AN ANALYSIS OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN ROCKET ROCKER’S SONG

Ni Komang Widya Dewi

Mahasaraswati Denpasar University.

Received : 03-08-2022		Accepted : 14-08-2022	Published : 26-08-2022
*Abstract*
*Keywords:* Figurative, song, descriptive qualitative.	Music is one of ways that human use to show their expression or tell hidden messages. In society itself, song often used as a tool to give advices beside its main function to entertain. Every song has a different lyric which match with the function and the goal from the writer. It is often found that song lyric use figurative languages, figurative language is a language that is often used by authors or artists in making a literary work that has a hidden meaning that the author wants to convey and is part of the semantics. which the words has a different meaning from the literal language. The aim of this research was to analyzed the types of figurative language and describe every meaning of an analusisis of figurative language in rocket rocker’s song. In this case, the researcher found there were several figurative language in a famous song in teenagers, namely “She’s my Cheerleader” by Rocket Rockers. In this research, the writer uses a qualitative descriptive method in analyzing the data. The data was collected from www.musixmatch.com and analyzed with Leech (1981) theory.
Abstrak
Kata kunci: Figuratif, lagu, deskriptif kualitatif.	Musik merupakan salah satu cara manusia untuk menyampaikan sebuah ekspresi maupun pesan nasehat. Di masyarakat sendiri, lagu kerap hadir sebagai sarana pemberian nasehat disamping fungsi utamanya sebagai hiburan. Tiap lagu tentunya mempunyai lirik yang berbeda yang disesuaikan dengan fungsi dan tujuan dari sang pencipta. Kerap kali kita menemukan penggunaan bahasa kiasan dalam lirik sebuah lagu. Bahasa kiasan adalah bahasa yang sering digunakan oleh pengarang atau seniman dalam membuat sebuah karya sastra yang memiliki makna tersembunyi yang ingin disampaikan pengarang dan merupakan bagian dari semantik. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menganalisis jenis-jenis bahasa kiasan dan mendeskripsikan setiap makna dari bahasa kiasan. Dalam hal ini, peneliti menemukan terdapat bahasa kiasan yang digunakan dalam lagu terkenal dikalangan remaja, yang berjudul “She’s my Cheerleader” karangan Rocket Rockers. Dalam penelitian ini, penulis menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif dalam menganalisis data. Data diperoleh dari www.musixmatch.com dan dianalisa menggunakan analisa dari Leech (1981). Hasil dari penelitian ini ialah, peneliti menemukan beberapa bahasa kiasan dalam lagu ini, sepertiSimile, personification and Irony.

Corresponding Author: Ni Komang Widya Dewi

E-mail: komangwidya175@gmail.com

INTRODUCTION

Music is one of the parts of art used to express the art from the voice. It is very difficult to separate human and music therefore, music has become the important part of human life (Storr, 2015). Almost in every condition we listen to music, when we sad or happy we listen to the song and sing the song. Every song has a message that can felt by the listener depend with how the singer or the writer put the meaning in every word in the song lyric (Yastanti & Safitri, 2016). A song is like a magic for us, because it bewitch us to listen it almost every day. Some people said that the song can make your mood and feeling better and make you feel peace when you hear it. Every song also has a lyric, According to Dallin (1994), the lyric are written by the author which are made as a form of interaction in conveying something to the singer with the listeners of the song lyric(WAHYU, 2021). Most of the lyric has their own message that can motivate the listeners. Beside to be a part to showing an expression, song can used as a tool to deliver message, entertain, even for the religious cultural.

Almost all of the people in the world loved to heard a song even every minute they played the song and listen it while studying, working, even for yoga and meditation (Kumar & Downey, 2019). Songs can influence everyone because the lyric suits their mood. Every song also have genre so we not only hear one genre but several genre that often heard by the people, those are; Pop, K-pop, Hip-hop, Rap, and folk or indie. The lyric that the writer and sing mostly use a figurative language. Without a figurative language, the song could be too bored to hear. The characteristic of figurative language is the writer not use a literal meaning or dictionary meaning to describe their lyric, but the use the hidden meaning to describe their lyric. Mostly they used the basic figurative language in their song, it can make the listener easy to hear and understand the meaning in this lyric. Most of Lofi and indie song use a figurative language in their song. Because the theme of lofi and indie song is about the life, love, and also the memory. So the writer and the singer use figurative language to make their song different with others song and genre(Lubis, 2019).

In lyric of the song, they have their own song’s writer that used their own language to describe the expressions of their feelings. Language has used from the basic language that everyone can understand, even used a figurative language to deliver the hidden message. Language is a tool for communication with others which is in every word have a meaning. As a human, we are mostly communicating with the society, so we need language to communicate with others. Language is a tool to communicate with others, it make easier to talk with language in society. According to (Hariyanto, 2017), language not only for communicate with others it also to express our feelings with others. With the language we can express our feelings, problem, or just chit chat with others in our society. He also added with language is a tool to express our thought in daily life to share and deliver with others. In this case the language that often used in lyric song to give more meaning to the listeners figurative language.

Figurative language means a language that have a meaning different with the dictionary. According to (Dobrovol’skij & Piirainen, 2021), metaphorical dialect isolated into four sorts specifically, comparison metaphorical dialect incorporates grin, representation, embodiment, and purposeful anecdote, resistance metaphorical dialects incorporates overstatement, modest representation of the truth, incongruity, direct opposite, conundrum, and punctuation. The analyst thought, each verse in this tune have meaning to analyze it. The researcher used the theory of Leech (1981:11) in present the figurative language (Werdiningsih, 2021).

According to Leech (1981:11), metaphorical dialect can be classified into 8 types. They are: personification, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, irony, litotes, metonymy and oxymoron. In the same opinion, (Inpok, Webb, & Nimmannit, 2019) said that isolates it gets to be ten types; personification, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, irony, litotes, metonymy and oxymoron. These are the sorts of metaphorical dialects commonly utilized in all over the world

Related to the topic taken by the author, there are several researchers who also conduct research on figurative language contained in song lyrics because song lyrics are also short poems so that there is some data containing figurative language which causes researchers to be interested in researching it. First, the research of (Aryawan, Suarnajaya, & Swandana, 2019), In this study, it was found that there are more simile figures than other types of figure of speech found in the song lyrics studied.. Second, the research of (Fitria, 2018), the researcher used the thirteen songs in One Direction album. As a result the researcher found there were six types of figurative language found in One Direction’s album entitled Up All Night, that were repetition, parallelism, personification, metaphor, simile, and hyperbole. The most dominant type of figurative language used was repetition. Third(Prasetyo & Maryadi, 2019), in this researcher there are four types of figurative language used, the first is hyperbole as much as 37.5%, personification as much as 18.7%, and similes found as many as 32.2%, and there are also 12 euphemisms. ,5% in Ed Sheeran's song, in that data hyperbole is the most dominant figure in the analyzed data, in the four types of figurative language found, the researcher also found that there were four types of meaning used, namely affective meaning as much as 44% of the data, meaning conceptual meaning as much as 5% of the data, connotative meaning as much as 34% of the data, and finally the thematic meaning as much as 17% of the analyzed data, in that data affective meaning is the meaning that is often used and is also very dominant in the analyzed data.Fourth, the research of Khadijah (Arifah, 2016), the researcher found there are various types of figurative language that found in John Legend’s song, such as personification, hyperbole, metaphor, and paradox. The researcher found there are often hyperbole in John Legend selected songs. The last, is the research of (Maftuhah, 2018), the researcher found 37 figurative language in Brien McKnight song, such as 11 hyperbole, 9 personification, 7 simile, 6 metaphor, and 4 metonymy. Most of the figurative language that found in this research were hyperbole.

In this research, the researcher chose the lyric from Rocket Rokers song named “She’s my Cheerleader”. With this song the writer and the singer told the listener how ironic his love relationship with the cheerleader in his school. The first how he’s sign his girlfriend, what’s job of his girlfriend, and how his girlfriend decline his hang out. He put all of his compliment in this lyric and hope one day his girlfriend will understand.

METHOD

This type of research is descriptive qualitative research. This research is used to analyze the data obtained carefully and allows the researcher to draw conclusions and develop a high level of detail from involvement in real situations.

The researcher used the lyric song from Rocket Rockers’s entitled She’s my Cheerleader. The data source was taken from www.musicmatch.com to gain the lyric. This song was written by the vocalist name Aska. This song talks about the feeling of a boy with his girlfriend whom a cheerleader and how their relationship between them.

The researcher first used observation method to collect the data source. First, the researcher read all the lyric that taken from musicmatch.com, second underline all the figurative language that found in the data source, last classified all the data source that been taken.

After all the data were collected, the researcher continued to analyze the data source that been classified. The researcher used the theory from Abrams (1999) to analyze and describe the types of conjunction that found in the data source (Michie et al., 2015).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

As a result the researcher found there are three figurative language occur in She’s my cheerleader song lyric. Those are 2 simile, 1 personification, and 1 irony. The data present by tabular form to display which lyric is contain with figurative language. The table shows the lyrics that contain with figurative language.

No	Line	Lyric	Title song	Figurative language
1	6	she moves her body likes bugs bunny	She’s my Cheerleader	Simile
2	5	1.2.3.4 she’s throwin’ smile to everyone	She’s my Cheerleader	Personification
3	12	She always left me just like her toy	She’s my Cheerleader	Simile
4	20	don’t wanna feel this pain, but she’s never understand	She’s my Cheerleader	Irony
5	10	Is this the boring part of the brokenhearted anyway	She’s my Cheerleader	Personification
Total: 5

DISCUSSION

Data 1

” she moves her body likes bugs bunny”

This data is refers to Simile figurative language because in sentence she moves her body likes bugs bunny means she move her body so smoothly just like a bunny when saw the opposite sex. According to Abrams (1999: 97), in simile, comparing two things that are different from one another explicitly shown by using words like or as. In this sentences the writer made a comparison between the cheerleader and the bugs bunny who always move its body smoothly when it saw the opposite sex.

Data 2

“1.2.3.4 she’s throwin’ smile to everyone”

This data refers to personification, because the sentence “1,2,3,4, she’s throwin’ smile to everyone”. The word throwin’ or throwing means the cheerleader smiles to everyone in that place. It said it a personification because according to Leech (1981:11), personificationmeans the given object used human quality. In this case throwing smile means the cheerleader give a smile to everyone in that place.

Data 3

“She always left me just like her toy”

This sentences refers to simile. If we take a look with this sentence, it said in literal language just left like toy after played. But in figurative means she left him in the dark and quite place that far from her and it made him felt sad, just like here toy that she left in her basement. According to Abrams (1999:97), simile means it is comparison between two and it mostly used like and as.

Data 4

“Don’t wanna feel this pain, but she never understand”

This sentences refers to irony. According to Abrams (1999:120), irony means saying something that the meaning is another thing. It said in this sentence the song’s writer want to always stick together with his girlfriend no matter what. Even if it hurt his feeling but he love her.

Data 5

“Is this the boring part of the brokenhearted anyway”

This sentence is classified in to personification. According to Abrams (1999:120), personification means given human quality to animate the object. In this case the researcher found that the mean of brokenhearted is not only feel sad but also felt loneliness. The song’s writer felt so alone in this big world because he’s too bored to wait for his girlfriend finished her job.

Generally, the researcher found most figurative language that are often used in society. However in this song there are no hyperbole figurative language that can make the listener confused with the song. This song used words that can easy to understand and also the figurative language found in this song also make the listener easier to understand the meaning of this song. In researcher opinion this song tell about how sad the man, because his girlfriend always left him for her job. And he all alone waited his girlfriend finished her job. This song is better to hear when you waited your girlfriend from her job or her school and you got nothing to do except listen the song that also have a same situation with you or for just bring you memory that you spent together with your girlfriend. It also can sing it when you with your friends who have the same situation with you.

CONCLUSION

In this conclusion the researcher found there are 5 figurative language that used in song lyric She’s my cheerleader by Rocket Rockers. Those are 2 simile, 2 personification, and 1 irony. In this research there are also several journal and thesis that studied the figurative language. The researcher hopes it will help the listener to understand more about figurative language in every song and hopes there will next research about figurative language. Because it is so challenging to analyze the figurative language used in every song lyric. According to previous research the researcher found that in every lyric have own meaning itself. As we know when we write a music they must insert some figurative language to make our song more meaningful than only used a literal language. If we only used literal language the song will feel so flat and there are not expression can give to the listeners. Used a figurative language also must in the right way to express our feeling, because we do not want to insert figurative language in the wrong sentences and it probably make a different meaning of the song. By creating a song’s lyric, we also learn about the figurative language and hope it can make our song better to heard and the listener will happy with our song and also they will understand about the hidden meaning that the song’s writer insert in their song. In researcher opinion this song told about how sad the man, because his girlfriend always left him with her job. And he all alone waited his girlfriend finished her job. This song is better to hear when you waited your girlfriend from her job or her school and you got nothing to do except listen the song that also have a same situation with you or for just bring you memory that you spent together with your girlfriend. It also can be sing it when you with your friends who have the same situation with you.

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