Stylistic analysis on A Marriage Proposal play by Anton Chekhov

ABSTRACT

A Marriage Proposal, an Anton Chekhov’s drama is a farce, a type of comedy that presents stereotyped characters in improbable situations. In addition, exaggeration, fast physical action, and coarse wit set farce apart from other forms of comedy. It is one of works that has certain characteristics of language. Every person has his or her own way or style to express his or her ideas through language related to the purpose and the context he or she deals with, h is the same with Anton Chekhov as an author of A Marriage Proposal. To know his style we read and analyze his work such as A Marriage Proposal.

This study is intended to find out the levels (slang, colloquial, informal, and formal) as well as the dominant level of the language style used in A Marriage Proposal. Ft is hoped that the results can be used in the teaching and learning of English Language in schools especially in Literary Course namely senior or junior high schools even in universities. It is also hoped to be useful for those who interested in drama especially the comedy one.

A Marriage Proposal that is analyzed in the study is copied from “Understanding Literature” book taken from Muhammadiyah University library at Malang. That is because of not being easy to find the text of it. It is translation from Russian Language to English Language.

The research design used in the study is descriptive-qualitative one as far as to describe the levels as well as the dominant level of language style used in A Marriage Proposal. Textual analysis is also used to describe the characteristics of language used in it.

The results of this study show that levels of language style used in A Marriage Proposal are slang, colloquial, informal and formal style. In addition, level of slang style is used in the scene three, four, five, and six. Colloquial and informal levels are used in the whole scene namely scene one, two, three, four, five, and six. The formal style is almost used in the whole scene accept scene six. The dominant level of language style used in the scene one, two, three, four, five, and six of A Marriage Proposal is colloquial style. Furthermore, the dominant level of language style used in the whole text of A Marriage Proposal is colloquial one.

Based on the results of the study it is suggested that those who are interested in drama pay more attention in this style in order to be able to appreciate every drama text better. It is suggested that the future researchers conduct study on the levels of language style used by other drama texts.