An analysis of metaphors used in the greeting cards texts on the site of www.2ooogreetings.com

ABSTRACT

Metaphor and greeting card are language phenomena, since metaphor is not applied only in poetry or other literature writings, as we have known so far. The study about metaphors could be done on the greeting cards’ texts on the site of www.2000greetings.com. It is a modem way to make an indirect communication between people, because this site is popular, accessible, and have an attractive display, for it has some pictures, animations, sounds of music, and is colorful.

This study was conducted to investigate the meaning of metaphorical expression and the syntactic functions of the metaphors used in the greeting card’s texts on the site of www.2000greetings.com. The design of the study was descriptive- qualitative since it obtains information concerning the current status of phenomena and determines the nature of situation, as it exists at the time of the study. The researcher used a documentary study since the sentences used on the greeting cards were taken from the site www.2000grcctings.com as the source of the data. The data were seven greeting card categories taken from the site www.2000greetings.com, they were: Friendship, Thinking of You, Good Morning, Good Night, Everyday, Family, and Seasonal.

The data were gathered in the following ways: the researcher obtained and collected all data to be observed by looking for greeting cards containing a written verse collectively from the site of www.2000greetings.com, selected and recorded the data obtained from data sources, and arranging the data in accordance with the research questions. To corroborate the data, triangulation was used in this study. The writer decided to use triangulation of data analysis. After the data had been collected, they were analyzed in the following steps: selecting greeting card from each categories, then presenting, analyzing, and concluding each of the data.

The researcher concluded that there was a concept of universality of the signifiers and its intended meaning in the metaphorical expressions used in the greeting card’s texts on the site of www.2000greetings.com. From the seven greeting card categories there were hierarchical model of universal semantic domain used and from the syntactic functions of the metaphors used in the greeting card’s texts on the site of www.2000greetings.com, the researcher found metaphorical words or expressions mostly function as the predicate of the sentence, then followed, by their function as the object and as the subject of the sentence. From this study, the researcher found that there was a tendency that the greeting card writers use metaphorical words or expressions. This phenomenon shown that in the process of making greeting cards, the writers consider, also, the language used in their greeting cards and to some extent, the researcher believes that the use of metaphors on it has certain purpose to attract the users. 'There are some aspects, which can be investigated by other researchers deeply, such as the different styles of modem metaphors, and idiomatic expressions.