Semantic analysis of the Lyrics in Tiffany Young’s Song

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background Of Study

Semantic is an important part of study linguistics structure. Semantic is defined as a branch of
linguistics that contains the meaning of language. (Atchiston 1978: 82) states that the study of
meaning is normally referred to as Semantics, from Greek noun ‘sema’ means sign or signal and
the verb ‘semanio’ mean. Atchison adds that Semantic is concerned with the way certain words
and contractions can be combined together in a semantically acceptable way. Leech (1977: ix)
states, Semantics (as the study of meaning) is central to the study of communication and as
communication becomes more and more pressing. Semantics is also at the center of the study of
human mind-thought process, cognition and conceptualization or these are intricately bound up
with the way in which we classify and convey our experience of the world through language.
because these two ways, a vocal point of man, semantic has been the meeting place of various
crosscurrents of thinking and various disciplines of the study. Philosophy, psychology, linguistic
all claims a deep interest subject”
If phonology examines the sounds of language and morphology examines the word formation,
therefore Semantic examines the meaning of language. The meaning of words is not only seen
from the lexical meaning, but also the meaning of the context. (Chaer, 2012: 289) states that The
meaning of Semantic is divided into six. They are lexical, grammatical and contextual meaning,
referential and non-referential meaning, denotative and connotative meaning, conceptual and
associative meaning and lexeme. This study, the writer analyzes Semantic analysis especially on
the lexical and contextual meaning because they play an important role in the study of semantic.
Lexical meaning is actual meanings, meanings that are in accordance with the result of our
sensory observations, or meaning as they are, while contextual meaning is the meaning of a
lexeme or word that is in one context (Chaer, 2012: 289-290). Lexical meaning refers to the sense
(or meaning) of a word (or lexeme) as it appears in the dictionary. Many people learn semantic to
help them understanding the meaning of each word to avoid the misunderstanding between using
an ambiguous word. The meaning of words or sentences is not only found in everyday
conversation but also in literary works like poems, song lyrics, novels, short stories and movies.
In this research, the writer interesting to analyzes lexical and contextual meaning in song lyrics.
Chaer, 2007: 290) states “contextual meaning is the meaning of lexeme or word inside a context”.
Contextual meaning is the type of meaning which is determined by the context in which the word
is used.
 Song consists of lyric or poems that unite the instrument or melody. Almost all people like to
listen to music. Music needs a good lyric to make the listeners have more feelings when listened
to it. The musicians definitely choose proper words to make sure the lyrics would be a pleasure to
be heard. On the other hand, the musicians write the lyric is not always derived the true meaning
of the words however it allows the interpretation. In addition, every song includes the implied
meaning which has to be delivered in the community.
Sometimes people expressed their feeling through song lyrics. Lyric is the words of song
expressing the writer’s personal feelings and thoughts. Song lyrics mostly describes the true story
of life. Sometimes the meaning of words in the song lyric has a big difference with The meaning
in the dictionary. Song lyrics have forms of word or sentence that can be used to create a certain
imagination of the audience so it can also create diverse meanings. The reason why the writer
fascinated to analyze song lyrics because there are many words that contain contextual meaning.
The writer chooses “Born Again” Album of Tiffany Young as the object of this study.
Tiffany Young is an American-Korean singer who was born on August 1, 1989, in San
Fransisco, California. Lips on Lips album is the first English language extend play by Tiffany. It
was released on February 22, 2019. This Album talks about how Tiffany going through the hard
moment when she lived in a foreign country (South Korea) to search for something real to make
her free.
The writer is eager to know the meaning of Tiffany’s song lyrics through Semantic theory as
an important part of understanding how language works and how she wrote this lyric by
analyzing the contextual meaning and lexical meaning of the words in the song lyrics, it will be
easy to understand the whole meaning of the song.

1.2 Problem Of Study

Based on the background of the study above, The problems that want to answer in this research is
about a semantic theory in lexical and contextual meaning on Tiffany Young Song, they are as
follows :
1. What are the contextual meaning that implied in Tiffany Young’s song lyrics?
2. What are the lexical meaning that describe in Tiffany Young’s song lyrics?

1.3 Objective Of Study

The objective of this research is to explain:
1. To find out the contextual meaning implied from Tiffany Young’s song lyrics that confused
listeners.
2. To describe the lexical meaning from Tiffany Young’s song lyrics.
1.4 Significant Of Study
This research is design to find the lexical and contextual meaning in song lyrics. The finding
of this study will be a great contribution to give benefits to enhance the readers' knowledge and
skills in linguistics especially in Semantic. The reader of this research will be able to understand
how to classify and describe semantic components (Contextual meaning) and (lexical meaning) of
a word, phrase, and sentence in song lyrics.

3.3 Scope Or Limitation

In this research, the writer focuses and analyzes three lyrics of “Tiffany Young” songs in an
album of “Lips on Lips” that released on February 22, 2019. The title of the song are “Born
Again”, “Lips on Lips” and “The Flower”.
 CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW

Semantic is the study of meaning in language. Semantics in the linguistics term has various
definitions. Katz (1972: 1) states “Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. It is concerned with
what sentence and other linguistics object express, not with the arrangement with their syntactic part
or with their pronunciation”. Based on etymology, the word semantics originally comes from greek
word semantikos means ‘significant’; semainein means ‘to show signify’; or ‘indicated by sign’; from
sema means ‘sign’. Palmer (1976: 1) states “Semantic is the technical term used to refer to study of
meaning”. In this century the study of meaning has expanded to include not only the symbols referent
relationship but also the behavior that results from language habit. Alfred Korzybski (1877-1950)
believes that “(general semantics) language influenced not only our thinking but also all human
behavior. Semantics is appropriate to be used in investigating the meaning of the lyrics of Tiffany
Young’s song as literary work. Because Semantics deals with the meaning of language used by people
in order to convey the actual meaning.
The definition of meaning is simply derived from the word “mean”. There are some definitions of
meaning as suggested by semanticist. Lyons (1977: 4) says “meaning is a word of the ordinary
everyday vocabulary of English”. The expert of language have classified meaning from different
points of view based on their deliberations such as lexical and contextual meaning. Meaning is
categorized into some reference. Kreidler stated also that there are several dimensions of meaning in
lexical meaning that includes reference and denotation, connotation, sense relations, lexical and
grammatical meaning, morphemes, homonymy, polysemy, lexical ambiguity, sentence, and meaning.
On the other hand, contextual meaning is discussed with the term pragmatic meaning. Contextual
meaning itself can not be separated from literal and non-literal meanings.
Richards (2002: 307) states lexical semantics is the subfield of semantics concerned with the
meaning of words. According to Cruse (1987: 84), Semantic relation needs to be at least systematic in
the sense that it recurs in a number of pairs or sets of related lexical units (it will be recalled that the
expression lexical form together with a single distinguished sense). Chaer (1990: 62) states,
describing lexical meanings is an adjunctive form derived from the form of a noun lexicon. The unit
of the lexicon is lexeme which is a meaningful unit of language. Lexical meaning can be interpreted a
lexicon, lexeme or word because there are have the similarity. Lexical meaning can also be considered
as the meaning contained in a dictionary (Chaer, 1990: 63). Djajasudarma (1993: 34), expressing the
lexical meaning is the meaning of the word that corresponds to what we encounter in the lexicon
(dictionary).
(Chaer, 2007: 290) states “contextual meaning is the meaning of lexeme or word inside a context”.
Context in linguistics carries the importance of disambiguation of meaning as well as in
understanding the actual meaning. Contextual meaning is the type of meaning which is determined by
the context in which the word is used. Charles W. Kreidler (1998: 41) stated that “Semantic is
considered with aspect of meaning in language”. Kadmon (2001: 9), uttered his opinion about
contextual meaning as follows :
“Besides that, we talk about the” context of utterance. “each utterance occurs in a context. This
context includes previous utterances. The speech situation, including the location, the speakers,
addressees, various salient objects, and more. It includes various topics in the conversation, about the
world in general and about the subject matter of the conversation in particular. It includes assumptions
that interlocutors make about the beliefs and intentions of each other”. It can be concluded that
context can found in any situation to utter the assumption about the topic that was discussed. Parera
(2004: 227) states, context is a situation that is formed because there are settings, activities, and
relationships. If there is an interaction between the three components then the context is formed.
Song consists of lyric or poems that unite the instrument or melody. It is a poem in line stanzas
(Oxford, 1993). Song is a collection of several poems and being set to music. Lyrics now is the name
of the short poem usually divided into stanza and direct expressing the poet’s own thought and
sentimental (Reaske, 1966: 846).
 CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Design

In this study, the writer used descriptive qualitative design. Associated with a variety of
theoretical perspectives, Qualitative research uses a range of methods to focus on the meaning
and interpretation of social phenomena and social processes in the particular contexts in which
they occur (Jupp, 2006: 249). In this research, the writer studied lexical and contextual meaning
in order to reach the objectives of the research easily. The data describes in the form of words
and uses the text of the lyrics to be analyzed.
3.2 Data Source
The data of this analysis is in the lines of lyrics in terms of words, phrases, and sentences
which have lexical and contextual meaning from Tiffany Young’s song. The data source taken
from three songs among five songs in “Lips on Lips” album that released on February 22, 2019,
retrieved from a website of songs lyrics in /genius.com./
3.3 Data collection
The writer applies a documentation method in this research. The data of this analysis are
collected in the following step. First, the writer reading all the data sources. Second, the writer
selected the appropriated songs in the lyrics of “Tiffany Young” songs. The third, The writer
chooses three lyrics song from an album of Tiffany Young with the title are “Born Again”, “lips
on lips” and “the flower” and the source in this data is taken from the “/genius.com/” website.
3.3 Data analysis
After collecting the data, The writer analyzes based on the lines of lyrics in terms of words,
phrases, and sentences. To arrange this data, the writer analysis the finding of meaning by using
semantic theory in terms of lexical and contextual meaning.
There are some steps for analyzing the data as follows :
1. The writer reading and listening to the data from the three selected songs from “Lips on
Lips” Album of Tiffany Young
2. Find the meaning with one by one of the words
3. Describing the meaning of the word in the lyrics using lexical meaning that are found from
the dictionary and describing the contextual meaning from the words in the lyrics of Tiffany
Young’s song.
4. The writer making a conclusion based on the result of the analysis.