A study on the associative meanings of The Jakarta Post Weekender Magazine

ABSTRACT

Studying meaning including studying associative meanings is the way to understand how words or sentences convey meaning in everyday situation of speech or writing. It is very crucial to know how language could be understood, interpreted, stated, and processed by language user. This reflects the meaning of words associate with another words and the condition beyond the language. It is also has to do with individual mental understanding of the speaker as stated by Leech.

This research in general aims to study associative meanings in written text since sometimes comprehend the meaning of the text is more difficult or more ambiguity than in speech. The researcher determines the types and functions of associative meanings based on Leech’s theory that was gathered from the Jakarta Post Weekender magazine which published from October until November 2009. Furthermore, it was focused on the Profile section of the magazine since there are many associative meanings are found.

A descriptive qualitative method is used to give comprehensive descriptions and discover functions of associative meanings in the text. Then, the data was analyzed by classifying into words, phrases or sentences.

The result of this study shows that there are types of associative meanings and its functions. They are connotative meaning is used to deliver the experience in the real world to associate with the expression when someone heard it or used it; stylistic meaning is used to deliver the stylistic style which appears in language; affective meaning is used to communicate the feeling or emotion of the speaker or writer itself; reflected meaning is used to deliver the new sense of a word that relates to another phenomenon in the same expression; then collocative meaning is used to convey the associate of words which tend to occur in the environment.

In conclusion, different types elicit different functions. Certainly, the speaker or writer uses the associative meanings to perform their functions which are related to the world since it is very appropriate to influence the addressees or readers.