An Analysis of Lexical Cohesion Used In Short Stories Written by Hans Christian Andersen

Abstract

0px; "> Cohesion is part of system language used to linking and hold some events and ideas
together within a text that gives it meaning. In means that cohesion is necessary in terms of
communication since it is a part of language system. Cohesion does not only occur in
communication between people but also occur in communicating ideas through literary work
such as short story. The three short stories The last deram of the old oak, the saucy boy and the
princess and the pea written by Hans Christian Andersen are interesting subject to be researched
in terms of lexical cohesion in those three short stories and those give good moral values.
Halliday and Hasan (1976: 299) have defined the general meaning of cohesion as the
continuity that exists between one part of the text with another. Cohesion is used to link one part
of a text to another part of the same text. It has functions as a tie to link one sentence to another
for indicates the relationship between the sentences. Cohesion is constituted by the text, texture,
and ties. A text is a unit of language. People can see the intention or the messages through the
text. Haliday & Hasan (1976:1) stated “the word text is used in linguistics to refer any passage,
spoken or written, of whatever length, that does form unified whole”. It can be said that people
communicate by using text. A text could be narration, dialogue, prose, conversation, story etc.
Halliday&Hasan (1976) have divided cohesion into two, namely grammatical and lexical
cohesion. Grammatical cohesion refers to the linguistic structure. “The highest structural unit in
the grammar is the sentence” (Halliday & Hasan 1976:28). The structure determines the order in
which grammatical elements exist and the way they are related within a sentence. Meanwhile,
the lexical cohesion comes about through the selection of items that are related in some way to
those that have gone before (Halliday, 1985:310). Types of lexical cohesion are repetition,
synonym, superordinate, general word and collocation. The main focusses of the study was the
lexical cohesion in order to find the types of lexical cohesion and the dominant type of lexical
cohesion used in the three short stories that the writer took from the short stories written by Hans
Christian Andersen.
This research used descriptive qualitative research design as the data in this study are
words, phrases, and sentences. According to Litosseliti (2010) qualitative research is concerned
with structures and patterns and how is something. The data in this study are described
descriptively based on the kinds of lexical cohesion, namely reiteration and collocation. The data
of this research is taken from 3 text of short stories by Hans Christian Andersen with the title The
Last Dream of The Old Oak, The Princess And The Pea and The Saucy Boy.Since the data taken
from internet, the writer uses method by Moleong, that is documentation method. Based on
explaining from Moleong, documentation is takes the data from internet. This method deals with
this analysis because the data used in this research taken from the internet. In collecting the data,
the writer used some steps. The writer searched the text of three short stories by Hans Christian
Andersen, and then observed the text which have the lexical cohesion, classified lexical cohesion
into repetition, synonym, superordinate, general word and collocation then the writer analyzed
the data which has classified as lexical cohesion.
In this research, the writer found there are some lexical cohesion used in the three short
stories written by Hans Christian Andersen. Not all items of lexical are appeared in text of short
stories. After the writer analyzed the text of short stories, the result shows that the repetition was
the dominant type appeared in the text of short stories, wich data found 32. The next lexical
cohesion that appeared in the text of short stories were synonym wich 22 data found.
Superordinate were 11, while the frequency of general word only 2 and collocation appears in
the short stories were 15. The superordinate occurs in the text shows the relation of kind. The
writer also found many functions in each types of reiteration and collocation, such as to develop
the imagination and to stimulate the understanding of the readers, to explain the ambiguous item
become clearly and also to give the vivid meaning to all the readers. Based on the finding
obtained, it can be concluded that the lexical type in the form of repetition dominates the short
stories of Hans Christian Andersen. The use of repetition in the short story aims to emphasize the
object and make the storyline clear and easy to be understand. The interpretation of lexical
cohesion in the short stories well formed. There are element that are related to each other
between sentence and the relation of the sentence build the lexical ties that makes the text
coherent. In analyzing the lexical cohesion, we need the term of tie, this is very useful in
determining a words, phrases or sentences which included lexical cohesion because tie shows
how something is related and refers to the previous texts.
Keywords: Cohesion, Lexical Cohesion, Qualitative, Short Stories