AN ANALYSIS OF CONTEXTUAL MEANING IN ALESSIA CARA’S SONG

LYRICS OF “KNEW-IT-ALL” ALBUM

A Research Proposal

By

Rehmalemta Br Sembiring

1175030217

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Research

Language is one of the most important things in human life. Language
is a communication between one person and another produced by human
speech tools (Keraaf, 1997:1). To communicate with fellow humans like
expressing ideas, emotions and something that wants to convey is only
through language. Language is a humane method that non-instinctively
expresses emotions, opinions, and so on (Sapir, 1921: 7). We no longer need
to think to speak or read or hear. Because we will read it instinctually even
though we only see it. But to understand what we are reading, we have to
understand what it means in the text. To know the meaning, we must know
about semantics.
Semantics is a branch of linguistics that focuses on the meaning of
words and sentences (Homby, 1972:789). Sometimes we are confused about
interpreting what someone said, which is listed in magazines, newspapers, and
texts with other media whether it means pleasure, disappointment, sadness, or
just jokes. So we need to study semantics to understand the meaning that is
conveyed either directly or through other media so that we understand what
they want to convey. There are many types of meaning in accordance with
experts. According to Abdul Chaer (2007: 289) that types of meanings include
lexical, grammatical, and contextual meanings, referential and non-referential
meanings, denotative and connotative meanings, conceptual and associative
meanings, and lexeme. According to Jos Daniel Parera (1990:16) that there is
a kind of meaning that includes referential or correspondence theory,
contextual theory, the theory of mentalism, or conceptual and theoretical
formalism.
We know that communication is important for understanding human
conceptualization, cognition, and thinking process (Leech, 1983:9). For
communication is smooth, the speaker and interlocutor must understand each
other what they and the other person mean. To find out the meaning of
someone’s words, we cannot escape the context. Context is a knowledge
between the speaker and interlocutor that links to all other knowledge that is
not out of the topic they are talking about (accepted by all parties)( Lyons,
1968: 413). The purpose of context is to understand each other what they are
talking about and also want to convey messages to one another. Not only
talking about something that maybe the messages obtained is only brief. But
we can reach it broadly because the context in question will link all the
information/messages. To convey the messages or information, not only on
conversations or poetry and the others but also in the song lyrics. This research
focuses on analyzing song lyrics.
As stated in Rizka’s research “An Analysis of Contextual Meaning in
A New Day Has Come Song Lyrics” (2008:2) that song lyrics are an
expression of someone on something, experiences, and so on. Usually, the
songwriter will speak their minds through beautiful words according to their
own characteristics. According to Rizka (2008:2) that songs are usually
created under the circumstances and wishes of the songwriter. The listener will
enter into the imagination created by the songwriter. From this process, their
messages will be conveyed. Because the song lyrics have many messages that
the songwriter makes, and sometimes people do not understand the messages,
the researcher will analyze the lyrics of the song album Alessia Cara: “Knew-
It-All”.
Briefly, Alessia Cara is a singer a multi-talent musician who comes
from Canada. She was born on July 11, 1996, in Canada. She got many awards
for her songs. The researcher is interested to analyze Alessia Cara’s song
lyrics, especially the “Knew-It-All” album. Because this album is part of her
 life journey. Hurlock argues in her book “Psikologi Perkembangan” translated
by Erlangga (2003:206) that adolescence is a period of physical growth that
begins to mature until their way of thinking becomes an adult. From that
statement, the researcher knows that the life journey of an adolescent is
different. Therefore the researcher is interested to know how the life process
of Alessia Cara as teenager from her song lyrics. Besides that, there are many
contextual meanings contained in her song lyrics in there are many messages
that Alessia Cara wants to convey.

B. Statement of Problem
According to the background of the research above, there are some questions
that attract the writer to make them as the problem of this paper, they are as
follow:
1. What the contexts are used in Alessia Cara’s song lyrics of the “Knew-It-
All” album?
2. What the contextual meaning are found in Alessia Cara’s song lyrics of the
“Knew-It-All” album?

C. Research Purposes
Based on the problems above, the purposes of this research are:
1. To find out the contexts used in Alessia Cara’s song lyrics of the “Knew-
It-All” album.
2. To find out the contextual meaning are found in Alessia Cara’s song lyrics
of the “Knew-It-All” album.

D. Research Significances
This research aims to inform that linguistics additionally has an important role
in science and communication. Specifically, it hopes to have benefit as
follows:
a. Practical
This study aims to help beneficial information to improve student’s
meaning to text in the State of Islamic Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung
students, primarily the English Department students. The researcher
 hopefully can provide the contribution of knowledge and consciousness
about how important the meaning of the text.
b. Theoretical
This research can be used as an additional reference for the next
researcher, mainly those who are interested in the study of discourse
analysis about the contextual meaning of song lyrics.

E. Conceptual Framework
In this research, the researcher is used contextual meaning theory by
Mansoer Pateda (2010) which divided into 10 contexts. There is the context of
organs, the context of the time, the context of place, the context of formality,
the context of purposes, the context of language, the context of a situation, the
context of linguistic, the context of completeness in speak or hear from
speaker or listener, and the context of an object. These ten of contexts have an
important role to know the contextual meaning in Alessia Cara’s song lyrics in
the “Knew-It-All” album and to understand what Alessia Cara’s message on
her song.
The researcher focuses on what contexts and meaning are found in
these song lyrics. Sometimes, the listener as foreign people or English people
has failed to know what Cara wants to talk about from her lyrics. To
understanding what Cara’s message from her song lyrics, the researcher
focuses on the contexts and meaning are found in her song lyrics. So, the
researcher uses that theory to describe her message by dissecting the lyrics
according to the contexts used.

F. Research Method
This chapter presents the research method in conducting this current research.
This research method covers the research design, sample of data, source of
data, technique of data collecting data, and technique of analyzing data.

1. Research Design
This research focuses on song lyrics created by Alessia Cara in the
album “Knew-It-All”. This research is used in qualitative document
analysis. Moleong (2006:6) stated that qualitative research is research that
 intends to understand the phenomena experienced by research subjects
such as behavior, perception, motivation, action, etc. in a holistic manner,
and by means of descriptions in the form of words and language, a special
context which is natural and making use of various natural methods. This
research uses descriptive research because it focuses on describing the
contextual phenomena meaning including descriptions of events,
participants, actions, and situations. The researcher uses a qualitative
method to describe the song lyrics of Alessia Cara’s album “Knew-It-All”
to study the main concern in this study.

2. Sample of Data
The data in this research use the phrases, words, and sentences which
had contextual meaning taken from Alessia Cara’s song lyrics in the
“Knew-It-All” album. The data source is taken from the “Knew-It-All”
album which had twelve songs released in 2015. They are Seventeen, Her ,
Outlaws, I’m Yours, Four Pink Walls, Wild Things, Stone, Overdose,
Stars, Scars to your beautiful, River of Tears, and My Song . These data
analyzed used the Lyon’s theory. These can be seen in the sample below:

Lyrics I
(Scars to Your Beautiful)
She just wants to be beautiful
She goes unnoticed, she knows no limits
She craves attention, she praises an image
She prays to be sculpted by sculptor

A piece of the lyrics above, there is the context of person, the context
of purposes, the context of situation, and context of object. For context of
person is she. The pronoun she is used to fulfill the role as the target of the
utterance. She just wants to be beautiful is the context of purpose. The
sentence as the concerned of a piece of the lyrics above that she wants to
be beautiful and the people claimed that. The sentence she prays to be
sculpted by sculptor is context of situation. Although the situation is not
stated, it is clear that she is in a solemn situation because she is praying to
her God. Context of object from a piece of the lyrics above is about
beautiful. Contextual meaning from the lyrics is she just wants to be
beautiful which are people praise her and that is why she prays to her
God.

Lyrics 2
(Scars to Your Beautiful)

She don’t see the light that shining

Deeper than the eyes can find it
May be we have made her blind
So she tries to cover up her pain and cut her woes away

From these lyrics, the researcher found context of person and context
of object. The pronoun she is used to fulfill the role as the target of the
utterance. The pronoun we is used to fulfill the role as the target of the
utterance. The pronoun she and we has the same role. The context of
object from the lyrics is blind. She does not see her beautiful cause people
perspective. The contextual meaning from this lyrics is she did not big
deeper into her own beauty and that she also suffered and endured pain
from people’s perspectives on beauty.

Lyrics 3
(Here)
I’m sorry if I seem uninterested
Or I’m not listenin’ or I’m different
Truly I ain’t got no business here, I just came to kick it

From a piece of lyrics above, the researcher found context of

person, context of place, context of object, context of mood, and context
of purpose. The pronoun I, I’m, is used to fulfill the roles as the speaker of
the utterance. The sentence I just came to kick it is the context of purpose
from this lyrics because it has a word “to”. The context of place from
 these lyrics is here. Here reference a place. These lyrics is talking about
she/he’s uninterested in the here. The context of mood from these lyrics is
uninterested. She/he goes to here without a clear plan or does not have a
business to here. The contextual meaning from these lyrics is I is
uninterested to here because I does not have a clear purpose to here and
want to kick her/his mind because does not have a clear purpose

Lyrics 4
(Here)

But really I would rather be at home all by myself

Not in this room
With people who don’t even care about well-being

From these lyrics, the researcher found the context of person, the context
of object, the context of place, and the context of mood. I is the context of
person. The pronoun I is used to fulfill the roles as the speaker of the
utterance. The phrase room is as the context of place. From that, the
researcher concludes that I does not want to this room. The sentence But
really I would rather be at home all by myself is the context of mood of
these lyrics. Because it is clear the word “really” emphasizes that I don’t
like that place. The contextual meaning from these lyrics is I compare
his/her feeling from this room or his/her home. His/her does not like this
room because the people don’t care about welfare.

3. Source of Data
Data source in this research retrieved from a website of song lyrics
https://genius.com/albums/Alessia-cara/Know-it-all (October 2020).

4. Technique of Collecting Data

In qualitative research, collecting the data mostly is done through
participant observation, depth interview, and documentation. As stated
 Sugiono (2008: 225) that the fundamental method relied on by qualitative
researcher for gathering information is a participant in the setting, direct
observation, in-depth interview, and documentation review. In this
research, the researcher uses qualitative document analysis. The researcher
takes some step to collecting data, there are:
a. Retrieving the lyrics of Alessia Cara’s song from the “Knew-It-All”
album.
b. Reading carefully the song lyrics from the “Knew-It-All” album.
c. Identifying the words, phrases, and sentences that meet the criteria of
contextual meaning on every lyric.
d. Marking the data table to display the data findings.

5. Technique of Analysis Data

After collecting the data, the researcher analyzes the data. Sugiono (2008:
245) stated that there are three activities to analyze the data in descriptive
qualitative research, they are data reduction, data display, and verification.
These are the procedure for analyzing the source of data:
a. Listening to Alessia Cara’s song “Knew-It-All” album.
b. Focusing on the lines of lyrics to find the data (words, phrases, and
sentences) which can be identified contains contextual meaning.
c. Categorizing the data for each type based on Pateda’s theory.
d. Interpreting the meaning of each context based on contextual meaning
in every lyric.
e. Drawing the conclusion based on the result.

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