Syntax Literate : Jurnal Ilmiah
Indonesia p–ISSN:
2541-0849
e-ISSN : 2548-1398
Vol. 4, No. 1 Januari 2019
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Ana Yusyfiana dan Wulandari Pratiwi
Sekolah Tinggi Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan (STKIP) Persis Bandung
Email: yusyfiana@gmail.com dan wulandari.p@gmail.com
Abstrak
The study reported here is based
on an investigation on the students’ writing. The students were asked to
compose tourism brochures as a kind of persuasive texts. Data were collected
from 25 students who were randomly divided into 3 groups through a pre-test and
a post-test. The data were then analyzed by using the criteria of
persuasiveness (Austin, 1962) in Relevance Theory. These criteria include perlocutionary force,
cognitive effects, advertising
copy, rhetorical expressions,
and metaphor. Analyses show that, after the students are introduced to criteria of persuasiveness, the
quality of their
persuasive text writing
improved. This improvement
can be identified
from the amplifying quality
of the criteria
of persuasiveness in the students’
post-test writing. The
study concludes that even though the concept of Relevance Theory is
based on the philosophy of language and regarded as obtaining little practical
adaptability to the language-teaching context, language teaching profession
could usefully have made more use of
this theory to examine teaching-learning process in the classrooms.
Keywords: English, Language,
Teaching, Persuasive Text, Writing
Introduction
Background of the Study This paper
reports the findings
of a quantitative research
in a class
of tourism and hospitality program of a community
college in Bandung. The investigation
was intended to investigate the students’ persuasive text
writing. Since the main
objectives of persuasive communication are to be understood
and to be believed, the projected
audience should understand the
utterances given and
believe in the messages.
This process deals
with the concept of relevance.
The
concept of relevance
emerges as the reaction
toward some utterances
violating the Grice-maxim,
however, they are still able to be comprehended. Relevance
permeates the gap between what we say and what we have in
mind based on the
context. When we
deal with persuasive texts,
for example brochure,
so we tend to apply the Relevance
Theory.
The
interrelation between persuasive
texts and Relevance Theory can be attained on Arai’s research (2007)
which offers an
analysis of persuasiveness used
in advertising language
as viewed through relevance
theory. The paper proposes that
a part what
makes successful advertising copy
persuasive can be explained by relevance
theory’s notion of mental profit (cognitive effect)
for the readers.
Taillard has also conducted
a research that
used relevance theory. Her
paper tries to
see that Relevance theory bridges
communication and cognition. She believes
that pragmatic can
only benefit from an analysis of
persuasive communication. In line with the previous research, Perez’s (2000)
paper aims to
analyse the applicability
of Sperber and Wilson’s
Relevance Theory toadvertising discourse.
The
previous researches have
shown that Relevance Theory can
be related to persuasive text. This
present study, thus, was aimed to show the interrelation between Relevance
Theory and persuasive text regarding ELT in the community college. One of the
text learned is a persuasive text in the form of brochure.
·
Literary Review (Relevance Theory)
Relevance Theory
is proposed by Dan
Sperber and Deidre
Wilson (see: Sperber & Wilson, 1981)
in reaction to the Cooperative Principles offered
by Paul Grice
(see: Grice, 1975). Rather
different from Grice,
who pays attention in inferences
and implicature, Sperber and Wilson argue
that explicit side
of communication are
also worthy of
pragmatic investigation.
They put forward
two main principles of
communication: Cognitive Principle and
Communicative Principle.
Cognitive Principle deals mainly with
what the speaker means, on
the other hand, Communicative Principle
copes with what
the speaker says.
According
to Grundy (2008: 139-140), there are six essential principles of relevance
theory. First, every utterance
has its own
particular relevance. Thus, we
will comprehend the utterance if we are able to prove its
relevance. Second, a hearer cannot prove the relevance of the utterances they
hear without taking context into account. Considering this phenomenon, the
speaker must make some assumptions about the hearer’s cognitive
abilities and contextual resources. Third,
the grammatical linguistic structure of
utterances is not
considered to be taken
into account. Fourth,
when the logic behind
an utterance has
been elaborated completely, the
utterance has a possibility to be regarded as a premise. Fifth, the most
relevance utterance is the one that has the most accessible interpretation. Consequently,
the greater the effect of
an utterance, the
more relevant it is. When
a hearer hardly
comprehends the utterance, the
less relevance the
utterance is.Finally,
context is treated
as “a set
of more accessible items of
information which are stored in
short-term memories” (Sperber&
Wilson, 1995: 142).
From the
above explanation on
Relevance Theory, it can be deduced that Relevance Theory recognizes and
can account for the fact that not all utterances are successfully understood or may be understood
in different ways
and different degrees by
different addressees. Many advertisements, newspaper
headlines, and joke tellingestablish what Grundy (2008) says
as an “understanding test” in
which the processing effort is very great but worth
engaging because
the understanding is more rewarding.
·
Relevance and Persuasiveness
Persuasion is
the communicative act
that carries out two
aims of communication. The aims are to be understood and to be
believed. An audience that is categorized persuaded when one has understood
an utterance, and
believed its message. Persuasiveness also
has much to do
with the
notion of ‘relevance’
as defined by Relevance
Theory. Persuading someone
is carrying out an act that affects someone’s desire and belief using
some form of communication, usually language. Relevance is one of the crucial determinants
when measuring persuasiveness, which is based on several
criteria. By the light of
this
fact, J. Austin
(1962) proposed criteria
of persuasiveness. The criteria of persuasiveness is presented below:
a.
Perlocutionary force
Perlocutionary force is one of the
notions in persuasiveness in which
a sentence (an utterance) has
to affect other
people’s actions and attitude. In
this theory an ordering utterance should
be more effective
than other ordering utterance. A
good advertisement should
utilize utterances that contain the force.
b.
Cognitive effects
Cognitive
effects are defined
as denying assumptions, replacing
old assumptions with new
assumptions, or getting
contextual implication through the
utterance. A good advertisement should
provide utterance that
is relevance for certain marketing target.
c.
Advertising copy
In
the advertisement field
the term ‘copy’ means
the literal parts
of the advertisement, including headlines, body
text, slogans, captions, plugs,
product names, and
company names. In this
paper, we are
primarily focusing on headlines because they usually consist of
short phrases or a few
words and have
similar characters with the shortest literature.
d.
Rhetorical expressions
The
rhetorical expressions are
the expressions found in advertisement that is easily understood by the
viewers and containing certain messages. The phrases can be linked with some pictures
or symbols. The rhetorical expressions intend to convey many weak implicatures.
e.
Metaphor
According to Carston (2000), a metaphor
is considered to be an ad hoc concept construction of a
word in relevance
theory. The aim
of the advertisement is to
persuade more people to buy or use the
product, the use
of certain word
or phrases is quite important to raise their interest. By using
metaphor is a
way to raise
their curiosity, thus, people will try to find out more information
about the product
Methodology
In this research, an experimental design
was adopted. The statistical calculation of t-test was employed in this present
study todetermine the effect of criteria of persuasiveness to students’ persuasive
writing. A t-test calculation produces t
value that can
be used to
judge whether the introduction of criteria of
persuasiveness plays a significant
role in improving
students’ persuasive text writing.
·
Research Site and Participants
The participants
of the study were a class of second
semester students of
Tourism and Hospitality Program
at a community college in Bandung. The class consisted of 25 students. The
students were randomly
divided into three groups.
They were the focus groups
or participants of the study.This random sampling was employed
to avoid any
bias in an experimental design.
The students’
English level in
general belongs to the
intermediate or upper intermediate. The
site of the
research, one of community
colleges in Bandung,
was chosen because it
is the place
where one of the
researchers works. The second semester students were selected because they
learn persuasive text writing in this
particular year. Considering all these, the researcher assumed that there
would not be any
administrative difficulties in conducting
the research. If
there existed, the problems would be relatively small.
·
Data
Collection Procedures and Instrument
Data were
collected through an investigation on
both the students’
pre-test and post-test persuasive text writing guided by criteria of
persuasiveness in Relevance Theory. The criteria comprise five
elements: perlocutionary force, cognitive
effects, advertising copy, rhetorical expressions, and metaphor.These criteria
of persuasiveness were used
as the instrument
of the study.
This kind
of instrument is believed to be capable of determining the quality of students’
pre-test and post-test writing in the way that, firstly, the
format gives clear
statements whether the students’
writing fulfil those criteria. Secondly, the format is also
equipped by remarks to provide clearer explanations of how the criteria present
or absent.
Regarding the
data collection procedures, first
of all, the
data will be collected
from the writing
test (pre-test) given to
the participants, a
class of 25 students
who were then
divided into three groups. Pre-test will be given to the
students without any treatment and prior knowledge to the Relevance
Theory and criteria
of persuasiveness. In the
pre-test, they will
be asked to write a brochure of Bali. The lectures on Relevance
Theory and criteria
of persuasiveness were conducted
for four meetings. From
this pre-test, the
students’ initial skill of composing persuasive text will be obtained,
and compared later with theirs in the
post-test after the
general principles of Relevance
Theory and the
criteria of persuasiveness are
introduced to the students to reveal the approach’s strength to promote the
students’ persuasive text writing.
Results And Discussions
·
Types of Data Obtained and Frameworks of
Data Analysis
Two types
of data were
collected through this
investigation of students’ persuasive text writing. The
first type is
in the forms
of explanations of students’
persuasive text writing quality.
This kind of data can be found in the remarks part of the research instrument.
The second type is in the forms of pre-test and post-test scores. This kind of
data is obtained after the first type of data is collected.
It is
believed that the
first type of
data is capable of
answering the first
research question because it reveals the
quality of students’ writing.
Similar to the first type, the second type data, which is in the forms of pretest and
post-test scores, are
capable of answering the
second research question, which tries
to reveal whether
there is any significant improvement
of students’ persuasive text
writing.
·
Findings and Discussion
After the
pre-test data was
collected, fourmeeting lectures
on Relevance Theory
and criteria of persuasiveness were conducted as the treatment for the
participants. After that, the post-test was carried out. To see whether
there is
any significant improvement
on students’ persuasive text
writing, the statistical
calculation of t-test was employed. After totalling the pre-test and post-test scores
from all the participants, it is found that the t value is – 4.88. By using alpha 0.05 and df = 2, it can
be concluded that there is a significant improvement of
students’ persuasive text writing.
Conclusions
From
the investigation of students’
persuasive text writing, guided by criteria of persuasiveness in Relevance
Theory, we come to the following conclusions:
1.
The
introduction to the
criteria of persuasiveness has
contributed to the improvement of
students’ persuasive text writing.
This improvement is
indicative strongly in some
criteria: perlocutionary force,
cognitive effects, and advertising copy.But in general there is amplyfying
qualitu of the criteria of
persuasiveness in students’ writing.
2.
Even though the concept of Relevance
Theory is based on
the philosophy of
language and regarded as
obtaining little practical adaptability to the
language-teaching context, language
teaching profession could
usefully have made more use of this theory to examine teaching-learning
process in the classrooms.
References
Arai, Kyoko. 2007. Relevance and Persuasiveness: An Analysis of Advertising Language. Tokyo:Toyo University.
Austin, J. 1962. How to
Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Carston, R. 2002. Thoughts and Utterances, The pragmatics of explicit communication.
Blackwell Publishers, Ltd., John
Benjamins Publishing Company.
Grundy, Peter. 2008. Doing Pragmatics Third Edition. United
Kingdom: Hodder Education.
Perez, F.J. Diaz. 2000. Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory
and its applicability to
advertising discourse: Evidence
from British Press advertisements. Atlantis
Vol.XXII Num. 2 (December, 2000): 37-50.
Sperber, D. & D. Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and
Cognition. Second Edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Taillard, M. O. 2000. Persuasive Communication: The Case of Marketing. UCL Working Papers
in Linguistics 12: 145-172.