Denotative and connotative analysis on Elia Pettie’s short story

Nur Nabilah Fauziyah,Roikhatul Nur Ilmi

doi:10.31940/jasl.v4i1.1593

Nur Nabilah Fauziyah, Roikhatul Nur Ilmi

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.31940/jasl.v4i1.1593

Copy DOI

Abstract

This study was conducted to analyze several words which have denotative and connotative meaning and find the relation of those words with the context of a love relationship in real life. In analyzing the denotative and connotative meaning of four words that were already chosen, this study uses Palmer’s theory of denotation and connotation as a theoretical basis. The data was collected from the text of the short story “A Child of the Rain”, which is categorized as a ghost story. Particularly, this study focuses on analyzing four specific words namely invisible, glad, expert, and coldness. This study uses descriptive qualitative as the design of this study. Therefore, after analyzing the meaning of words, this study found that (1) the words invisible, glad, expert, and coldness have denotative and connotative meaning, (2) connotative meaning of these words have a relation with the context of love relationship in real life, (3) these words can portray someone’s feeling in specific situation like in love relationship. These findings can be utilized by second-language learners in the process of understanding the denotative and connotative meaning of the English language.      

Highlights

An understanding of the denotative and connotative meaning of a word is highly significant as a basic to conceive the definition and concept of word in communication
This paper mainly focuses on analyzing specific word in several sentences which contain denotative and connotative meaning with love relationship as the context
The structure of the sentence shows that the word invisible is preceded by the word as which refers to a clause comparison

Summary

Introduction

An understanding of the denotative and connotative meaning of a word is highly significant as a basic to conceive the definition and concept of word in communication. In some cases, people cannot deliver a message perfectly due to the fact that a receiver fails to interpret the meaning of the message (Omar, 2012) In this case, interpreting the message could be incorrect because the receiver only focuses on the denotative meaning and overlooks the connotative meaning of a word. Kreidler (1998) explains that denotative is a knowledge that a sender and a receiver have in expressing language, while connotative is a word that has a relation to the experience of a sender in expressing the language. This study attempts to examine denotative and connotative meaning in Ellia Peattie’s story, namely “A Child of the Rain.” This story portrays the main character’s fear of a little figure’s existence and has a horror story as the genre. “A Child of The Rain” can be categorized into the fantastic one, due to the fact that the author doesn’t explicitly show the child as a ghost or a human being in the story and it is salient to analyze denotative and connotative meaning of words in the story

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion