COHESION IN THE COMIC STRIP “THE BORN LOSER” IN THE JAKARTA POST

ABSTRACT

The research entitled “Cohesion in The Comic Strip The Born Loser in The Jakarta Post” is intended to reveal the cohesive ties formed in the comic strips The Born Loser in Jakarta Post and the portion of each of the types that takes place.

This research belongs to a descriptive qualitative research since the data are presented qualitatively and analyzed descriptively. It describes the condition of the data in whatever it is. The object of the research is grammatical and lexical cohesion in the comic strip The Born Loser in Jakarta Post. The researcher takes the data from The Jakarta Post daily newspaper. In collecting the data, this research is done by using observation method to the determined comic strips and tapping technique. The researcher discusses based on the types of cohesion in the comic strip the Born Loser by observing cohesive items in each sentence number of each edition and describing distance of items and also finding out presupposed item. Finally, she accounts the portion of each the types that take place.

This research shows that the types of cohesion in the comic strip the Born Loser are reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, reiteration and collocation. While, most of the direction is anaphoric with the presupposed element preceding. The forms of presupposition are immediate tie, mediated tie and remote tie and also there are some formed ties which are both mediated and remote. Then, it also shows the distance separating the presupposing from the presupposed item that is the number of intervening sentences. Whereas, from the data of the identified cohesive items, the greatest portion of the grammatical cohesion type is reference and the lowest is substitution. While reiteration particularly repetition is the greatest portion of the lexical cohesion type and the lowest is synonym. Of the grammatical cohesion, the reference is about 53.33%, substitution is about 2.66%, ellipsis is about 27.11%, and conjunction is about 16.88%. Reference type particularly personal reference is more dominant than others as it, in the text, acts to keep track of participants throughout the text. Whereas, the lowest frequency is substitution particularly verbal substitution because, to avoid the redundancy of repetition of lexical item is more effective by omitting. While, from the lexical cohesion, reiteration is about 71.31% and collocation is about 28.67%. While the form of reiteration particularly repetition form is the most dominant because it is to keep track the timing, characters and events. Whereas, the synonym is the lowest frequency because to state the same meaning in repetition form more often is stronger impressive than in synonym form.