral connotation who’s the word or phrase denoted either positive or negative. For example, when speaking about a pet, the word "pussy” has a neutral connotation; but, the word “mutt” has a negative connotation, and the word “purebred” has a positive connotation. Here were the italic words and phrases that had been selected as considered as Neutral connotations.
(3-12) Oh, it’s like a freight train going down the track
The phrase freight train was commonly used to indicate something gone so fast. Its phrase denoted either positive connotation or negative connotation. Furthermore, connotatively in this context, the character in the movie tried to explain that his friend's daughter grew up so fast. Therefore, it was considered as a neutral connotation.
(3-13) That is expensive stuff
The word expensive if we defined it conceptually based on CALD meant costing a lot of money and it was commonly used to denote something with a high price. Furthermore, connotatively the character in the movie tried to explain that he cannot afford the stuff and he used to complain to someone for his disappointment. Therefore, it was considered as a neutral connotation.
(3-14) Let’s be the three Dutchmen
According to Leech (1981:12), connotative meaning can hold the 'putative properties' of the referent, due to the viewpoint adopted by an individual, or a group of people, or a whole society. Connotatively, in this context the character in the movie tried to explain the to pay the bill by separating it and everyone should pay for it. Furthermore, it was commonly used to complain to someone for his disappointment. Therefore, it was considered as a neutral connotation.
(3-15) But at the end of the day, you’re grinders, foot soldiers
Connotative meaning is the communicative value an expression has under what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content, Leech (1981:12). If we define the word grinder based on CALD meant when people are extremely poor over a long period. Connotatively, in this context the character in the movie tried to explain that even when we have the best knowledge or experience, however at the end we are just an employee that should work hard.
(3-16) And you two are dinosaurs
Connotative meaning is the communicative sense of an expression derived from what it corresponds to, in addition to its solely semantic substance, Leech (1981: 12). If we define the word dinosaur conceptually it has features (+animal +adult -ancient). Therefore, it meant a type of reptile that stopped existing about 60,000,000 years ago. Connotatively, in this context the character in the movie tried to explain that his employees have stopped working at him. Furthermore, it referred to
something tough and reliant that could be facing and solving the problem.
(3-17) Is this because I’m too unselfish in bed?
Because of the perspective taken by a person, a community of individuals, or an entire culture, connotative meaning may retain the 'putative properties' of the referent, Leech (1981: 12).
Connotatively, in this context the character in the movie tried to explain that he was not an arrogant man and he was willing to become better than before.
CONCLUSION
Based on the data analysis and discussion about connotative meaning in The Internship movie’s dialogue, there are some points to be drawn as conclusions. The conclusion is as follow:
First, there are three connotative meanings obtained in The Internship movie’s dialogue, positive connotation, negative connotation, and neutral connotation. The connotative meaning in this movie is used to express feelings by the characters in The Internship movie. Furthermore, in this Movie negative connotation was used the most while neutral connotation was used lowest.
Second, the use of connotative meaning in this movie mostly referred to something reflected in human behavior. The word or phrase selected and used by the characters in the movie depends on the condition or situation and with whom they are talking. Furthermore, the use of connotative meaning in the movie was mostly influenced by American culture, because the setting of the movie was in America.
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