A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN BARRACK H. OBAMA’S SPEECH

Abstract

Language is fundamental to all social processes, and human do need language to communicateto each other. In social process, there are people who communicate more than they say, they uselanguage that indicate meanings more than the language does. This term is called figurative language.By conducting the study about language in use, we undertake a discourse analysis. In this research, adiscourse analysis is conducted in Barrack Obama’s first inaugural address with point of view of fourtypes figurative language, they are metaphor, personification, paradox, and hyperbole. The purposeof this research are to find out four types of figurative language and interpret the meanings indicatein that figurative expressions. In conducting this research, descriptive qualitative method wasused. The results of this research were described qualitatively from the stage categorization of thefigurative language until explanation and interpretation of the figurative expressions. The analyzingof this research was supported by the related references to this research. By analyzing the data basedon the related theory, the result of this research showed that there are 52 figurative expressions,where metaphor had the highest frequency as 24 expressions or 46.15%, followed by hyperboleas 14 expressions or 26.92%, expressions of personification as 9 expressions or 17.30%, and theleast frequency is paradox as 5 expressions or 9.61%. From those result could be concluded thatin Obama’s speech contained huge number of figurative expressions. This fact showed that figurativelanguage is important and could influence the language to become more powerful and more artistic.Keyword: Figurative Language, Discourse Analysis, Speech, Obama