CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

Jargon is one of the language varieties which is commonly experienced by

society. According to Fromkin et al (2011), jargon is a slang term used in

conceivable science, profession, trade and occupation. They also add that the reason

to specialized terminology is for clarity of communication, but part is also for

speakers to identify themselves with persons with whom they share interests. In

addition, Yule (2010) stats that jargon help to create and maintain connections among

people whether they are included or excluded of a group of people.

Further, Yule (2010) also offers theory of kinds of jargon based on the way

they formed. They are coinage, borrowing, compounding, blending, clipping,

conversion, acronym, backformation and derivation.

Coinage is one of the least common processes of word formation in English,

which means the invention of totally new terms. One of the best examples of coinage

is word “google”. Originally a misspelling for the word googol, which means the

number 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Borrowing is taking over of words from other languages. It is what commonly

happened in Indonesian which takes several languages as its language. For example;

diwan (Arabic) to be dewan (Indonesian).

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 Compounding is a joining of two separate words to produce a single new

term. It is common now to listen people say bookcase, fingerprint or fast food which

all are compounding words.

Blending is combining of two separate forms to produce a single new term. It

is like in word smog means the effect of smoke, which originally from smoke and

fog.

Clipping is reduction which is noticeable in blending is even more apparent in

the process, this occurs when a word of more than one syllable is reduced to a shorter

form, like in proff, which originally taken from “professor”.

Conversion is a change in the function of words. It could be noun used as verb

without any changes like what commonly hear now people say, “You can google it,

bottle it”, etc.

Acronym is some new words are formed from the initial letters of a set of

other words. The way to pronounce it is by spelling the letter one by one, like in CD

(compact disc), or to pronounce it as single word like in NASA, NATO, UNESCO, etc.

Backformation is a very specialized type of reduction process. This related

with what commonly known by students as “word class”. It is typically the reduction

of word of one type (usually noun) to a word of another type (usually verb). For

example; television reduced to be televise, donation to be donate.

Derivation is the origin or developing of word. It can be from the affixes like;

un-, mis-, pre-, -ful, -less, -ish, -ism and -ness which appear in words like: unhappy

(taken from happy), sadness (taken from sad), etc.

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 The jargons which are used in a community could be formed by one of those

word formation processes, the combinations of those, or even by irregular form which

does not belong to those word formation processes.

In doing this research, the writer takes the previous research as a reference in

deciding the variables and as a comparison. The first research was done by Adisty

(2007). She has done a research on the jargon used at Friendster testimonial in

Indonesia. The aim of the research is to identify the jargon and their meaning used at

Friendster testimonial in Indonesia and also to know the function of the jargons. All

the jargons found were derived from acronym of English and Indonesian,

abbreviation of English and Indonesian, nouns, verbs, adjectives of English and

Indonesian, jargon of computer, modification (blend) of alphabet number, and

emoticons (emotions icons).

Besides, Yuli (2007) has conducted a study about jargon used in “Ikatan

GayaArema (IGAMA)” East Java. In her thesis, she found that there were 205

jargons used by IGAMA members. Jargon was found in four languages such as

English, Indonesia, Javanese and Sundanese. From that study, the writer learnt that

the jargons are used to make communication easier and funny, even hold good

relationship between each other.

Further, the writer also uses a research done by Oktavia (2011) as an

alternative reference. On her research, she had analyzed jargons found in “Just friends

room” in Paltalk Chat”. There were abbreviations and acronyms, while the most

dominant types of jargon used by the chatter was abbreviation words. After

understanding those three researches, the researcher tries to do the same thing, but in

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different subjects of the study. Here, the researcher wants to do a study on the jargon

used by the Dota gamers community in University of Muhammadiyah Malang.

Dota gamers’ community in University of Muhammadiyah Malang is the

community of Dota online and offline game players. The game used is Dota. Dota is

one of the most famous games on online and offline in the world, this game played by

many younger around the world, while in Indonesia, this game is played by more

than eight thousands people, proven by the account they have, and it is predicted that

the offline players is much more than that (http://www.playdota.com).

Overall, the writer is really interested in doing this research because the writer

thinks that the jargon which is researched is still new. Besides, the writer also thinks

that the field where the researcher does has strong relation with academic

environment, where this research will be published. So that, the researcher assumes

that this research will be beneficial as it gives fresh information.

1.2 Statement of Problems

Based on the background of the study, the research problems are formulated

as follows:

1. What jargons are found in Dota gamers in UMM in playing the game?

2. What are the types of technical term of jargon found in Dota gamers in UMM in

playing the games?

3. What are the associative meanings of jargons found in Dota gamers in UMM in

playing the game?

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1.3 The purpose of the Study

Based on the problems above, the purpose of the study are:

1. To find the jargons used in Dota gamers in UMM in playing the game.

2. To describe the types of technical terms of jargon found in Dota gamers in UMM

in playing the Dota.

3. To know the associative meanings of jargons found in Dota gamers in UMM in

playing the game.

1.4 Significant of the Study

It is expected that the finding of this study gives contributions for the

students of English department and the readers to know theoretically about

sociolinguistics and jargon, especially jargon used by Dota gamers’ community in

University of Muhammadiyah Malang.

Besides, the writer is also expected that the reader can applied the jargons

offers in this research, especially for the students who like to play the game. The

writer hopes that after reading this research, they can practice the jargon while

knowing and understanding the theory. The last, the writer also hopes that this

study would be useful for the next researcher who is interested in doing similar

research.

1.5 Scope and Limitation

The scope of this study is jargon. Meanwhile, the limitation of this study is

jargon used in Dota game by the gamers in University of Muhammadiyah Malang,

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and only focusing on the analysis of jargon, types of technical term, and the meaning.

In addition, the types here is in the technical term, how the words are formatted,

stated by Yule (2010), while the theory of meaning used in this study is associative

meaning (Yule: 2010), as the gamers tend to use the words (jargons) in different

function with the standard form of words.

1.6 Definition of the Key Terms

Some definitions of the key terms are presented to avoid misunderstanding in

interpreting in this study:

1. Jargon is the specific words exclusively used in particular fields (Jendra, Made

Iwan Indrawan, 2010:58).

2. Dota stands for defense of the ancients is an action strategy video game which can

be played in numbers of players (maximally ten players) at one game and one

time in online and offline mode. (http://www.playdota.com)

3. Dota gamers refer to the people who play the Dota game.