Semantic analysis on “Tenggelamnya Kapal Van Der Wijck" by Hamka

ABSTRACT

The choice of fiction as the data is first based on the difficulties and challenges when analyzing it because of the allusions in the implicit parts of the novel, and second based on the lack of students who are interested in literature. The last reason is that the writer wants to build up and encourage the habit of reading literature. Reading fiction is very advantageous. People can get a better view of things that happen in people's minds. In fiction, readers can find explorations of human behavior. These things can educate them and enable the readers to know how to cope with and understand other people's thoughts.

This study focuses on the investigation of meaning and messages in some letters in “Tenggelamnya Kapal Van Der Wijck”. It is considered very powerful and contains many valuable life lessons. This fiction describes the relationship between humans who love each other but cannot be together until they part ways. In such a way, this fiction becomes beautiful and full of color.

This study is descriptive qualitative research because it does not deal with numbers at all. The data is taken from the novel. To get the data, the writer used the following steps. First, he tries to obtain the book used as a data source, namely “Tenggelamnya Kapal Van Der Wijck”. Then he reads the book again and again until he understands the meanings and the messages involved in that book. Next, the writer makes records of the data obtained from the data sources that are relevant to the problem of the study. Lastly, he arranges the data systematically in accordance with the research problem.

The problems of this study were formulated in two questions: First, what are the meanings involved in Zainuddin's and Hayati's letters in “Tenggelamnya Kapal Van Der Wijck”? Second, what kinds of messages are found in Zainuddin's and Hayati’s letters in “Tenggelamnya Kapal Van Der Wijck”?

The result of this study is that there are three kinds of meanings involved in Zainuddin's and Hayati's letters in “Tenggelamnya Kapal Van Der Wijck”: lexical, sentence, and discourse meaning. From the data, the writer also found moral, religious, and social messages.