I. INTRODUCTION
Song is usually listens in people’s daily life. Generally, many people love to listens a song or sing a song. There are many music works which created by many musicians or band. Usually, a song contains of lyrics and music; rhythm, melody or harmony. Lyrics is the form and musical quality of song, and especially the character of a songlike outpouring of the poet’s or songwriter’s own thoughts and feelings, as distinguished from epic and dramatic poet or song. A song has its own story. The song writers wrote song lyrics with their own perspective, experience, or someone’s story. Those things are very general foundation to write song lyrics. For example a song from Coldplay, The Scientist as a song contains of lyrics.
The Scientist is about a scientist who is so caught up in his work that he neglects his girlfriend, but realizes it eventually and wants to “go back to the start”. On The Scientist’s music video shows lead singer Chris Martin driving with his girlfriend. They get into an accidents, she goes flying through the windshield and dies. Chris just walks out of the car, out of the forest, and into a city. This is all backwards. The video was shot normal direction and then played backwards, while Chris sang the lyrics to the song backwards. The researcher wants to analyze about Reference in Pragmatics form in based on context of this song.
Reference in Pragmatics is an act in which a speaker, or writer, uses linguistic forms to enable a listener, or a reader, to identify something (Yule:1996). For successful the reference occur in this song lyrics, we must also recognize the role of Inference. Because there is no direct relationship between entities and words, the listener’s or the reader’s task are to infer correctly which entity the speaker or the writer intend to identify by using a particular referring expression.
The data of this analysis is from the song lyrics and the background story of this song. The researcher choose the title of this paper is “Reference Analysis in Coldplay’s song The Scientist” because the researcher wants to analyze who are The Scientist and “you” on this song lyrics from the people’s, the song writer’s, and the researcher’s perspective based on the context of this song.
II. LITERARY REVIEW
2.1 Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a branch of linguistic study which focuses on the meaning of utterances. There are many definitions about pragmatics. Pragmatics can be usefully defined as the study of how utterances have meanings in situation. It means that pragmatics concern with the meaning of utterance, in which the meaning depends on the situation where the utterance occurs ( Leech in Trosborg, 1994: 6 ).
Levinson in Trosborg (1994:6) defines that pragmatics is the study of the role of context, which plays in speaker’s (utterances) meaning. This type of study is necessarily the interpretation of what people mean in the particular context and how the context influences what is said. It requires a consideration of how speaker organizes what they want to say in accordance with whom they are talking to, where, when, and under what circumstances.
Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker and interpreted by a listener (Yule, 1996:3). This type of study necessarily involves the interpretation of what people mean in particular context and how the context influences what is said. This approach also necessarily explores how listeners can make inferences about what is said in order to arrive at an interpretation of the speaker’s intended meaning.
Based on the definitions above, it can be concluded that pragmatics is the study of language or utterance meaning in which the meaning is influenced by the context. It can be said that pragmatics emphasizes on the relation between language meaning.
2.2 Reference
Reference is an act in which a speaker, or writer, uses linguistic forms to enable a listener, or a reader, to identify something (Yule:1996). The concept of reference is tied to the speaker's goals (for example, to identify something) and the speaker's beliefs (for example, can the listener be expected to know that particular something?) Reference is based on some locally successful choice of expression. Successful reference is necessarily collaborative: the speaker and the listener have the role of thinking about what the other has in mind. Reference is not simply a relationship between the meaning of a word or phrase and an object or person in the world. It is a social act, in which the speaker assumes that the word or phrase chosen to identify an object or person will be interpreted as the speaker intended.
2.3 Inference
For successful the reference occur, we must also recognize the role of inference. Inference is the listener's use of additional knowledge to make sense of what is not explicit in an utterance. Because there is no direct relationship between entities and words, the listener’s or the reader’s task are to infer correctly which entity the speaker or the writer intend to identify by using a particular referring expression.
III. Methodology
This chapter concerns about the method of this research that will be used in this research. This chapter consists of research design, data source, population and sample, technique of data collection, and technique of data analysis.
3.1 Research Design
In this research, the researcher uses descriptive qualitative research. According to Blaxter (2006:64), qualitative research concerns with collecting and analyzing information as many forms, chiefly non-numeric. This means the researcher just explains about the research. This research will discuss about the reference on the lyrics of The Scientist.
3.2 Data and Data Source
The object of this research is lyrics of The Scientist. The researcher will take the data from the lyrics and the story from this song writers. According to Arikunto (2006: 129), data resources are subject where the data is collected.
IV. Discussion
The Scientist is the second single from British alternative rock band Coldplay's second studio album, A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002). The song was written collaboratively by all the band members for the album. It is built around a piano ballad, with its lyrics telling the story about a man's desire to love and an apology. Here is the lyrics of The Scientist :
"The Scientist"
Our ability to identify intended referents has actually depended on more than our understanding of the referring expression. It has been aided by the linguistic material, or co-text, accompanying the referring expression. The referring expression actually provides a range of reference. The word "Scientist" does not appear in the lyrics, though "science" crops up several times. The liner notes from A Rush of Blood to the Head state: "The Scientist is Dan." 'Dan' being Dan Keeling, the A&R man who signed the band to Parlophone. Literally, The Scientist as a proper noun is a man who never give up to try his experiments or his works to make it
successful, but the writers of this song lyric are describe The Scientist as a man who regrets his past with his girlfriend, because his girlfriend is passed away. He wants to say sorry on the first stanza to “you” who refer to his girlfriend. The word “you” is often appears in the whole of the song. From those contexts, the listeners of this song can easily identify or infer this song about the regret of a man. He just wanted to back to the start. He does not believe that the reality is his girlfriend is passed away. “No one ever said it would be this hard” refer to how The Scientist works. “Questions of science. Science and progress do not speak as loud as my heart”, the writers refer that lyric that The Scientist thinks love just like science. “Tell me you love me, Come back and haunt me, Oh, and I rush to the start”, this lyrics really show that The Scientist is really sorry to his girlfriend. Co-text is just linguistic part of the environment in which a referring expression is used. The physical environment, or context, is perhaps more easily recognized as having a powerful impact on how referring expressions are to be interpreted.
The music video shows lead singer Chris Martin driving with his girlfriend. They get into an accidents, she goes flying through the windshield and dies. Chris just walks out of the car, out of the forest, and into a city. This is all backwards. The video was shot normal direction and then
played backwards, while Chris sang the lyrics to the song backwards. As it is play backwards, we can infer this song is about a regrets on the past. This video clip showed The Scientist wanted to try back to the start when before this accident happened. If this video linked to its lyrics, this video describes a linear narrative as it goes into order of events, but backwards. If it was to be watched from the end to the beginning, the audience will understand that from the car crash onwards is very reminiscent of a dream sequence, as the audience would understand he died from the car flipping down the hill. This also creates a feeling of disorientation towards the audience and subsequently makes the video very promotional as the audience will have to replay the video to understand the sequence of events. From this video clip, the audience can predict, infer, and identify the song meaning clearly.
V. Conclusion
From those data and contexts which explained, the role of reference and inference are important and have a strong relation each other. This process is not only work between one speaker or writer and one listener or reader; it appears to work, in terms of convention, between all members of a community who share common language and culture. The reference of The Scientist and “you” on the song lyrics are a couple who got an accident. Based on the lyrics and video clip, The Scientist is a man who has love desire, regret his past, and an apology to his girlfriend (in the lyrics showed as “you”). The lyrics showed who are The Scientist and “you”, and clarified by the video clip and the background story of the song. The reference will successful if a listener or a reader conclude and predict the meaning of reference about.
References
Earl, Matt (2011) http://www.mtv.com/news/1472164/lens-recap-the-story-behind-coldplays-the-scientist/
Yule, George (1996) ; Pragmatics, New York: Oxford Press