Grammatical Metaphor in Bruno Mars' Songs
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
GRAMMATICAL METAPHOR IN BRUNO MARS’ SONGS *Joynet Tabita Niarta Manurung **Busmin Gurning ABSTRACT This study deals with the types of ideational metaphor in Bruno Mars’ Songs. The objectives of this study are to find out the metaphorical codes applied in Bruno Mars’ songs and the reason of the writer to use metaphorical codes in the songs. The data are the song lyrics of Doo-Wops & Hooligans taken from internet. This research is conducted by using descriptive qualitative design to explain the grammatical metaphor coding. The finding shows that there are six types of ideational metaphor occur in the album, they are: material process, mental process, relational process, verbal process, behavioral process and existential process. The study shows that Material Process is the dominant which presented the action, activity, doing or happening to tell about Bruno Mars’ experiences. Keywords: Grammatical Metaphor, Linguistics, Descriptive Qualitative Design *Graduate Status **Lecturer Status 48 INTRODUCTION In daily life, metaphors form an important component of our conversation. Metaphor is a concept of understanding one thing in terms of another. Metaphor inherently implies two points; those are comparison and uncommon representation. Metaphors are found not only in daily language but also in songs. According to River (1987), song is an expression of human feelings sung and listened to people as well as symbol of joy and sadness. The lyrics of songs show the feeling or experience of the songwriter. Because of that, everybody loves to listen and sing a song to evoke their emotions. In writing a song, the songwriters consciously or unconsciously use metaphors to convey ideas, thoughts and feelings to the listeners, so they are able to illustrate the experiences of the song. Based on Riffature (1978), the literature is ungrammaticality. This concept was applied because songwriters are free to use language or they had a purpose to convey the experiences of the song.But, sometimes they use metaphor because they do not find the right words to describe the feeling. Therefore, songwriters often inadvertently create new words in their songs to give new meaning in expressing the experiences. The research questions of the present study are; what metaphorical codes are applied in Bruno Mars’ songs? And, why the writer used metaphorical code as in the songs? Grammatical Metaphor Grammatical metaphor as a part of metaphor is a subfield of systemic functional grammar which studies about representing or interpreting meaning from two sides. Metaphor inherently implies two points; those are comparison and uncommon representation. Leezenberg (2001:33) states that according to Aristotle who generally defines metaphor as a transfer of a name belonging elsewhere. Halliday (1994:340) stated that metaphor is a word used for something resembling that which it usually refers to. There are two codes in metaphor; they are the unmarked or congruent and marked or incongruent coding. The congruent coding is also known as a common, usual or literal representation whereas the incongruent one is called uncommon, unusual, or metaphorical representation. Metaphor could be divided into lexical and grammatical metaphors. Lexical metaphor is a usual, common, or congruent coding of meaning in 49 language. Grammatical metaphor is defined as relocation or shift in the wording of meaning from its usual representation to another usual realization.Grammatical metaphor is divided into two types; they are interpersonal and ideational metaphors. Interpersonal metaphor accommodates metaphor of an interpersonal kind in the expression of mood and modality. Ideational metaphor accommodates metaphor in its ideational function as the representation of a process. Ideational metaphor includes process type, configuration of transitivity, and sequence of group classes. Ideational Metaphor and Its Types Ideational Metaphor Ideational Metaphor is the representation of experience and its relationship among logical meaning. An experiential unit which is realized in a clause congruently consists of three elements, namely; process, participant and circumstance.Grammatical metaphor leads to denser language, maybe “adult language” or language of writing. Ideational metaphor is often found in teacher talk, for example, when a command is phrased as a friendly question. Such language emphasizes teacher authority while hiding teacher identity. The using of metaphor reflects the transition from early childhood classroom talk (congruent in the ideational sense) to more metaphorical, both in the ideational and interpersonal senses. Types of Ideational Metaphor Ideational Metaphor includes process type, configuration of transitivity, and sequence of group classes. Transitivity system has functions of language. Oneof those functions is to construe or represent experience (Halliday, 1994: 106). Saragih (2010: 7) also stated that transitivity system construes the world of experience. According to Halliday, the process itself is divided into six types, they are: 1. Material: material clauses construe doings and happenings. 2. Mental: mental clauses construe a person involved in conscious processing, including processes of perception, recognition and affection. 3. Relational: relational clauses construe being and do this in two different modes, attribution and identification. 4. Behavioral: behavioral clauses construe human behavior 5. Verbal: verbal clauses represent processes of saying 50 6. Existential: existential clauses resemble relational clauses in that they construe the participant involved in a process of being, but differ from the relational ones in that there is only one participant. Song Songis a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing. A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs. A song may be for a solo singer, a duet, trio, or larger ensemble involving more voices. Songs with more than one voice to a part are considered choral works. Songs can be broadly divided into many different forms, depending on the criteria used. For human being, song is a kind of entertainment that really needed. It influences mood and feeling. According to River (1987), song is an expression of human feelings sung and listened to people as well as symbol of joy and sadness. Song can make someone getting sad, happy, cheer up, and so many others. That is why some people have their song of life. It brings memory and removes memory also. Human is an art that God create and music, which is improved become song, is also an art that human create. Lyrics are the words to a song. The lyrics of a song will usually have a meaning. Sometimes the meaning is easy to find but other times it can be very difficult to know what the lyrics mean. Some lyrics are strange that it is nearly impossible to understand them. In such cases, people tend to look more at the form, articulation, meter, and symmetries of the lyrics instead of looking at their meaning. Bruno Mars’ Song Bruno Mars was born on October 8, 1985. He is an American singer, songwriter and producer. Peter Gene Hernandez, Bruno Mars’ original name, wasraised in the Waikiki neighborhood of Honolulu, Hawaii, by parents Pete Hernandez of Puerto Rican descent and Bernadette "Bernie" of Filipino descent. At the age of two, he was nicknamed "Bruno" by his father, because of his resemblance to legendary professional wrestler Bruno Sammartino. He adopted his stage name from the nickname his father gave him, adding "Mars" at the end because "I felt like I didn't have [any] pizzazz, and a lot of girls say I’m out of this world, so I was like I guess I'm from Mars." His debut studio album ‘Doo-Wops & Hooligans’ released on October 4, 2010 charted at number three on the Billboard 200 and in the top ten of music charts in Australia, Canada, 51 Ireland, and New Zealand. The album received generally mixed to positive reviews from music critics. The usage of a wide variety of influences was noted by critics, with musical comparisons made to Michael Jackson, Jason Mraz and Little Richard. The album received a total of seven nominations for the Grammy Awards in 2011 and 2012 including Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album. Mars embarked on a US headlining tour throughout November and December 2010 to promote the album. Doo- Wops & Hooligans was announced the third biggest-selling album of 2011 in the UK, selling approximately 1,214,420 copies. The album has sold over 6 million copies worldwide. Methodology This study was conducted by applying descriptive qualitative design that studied about song lyric and coded them by using grammatical metaphor. The source of data was original website of Bruno Mars, Doo-Wops & Hooligans album. There are 10 songs in the album and every repetition in each song will not be analyzed.To collect the data, the researcher browsed official website of Bruno Mars to look for the song lyrics on the internet. After that the lyrics were printed out. The data were analyzed by using a scheme which showed the sentence and the grammatical codes. The data were analyzed to find out the ideational metaphorical code in Bruno Mars’ The Doo-Wops & Hooligans album, by identifyingthe types of ideational metaphor in the Bruno Mars’ song lyrics, and classifyingthe data based on the Ideational Metaphor’s types. After that, the writer interpreted the real meaning of grammatical metaphor uses in the lyrics of Bruno Mars’ song. RESULT AND DISCUSSION Result After identifying and classifying the data into the six types, the writertabulated and calculated the total usage and the percentage of each type of grammatical code used in the album. All grammatical codes of the Bruno Mars’ Album were presented in the table1: 52 Table1. The Total of Grammatical Metaphor of Bruno Mars Songs Ideational Metaphor Code No. Songs Mat Men Rel Ver Beh Ext 1 Talking To The Moon 7 6 2 8 1 1 2 Just The Way You Are 7 8 12 6 3 0 3 The Lazy Songs 13 2 4 3 3 0 4 Grenade 15 8 3 3 4 0 5 Our First Time 5 6 13 0 1 0 6 Runaway Baby 13 4 9 3 1 0 7 Marry You 6 4 9 6 0 0 8 Liquor Store Blues 9 2 5 0 1 0 9 Count On Me 6 2 5 3 1 0 10 The Other Side.