A descriptive study on the deixis used in garfield in: The Jakarta Post

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on analyzing Garfield comic strips in The Jakarta Post using deixis theory proposed by Stephen c. Levinson. Deixis is a sub-part of discourse analysis which studies a reference. Deixis also concerns with meaning inferred from an utterance or a sentence by giving a context. The study of deixis is always interesting since the language both spoken and written and context cannot be separated to each other. Garfield is a humorous strip centered created by the mastermind of cartoonist Jim Davis. The utterances and dialogues in Garfield are simple, fun, understandable, and related with the conversation happen in daily life. Based on that background, the research on deixis on Garfield in The Jakarta Post is conducted with the proposed problem, ،،how is the deixis used in Garfield in The Jakarta Post?”

،This research was conducted by using descriptive qualitative method in order to explain the data descriptively on how the deixis used in Garfield in ،،The Jakarta Post ،، based on Levinson’s theory of deixis. The data were in the forms of words or utterances in Garfield comic strips in The Jakarta Post, which published from April Ist to April 30٩ 2006.

Data analyses revealed the findings,covering the proposed problem. The deixis used in Garfield in The Jakarta Post can be categorized into five types of deixis, namely person, time, place, discourse, and social deixis. The data showed that the person deixis mostly appears in Garfield. It can be classified into the first person, the second person, and the third person deixis. The first person deixis is used when the cartoonist wants to show the speakers who produce the utterances in Garfield, while the second person deixis is used to show the referents identified as the addressees, and the third person deixis is used to point to the referents not identified as the speakers or addressees. The time deixis is used when the cartoonist showed the time in which the utterances occurred. It also often used in Garfield comic strips. In addition, the place deixis are used to describe the place or location relative to the location of the participants in the speech event based on the context given. Furthermore, the discourse deixis is used to point to some portions of discourse which contain the utterance as a signal and its relation to the discourse context Meanwhile, the social deixis is used when the cartoonist showed the social Stahrs between the speakers and addressees.

Based on those findings, it is suggested for the cartoonist to consider the words or utterances that will be presented in the comics in order that the readers easily understand the inference being conveyed. Additionally, it is also recommended for the next researches to conduct the researchers on daily conversation, which is formal or informal and in any literary works such as the spoken dialogues in the movie or drama as the data sources.