CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1. Background of Study People cannot be separated from the process of communication. As human beings, people need to interact with the others. People use different language in society according to their surrounding communities. Language is a guide for everyone to communicate between individuals and communities. People use language to deliver messages to others. Through language, the speakers could identify themselves because they view their language as a symbol of their identity. Sociolinguistics is a study about how people use language and create a new language in their society or group. Language can be changed due to two factors, first, everyone has their own style from different social, and second, sometimes the new language has adopted from different language. Each society has their own language because of their condition and people also have creativity to create something new in their community such as new words. According to (Wardaugh, 2006) Sociolinguistic concerns with investigating the relationships between language and society with the goal to be a better understanding of the language structure and how language functions in communication; the equivalent goal in the sociology of language is trying to discover how social structure can be better understood through the study of language. In other words, through language, people are free to express their communicate needs to say anything to each other. The language that is used by each community is different. Language and community are related and people will use the different language in every different community. One of the examples is Korean fans or K-pop’s fans. The K-pop community and its people have their own language that will only be understood by K-pop fans. Through language, people construct their identity as a community. Each society has characteristics, and in Sociolinguistic it is called as Register. The term of register describes the language of the group of people with same common interest, jobs, or the language used in associated with such groups (Holmes, 2013). Register is a language variety that is based on its function. Register has differences that can be indentified in terms of the model of acts identity as much as the way of dialect 1 2 differences. Usually register is used in all form of communication such as written, spoken and signed. I focus on sociolinguistic analysis of the register as a kind of language variation. Language variety is based on social variety and its function in social communication. Register is a variety of language that is based on speaker, means that the language used based on what is being done and the nature from the activities. In a group or community, people usually use different language. For example, in the online shop context, people usually use gan, sist, pre-order, re-stock , transfer , etc. Those words are the examples of register in the online shop. This research focuses on K-pop fans as a community. Korean music pop or K- pop is one of the most popular music genres from South Korea. K-pop has entered the American Charts such as Billboard which is one of the benchmarks for the quality of the world music industry. K-pop has been influencing people all over the world and the society. All countries in the world have different cultures and different languages, therefore, mostly K-pop fans communicate using English, because English is a universal language used in the whole world. As we know, English becomes the second language in the world. Not only fellow fans use English, but also K-pop idols. K-pop idols try to use English language to make their fans understand what they say. K-pop started going International since 2003. According to Matsumoto (2017) Modern K-pop is marked by the use of English Phrases. Usually K-pop groups song use English rather than Korean, such as Jumping by Kara, Shine Forever by Monsta X, Forever Young by GOT7, Knock Knock by Twice, Missing You by BTOB, Fire by BTS, Power by EXO, Mirotic by TVXQ, etc. By using English Phrase, it allows the songs and the artists to be marketed to a wider audience around the world. The reason why K-pop can go international because the genre of the music is acceptable in Western and Asia. There are a lot of popular groups that is popular internationally, such as Super Junior, SNSD, Big Bang, Shinee, 2PM, 2AM, Highlight, Infinite, Born to Beat (BTOB), GOT7, Monsta X, Day6, Wanna One, Twice, Blackpink, Red Velvet, Winner, Seventeen, Bangtan Boys, VIXX, Lovelyz, Mamamoo, etc. Those groups have a lot of international fans. Even though each group has a different fandom name but all of them are called as K- pop fans. 3 This research focuses on the language used by K-pop fans in social media. Nowadays, communication has been improving to be more modern, and it makes people easier to do communication with others. Through the social media, they can communicate with people all over the world. Everyone can meet someone who has the same interest and be friends to share something they like. In social media, usually people will communicate with others by using informal language. They will use some special context such as slang words or swear words. If they have a community in social media, usually they use special words or expression to identify their community in social media. Twitter is chosen as the source of data because according to Kompas.com there are around three hundred million people who use Twitter to communicate each other, including myself. Sometimes, people as the user of language do not think about how language formed. We also can investigate the use of language in each group because they usually have a different language from each other. In this case, K-pop’s fans have register that others do not know. Usually K-pop’s fans are active in twitter to search the latest news of their favorite group and something new from their favorite groups, fans will reply the artists’ tweet or tweet something as their status. They will communicate with the other fans from another country to talk about their idols. The Twitter profile of a K- pop fan can be identified by their profile picture and the name of their account. Usually they will use their favorite idols picture and use the name of their favorite idols, moreover, we can also identify it by their tweets that usually talk about their favorite idols. I had already searched two other theses with the same topic such as register in sociolinguistic. Because I want to analyze about register, so I need some of references that helps this research. The first one is English Movie Advertisement of www.21-cineplex.com (A Sociolinguistic Study) by Yetty Faridatul Ulfah – 2010. Similarity between Yetty’s thesis and this research is that both studies use register in sociolinguistic, and the difference is about the object that wants to be analyzed. Yetty used movie advertisement in media website cineplex and this research uses K-pop’s fans in Twitter. And the second thesis is A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Register Used in Online Shop of Social Media by Farikha Nur Alfi – 2013. Similarity between Farikha’s thesis and this research is that both studies use register in sociolinguistic 4 and the difference is the object. Farikha’s discussed about Register in social media facebook and this research discuss about K-pop’s fans’ tweet. Both of the previous studies and the research have a different intention. I will use sociolinguistics, register theories, slang words, swear words, community of practice, communication and media social which is twitter. (The main focus, expected result of doing this research) People will use some slang and swear words and some of register form to identify their favorite idols in their tweet. This case, I try to find the types and the meaning of register that K-pop’s fans usually use and the function of that register form in K-pop’s fans tweet. 1.2. Problem Formulation I make this thesis because I want to find out about the problem formulations that make me curious about the answers. There are three problem formulations that I will search, such as: 1. What are the form and meaning of register used by K-pop fans in twitter? 2. What are the functions of the register used by K-pop fans in twitter? 1.3. Scope and Limitation This research focuses on the register in special context such as slang and swear words of a social media, in this case, Twitter. I will only focus on the tweets of K- pop fans’ Twitter who communicate using English about their favorite groups. 1.4. Goals and Functions Based on the problems which have been formulated above, the goals of this research are: 1. To find out the form and meaning of register used by K-pop fans in Twitter. 2. To find out the function of the register used by K-pop’s fans in twitter. The functions of this research are to give an explanation about register form of K- pop’s fans use and to give information about the use of slang and swear words in K- pop’s fans twitter. .