Semantic Analysis on Caption of Caricatures in New York Times Newspaper

‘‘Meaning’’ is typically treated as the first source for catching some exact message content of extended discourse (spoken or written) in the case of direct communication or in the case of verbal report such as in newspapers, book and the others. In this study, the characterization of meaning is situated action and reasoning as a fundamental point and significant view of this research. The focus statement of this research is framed practically and theoretically, that is currently facing toward the concept of meaning. It then presents particularly a problematical discussion of semantic terms.


The primary stage of this analysis is about meaning in the terms of denotative meaning and connotative meaning. The important point of views in this research is that, first; the writer tries to find out the scientific or academic information within the caption of caricature, in which the caption of caricature is one of the valuable resources on the interne through New York Times Newspaper.


This requires simple linguistic analysis, including searches for linguistic clues such as reference phrase (“the picture above shows”) and knowledge of which verb and noun in sentence represent a depicted object. In other words, this research is intended to generate discussion about words, phrase and sentence found in caricature that published in New York Times Newspaper.


In this research, the writer uses the suitable theory that framed as descriptive qualitative method, in which the emphasizing of qualitative research threat the case of process, interpretation of meaning and exploration of concepts, the data are in the form of word rather than number and statistic. The major purpose of the descriptive method is to tell and to describe a situation or area of interest systematically, factually and accurately. Based on the operational definition of qualitative method, this method is very appropriate one with this study, because this research is dealing with the object that is in the form of word, phrase and sentence. In such case, the writer selects and uses written texts (caption of caricature) as the data from caricatures of New York Times Newspaper.


However, the writer limits the data by selecting twenty of caricatures. The writer categorizes those caricatures into three parts namely: political caricature, social caricature and economical caricature. In Addition, the writer collects the data from January to May 2009. In analyzing the data, the writer identifies denotative meaning and connotative meaning that are found in the caricatures of New York Times Newspaper.


The data results of this analysis indicate and show some points, those ones could be formulated into two categories, and they are denotative meaning and connotative meaning. In other words, the writer faces that eighty percent of those caricatures talk about current issues of social problem in any cases of life such as political competition, social conflict, ideology, family’s life and sport.

Syntactic and Semantic Characterizations of Infant Utterances: the Case of Ben in "Daddy Day Care” Film

Language is a fundamental instrument for communication and interaction. Those functions however are only found if the speakers are able to convey the ideas and messages to the hearers successfully. In relation to children's language, it is a long-standing and interesting topic to be discussed. Since the children language development topic has attracted many linguists and psychologists from a certain century, it appears many things in line with the children language in later time. Children's utterances have their own characteristics and uniqueness both in syntactic and semantic features. The problem statements which are carried out are: (1) What are the syntactic characterizations of infant utterances in some conversations of Ben (a 4 year old child) as found in "Daddy Day Care" film? and (2) What are the semantic characterizations of infant utterances in some conversations of Ben (a 4 year old child) as found in "Daddy Day Care" film?

To answer those two problems, the researcher studied the utterances of a child aged 4 year old in a certain film. Here, Ben as an exemplar case of the children utterances. The type of this research is embedded single case study focusing on the description of the syntactic and semantic characterization of infant utterances. The data of this research are the "Daddy Day Care" film itself and the utterances of the movie players especially Ben's utterances which become the main data. The example of syntactic and semantic characterizations of children utterances in early multi-word stage analysis given by Adrian Akmajian is very useful during the process of this research data analysis.

The findings shows that there are 8 syntactic characterizations which are: yes/no question, wh-question, negation sentence, subject+prepositional phrase, one/two constituents, noun phrase, verb phrase, and noun phrase+verb phrase. And there are 18 semantic characterizations whicha are: question (confirmation/clarification, request/expectations, request/imperatives, and information request), negation (denial and rejection), location, request/imperatives, attribution, plurality, greeting, information, protest, ascertainment, replying greeting, appreciation, regretting, and justification.

Referring to the result of this research, the researcher expects all people who have academic or science purpose to study more about the children language development. The researcher also expects the parents who have a child in early age to understand more their children language. Children often fail in uttering words or sentences they actually intend to. In contrast, parents also often fail in understanding their children utterances.

A Semantic Analysis on Ulul Al-Bab English Translation in the Holy Qur’an

Understanding and expressing what people do is not an easy as we do. We need to learn several linguistic branches such as semiotics, morphology, pragmatic and semantics. Because to avoid misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the language we used, we have to know the meaning of words or sentences we made. To understand someone utterance means to know the intended messages of that person (included the intended meaning). Semantic as one of linguistics branches is concern about that. This branch is important one, and there are including lexical meaning, sentential meaning and discoursial meaning such the discussion in this thesis.

There are some reasons the researcher chooses this topic. By knowing Ulul Al-Verses, first we can enhance our position in this universe to be useful for others, second we can dig up what does UIN Malang mean? Because UIN Malang using Ulul Albab as a symbol. Therefore, the researcher was interested in analyzing the kind of meaning used in Ulul Al-bab Verses. The researcher dedicates to give the title of this thesis “A Semantic Analysis on Ulul Al-bab English Translation in the Holy Qur’an”.

The problems of this study are what kind of meaning involved in Ulul Al-Bab verses? The researcher limits the discussion of his thesis based on the three kinds of meaning stated above. Ulul Al-bab verses used in this research are Q.S Al-Baqoroh: 179, 197, 269; Q.S Al-Imran: 7, 190,; Al-Maidah: 100; Q.S. Yusuf: 111; Q.S Al-Ra’d: 19; Ibrahim 5: 52; Q.S Shad: 29; 43; Q.S Az-Zumar; 9, 18, 21; Q.S Al-Mukmin/Ghafiri: 54; Q.S At-thalaq: 10 (Al-Bagy; 1945).

In analyzing Ulul Al-Bab verses, the researcher uses Qualitative method because the researcher would analyze and interpret the research object Ulul Albab verses. The step to obtain the data is by collecting sources of data from Interpretation of the Meaning of the Noble Qur’an in the English Language translated by Taqiuddin and Muhammad Muhsin Khan as the relevant source of data, conducting and analyzing the collected data and make conclusion.

After conducting the study, the results of this study are as follows: (1) related to lexical meaning, most of the verses consists of synonym, antonym, hyponym, denotation, connotation, homonym, homophone, polysemy, ambiguity and figurative language. While (2) related to sentential meaning, most of the Ulul Al-bab verses consist of speech act, presupposition, entailment, idioms and deixis. And the last (3) related to discoursial meaning, Ulul Al-Bab verses dominated by cohesion which explains about substitution, ellipsis, reference and conjunction.

Finally, The researcher expects this study could give contribution for the other researchers who are eager to know more about semantics. Moreover semantics as an important branch of linguistics is interesting to be studied especially when it is applied to applied linguistics. But it does not mean that a linguistics branch is monotonous. We can merge those things and make them as interesting study. By this study, we can get two profits at the same time. We do not comprehend our skill in certain applied linguistics. We can get a valuable analyzing of Ulul Al-bab verses. In this way the reason of the researcher chooses this topic and it is important for further researcher to consider it as an interesting challenge to do especially in UIN Malang and society.

Functional Semantics Analysis on the Language of Advertisement of Well-known Electronic Products

There are many kinds of advertisement appears in the mass media. One of them is the advertisement of electronic products. The advertisers must use their language of advertisement full of messages. However, the consumers do not always easily understand the language that used in advertisements. Thus, understanding meaning becomes the most important thing in communication especially in advertising. Moreover, the main purpose of advertisements is to deliver the messages, that should be understood by the hearer or reader and finally they will respond by buying or using the product that advertised. Based on that background, this study is conducted on how the types of meaning are appeared in the language of advertisement of well-known electronic products which is specified to identify the types of associative meaning appeared and describe meaning that is emphasized.

This study uses descriptive qualitative approach that emphasizes on describing in detail the types of meaning that appears in the language of advertisement of well-known electronic products in which the data of this study are ten advertisements which taken from internet. The instrument of this study is the human instrument (the researcher herself) who is gathering and analyzing the data.

The results of this study shows that in the language of advertisement of well-known electronic products there are several types of associative meaning appears, namely connotative and affective meaning in which the dominant meaning that appears is the connotative meaning. Meanwhile there are two types of associative meaning that did not appear, namely social meaning and collocative meaning. It means that most of advertisers use connotative words to make their advertisement meaningful and sense able.

Based on those findings, it is suggested for the advertisers to comprehend and consider the meaning when they write the advertisements. In addition, it is also recommended for future researchers to conduct the research using semantics in other fields, daily conversation or any literary work such as the dialogue in movie or drama.

Semantic Analysis on the Lyrics of Rihanna’s Songs

The present study analyzes about semantic analysis especially nn the lexical meaning and the messages in the lyrics of Rihanna’s songs. According to the background, this research is conducted to answer the following statement of the problems: the study deals with the following question; what kinds of lexical meaning are used, what messages are involved in, and what the dominant are in the lyrics of Rihanna’s songs?

The lexical meaning is to be interpreted as the meaning of lexemes depending on the meaning of sentences in which they occur. Lexical meaning concerned with the relationship between words and meanings. Related to lexical meaning involves denotation, connotation, synonymy, antonym, hyponymy, homonymy, homophone, polysemy, and figurative language. Also includes the messages which found the lyrics of Rihanna’s songs. Messages are divided into three kinds such as moral, social, and religious messages. This research aimed in analyzing the lyrics of Rihanna’s songs by using Lyons’s theory.

This research uses descriptive qualitative methods, because it depends very much on description and explanation. Furthermore the researcher uses qualitative methods because the data are taken in the form of words. Data are taken from the kinds of lexical meaning and the messages on lyrics of Rihanna’s songs. The data was downloaded from internet, magazine and media player of Rihanna’s songs. Related to lexical meaning may be found in single verse or part of verse in the form of sentence or discourse, as both a sentence and discourse is the collection of words. Lexical meaning in this study includes denotation, connotation, ambiguity, synonymy, antonym, hyponym, homonym, homophone, polysemy, figurative language, and the messages. Of course denotation or conceptual meaning dominates the number of meanings used in the lyrics of Rihanna’s songs. In addition, moral, social, and religious messages are used.

The researcher expects this study is useful for the other researcher who wishes to know about more about semantics. Moreover semantics as an important branch of linguistics is interesting to be studied especially when it is applied to literary works such as song, poem, and prose. But it does not mean that a linguistics branch is monotonous. We can combine those things and make them as interesting study. By this study, we can get two profits at the same time. We do not only comprehend our skill in certain literary works but also we are able to get a valuable analyzing of the song. In this study the reason of the researcher chooses this topic and it is important for further researcher to consider it as an interesting challenge to do.

A Semantic Analysis on the English Translation of Surah Al-Furqon by T. B. Irving

Semantics is one of branches of linguistics studying about the meaning and considered as a major branch of linguistics devoted to study of meaning in language. According to what has long been the most widely accepted as theory of semantics, meaning are ideas or concepts that can be transferred from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the hearer by embodying them, as it were, in the forms of one language or another.

Meaning is also found on language of the translationof Holy Qur’an as the Revelation of Allah to Muhammad. Based on the background, this research is conducted with three problems. They are; What kinds of meanings are involved in the English translation of Surah Al- Furqon by T. B. Irving?. What messages are found in the translation of Surah Al-Furqon by T. B. Irving?. What translation method does T. B. Irving use in translating Surah Al-Furqon from Arabic into English?

In anlyzing this surah, the researcher used a descriptive qualitative design since the data are in the form of words rather than numbers. The researcher used the English translation by T. B. Irving as the relevant source of data. After reading and understanding the data obtained and getting information from informants and internet, She analyzed with several steps; First of all the researcher categorized the data into four categories in accordance with the division of data used as the data sources, the data each categories are presented, analyzed and concluded, after the data of the whole categories have already been presented, analyzed and concluded, the researcher made tentative conclusion and continued by making final conclusion after consulting or discussing the informants.

There are three kinds of meaning which are involved on the English translation of Surah Al-Furqon by T. B. Irving, they are: Lexical, Sentence or Utterance and discourse meaning. Related to the lexical meaning, Synonym, antonym, denotative, Connotation, Ambiguity, homophony and hyponym are found in this surah. Sentential meaning also occurred in this surah, analytic Synthetic sentence and entailment. In addition, T. B. Irving applied discourse meaning such as Verse 14,24,26,53, etc.

From the result of the study, the researcher concluded that T. B. Irving translation of the verses of Surah Al-Furqon involved lexical meaning, sentence and utterance meaning, and discourse meaning. Lexical meaning ominates the number of the verses, then it is followed by senetence and utterance meaning, and next is discourse meaning.

Finally, the researcher expects that this study could give contribution toward the researcher herself moreover for anyone who want to do the same field (literary woks) in accordance with semantic analysis. Besides, She hopes any comments and suggestions since this study is far from perfection.