A discourse study of types of cohesion used by the main character of “Freedom Writers”

ABSTRACT

This research focuses on cohesion expressed by the main character of Freedom Writers’ Film. Cohesion is a part of Discourse Analysis, since in discourse study attention has been paid to one of seven criteria of textuality namely cohesion, the apparent connection in discourse. Script film is chosen because this is rarely studied by the researchers before. Moreover, it includes spoken text. Most of the studies conducted previously choose written text as the object of the study. Therefore, script film is chosen as the data of this research. Furthermore, Freedom Writers’ Film is chosen since there are cohesion in the utterances expressed by the main character of Freedom Writers’ Film. Related to those phenomena, the research problems are explored namely “What are the types of cohesion used by the main character of “Freedom Writers”?” and “What are the functions of cohesion used by the main character of “Freedom Writers”?”.

This study uses descriptive qualitative design in which the data are taken from the utterances expressed by the main character of Freedom Writers’ Film. The data collected are identified using Halliday and Hasan’s theory of cohesion.

The finding of the study reveals that, on the grammatical cohesion, he researcher finds that the most common used is reference. The function is to indicate reference pronoun. Then followed by demonstrative reference, the function of demonstrative reference is to indicate demonstrative pronoun. After that conjunction, the function is to indicate a connection between ideas. After that ellipsis, the function is to make the utterances simple. And substitution is rarely used; its function is to make the language accurate. Nevertheless, on the lexical cohesion, it is found that the most common used is reiteration namely antonym, repetition, and synonym. Collocation rarely found. The function of antonym, repetition, synonym and collocation is to make the sentences can be tied together in order to make a good coherence in the utterances.

From those findings, it is expected that this study will be useful for English learners. By knowing the information of cohesion in spoken text, they could pay attention to the use of them in practicing speaking to develop their speaking.