LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature XI/1 (October 2016) p-ISSN 1858-0165 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X 37 SPOKEN TEXT FEATURES OF THE CONVERSATION IN TV TALK SHOW OF TALK INDONESIA Hidyatul Mutmainnah hiday_elhalim@yahoo.com Universitas Negeri Semarang Indonesia Djoko Sutopo Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia Received: 30 June 2016. Revised: 30 August 2016. Accepted: 20 October 2016 Abstract The aims of this study were to describe how the participants show spontaneity features, to describe how the participants show interpersonal function, to describe the information flow among the participants and to describe how the participants achieve coherence and relevance in the conversation of TV talk show of Talk Indonesia. This study applied descriptive qualitative research. The data were taken from two videos of talk show entitle Talk Indonesia that was broadcasted in Metro TV. The data were analyzed by using conversation analysis. Conversation analysis was used to analyze or investigate the structure and process of social interaction between humans. It was a kind of discourse analysis method that focuses primarily on talk (Cameron, 2001:48). The result of this study showed that there were some various spoken features found in the conversation of talk show for instance spontaneity, Interpersonality, interactivity and coherence features. Each of features had some aspects. The finding showed that among participants showed the spoken text features variously. Although some overlaps and interruptions occurred in the conversation, the talk show could still run well. Keywords: conversation analysis; spoken text features; descriptive qualitative research; TV talk show. How to Cite: Mutmainnah, H. & D. Sutopo. 2016. Spoken Text Features of the Conversation in TV Talk Show of Talk Indonesia. Language Circle: Journal of Language and Literature, XI/1. ________________________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION TV Talk Show is a program that principally includes a conversational discussion on some of the usually latest events in different respects of life; politic, social, economy, education etc. A TV talk show is supposed to direct its discourse to a large number of overhearing audience and to provide them with information and entertainment through conversation and talk. Since TV talk shows are live programs, they involve spontaneous conversation between the participants who are usually a host and a guest, or if the show is multidimensional there will be more than one guest. In all cases, TV talk Shows take place in a conversational media setting. People use language to communicate. They use many ways to express their feelings. Sometimes they express them through written language or spoken language. People believe that languages are first spoken then written. The first time, human beings communicate using spoken language. They talk to others to negotiate, exchange meaning and express their feelings. mailto:hiday_elhalim@yahoo.com LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature XI/1 (October 2016) 38 Quoted from the Guardian in 1996 (Cameron. 2001:6) „life is in many ways of a series of conversations, it makes sense to be as good as we possibly can at something we tend to take for granted‟. Many linguists and researchers agree that talking is something we tend to take for granted. They try to analyze spoken discourse to know the aim of the talk that happens in people‟s lives and in society in large. Talking or interacting is not merely a mechanical process of negotiating and making sense of meaning. This process of taking turns to negotiate and exchange meaning is functionally motivated whereby we interact with each other in order to accomplish a wide range of social purposes and tasks. Discourse analysis is used as a tool to interpret and understand the spoken text. By understanding the spoken text, a misunderstanding can be avoided. That is why analyzing spoken discourse is crucial. McCarthy (1994:5) clearly explains that “discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used.” In other words, this branch of linguistics deals with how people construct their ideas in a cohesive and coherent way in order to communicate their message by means of written and spoken texts. This research emphasizes on analyzing spoken language from its features. The features give certain sign to be interpreted. There are many kinds of spoken text features that should be considered. By analyzing the features of spoken text in the conversation of talk show, I would like to know how among participants use some features of spoken text to express their feeling. For instance, some speakers or participants use some features such as filled pauses, repetition, false start and backtracking or incomplete utterances unintentionally. Those features are as indication spontaneous reaction that is done by speaker in a conversation. Furthermore turn-taking is a crucial thing to be considered to make the conversation run smoothly. Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974, 1978) suggest that the mechanism that governs turn-taking, and accounts for the properties noted, is a set of rules with ordered options which operate on a turn-by-turn basis, and can thus be termed a local management system (Levinson, 1995:297). For example when one participant, A, talks and then stops; another, B, starts, talks and stops, that is a good Turn-taking. But sometimes an interaction cannot flow smoothly because of some interruptions. While one participant is taking his/her chance to speak, another may interrupt to show an agreement or amusement. This case can show the participant‟s intention and it can be revealed by doing this research. The conversation is called coherent when it makes sense. The coherence is achieved because speakers co-operate to make sure that what they say is relevant to what has been said before. Coherence can be seen from the consistency of the topic being talked. When a speaker talks the other speaker should give relevant response in order the conversation can go well. So a good conversation should be relevant. In order that all features of spoken text in the conversation of talk show „Talk Indonesia‟ can be revealed, it was analyzed and interpreted to get the main conclusion. We can also know what is going on in that conversation. What intention of speakers that can be understood by the readers or audiences. This research reveals as many features as possible to get a complete result. The objectives of the study are (1) to describe how the participants show spontaneity features in the conversation of Talk Indonesia. (2) to describe how the participants show interpersonal function in the Hidyatul Mutmainnah & Djoko Sutopo. 2016. Spoken Text Features of the Conversation in TV Talk Show of Talk Indonesia. Language Circle: Journal of Language and Literature, XI/1. 39 conversation of Talk Indonesia. (3) to describe the information flow among the participants in the conversation of Talk Indonesia. (4) to describe how the participants achieve coherence and relevance in the conversation of Talk Indonesia. METHODOLOGY Considering the purpose of the research and the nature of the problem, this research is a descriptive qualitative one. It is descriptive because the objective of this study are observing and finding the information as many as possible of the phenomenon (Hariwijaya and Triton, 2008:22). It is kind of method which is conducted by collecting data, analyzing the data, and drawing representative conclusion. In this kind of method, the data used as samples are not figures but some words or description of something. Qualitative research is fundamentally interpretive. This means the researcher makes an interpretation and description of the data. Qualitative research has a purpose to understand the phenomenon of subject‟s study such as action, perception, motivation, behavior etc; holistically and descriptively in words and language at specific natural concept and used some natural method (Soegeng, 2006: 25). In this study the data are the conversations taken from video of TV Talk Show. Data are what we gain through observation, sensing, people‟s information and documentary notes. Arikunto (2010:33) stated source refers to the subject from which the data obtained. In this study, the sources of data are the conversations in the video of TV Talk Show entitled Talk Indonesia. There are two instruments that are used in this study, the theory of segmenting speaking text into turns and moves as suggested by Halliday (1984) and the theory of transcription proposed by Jafferson (2004). The technique used for collecting data is documentation study technique. Documentation study may refer to the technique of collecting data by gathering and analyzing documents, while documents are any communicable materials (such as text, video, audio etc) used to explain some attributes of an object, system or procedure. After the data are obtained they are analyzed descriptively involving the description and the interpretation of the data. In analyzing the data there are several steps that should be administered. First is segmenting the spoken text into turns and move. The ordinal number (1,2,3,etc.) represents the turn produced by a given speaker and the alphabet (a, b, c , etc.) to represent the move. Second is transcribing the spoken text into transcript layout. The symbol of transcription is represented in the appendix. Third is analyzing the features of spoken text found in the conversation such spontaneity, interactivity, interpersonality and coherence and relevance. Fourth is describing and interpreting the features of spoken language found in the conversation. The last is reporting the result of the research in table and chart. RESULTS AND DISCUSSSION This chapter includes the finding and the discussion of the data. The finding includes four prominent results. First is spontaneity in the conversation of Talk Indonesia that consists of filled pauses, repetition, false start and backtracking, incomplete utterance and chunks. Second is the information flow or Interpersonality among the participants in the conversation of Talk Indonesia that consists of laughter or chuckles, disagreement or hedges, vague language, agreement, empathy LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature XI/1 (October 2016) 40 and evaluative language. Third is the interactivity among the participants in the conversation of Talk Indonesia that consists of taking turn, agreement, back-channeling, discourse marker, interruption and overlapping. Fourth is coherence in the conversation of talk Indonesia. Coherence consists of topic consistency which includes lexical repetition, lexical chains, referring expression, substitution and linkers and macro level coherence. Spontaneity in the Conversation of Talk Indonesia There are some aspects of spontaneity in the spoken text or language. They consist of filled pauses, repetition, false start and backtracking, incomplete utterance and chunks. There are some features found in the data. They are filled pauses 18%, repetition, 31,5%, incomplete utterance 46,5%, and back-channeling 2%. There are some functions of filled pause but in the research only found two kinds; they are filled pause to hold conversational turns and to give signal the end of utterance. These are the examples. Dalton: it’s questionable now whether that violate campaign law paying people to attend the rallies is legal in most place in the world like US, ehmm are you and your partner Joko Widodo paying the people to attend the rallies? The part of the utterance is a complete act. Although it is apparent that the speaker wants to continue, but is not quite prepared to continue fluently. By inserting a filled pause which has the function as a filling act, the speaker is permitted to continue the conversation, while taking enough thinking time to manage the following act. Basuki: That’s what we have to do, we always go everywhere we give them our name card and without give money even arr.. we should like this or t-shirt if another one they have to ask from us, but for us we have to pay, we have to buy you know arr… Dalton: =to get a shirt?= Here, the first speaker (Basuki) seems to try to continue, but fails to do so, relinquishing control of the conversation to the second speaker (Dalton) as a result of a framing act. Next is repetition. Some speakers repeated their words to self repair and also gain time to plain or formulate what to say next. Repetitions as verbal nodding, emphasizing and agreeing were also found. Many incomplete utterances occurred in the both of the data. It was caused by overlapping or interrupting of participants in the conversation of talk show. This is the following example. Basuki: yeah we are spreading name cards, we go to the kampong, this more cheaper.. Dalton : =how you raising money? How are you, how are you getting money?= This evidence showed that Basuki could not complete his utterance because Dalton interrupted him before finishing his opinion. The Information Flow or Interpersonality among the Participants Based on the finding some participants showed various ways to maintain interpersonal function in the conversation. There are some ways to show interpersonal function in a conversation such as using laughter, agreement, disagreement (hedges) and vague language (Thornbury, 2005:4-5). There are five features found in the data. They are laughter 14,5%, hedges 14%, vague language 5%, agreement 56,5% and empathy 5%. Laughter can both convey positive affect Hidyatul Mutmainnah & Djoko Sutopo. 2016. Spoken Text Features of the Conversation in TV Talk Show of Talk Indonesia. Language Circle: Journal of Language and Literature, XI/1. 41 and assist participants in communicating negative intent (Holmes 2000 cited from Voge;58). It means that laughter can avoid contradiction or high tension among speakers. In this study, it was also found that laughter in this conversation was to assist participants in communicating negative intent and relieving tension. This is the example: Rahayu : (laughs) are you saying that what to get you out there? Dalton : oh oh no Rahayu : (laughs) Rahayu asked Dalton that problem about money politic done by some politician also done by Basuki accompanied with laughter in order to avoid negative intent. Because of money politic that happen in Indonesia is something risky to be talked. Then Basuki also laughed after Rahayu asked that to Dalton. It means that Dalton also considered that problem and paid attention to that issue. To maintain the relationship among the speakers, they used hedges to express disagreement. In this study, some hedges were found such as yeah and but. Some speakers also used vague language to express their opinion. Thornbury (2005) stated that vague language is used to make the opinion not too assertive. There is only 5% vague language found. It is like in the following example. Basuki: this is an accident because some maybe or volunteers they are…. Basuki used the word „accident‟ to refer money politic that is done in his party. He meant that was not his fault because he did not know. To maintain the relationship among the speakers, they also expressed their agreements in several ways. For instance they used marker ‘you know, yeah, right, yes, ya, exactly, ya exactly and of course’. The last feature to show Interpersonality that found in this research is empathy. In the both of the data were only found two empathies used by speakers. To show empathy some speakers repeated or gave stressing to another utterance. The Interactivity among the Participants in the Conversation The information among the speaker will flow smoothly if they can cooperate with each other. It is like stated by Stenstrom (1994, cited from Brno 2007: 8) that spoken interaction is a joint, here-and now social activity which is governed by two main principles; speaker take turns and speaker cooperate. When other speaker is taking his turn so the others should give a chance to him expressing his idea or maybe give feedback to show attention to what they are talking about so that is why the information can flow smoothly. To know whether the interactivity in a conversation runs well or not the data was analyzed from some aspects such as turn- taking, back-channeling, interruption, overlapping and discourse markers that occurred in the conversation. Based on the finding in the first data there are 57 taking turns. Dalton as the host of the talk show took 27 turn-takings, Basuki the guest speaker took 18 turn-taking and Rahayu took 12 turn- taking. Dalton dominated the interactions in the talk show that he took the most turn- taking yet it did not mean that the information did not flow as expected. Then in the second data there are 61 taking turns which is dominated by the host Dalton with 24 turn- taking, Rahayu as co-host took 19 turn-taking then Anggun as the guest speaker only took 18 taking turns. It should confirm with other features for instance back-channeling, overlap or interruption occurred. Some speakers tried to give feedback by using back-channeling. The most dominant here is agreement back-channeling. It means LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature XI/1 (October 2016) 42 that most of the speakers tried to maintain the information flow by using agreement. This is the example: Basuki: =but you talk in English, not all of the class could talk speak in English. Rahayu: laugh Dalton: all right all right, that reason is wise This finding showed an agreement back- channeling. The participant also repeated his word twice. It indicates that he did not have other reason instead of agreeing the rival In the finding, it can be seen that there are some interruptions and overlaps occurred in the talk show. They are disagreement, agreement, confirmation, completion, explanation, compliment, opinion and another possibility. The examples are in the following. a. Disagreement BTP: he prefer to meet the people directly because many… DT: =but in TV you can meet million people in one time= This interruption shows disagreement in which Dalton used linker „but‟ that indicates the contrary of Basuki‟s statement b. Agreement RS: It is because the government also knows that there are a lot of, you know, drugs being traffic or even produced domestically and they are still having problem dealing with that, so to save to others, you know, like hey, especially we are talking about getting our people, the migrant workers, who are they in Saudi Arabia facing the death penalty, there are hundreds of them.. DT: =ya We try to ask mercy for them.We have to have mercy= Interruption occurs to show an agreement. Dalton agreed with Rahayu‟s statement that the migrant workers in Saudi Arabia that are punished with death penalty should be given a mercy. He used „ya‟ to express it. c. Confirmation BTP: yeah we are spreading name cards, we go to the kampong, this more cheaper…. DT:=how you raising money? Dalton interrupted Basuki in order to get the correct answer from Basuki because he answered out of the topic. He wanted to confirm whether Basuki understood what Dalton asked or not. d. Completion BTP: so the volunteer. RS:=so they made an initiative to make a t-shirt= Rahayu interrupted the current speaker, Basuki, to complete his statement. e. Explanation ACS: Exactly the thing it’s … ya .. ya .. ya .. I can understand that they need that for closure but then…it’s… RS := It won’t bring that family back= Rahayu interrupted Anggun‟s statement because she wanted to add an explanation that if death penalty was applied it would not bring the family as a victim back. f. Compliment DT: I meant we are happy to have you Sir, but everyone RS: =he’s the good one = Dalton seemed satisfied that Jokowi, the invited speaker, was expected to come but he did not so Basuki changed him as the guest speaker, but Dalton explained later that Hidyatul Mutmainnah & Djoko Sutopo. 2016. Spoken Text Features of the Conversation in TV Talk Show of Talk Indonesia. Language Circle: Journal of Language and Literature, XI/1. 43 actually everyone expected Jokowi to come. Dalton here actually was not satisfied, he used linker „but‟ that showed disagreement. Yet the other participant, Rahayu, tried to support Basuki by giving compliment that Basuki was the right person. g. Opinion RS: [Oh yeah, hopefully one shoot to death but you know … it’s like few of them …] DT: =Ok, let’s see that this country goes, now talk about singer, perhaps it comes…ok= Dalton interrupted because he wanted to share his opinion and also agreement with that case. h. Another Possibility ACS: exactly.. DT: =or determine suppose ably= Dalton interrupted to show another possibility that might happen or become the way out of the problem they were discussing. Based on the theory of Schelgloff (1972), there are four kinds of overlaps. In this research four kinds of overlaps were found. They are back-channel cue, insert, false start overlap and floor-taking. First is back-channel cue. It is as signal of agreement that consist of one or two word which does not disturb the current speaker. There are five back-channel cues found in the data such as in the next extract of the first data. DT: ehmm, pushing their campaign and this is done in a legal way, you providing campaign financing transparently RS: [Yes] Rahayu interrupted the current speaker but it did not disturb him to continue his utterance. Rahayu used „yes‟ to show an agreement. Second is insert. This overlap is begun when the current speaker is talking but it is finished when the current has not finished his utterance yet. It consists of some short words but longer than back-channel cues. This is the example found in the second data. ACS: Well again, you know, because I I understand that death penalty its that.. so it’s almost like a threat for those RS: [Yes, Fear Factor] The overlap showed an agreement „yes‟ but it was still continued by using „fear factor‟. This overlap is called insert. It is not too intrusive. Next is false start overlap. It is more intrusive than insert because it happens when the other speaker wants the current speaker to stop his utterance. It is begun when the current speaker is still conveying his opinion and finished before the current speaker finished his utterance. This is the example of the finding. DT: =yeah…… you should give them away or= RS: [ right, people are paying quietly] The last is floor-taking. This is the most intrusive among overlap. It is begun after the first speaker has begun speaking and continues after that speaker stops. The finding showed that floor-taking overlap was the most found. There were ten floor-taking from both of data. This is the example of floor-taking. ACS: of course I understand that you know aa.. death penalty actually ehmm very reassuring for family of a victim that you know like some horrible big crime. DT: [Yes because they wanted an eye for an eye. They missing their family] Dalton cut Anggun utterance when she has begun talking but he kept continuing his overlap until he finished. LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal of Language and Literature XI/1 (October 2016) 44 Various discourse markers are found in the first data such as „you know, you know what, yeah‟ with the most dominant is „you know‟. Many kinds of discourse markers are found in the second data such as „you know, I mean, well, yeah, oh, but you know, and oh yeah‟. The most dominant discourse marker used by the speakers is „you know‟. Coherence and Relevance in the Conversation Coherence and relevance are the important aspects to make the text make sense. Coherence can be seen from the consistence of the topic and macrostructure. There are some features that are showing consistence of the topic such as lexical repetition, lexical chains, referring expressions, substitution and linkers. (Thornburry:2005) In this study, some speakers also tried to achieve coherence by using topic consistency features such as lexical repetition, lexical chain, referring expression, substitution and linkers. They tried to be relevant in giving response for example like following the adjacency pair. In the both of the data „question-answer‟ pairs were found. The other finding is adjacency-pair of „compliment- response‟. The coherence of language can also be seen from macro-structure. Both of the data have story sequences: general issue- Argument-Conclusion. Although some interruptions and overlaps occurred, it does not give big influence on the text coherence. Also some finding show that some speakers did not give relevant response but finally they make self correction. The text still makes sense. Among the speakers still got what they were saying. They still could understand each other. So it can be concluded that the data is coherent. CONCLUSION In accordance with the aim of this study, that is describing spoken text features of the conversation in TV talk show of Talk Indonesia, it can be concluded that many various spoken features are used by participants/speakers. The participants showed spontaneity by uttering filled pauses, repeating some words, showing incomplete utterance and false start. There are some ways to show interpersonal function in a conversation. In this research, five features are found in the both of the data. They are laughter, agreement, disagreement (hedges), vague language and empathy. Some speakers tried to give feedback by using back- channeling. The most dominant here is agreement back-channeling. It means that most of the speakers tried to maintain the information flow by using agreement. In the finding, it can be seen that there are some interruptions and overlaps occurring in the talk show. In this research four kinds of overlaps were found. 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