A Semantic Study on Figures of Speech Used in Short Stories of New Stories from the South 2000 the Year’s Best

Studying figures of speech is the way to understand each type of figures speech used. It is very important to study figures of speech because there are mong figures of speech have a little different.

This study was intended to analyze types of figures of speech used in “Short Stories of New Stories from the South 2000 the Year’s Best”. Actually there are a dozen types of figures of speech, but this study only focuses into nineteen types, namely simile, metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, climax, irony, litotes, oxymoron, synecdoche, aposiopesis, pun, exclamation, apostrophe, antithesis, parenthesis, periphrasis, chiasmus, onomatopoeia and parison.

There are two research problems of this study, they are; first, what are types of figures of speech found in short stories of ‘New Stories from the South 2000 the Year’s Best’. Second, how are each types of the figure of speech used in the short stories of ‘New Stories from the South 2000 the Year’s Best.’

A descriptive research design is used in this study. The data of this study were all text of four short stories from a book entitles Short Stories of New Stories from the South 2000 the Year’s best. Data analysis was conducted in three steps; after obtaining the data from short stories of ‘New Stories from the South 2000 the Year’s Best’, the researcher then analyses the data as follows; coding the data in order to get easy in analyzing it. Second is categorizing the data into four categories in accordance with the number of type short stories are used as the main data sources. After the data of the whole categories have already been presented, analyzed and concluded, the researcher makes tentative conclusion. After consulting with the informants, the researcher makes final conclusion.

The results of this study show that there are sixteen types of figures of speech. They are parison, onomatopoeia, chiasmus, periphrasis, parenthesis, antithesis, apostrophe, exclamation, pun (or paronomasia), aposiopesis, irony, climax, hyperbole, metonymy, metaphor and simile. Moreover, the authors applied these figures of speech appropriately and accurately. Furthermore, the short stories are more understandable, interesting and beautiful.

Based on the results of this study, among figures of speech there have been a little difference. The researcher suggests that the readers be careful in using figures of speech because certain figures of speech sometimes have only slight difference to each others. Furthermore, the researcher suggests that the future researchers conduct similar theme of study with more complete data and discussion.