A Semantic Analysis of Entailment Applied by Some Characters in The Princess Diaries Movie Scrip

Abstract

Generally, the previous investigations about entailment were only focused on its types and dominant types, which are often used in literary works such as films, comics, and novels. This research explored entailment based on types and orders. This thesis is conducted through the application of qualitative research. The data in this thesis were in the form of words and a movie. Furthermore, this research chose The Princess Diaries movie as the object of the data. In analyzing the data, Griffiths (2003), Murphy (2006), and Yule (1998) theories were used. Griffiths (2003) and Murphy (2006) theories of types of entailments were applied to provide guidance in providing interpretations of the entailments expressed by some characters based on their forms and meanings. Meanwhile, Yule's (1998) notion about two orders of entailment was used to find out the main idea or main point of entailment employed by some characters as well as to give an explanation why they employed the types of entailments. This study reveals that there are four types of entailments, i.e., negative entailment, one-way entailment, two-way entailment, and mutual entailment. From the total of 35 data, negative entailment reaches the highest frequency model of entailment, and it appears 19 times. One-way entailment appears 11 times, and two-way entailment appears 4 times. Meanwhile, mutual entailment becomes the least common, occurring only once. Mutual entailment is more restricted by its structure. Therefore, some characters in the film rarely perform active-passive sentences that have the same meaning sequentially. Otherwise, negative entailment is a type of entailment that most often appears because some characters often use negation sentences in the form of denial, rejection, prohibition, and disagreement. This type of entailment aims to show that particular statements, jobs, and events were not true or did not happen.There are two orders of entailment applied in the movie, which are background entailment and foreground entailment. Most of the entailments found in the movie are ordered by background entailment; it is applied 19 times, and foreground entailment is applied 16 times, which is distributed into 12 stressing and 4 clefting. Background entailment is most often used by some characters because this order does not have too many restrictions on its structure to construct entailment. Background entailment is the order of entailment presented by adding new information to support the main idea. The information can be in the form of explanations or descriptions that contribute to strengthening the idea. Meanwhile, foreground entailment can be identified with two linguistic devices, namely stressing and clefting. Clefting and stressing have several rules that are rarely used by some characters in The Princess Diaries movie to convey and strengthen their ideas.