Connotative and denotative meanings on the lyrics of Tina Arena’s songs

One form of literature is poem. The lyrics of song are categorized into poem or poetry. Lyrics have important roles on the song. Song will be interesting if they have good lyrics. Lyrics of song can be described as composer’s expression on represent the feeling, thought and the willingness. Moreover, to make a song has artistic value the composer usually uses sentences or word’s meaning to convey his or her messages. Consequently, he or she always exists in a song to show the way of the composer in expressing their emotion and feeling through the lyrics that they make.

The term meaning is used in many ways, not everyone who knows a language can understand what is said to them and produce strings of words that convey meaning. Semantic as one branches of linguistic is the study of meaning, meaning of a words, phrases and sentences. Kinds of meaning are also found on language of song, as literary work. It means that language is thought and activity. Tina expresses her lyrics used kind of meanings to get good lyrics in order to deliver the messages for the listeners.

This study is conducted to investigate what are denotative and connotative meanings are implied in Tina Arena’s songs. Every meaning in the lyrics of Tina Arena’s songs are taken from three albums and take ten songs to be analyzed, which have been selected before. In analyzing these songs, the researcher used a descriptive qualitative method, because it does not need variable and she only analyzed and interpreted the research object of Tina Arena’s lyrics. The steps how she obtained all those data to be observed by collecting sources of data from Tina Arena’s cassettes and from internet.

Selecting the songs which contain of connotative and denotative meanings, presented all of the data from the first album until the third album, and then reading all of those lyrics. The data were selected where included connotative meanings. Furthermore, choosing the words which have implicit meaning and comprehending it meaning. Then the data were categorized as data of the study. Presented the first data, the data were read, analyzed and concluded, and the tentative conclusion made. These steps were done until the last the song. The writer analyzed each song using theory of George Yule. It is found that there are positive and negative meanings in the lyrics of Tina Arena’s song. The positive connotative meanings are mostly used by Tina Arena, because the sentences and utterances are constructed for daily expression. The negative connotative meanings are not dominant because the lyrics of Tina Arena mostly written in the figurative language.

The researcher suggests that the students of the State Islamic University of Malang who are interested in analyzing the similar subject to be able to develop the study by using different point of view, because there are still many elements that have not been analyzed yet. So, they will have more information about language characteristics which are used in Tina Arena’s song.