ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION OF MATT KING IN

THE DESCENDANTS MOVIE (2011)

PUBLICATION ARTICLE

Submitted as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement

for Getting Bachelor Degree of Education
in English Department

by

NOVITASARI WAHYU MUKTI WULANDARI

A320090170

SCHOOL OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION

MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF SURAKARTA
2013
 UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMADIYAH SURAKARTA
FAKULTAS KEGURUAN DAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN
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Yang bertanda tangan dibawah ini pembimbing/ skripsi/ tugas akhir :

Nama
NIIPAIIK : 195906011985031003
Nama

Telah membaca dal, rnencermati naskah arlikel publikasi ilmiah, yang merupakan
ringkasan skrips ii tugas akhir dari Mahasiswa :

Nama Novitasari Wahyu Mukti Wulandari

NIM A 320090170
Program studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris
Judul ETTINOGRAPHY OF COMMUI{ICATION OF MATT KING IN
THE DESCENDANTS MOVrE (2011)

Naskah artikel tersebut, layak dan dapat disetujui untuk dipublikasikan.

Demikian persetujuan dibuat , semoga dapat dipergunakan seperlunya.

Srakarta, 28 Oktober 2013

Pembimbing i Pembimbing II

&
Dra. Djoko Srijono. M.Hum. Dra. Dwi Haryanti, M.Hum.
NIP : 19590601 1985031003 NIP :447
 3 
 

ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION OF MATT MOVIE

IN THE DESCENDANTS MOVIE (2011)

Novitasari Wahyu Mukti Wulandari

A320090170

ABSTRACT

This research aims for revealing and clarifying ethnography of

communication of Matt King in The Descendants movie (2011) using SPEAKING
grid. The type of research conducted by the researcher is descriptive method. The
data and data source is dialogue of Matt King in The Decendant movie. The
method of colection data employed by the writer is the documentation and
observation to ward the movie. Based on the analyzed data, the researcher finds
(1)Setting or Scene is at pantient room, at staffroom, at schoolyard, at Mrs.
Brab’s house, at office, at Dr. John room, at the club, at beach, at kitchen, at
swimming pool, at yard, kay’s house. (2) Participant is the sender and receiver.
The sender is as informan, as family member, as husband, as father, and as
friend. The receiver is as father, as husband, as family members, as friend and
son-in-low. (3) End is to giving information, to geting information, to asking
apologize, to giving praise, to persuading, to giving advice, commanding,
showing, believing, and exspressing his disappointment. (4) Act sequences is in
normal situation, regreds situation, confused situation, intimate situation, wise
situation, tense situation, sad situation, rushs situation, slow situation, and
disappointment situation. (5) Keys consist of two parts, those are tone and
manner. The tone of Matt King is flat, tense, worried, intimidate, emphatic, sad,
and amazed. The manner is low intonation and high intonation. (6) Instruments
are verbal communication and non-verbal communication. Verbal communication
consists of formal style and non formal style, non-verbal communication is hit
Alex buttocks and throws the doll on the floor.(7) Genre of Matt King
communication in The Descendant movie is dialogue and monologue.

Keyword : communication, speaking grid

 
 
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A. Introduction

Utterance is often used in daily activity and communication with other

people in every situation. Utterance is very important in communication to present
what the speaker’s intention to the hearers and it is the physical production of
linguistic behavior. Finding the meaning of utterance is one of many ways to get
the message from the utterances. And in daily activity people have a speech
community in their environment. Hymes (1974:52) in Coupland (1997:116) states
that speech comunity is called a group of people who share rule for using and
interpreting speech. The term speech event will be restricted to activities, or
aspects of activities that are directly governed by rules or norms for the use of
speech.

Sociolinguistics refers to a study about relationship between language and

society. T here are many aspects being studied in sociolinguistics. A discourse
analysis is one of the sociolinguistic aspects which is learned generally. Then
discourse analysis has several points. Ethnography of communication is one of the
aspects of discourse analysis. Ethnography of communication is the approach by
Hymes that studied about language and culture. Fauziati (2009:181) states that

the ethnography of communication is an approach to discourse,

which is based on linguistics an anthropology. It focuses on a
wider range of communicative behavior whose forms and
function can represent different ways of life. This approach tries
to analyze pattern of communicative practices and such practices
are an integrated part of what one knows and does as a member
of particular culture.
The writer elaborates two previous studies done by Chotimah
(UMS,2010) Ethnography of Communication of Arthur Dimsdalle in Scralet
Letter Movie by Roland Joffe. This research aims at finding the ethnography of
communication of Arthur Dimsdalle in Scarlet Letter Movie by Roland Joffe. The
researcher finds that components of communication of Arthur Dimsdalle are (1)
Scene/ Settings, (2) Participants, (3) Ends (4) Act Sequences, (5) Keys, (6)
Instrumentalities, (7) Norms, (8) Genres. Based on those components, the writer

 
 
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finds that ethnography of communication of Arthur is obedient to the religion as

the influence of Arthur in communication.

Secondly, the researcher is done by Ray (Visva-Bharat University,

2011) A Study on Ethnography of Communication: A Discourse Analysis with
Hymes’ SPEAKING Model‘ .Ethnography of communication relates ethnography,
the description and structural-functional analysis of society and culture, with the
‘language’ – a cultural behavior that navigates and helps to share knowledge, arts,
morals, beliefs and everything acquired by man as a member of society.
Ethnography of communication is an approach to understand society & culture
and its reconstruction of an ethnic group in particular and nation in general.
Language carries and transmits social/cultural traits through generations. The role
of speech behavior, one of the aspects of language, has always been significant in
cultural anthropological research. Ethnography of Communication, the concept
introduced by Del Hymes in late sixties, is an active action of human way of life.
He and his associates constructed a model of ‘SPEAKING model’ while tried to
understand society and culture of an ethnic group through communication process.

Whille this article purposes to describe Hymes theory in Matt King

communication in The Descendants Movie (2011). The components are setting,
participant, end, act, key, instrument, genre of The Descendants movie.

Hymes (1974) in Fauziati (2009:179) has proposed a methodology used to

discover communicative events. With this method one can discover
communicative acts by classifying the components in which the communication
may be potentially comprised. He then, also can discover communicative patterns
formed by interrelationships among components. The classificatory grid he
proposed is known as the SPEAKING grid.

Dell Hymes (1962) in Merrigan (2004:226) is preffered by

ethnographer of speaking. Here is what SPEAKING stands for

Scene and Setting (from the perspective of members)

Participants (age, role, gender, ethnicity, etc.)

 
 
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Ends (goals of the participants and actual outcomes of the event)

Act Sequence (structure and topic of the messages)
Key (tone or manner of the communication)
Instrumentalities (channels of communication, jargon, dialects, etc)
Norms of Interaction and Interpretation (how to make sense of messages)
Genre (categories like poetry, myth, joke, etc)
1) Setting

Fauziati (2009:181)has argued about setting or scene:

setting, scene is all speech events occur at specific time

and specific place. This includes not only the physical
circumstances but also the psychological setting (scene)
of an event – the cultural definition of an occasion as
formal or informal, serious or festive. Since very often
the festive nature of the occasion conditions the choice of
style-the litigants, for example, employ esoteric legal
language, often arranged into verse form and sung to the
tunes of drinking songs.

Based on the quotation above setting refers to a psycal

circumstance and a scene that is used in a conversation that takes place. In

one place and another place have a different style of language to

communicate.

2) Participant

According to Fasold (1999:244), participants include not only the

speaker and addressee, but also the addressor and the audience. The

participants include their age, sex, ethnicity, social status, or other relevant

categories, and their relationship to one another.

3) End

According to Fauziati (181:2009):

 
 
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end is all speech events and speech acts that have an end
or a purpose, even if occasionally it is only a phatic
communion. Sometimes several events shared the same
style and are distinguished only by purpose and
participants or setting. Hymes observes that the identical
to the purposes of those engaged in it. At every language,
individuals can exploit the system for personal or social
reasons or effects.

Overall end is a speech act that has an aim in each communication

delivered by the speaker to the hearer.

4) Act

According to Fasold (1999:44) :

act is message form (how something is said) and content

(what is said) together are called the act sequence. Both
message form and message content involve
communicative skills that vary from one culture to
another. Speakers have to know how to formulate speech
events and speech acts in ways that their culture values
and how to recognize what is being talked about, when a
topic changes, and how to manage changes in topic.
According to Fasold above act is a speech act where the speaker

must be able to show a spesific character in delivering a message to the

hearer.

5) Key

According to Fasold (1999:45) keyrefers to “manner or spirit in

which a speech act is carried out: for example, whether is mock or serious,

perfunctory or painstaking.”

 
 
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6) Instrument

According to Fasold (1999:45) instruments refer to” both channels

and form of speech. The kind of channels are written, telegraph, and the

form of speech; dialect, standard language.”

7) Norm

According to Fasold (1999:45) norm refers to “both of interaction

(what proprieties should be observed) and interpretation (including the

common knowledge, the relevant cultural presuppositions, or shared

understandings, which allow particular inferences to be drawn about what

is to be taken literally, what discounted).”

8) Genre

According to Fasold (1999:46), genre refers to “categories like

poems, myths, proverbs, lectures, and commercial messages. Genre often

coincides with speech event, but have to be distinguished from speech

events since a speech genre can occur in more than one kind of speech

event.”

B. Research Method

This research belongs to descriptive research. Polit (1999) in

http//www.researchproposalsforhealthproffesional.comdescriptive_research1htm
this type of research describes what exists and may help to uncover new facts and
meaning. The purpose of descriptive research is to observe, describe, and analyze
document aspects of a situation as it naturally occurs. The object of the study is
the utterance of Matt King in The Descendant Movie (2011). Data and data source

 
 
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in this research are the dialogues of Matt King in The Descendants movie. Method
of collecting data is watching the movie repeatedly, collecting the data of Matt
King utterances or the dialogues, classifying the data based on the criteria.
Technique for analyzing is collecting the data of Matt King utterances or
Dialogues in The Descendants movie , classifying the data or dialogue based on
the Hymes theory, analyzing the Matt King utterances by the ethnography of
communication, drawing conclusion and suggestion for the data
C. Research Finding and Discussion.
This chapter deals with the analysis the data based on the problem
statements in the research. The data are the utterance of Matt King in The
Descendants movie (2011)

1. Research Finding
The problem statement in this research answered by the analysis
bellow :
1. MATT : “My friends on the mainland think just because I
live in Hawai'i, I live inparadise. Like a permanent
vacation we're all just out here drinking mai-tais,
shaking our hips, and catching waves. Are they
nuts? How can they possibly think our families are
less screwed up, our cancers less fatal, our heart
attacks less paintful I haven't been on a surfboard
in fifteen years.For the last 23 days, I've been
living in a "paradise" of IVs and urine bags and
endotracheal tubes. Paradise. Paradise can go fuck
it self.

a. Setting or Scene
The setting of Matt King monologue above is in patient
room. Matt waits for Elizabeth in the hospital because she is coma,
and he tells about the other people’s opinion about Hawaii and the
real condition of people in Hawaii. The setting of time is in the
morning.

b. Participants :
The participant of Matt King is the sender, because Matt as
the informan who gives information about the background of this

 
 
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movie. Matt tells about the people’s condition in Hawaii and he

does not agree with the judge of his friends about Hawaiian people.

c. Ends
Based on the previous dialog Matt King gives information
to the viewer about Hawaii and the life style there, Hawaii is not
only a paradise like the people think but there are also many
conflicts in Hawaii.

d. Act
The act based on the Matt King monologue is with normal
situation. Matt says with the flat intonation and there is no
expression.

e. Keys
The keys of Matt King monologue are with flat tone,
because the intonation of Matt King is using low intonation.

f. Instruments
The instrument of Matt king based on the monologue is
verbal communication with informal style because the partner of
Matt King’s Monologue is the audience.

g. Gender
Based on the Matt King utterance, the gender is monologue.

2. AYASHI :“We just don't think these photograph sare

appropriate for Scottie to be sharing with her
classmates. Some of them went home quite
disturbed, and wegot some angry calls from
parents.

MATT
: “Yeah, she's sort of been going to town
with the whole picture-taking thing, but I had no
idea
THULL : “Mr. King, we see this every day children acting
out at school when something's wrong at home.
And your family is facing a devastating crisis.
Have you been engaging Scottie in really talking
about what's going on? Encouraging her to
express her feelings? That's crucial

MATT : “Oh, understand”

 
 
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a. Settings or Scene

The setting based on the previous dialogue is in staffroom.

Matt King gets a complaint from Scottie’s teacher about Scottie art
photograph, she takes her mother picture when she is coma, it
makes Scottie friends afraid. The setting of time is in the day,
because that time is when Scottie goes home.

b. Participants

The participant based on the previous dialogue above is

Matt King as the receiver,it is the father of Scottie who gets
complaints from Scottie’s teacher about Scottie’s art photograph.

c. Ends
The ends from the dialogue between Matt King and Scottie
teacher above is getting information, Matt King gets information
from Scottie’s teacher about Scottie art photograph that makes her
friends afraid and their parents complaint to the school.

d. Act
The act based on the dialogue is Matt King getting
information from Scottie’s teacher and Matt King is in confused
situation. Matt never knows about the problem of his daughter
before because Matt is always busy with his job.

e. Keys
The tone of Matt King based on the dialogue with Scottie’s
teacher above is tense tone because Matt is confused with the
situation and Matt does not know whathe should do toward Scottie
problem.

f. Instruments
The instrument of Matt King utterance based on the
dialogue is verbal communication with formal style because Matt
King has conversation with Scottie’s teacher and there is a respect
inside.

g. Gender
Based on Matt King utterances with Scottie’s teacher above,
the gender is dialogue because Matt has a partner in their
conversation.

 
 
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D. Discussion

The writer finds the Matt King utterance is affected by the Hawaiian
culture, the Hawaiian culture is calm and the character of Matt King in this movie
is calm, Matt King has wise character in every scene, when Matt King knows
about his wife’s affair Matt King is angry but still wise, Matt King can handle his
emotion in front of his daughter, and Matt King still calm. Matt King also the
wise husband because Matt King treats his wife when she is coma although his
wife cheating on him. In other words the character of Matt King is emphatic as a
family member, Matt King is empathic when he is a decision marker. The
participant of Matt King based on the research finding above is the sender and the
receiver, the sender as informant, as family member, as husband, as father, as
friend. The receiver as father, as husband, as family member, as friend, and as son
in law.

The dialogue of Matt King contains ends and act sequences, between ends
and act sequences has a closely relation. When Matt King talks with someone he
has ends of his utterance and has relation with the situation on the act sequences.
The end of Matt King is as commander, as husband, as friends, as family member,
as father. And the act sequence is with normal situation, regret situation, confused
situation, rushes situation, slow situation, and disappointment situation.

The writer finds the utterance of Matt King is using different style, tone,
and intonation in his utterance, when he talks with the older man Matt King uses
the low intonation and sometime with the formal style language. The formal and
informal language style of Matt King is the instruments of Matt King utterance
with the verbal communication. Matt also uses non-verbal communication in his
utterance for example when he hit Alex buttocks. Then the manner and the tone as
keys of Matt King utterance. Matt King uses flat, tense, worried, intimidate,
emphatic, sad, and amazed tone for his utterance than low and high intonation to
the manner of his utterance. Matt King understands with his utterance, how he has
to be. The writer also finds the domination of the Matt King is utterance based on

 
 
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the movie data is monologue. But the gender of the Matt King utterances is
monologue and dialogue

E. Conclusion and Suggestion

1. Conclusion
After analysing the data the writer draws some conclusions as follows :

a. Setting or Scene of Ethnography of communication in The Descendant

movie of Matt King dialogues are in patient room, staffroom, schoolyard,
Mrs. Brab’s house, office, Dr. John room, on the club, beach, kitchen,
swimming pool, yard, kay’s house.

b. Participant of Matt King communication in The Descendant movie is the

sender and receiver. The sender is as informan, as family member, as
husband, as father, and as friend. The receiver is as father, as husband, as
family members, as friend and son-in-low.

c. End of Matt king communication is giving information, geting information,

asking apology, giving praise, persuading, giving advice, commanding,
showing, believing, and exspressing his disappointment.

d. Act sequences of Matt King communication is in normal situation, regreds

situation, confused situation, intimate situation, wise situation, tense
situation, sad situation, rushs situation, slow situation, and disappointment
situation.

e. Keys of Matt King communication consist of two parts, tone and manner.
The tone of Matt King is flat, tense, worried, intimidate, emphatic, sad,
and amazed. The manner is low intonation and high intonation.

f. Instruments of Matt King communication are verbal communication and

non-verbal communication. Verbal communication consists of formal style
and non formal style, non-verbal communication is hit Alex buttocks and
throws the doll on the floor.

 
 
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g. Genre of Matt King communication in The Descendant movie is dialogue

and monologue.
2. Suggestion
After drawing the conclusions, the writer would like to propose some
suggestions as follows :
1. The lecturer of English Department should be able to improve their
student’s knowledge about discourse especially ethnography of
communication and suggest his or her student to analyze the
communication utterance using ethnography of communication to
broaden the knowledge about linguistics especially ethnography of
communication, because linguistics is very broad and complex.

2. Language learners especially students of Muhammadiyah University of

Surakarta, should understand the object and the data source to analyze
communication utterance using ethnography of communication theory
by Hyme.

3. Ethnography of communication have many object to be analyzed not

only about utterance but also other object. In this research the object of
the writer focuses on the major character utterance in The Descendant
movie. The writer suggests other researchers to analyze the other
objects using ethnography of communication, because language is not
simple and has much kind of forms and function.

 
 
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