A Comparative Analysis on Appraisal of Two Texts Exposing the Controversy of Sex Education Given in US Public Schools (Based on Systemic Functional Linguistics Study)

Oleh :
Umi Dwi Lestari - C1307023 - Fak. Sastra dan Seni Rupa

This research attempts to find out the attitudes employed in the texts of contributor opinion exposing the controversy of sex education given in US public schools, to find out the influence of the attitudes toward the texts and to find out why the attitudes are employed in the texts. This research applied qualitative descriptive method with total sampling technique. This research also used primary and secondary data. The primary data of this research consist of detail and depth linguistic phenomena about the types of attitudes: affect (people’s feeling), judgment (people’s character), and appreciation (evaluating things) taken from the two texts. Meanwhile, the secondary data consist of the information about the sex education given in schools and the texts’ writers. The data and source of data of this research were two texts of contributor opinion column in Allvoices.com. The first text is entitled Sex Education: Does It Really Work? written by Hasnain and the second text is entitled Why Sex Education Should Be Taught In Schools? written by Zeeshan. The results show that both texts apply the two same kinds of attitudes: judgment and appreciation. The first text is dominated by negative attitudes, consisting of 46% negative appreciation, 27% positive appreciation, 17% negative judgment, and 10% positive judgment. Meanwhile, the second text is dominated by positive attitudes consisting of 48% positive appreciation, 15% negative appreciation, 18.5% positive judgment and 18.5% negative judgment. Moreover, both texts’ writers, Hasnain and Zeeshan, apply force: raise and focus: sharpening graduation with more than one voice (heterogloss). The use of attitudes influences the text in term of register, prosody, genre and the ideology of the texts. In the level of register, the use of judgment and appreciation indicates that the language in both texts, in the clause level, is dominated by behavioral, carrier- attribute, and token-value. In the level of nominal group, epithet-thing is mostly exploited by the texts’ writers. This is because behavioral process, attribute, value, and epithet are potentials for developing judgment and appreciation. In the level of graduation, the use of dominant intensifier, attitudinal lexis, and quantification in both texts implies that the volume of attitudes is strong and sharp. In the case of engagement, the use of dominant projection (more than one voice) results in heterogloss. This means that both texts’ writers express their objectivity. In the case of prosody and relation to genre and ideology, text 1 applies negative attitudes in evaluating the issue, both positive and negative in argument for and against, and ended by positive attitudes for recommendation. Thus, Hasnain uses discussion genre in his text and leads xv into left- protagonist ideology. Meanwhile, text 2 written by Zeeshan employs positive attitudes for assessing the issue, starting from thesis until reiteration. That’s why, Zeeshan’s attitudes results in hortatory- exposition genre and brings into right-antagonist ideology. This study also finds that both texts’ writers, Hasnain and Zeeshan, employ the attitudes: judgment and appreciation because they do not show their own feeling (affect) to evaluate the issue. They use judgment to assess the participants involved in the text, and apply appreciation to evaluate the issue of sex education in US. Both texts’ writers employ force: raise and focus: sharpening with more than one voice (heterogloss) in their attitudes because they express their objectivity in strong and sharp judgment and appreciation. The different point is that, as the educationalist, columnist, and the anchor Hasnain’s use of discussion genre and left- protagonist indicates that he did not just evaluate the issue but also the method of sex education in US. In this way he challenges the issue and supports the majority of US society to conduct AIDS education program as one of the policies related to what kind of sex education should be taught in schools (sex education in the U.S.: policy and politics). Meanwhile, as the student and the stringer, Zeeshan’s use of hortatory- exposition genre and right- antagonist indicates that he just supports one-sidedly that sex education should be taught in schools. This is because schools provide reliable information and explanation about sex (Tatum and Alan Haris).