AN ANALYSIS OF LEXICAL SEMANTICS ON BOB DYLAN’S THOUGHTS ABOUT CIVIL WAR IN HIS SELECTED LYRICS OF PROTEST SONGS

Abstract

Protest song is a type of song which concerns to convey critics associated to a current social issue. People are also influenced by the ideas revealed in the lyric. They mentally digest the song from the existence of words which can construct a certain meaning of the song. From the view, we consider that words have a significant role to establish an understanding to a song. Therefore, this thesis is intended to seek Dylan’s ideas and his tendency toward civil war on his lyrics through analyzing words as composition of the lyrics based on the keywords; the oppressor and the oppressed. This thesis is a stylistic study. Lexical semantics as the theory includes parts of speech, semantic field, and collocation. There are eight songs that are analyzed. For finding whether he tends to use the oppressor or the oppressed point of view, there are some parts that must be found. The first is collecting the lexical items based on those both the keywords. The second is classifying the lexical items into the parts of speech. The third is finding and counting the lexical chains of semantic field and collocation. Furthermore, the result is analyzed and tried to prove the appropriateness of the sense of lexical items and the use of them in lyrics. The last includes interpreting the findings. In conclusion, all of the songs employ the oppressor point of view, it means that Dylan tends to expose the oppressor in expressing his protest. Moreover, not all of the lexical items used are appropriate with their sense. The relation of parts of speech and the total of noun that are dominant in the lyrics, are interpreted as Dylan’s tendency in conveying an impression of civil war. While, repetitions mostly used in the lyrics are interpreted as Dylan’s aim to emphasize the meaning. Finally, there are three categories of Dylan’s lyrics covering his thoughts of civil war. He describes civil war based on American soldier, discrimination in America, and the war itself.