Figurative Language Used by the Students in Writing a Personal Letter

Abstract

This research presents about figurative language used by the students in writing a personal letter at grade XI in SMA Negeri 2 Pematangsiantar, which had found that the students used figurative language in their writing a personal letter. The objectives of this research are to find out the kinds of figurative language and to figure out what kinds of figurative language is dominantly used by the students in writing a personal letter. The problems of this research that solved by the writer stated as follows: (1) what kind of figurative language used by the students in writing a personal letter? (2) what figurative language is dominantly used by the students in writing a personal letter? The writer used some theories in answering the problems, namely: Quin (1982), McDonough and Shaw (1993), Gluckberg (2001), Arvius (2003), Lazar (2003), Ratumanan and Laurens (2003), Brown (2004), Harmer (2004), Heller (2006), Picken (2007), Stanley (2007), Keraf (2009), Creswell (2009), Arikunto (2010), Taylor (2009), Arnold and Von (2011), Dalman (2012), Dancygier and Sweetser (2014). The writer uses subject of the research and takes 38 from 40 students. The writer gets findings of this research, such as: (1) the writer found out seven kinds of figurative language used by the students in writing a personal letter. They are: Metaphor 41 cases (24,6%), Simile 41 cases (24,6%), Personification 24 cases (14%), Eponym 36 cases (21,6%), Metonym 18 cases (11%), Antonomasia 6 cases (3,6%) and Synecdoche 1 case (0,6%). (2) The dominantly kinds of figurative language is used by the students in writing personal letters are Simile and Metaphor with 41 cases (24, 6%). The writer draws a conclusion that a letter is very essential role as a media to convey our feelings, idea, notion which create best effect in developing comprehension or imagination in choosing and arranging the words, especially if the word used figurative language to be colorful in its contents.