An analysis of ambiguity in news titles of The Jakarta Post

Oleh :
Retno Kusumo Dewi - C0304043 - Fak. Sastra dan Seni Rupa

ABSTRACT 2008. This research focuses on the case of ambiguity in news titles of The Jakarta Post published in January 2008. The research is aimed to find out: 1) what kinds of ambiguity found in the news titles of The Jakarta Post, 2) what makes the news titles of The Jakarta Post ambiguous, 3) how meanings conveyed in the ambiguous news titles of The Jakarta Post. This research is a descriptive qualitative research that refers to the method to formulate the conclusion by collecting, classifying, and interpreting the data of the research. The source of data of the research is The Jakarta Post published in January 2008. All of the ambiguous news titles in The Jakarta Post newspaper published in January 2008 are used as the data of the research. This research applies purposive sampling technique. Overall, there are 83 data of ambiguous news titles found in The Jakarta Post. Derived from the analysis, the research is concluded that: 1) there are two kinds of ambiguity found in The Jakarta Post published in January 2008: grammatical and lexical ambiguity. The data show that there is more lexical ambiguity than grammatical ambiguity found in The Jakarta Post published in January 2008. The fact shows that 69 data represent lexical ambiguity (83,13 %) and 14 data represent grammatical ambiguity (16,87 %). 2) There are three factors of grammatical ambiguity and two factors of lexical ambiguity found in The Jakarta Post published in January 2008 which make word (s), phrase (s) or sentence (s) of title ambiguous. First, grammatical ambiguity is caused by three factors: grammatical word form (35,71%), equivocal phrasing (57,14%), and contextual ambiguity (7,14%). Second, lexical ambiguity is rooted by two causes: polysemy (8,70%) and homonym (91,30%). 3) Due to the effort of a journalist to make the title more interesting and the constraint of limited space, he/she may raise the case of ambiguity (although not all the title ambiguous). However, still, the writer (journalist) has a particular meaning conveyed through the title. To figure out the meaning, it needs special context. A clear understanding about the ambiguous title can be found through the text under the title. Yet, the title still becomes the first attraction and impression for the readers. Therefore, the attractive news titles will open the possibilities for readers to read. This research is lack of the newsreaders’ and journalist’ participation. The researcher suggests to other researchers interested in this research to conduct a research using newsreaders’ and journalist’ participation got from questioner and interview dealing with their understanding through the case of ambiguous news title.