Explicature of university and college mottos in Malang

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, the great development of educational aspect has led the authority of each university or college to have high competition among others to get students. Many ways are done by the authorities, one of them through setting up the promotion. The most effective one is by giving or showing the capability of their university or college through their motto in brochure.

Malang city as the learning city has many universities and colleges. This fact has caused at least two consequences. Firstly, each university and college has high competition in promoting its educational service to the students. Secondly, the students have many alternatives to continue his or her study in university or college which acceptable for his or her need. As we know, to give understanding for student about the capability or quality of university or college, the authority use their motto that is written in brochure. Because of that, occur the phenomenon that how the transferring of sharing understanding about the universities or colleges between them and the students through their motto can be done optimally.

Based on the fact above, a study on the explicature of university and college mottos is conducted. Generally this study aims at describing the explicature of university and college mottos in Malang that are written in their brochure. The researcher limits this research only for nine mottos from famous universities and colleges in Malang.

This study employs descriptive qualitative research approach. Research data of utterances and sentences of the mottos are obtained from brochures that are released for 2005 year. Technique of data collection is documentation because the data source of this study is in the form of brochure or printed media. The main instrument of this research is the researcher himself. To make the data valid, a careful observation and triangulation are done. Data analysis is done by using interactive model, in which the activity is done simultaneously and repeatedly, that is, data reduction, data presentation, data conclusion.

The result of this study shows that there are three elements of explicature needed to uncover the implied meaning of the motto. They are : (1) encyclopedic knowledge, (2) The real-world knowledge and (3) The context of the motto owner.

From the findings it is concluded that (1) there is no higher level of explicature used in mottos of university and college. Because of the data is in form of the written text which do not need the speech act of the speaker to his utterance, it is only explicature that can be used in the university and college mottos, (2) The explicature of the university and college mottos is strongly effective to give better understanding for the reader or the student about the contents of the message in the motto conveyed, (3) the result of this research approve that explicature makes easier the students or the readers to understand the implicit meaning of the motto.