An Analysis on Cohesion in Short Poetries of Robert Frost

ABSTRACT

Cohesion as such can be considered as a guide to coherence and comprehension. Certain words, or phrases, and their location within the discourse will activate a set of assumptions as to the meaning of what has gone beforehand or will generate a set of expectations as to what may follow. These words can be described as ‘cohesive devices’, as they create links across the boundaries of mere fragments, or can chain related items together. Moreover, it is one of primary criteria for textuality text which differentiates between text which has texture and text consists of random sentences. Cohesive devices are divided into three categorizes; grammatical cohesion, lexical cohesion, and conjunction.

This study is conducted to analyze the cohesive devices and the function of cohesive devices in short poetries of Robert Frost. Poetry is taken as subject of the study due to it is a kind of verse included in literary discourse. Poetry is different from the other kind of text because it consists of brief language but powerful. It is also full of figurative language and connotation. Robert Frost is a very well-known American poet in 20th Century. He is the only American poet
who got four Pulitzer prizes.

In this study, the descriptive qualitative is used as the research design. It is used because the data are in form of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. In addition, the researcher does not try to examine a hypothesis but tends to elaborate something deeply that is cohesion. The researcher also describes the results of analysis in form of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. The data are every sentence in some of Robert Frost’s short poetries. The research instrument is the researcher herself who obtaining and analyzing the data. In collecting the data, the researcher searches first some short poetry which included in descriptive lyric poetry and no more than twenty lines. Then, she reads them one by one to determine the sentences which consist of cohesive devices by giving numbers. In analyzing the data, she reads every sentence again while highlighting words or phrases which are considered as cohesive devices. After that, she classifies the cohesive devices into their appropriate types and also determines their functions. The last, she describes the findings and makes conclusion.

The finding of this study is that almost all types of cohesive devices are used in short poetries of Robert Frost. Furthermore, that can be concluded that the type of grammatical cohesion which is the most dominant is personal reference. It is used to make brief the language of the poetry. The lexical cohesion which is mostly used is repetition to reinforce the thematic focus of the poetry. In terms of conjunction, additive conjunction is often used to provide additional information on the thematic focus of the poetry.

Finally, this thesis is expected to give contribution to the study of discourse analysis, especially to the analysis of discourse markers in this case cohesion. It can be a teaching media for English teacher in teaching discourse makers. In addition, it can be a reference for the next researcher who interested in analyzing cohesion. However, the researcher suggests the next researcher to use another research design such as quantitative method to measure the percentage of the used of each cohesive device in a discourse. It is in order to know the quantity of every kind of cohesive devices in text.