CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1. 1. Background of the Study
Talks (conversation) are a central activity in social life1. That is why; studying or investigating conversation is not only interesting, but also meaningful. As the phenomenon of language in use, conversation is studied by one of the branches of linguistics that is discourse analysis. Language is the medium of conversation. As the definition of language, it is a set of meaningful sound. People use it for conversation. In the development of language and conversation, sometimes language is a very complicated thing either in national or international language. It can be spoken or written language. Language used by the human being expresses the idea, feeling, whishes, opinion, and very common people debate their friends by language, although their reasons are false.
One of the phenomena that show studying language is interesting are each of people have common language and, the differences of how the language is used by the people in certain area. But we just observe the phenomenon physically. We never discuss or study it on the component of their language. We are never aware about it. Because of that, the researcher interested in studying about it, as Yule has pointed out in his book entitled ‘An Introduction to Language’ as below.
In the study of language, some of the most interesting questions arise in connection with the way language is used, rather than what its components are. We have already introduced one of those questions when we discussed pragmatics. We were, in effect, asking how it is that language-users interpret what other language-users intend to convey. When we carry this investigation further and ask how it is that we, as language-users, make sense of what we read in texts. Understand what speaker mean despite what they say, recognized connected as opposed to jumbled or incoherent discourse, and successfully take part in that complex activity called conversation, we are undertaking what is known as discourse analysis2.
The discourse analysis becomes very important because it relates with how the language is applied. Our understanding about it influences the way people make a conversation, because we apply our language in that conversation process. In here, conversation is a kind of discourse, which is in spoken form. Because of that, discourse analysis presents the criteria of discourse. It is consisting of seventh criteria; they are coherence, cohesion, situational, acceptable, informative, intentional, and intertextual. But, not all of them are required in the discourse, but it depends on the kind of discourse.
Between all of the criteria above which had to be required on the debate are cohesion, coherence, and intertextuality. In the cohesion, each of statement should be in good structure. In coherence each of statement should be connected each other, and in intertextuality each of the statement should be truth as the reality.
The discourse analysis shows that analytic access can be gained to the situated achievement of intersubjective by focusing on the sequential organization turn taking. In addition, the relation with the discourse, conversation as a type of a discourse, so, both of them are in relationship that cannot be separated. It is very important to pay attention to the conversation process; further more for the debaters or the participants, the quality of discourse become a special point that will be considered in the scoring.
Because of those, it is very important to discuss about the good quality in discourse. We as the language-users often make mistakes in conversation. It causes our conversation is not successful, and in addition we often get misunderstanding with our partner. Therefore, we may also see it as a proof that the understanding to the language in use is declining and that people simply do not know to speak by his or her own language. So, when we want to speak, we must think first with the language or our sentences that we want to say. As the explanation before, it determines the quality and the success of speaking. Dealing with English language, Bex and Watts stated that as Standard English, a conversational text of this kind draws attention to the point of classifying it as being either in standard or non-standard English3.
To study the quality of discourse, the researcher uses the data from "Java Overland English Debate" 2007. The researcher takes this object because in a debate, the participants often ignore the criteria of a good discourse. The important for the participants are speaking fast and debate to the other arguments. They ignore the grammaticality, intertextuality and also the coherent. From this debate, the researcher whishes it will become one of source of knowledge in linguistics study and we will know how our quality of the discourse in speaking English can be proofed.
1.2. Problem Statement
The general problem of this study is about the quality of the discourse. Then, the problem derived into three points that is stated as follows.
1. How is the cohesiveness of the discourse developed by the participants of Java Overland English Debate 2007?
2. How is the coherent of the discourse developed by the participants of Java Overland English Debate 2007?
3. How is the intertextuality of the discourse developed by the participants of Java Overland English Debate 2007?
1.3. Research Objectives
Based on the problem statement above, the objective of the study of this research is:
1. To identify the cohesiveness of the discourse developed by the participants of Java Overland English Debate 2007.
2. To identify the coherence of the discourse developed by the participants of Java Overland English Debate 2007.
3. To identify the intertextuality of the discourse developed by the participants of Java Overland English Debate 2007.
1.4. Significance of The study
This research has two significances; they are theoretical and practical significances. Theoretically, this research will enrich the knowledge on the standard quality of discourse. It also informs about any kinds of element that is needed in discourse. Therefore, we can apply it well in our interaction. Practically, this research will have a good contribution for all of us. If our speaking has good quality, our partner will not misunderstand or confuse with our perception. Usually, our misunderstanding is caused by the uncompleted sentence that we produce; it also causes the different interpretation for the listener.
1.5. Scope and Limitation
In this research, the researcher just studies quality of the discourse that is developed by participants of Java Overland English Debate 2007. So, the researcher does not study any kind of discourse. And this research just specified on spoken discourse.
The reason why the researcher took this data as the object is because the researcher is interested in studying the spoken discourse, and this debate also as a kind of spoken discourse. In this debate, the researcher gets any kinds of examples about the criteria of discourse that is needed in debate. The criteria that are needed in debate just three kind, they are cohesion, coherence and intertextuality.
In this thesis, the researcher just takes one competition and that in the fourth session. It consists of two teams; positive team and negative team, each of team consist of tree participants. As the positive team is the participants from The State Islamic University (UIN) of Malang, and as the negative team is The Widya Mandala University (UWM) of Surabaya. So, in this debate, there are six participants.
1.6. Definition of the Key Terms
The definition and the key term of this research are written as below.
1. Discourse is text in on-going speaking that consists of sentences expressed by the participants in English debate.
2. Quality of the discourse is the characteristics of the discourse that give the strength and weakness identity.
3. Cohesiveness is the connection between sentences and words in sentence, resulted by the element in the text, cohesion has two kinds, and they are grammatical and lexical. Grammatical cohesion consists of four elements namely substitutions, ellipsis, reference and conjunction. While lexical cohesion has two kinds they are reiteration and collocation.
4. Coherence is the connection that is brought about by something outside the text; the order of statements relates one another by sense.
5. Intertextuality is one of the discourse criteria which show the unity of the text and must relevant with another reference or text.
6. Debate is a competition to defend the argumentation of the participants in ‘Java Overland English Debate 2007’.
7. Participants are the team or the member of team who follows the English debate.
