Najah Mahyati Lukman, 2015
THE REPRESENTATION OF AIR ASIA QZ8501 ACCIDENT IN THE JAKARTA POST ARTICLES
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | \.upi.edu perpustakaan.upi.edu ABSTRACT
The Representation of Air Asia QZ8501 Accident in The Jakarta Post Articles
Supervisor: Wawan Gunawan M.Ed., Ph.D.
The study entitled “The Representation of Air Asia QZ8501 Accident in The Jakarta Post Articles” aims to analyse, describe, and interpret how the accident of Air Asia QZ8501 is represented in the articles of The Jakarta Post and to uncover meanings constructed from the texts. Five related articles were taken from Indonesia online daily newspaper The Jakarta Post for further being analysed. One Critical Discourse Analysis framework proposed by Fairclough (1995) is applied as the main approach in this study. The analysis consists of two phases. The first phase is textual analysis of the five chosen articles. Transitivity system proposed by Halliday (1994) is used in conducting textual analysis. The second phase is the interpretation and explanation from the result of textual analysis. The findings show that The Jakarta Post reports the accident carefully by putting people’s comment than its own opinion. As for the aircraft accident, it is represented as a mere unexpected mishap caused by natural
disruption rather than technical errors. It found that it is not fully Air Asia’s fault that
the accident occurred. Air Asia, on the other hand, is represented as a responsible airline that provides any services as response to the accident. It means that The Jakarta Post tries to cover Air Asia by representing the accident and the airline in such ways.
Najah Mahyati Lukman, 2015
THE REPRESENTATION OF AIR ASIA QZ8501 ACCIDENT IN THE JAKARTA POST ARTICLES
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | \.upi.edu perpustakaan.upi.edu ABSTRAK
The Representation of Air Asia QZ8501 Accident in The Jakarta Post Articles
Pembimbing: Wawan Gunawan M.Ed., Ph.D.
Penelitian yang berjudul “The Representation of Air Asia QZ8501 Accident in The Jakarta Post Articles” bertujuan untuk menganalisa, mendeskripsikan, dan menginterpretasikan bagaimana kecelakaan Air Asia QZ8501 direpresentasikan dalam artikel The Jakarta Post dan untuk mengungkapkan makna yang terbentuk dari teks. Lima artikel terkait telah diambil dari Koran harian online Indonesia The Jakarta Post untuk selanjutnya dianalisa. Satu teori Critical Discourse Analysis yang diprakarsai Fairclough (1995) digunakan sebagai pendekatan utama dalam penelitian ini. Analisis dalam penelitian ini terdiri dari dua fase. Fase pertama adalah analisis tekstual dari lima artikel yang dipilih. System transitvity dari Halliday (1994)
digunakan dalam melakukan analisis tekstual. Fase kedua adalah interpretasi dan penjelasan dari hasil analisa. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa The Jakarta Post menmberitakan kecelakaan tersebut secara hati-hati dengan menempatkan komentar orang lain daripada komentarnya sendiri. Sedangkan untuk kecelakaan pesawat Air Asia, hal tersebut direpresentasikan hanya sebagai kejadian takterduga yang disebabkan oleh gangguan alam daripada disebabkan oleh masalah teknis. Terlihat bahwa kecelakaan ini bukanlah sepenuhnya kesalahan Air Asia. Air Asia, sementara itu, direpresentasikan sebagai perusahaan penerbangan yang bertanggung jawab yang menyediakan pelayanan-pelayanan sebagai tanggapan untuk kecelakaan tersebut.
Najah Mahyati Lukman, 2015
THE REPRESENTATION OF AIR ASIA QZ8501 ACCIDENT IN THE JAKARTA POST ARTICLES
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | \.upi.edu perpustakaan.upi.edu CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This chapter provides general information of the study which covers the
background of the study, research questions, aims of the study, significance of the
study, the methods used in the study, the collection of data, data analysis, the
clarification of terms and the organization of the paper.
1.1Background of The Study
At the end of 2014 people of Indonesia were surprised by grief news of an
aircraft accident from Air Asia, one of public airlines operating in Indonesia. As
reported in The Jakarta Post (December, 28) on Sunday morning around 6:17 a.m.
local time, a plane of Air Asia with flight number QZ8501 was reported missing
due to a lost contact between the plane and the air traffic control. The missing
plane was supposed to conduct a flight from Surabaya to Singapore with 155
passengers and seven crew members on board. It was reported three days after the
accident, the debris of the plane and the bodies of the victims were found in the
Karimata Strait, Central Kalimantan (Kompas.com). This accident surely became
an ordeal for Air Asia airline. Besides being addressed for several accusations
regarding the airline’s carelessness, Air Asia also has a lot of homeworks to
regain its customers’ trust.
Soon after this accident happened, many local and international mass media
especially daily newspapers published articles about this misfortune. What is
interesting is how the accident is covered by mass media. One well known online
daily newspaper, The Jakarta Post, in this case, published several articles
concerning the aircraft accident through which we can see how they picture the
Najah Mahyati Lukman, 2015
THE REPRESENTATION OF AIR ASIA QZ8501 ACCIDENT IN THE JAKARTA POST ARTICLES
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | \.upi.edu perpustakaan.upi.edu
or paraphrased or in other way reconstructed through different ways in different
texts. It means that two different texts that circulate in the same context will have
different views of a certain social practice and therefore different representations
of the social practice.
This representation of a social practice could be analysed using Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA) frameworks. CDA according to Wodak and Meyer
(2009) is an area of study that is concerned with the study of social phenomena.
Wodak (2002) stated that the main interest of CDA is the relationship between
language and power, and it sees discourse as a form of social practice. In line with
this, van Dijk (2001) stated that CDA is a kind of analytical study of discourse
that mainly investigates how discourse enacts and reproduces social domination,
abuse and inequality in the context of social and politics. CDA, according to
Paltridge (2006), mainly investigates how discourse is used in social and cultural
issues and what can be implied by this use of discourse. It is the aim of CDA,
Paltridge explained, to help discover the hidden values, positions and perspectives
in a discourse.
One approach of CDA, and that is used in this study, is Norman Fairclough’s
three-dimensional conceptions. This framework based on Fairclough’s
consolidation of CDA as a three-dimensional framework with a particular
objective:
“…to map three separate forms of analysis onto one another: analysis of (spoken
or written) language texts, analysis of discourse practice (processes of text production, distribution and consumption) and analysis of discursive events as
instances of sociocultural practice.” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 2)
The term discourse is used by Fairclough to mainly refer to the use of spoken
and written language that includes semiotic practice (Fairclough, 1995).
Considering language as a discourse, Fairclough sees language as a form of social
Najah Mahyati Lukman, 2015
THE REPRESENTATION OF AIR ASIA QZ8501 ACCIDENT IN THE JAKARTA POST ARTICLES
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | \.upi.edu perpustakaan.upi.edu
Fairclough stated, is simultaneously perceived as a piece of text, a case of
discursive practice, and a case of social practice (Fairclough, 1992).
This approach enables one to access the relationship between discursive and
social change and to see the linguistic resources used in the text to describe the
action and make an interpretation of the thoughts involved in the text. According
to Fairclough (1992) there are three stages of discourse analysis which are
description, interpretation and explanation. Description concerns with the analysis
of text. At this level of analysis, all linguistic features will be first identified. After
the linguistic features are all identified, the analysis moves to the second stage
which is interpretation. This stage concerns with the analysis of discourse practice
which the objective is to find the social meaning expressed in the discourse or in
the other words the relationship between text and interaction. The last stage is
explanation. It deals with the analysis of social practice. It is an explanation of the
relationship between interaction and social context, or in other words this stage
aims to identify the social determination and social effects of the discourse, as
Fairclough (1989) stated:
“The objective of the stage of explanation is to portray a discourse as part of a social process, as a social practice, showing how it is determined by social structures, and what reproductive effects discourses can cumulatively have on
those structures, sustaining them or changing them.” (p.163)
One study that employs Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework was
conducted by Kaur, Arumugam, and Yunus (2013). Fairclough’s three
-dimensional framework was applied to examine beauty advertisements in local
English magazines. The use of language in those advertisements and also the
strategies used by the advertisers to persuade their customers were the main
focuses of their study. The framework demonstrated how the concept of beauty
was produced and reproduced through advertisements in those local magazines.
They found that the advertisers used numerous strategies to persuade their women
Najah Mahyati Lukman, 2015
THE REPRESENTATION OF AIR ASIA QZ8501 ACCIDENT IN THE JAKARTA POST ARTICLES
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | \.upi.edu perpustakaan.upi.edu
how beauty products are synonymous with a better life (Kaur, Arumugam &
Yunus, 2013).
Other study that used Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework was
conducted by Qiu in 2013. Twenty English eco-hotel profiles were examined to find out the ecological thoughts existed in the profiles. Employing Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework, this study followed three stages of analysis:
description of linguistic features using transitivity, interpretation of ecological
thoughts, and explanation of social reason. The findings of this study are, first,
various linguistic resources were used in those English eco-hotels. Second, certain
kinds of ecological thoughts were expressed through those linguistic resources
used in the profiles. It was expressed that to live in harmony with nature, we as
human beings should identify ourselves with nature and view ourselves as part of
nature. The language use in the profiles helped to convey those ecological
thoughts or ideology to the readers and therefore, influence their ecological
ideology by directing their human-centered values into eco-centric values.
The representation of the accident in daily newspaper articles is the main
concern of this study. Applying Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework and
Halliday’s transitivity, this study tries to investigate how the aircraft accident is
represented or reconstructed by The Jakarta Post.
1.2Research Questions
In conducting this study, the following research questions have been
formulated as follows:
1. How is the aircraft accident represented by The Jakarta Post?
2. What do these representations mean?
Najah Mahyati Lukman, 2015
THE REPRESENTATION OF AIR ASIA QZ8501 ACCIDENT IN THE JAKARTA POST ARTICLES
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | \.upi.edu perpustakaan.upi.edu This study aims to:
1. Investigate how the QZ8501 accident is represented by The Jakarta Post
2. Reveal what is implied by the representations
1.4 Scope of the Study
This study is concerned in analyzing five articles from The Jakarta Post
related to the aircraft accident. Fairclough’s framework and Halliday’s framework
of Functional Grammar are used to reveal the representation of the accident.
1.5 Research Methodology
Since this study mainly focuses on analyzing, describing and interpreting
the representation of a social action in texts, qualitative descriptive is the most
suitable method to be used in this study. In a simplified definition qualitative
research is empirical research that the form of its data is not numbers (Punch,
2009). In line with this, Creswell (2009) explained that qualitative research is an
approach used to investigate and understand meaning which is attributed to social
problems by certain individuals or groups. As for descriptive research, it is a
method used to describe how reality is and not to formulate hypotheses or to
develop a theory (Lans & van Der Voordt, 2002).
1.5.1 Data Collection
The data for this study were taken from a daily online newspaper, the The
Jakarta Post. Five articles from The Jakarta Post were used as the data for this
Najah Mahyati Lukman, 2015
THE REPRESENTATION OF AIR ASIA QZ8501 ACCIDENT IN THE JAKARTA POST ARTICLES
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | \.upi.edu perpustakaan.upi.edu 1.5.2 Data Analysis
Since this study is based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional conceptions
framework, there are three stages in analyzing the data. The first stage is textual analysis which deals with the linguistic features used in texts. Halliday’s transitivity is employed in conducting the first stage. The second stage is
discourse practice analysis. The main objectives at this level of analysis are to find the texts’ production and consumption, power relation, and strategies used in the discourse. The last stage is social practice analysis. In this stage, the analysis
concerns with the explanation of the relationships between the social events and
the social structures or the societal currents which shaped and are shaped by the
events (Fairclough, 1989).
1.6 Organization of The Paper
This paper is organized into five chapters as follows:
Chapter I
This chapter provides general information of the study which covers the
background of the study, research questions, aims of the study, significance
of the study, the methods used in the study, the collection of data, data
analysis, the clarification of terms and the organization of the paper.
Chapter II
This chapter presents explanations of the theoretical frameworks that are used
to support the analysis of this study and some related previous studies.
Chapter III
This chapter describes the method used in this study, research design, data
Najah Mahyati Lukman, 2015
THE REPRESENTATION OF AIR ASIA QZ8501 ACCIDENT IN THE JAKARTA POST ARTICLES
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | \.upi.edu perpustakaan.upi.edu Chapter IV
This chapter provides the results of the study.
Chapter V
This chapter presents conclusions of the findings and suggestions for further
Najah Mahyati Lukman, 2015
THE REPRESENTATION OF AIR ASIA QZ8501 ACCIDENT IN THE JAKARTA POST ARTICLES
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | \.upi.edu perpustakaan.upi.edu REFERENCES
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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | \.upi.edu perpustakaan.upi.edu
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Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia | \.upi.edu perpustakaan.upi.edu
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