LEXICAL DENSITY AND GRAMMATICAL INTRICACY IN DEBATERS’ SPEECHES

Putry Amelia

doi:10.30743/ll.v4i1.2519

Abstract

This paper entitled “Lexical Density and Grammatical Intricacy in Debaters’ speeches (Case Study of National University Debating Championship 2018)” discusses the lexical density and grammatical intricacy to identify the level of lexical density and grammatical intricacy in debaters’ speeches conducted by means of descriptive qualitative method. The theories supporting this thesis are the ones proposed by Ure, Halliday, and Simon Quinn. The data source in this thesis were debate speech from Main Grand Final round of NUDC 2018 which are Opening Government team (Prime Minfister and Deputy Prime Minister) and Opening Opposition team (Leader of the Opposition and Deputy Leader of the Opposition) taken from youtube video of NUDC 2018, Malang. The data in this study were lexical items for lexical density and clauses for grammatical intricacy. The step passed in this analysis are collecting the data by transcribing the debate speech into text, identifying the lexical items and clauses, and concluding the analysis. The result of this thesis shows that lexical density and grammatical intricacy of Prime Minister = 40.95 % and 3.43, Deputy Prime Minister = 42.44% and 2.72, Leader of the Opposition = 46.14% and 2.91, and Deputy Leader of the Opposition = 47.90% and 3. Thus, both the level of lexical density and grammatical intricacy in debaters’ speeches account for higher density and intricacy, so debaters’ speeches represent much information due to many lexical items as the proportion of running words and indicate that clause complex is more dominant than simple sentence.

Highlights

Debate has been a popular platform in 21st century in the terms of conveying ideas, knowledge and thoughts. Shan (2005:21) states that debate is defined as two groups of people on opposite sides of the issue discussing an agreed topic upon rules, and the judges listen to both different sides of the argument, choosing the winning team based on the reasoning and evidence provided
Based on the analysis of data, it is found that Prime Minister (PM) speech has 584 lexical items among 1426 words and has 37 clause complexes that consist of 127 ranking clauses, Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) speech has 674 lexical items among 1588 words and has 59 clause complexes that consist of 161 ranking clauses, Leader of the Opposition (LO) speech has 712 lexical items among 1543 words and has 57 clause complexes that consist of 166 ranking clauses, Deputy Leader of the Opposition (DLO) speech has 709 lexical items among 1480 words and has 48 clause complexes that consist of 144 ranking clauses
The highest lexical density among the four debaters’ speeches is found in Deputy Leader of the Opposition (DLO) speech (47.90%), while the lowest lexical density is found in Prime Minister (PM) speech (40.95%)

Summary

Introduction

Debate has been a popular platform in 21st century in the terms of conveying ideas, knowledge and thoughts. Shan (2005:21) states that debate is defined as two groups of people on opposite sides of the issue discussing an agreed topic upon rules, and the judges listen to both different sides of the argument, choosing the winning team based on the reasoning and evidence provided. Debate has been a popular platform in 21st century in the terms of conveying ideas, knowledge and thoughts. Shan (2005:21) states that debate is defined as two groups of people on opposite sides of the issue discussing an agreed topic upon rules, and the judges listen to both different sides of the argument, choosing the winning team based on the reasoning and evidence provided. In Indonesian context, debate is considered as a means for students to exercise public speaking ability which is manifested through the existence of a lot of competitions. In Indonesia, debate competitions either local, regional, or national scale have been numerously conducted. In varsity level, National University Debating Championship (NUDC) is one of the annual debate competitions. The competition consists of two categories which are Main and Novice categories.

Methods

Results

Conclusion