An analysis of ambiguity in the articles of The Jakarta Post

Oleh :
Wening Bayu Irawan - C1307533 - Fak. Sastra dan Seni Rupa

ABSTRACT This research focuses on the case of ambiguity in the articles of The Jakarta Post published on Thursday, December 11, 2008. The research is aimed to find out the kinds of ambiguity found in the articles of The Jakarta Post, the causal factors of the ambiguity, and the interpretations of the ambiguous words, phrases and sentences in the articles of The Jakarta Post. This research is descriptive qualitative that refers to the method to formulate the conclusion by collecting, classifying and interpreting the data of the research. The data of the research are the articles of The Jakarta Post published on Thursday, December 11, 2008. All ambiguous words, phrases and sentences in the articles of The Jakarta Post, Thursday, December 11, 2008 are used as the data of the research. This research applies total sampling technique. There are 23 data of the ambiguous words, phrases and sentences found in the articles of The Jakarta Post, Thursday, December 11, 2008 edition. From the result of the data analysis in the Chapter IV, the research reveals that; 1) there are two kinds of ambiguity found in the articles of The Jakarta Post published in Thursday, December 11, 2008: grammatical ambiguity and lexical ambiguity. The data show that there is more grammatical ambiguity than lexical ambiguity found in the articles of The Jakarta Post, Thursday, December 11, 2008. The fact shows that 15 data represent grammatical ambiguity (65, 22%) and 8 data represent lexical ambiguity (34, 78%). 2) there is one causal factor of grammatical ambiguity and two causal factors of lexical ambiguity found in the articles of The Jakarta Post published on Thursday, December 11, 2008. Grammatical ambiguity is caused equivocal phrasing (15 data). In the case of lexical ambiguity, polysemy (75%) is more heterogeneous than homonym (25%). 3) the ambiguous words, phrases and sentences are interpreted into two to three interpretations. Words structure and sentence structure may be grammatically correct but it may be interpreted in different ways since there is lexical or grammatical ambiguity. However, the journalist or the writer still has a particular interpretation of the ambiguous words, phrases and sentences. To get the right interpretation of the ambiguous words, phrases and sentences, the readers need to read the whole paragraph and understand the topic of the articles. This research is still far from perfect, so that the researcher suggests the other researchers who are interested in studying about ambiguity to conduct the research by using the participation of the newsreaders’ and the journalists’.