A Psycholinguistic Study on Perceptive Language Disorder of The Main Characters in Mozart and The Whale Film

ABSTRACT

Language disorder is language disability which causes the damage of understanding and the expression of language is one of the frailties of human, such as Asperger Syndrome. Asperger syndrome (AS) is the kind of autism that is a disorder in development that usually begins before the age of four. It is caused by brain damage especially in the left side of the head, which prevents the sufferer to make social interaction with other people. Asperger syndrome (AS) is also characterized by impaired social interaction, impaired communication, repetitive or odd patterns of behavior or interests, and unusual responses to stimulation and environments.

This research uses descriptive qualitative method that emphasizes the specific case—language disorder by using psycholinguistic approaches to analyze the perceptive disorder of the main characters as people with suffer from Asperger Syndrome in Mozart and the Whale film, they are Donald Morton and Isabella Sorenson. Therefore, it is an interesting thing observing them in order to discuss the kind of perceptive language disorder. The data are collected by observing their utterances in the film.

The result of this study shows that Donald Morton and Isabella Sorenson have some kinds of perceptive language disorder, namely: Absurd Response (AR), Odd Response (OR), Relevant but Not very Polite (RNP) Response, and Marginal Response (MR). The result also shows that Relevant but Not very Polite (RNP) Response is mostly found in both of them, while Absurd and Odd Responses rarely occur.

Finally, after analyzing the perceptive language disorder in Donald Morton and Isabella Sorenson, people who will interact with the sufferer of Asperger Syndrome will understand their communication strategy, because they tend to lack of having a good communication and social interaction.