ANALISIS TEMA DAN PENGEMBANGANNYA PADA SURAT PEMBACA DALAM SURAT KABAR THE JAKARTA POST

Abstract

In daily communication, one can use spoken and written language to express oneself well. In English, there is a particular structure information to convey its message in order to help the reader catch the main point of the message easily. The message itself is indicated by element which occurs in the first position of the clause, known as theme. And it is developed by a reminder that gives new information about theme, called rheme. One of the form communication is the letters. Therefore, the letters of language is analyzed through this research. This research is done to answer several research questions in which involving the thematic structure, types of theme, the thematic progression and cohesion types in the column “Your Letters”. The aims of study are to describe the thematic structure of clauses, to find out the types of theme, to identify the coherence of text, and to explain the development process of each clause of “Your Letters”. The research method applied in this study is descriptive qualitative research. Method of collecting data is Simak method which is continued with Teknik Bebas Libat Cakap. The data are taken from 5 samples of “Your Letters” of May 2008 editions in The Jakarta Post. The samples are taken by purposive sampling technique. Method of analyzing the data is Agih method which divide the data into some lingual units, those are, clauses. The data shows that the pattern of thematic structure can be effectively applied in the “Your Letters” text. However, there is the problem of the flow of theme and rheme, that is, the empty of rheme. It means that the rheme is virtually free information. In addition to the thematic structure, there are also some different types of theme. The theme can be classified into four, i. e. (1) topical theme: marked and unmarked; (2) textual theme: conjunction, conjunctive adjunct and continuative; (3) interpersonal theme; and (4) multiple theme operate between textual^interpersonal^topical, textual^interpersonal, textual^topical, and interpersonal^topical. Furthermore, cohesion can be divided into five different types in text, i. e. (1) reference: anaphoric, cataphoric and comparative reference; (2) ellipsis; (3) substitution; (4) lexical cohesion: re-iteration (repetition, synonymy, antonym, meronymy, and hyponymy) and collocation; and (5) conjunction: elaboration, extension, and enhancement. Moreover, the pattern of thematic progression is divided into three, i. e. (1) theme re-iteration pattern; (2) the zig-zag pattern; and (3) the multiple-theme pattern. The result shows that the “Your Letters” text were not constructed based on one thematic progression in a text. A text employes several patterns of the thematic progression. In short, they do not follow a single spesific pattern.