SEMANTIC EMOTION IN MAHER ZAIN'S LYRIC OF SONGS: SEMANTIC ANALYSIS

International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World (IJLLALW)

Volume 14 (4), April 2017; 22-‐28 Novita Husna Nasution., & Sir Heryani Nasution EISSN: 2289-‐2737 & ISSN: 2289-‐3245 www.ijllalw.org

SEMANTIC EMOTION IN MAHER ZAIN’S LYRIC OF SONGS: SEMANTIC ANALYSIS Novita Husna Nasution English Applied Linguistics Study Program, Post Graduate School, State University of Medan (novitahusnanstgmail.com) Sri Heryani Nasution English Applied Linguistics Study Program, Post Graduate School, State University of Medan ([email protected]) ABSTRACT Music is said to be the language of emotions. A song is a relatively short musical composition for the human voice (possibly accompanied by other musical instruments), with feature words (lyrics). Lyrical analysis for classification is a relatively new area of research. This descriptive qualitative research discussed about Semantic Emotion in Maher Zain’s Lyric. Lyrics are typically analyzed as part of a music classification task, where songs are classified by genre, mood, or emotion. The research aims to find how semantic emotion of Maher Zain’s Lyrics was represented in his songs. There were seven songs of Maher Zain which were taken randomly as the source of the data. By using the theory of Shaver as the tool in analyzing the lyrics, it was found that there are twenty nine love emotion, fifteen joy emotion and nine sadness emotion in seven Maher Zain’s songs. The songs are about, regret, family and love. It was also found one kind of emotion that was not included in the kinds of emotion based on the theory of Shaver namely grateful. The dominant emotions that used in Maher Zain’s song is love emotion. By knowing the semantic s emotions of a song people could be more understand about the meaning and the purpose conveyed by the song. The emotions can show sadness, joy, happiness, love, satisfaction, and maybe other emotions. So, not all feeling is expressed by one emotion and show it directly. We can show it by another word and by describing the feeling. Keyword: Semantic, Emotion, Song lyric, Music INTRODUCTION When one is talking about emotion in one's own language, it is very easy to feel that such concepts must exist universally. Everyone, one feels, must know what it is like to be happy or sad, or have felt love or hate - after all, when watching someone on television, whose language we do not understand, protesting about some injustice, we may need someone to inform us about the injustice, but we can deduce the people's emotions about it from their facial expressions and gestures. Maybe we can deduce some general negative notion about the injustice, but we may need to understand what is being said before we can be clear whether the dominant emotion being expressed is anger, hate or frustration, and it is quite possible that the relevant emotion words in the unknown language may present problems for whoever is translating or interpreting for us. The language relativists will find that the lexicon of Emotion can be shown to vary 22



between different cultures, languages and social groups. As we shall see, psychologists and linguists have in fact found that individuals using the same language vary in their usage of Emotion lexemes more significantly than in other semantic areas. In linguistics the problem of emotions arises from the problem of a language function, i.e. to express and arouse emotions in the process of communication. Since a language is the way to gain social experience, any experience is fixed in the language units, with the help of which people express and perceive emotions. Music is said to be the language of emotions and the activity of listening to music is indeed a part of everyday life. If questioned about the song one would want to hear at any particular moment, one would surely pick a song that would be relevant to his mood. Musical aspects definitely play an important role in deciding the emotion of a song. Even so, most people are able to connect with the words of a song better than its musical features. In most cases, the words of the song are what truly express the emotions associated with the music, while the musical aspects are generally made to revolve around the lyrical theme. In this study, the researcher wanted to know how semantic emotions were used in Maher Zain’s song, what is the dominant emotion used in Maher Zain’s song. Maher Zain is the singer of Religious song, Family song, love song, Child song and so on. The analysis of song lyrics can provide important meta-information about a song, such as its genre, emotion, and theme; however, obtaining this information can be difficult. Classifying a song based solely on its lyrics can be challenging for a variety of reasons, and as yet no single algorithm results in highly accurate classifications. The researcher choose seven songs which were chosen randomly to be analyzed, they are:, For The Rest Of My Life, Number One Foer Me, Forgive Me, One Big Family, I Love You So, Hold My Hand and My little Girl. LITERATURE REVIEW Emotions are psychological states, but not all psychological states are emotional; for example, neither a state of exhaustion nor a state of confusion is an emotion. Emotions are sometimes expressed facially, but not all facial expressions indicate emotions; neither a grimace of pain nor a frown of puzzlement is an emotional expression. Emotions also involve feelings, but not all feelings indicate emotions; neither hunger pangs nor a feeling of certainty is an emotional feeling. Most people would readily agree to these assertions. They involve more or less clear cases. The question posed in this paper is whether we can establish, on the basis of such clear cases, a set of criteria that will also differentiate emotions from non emotion in less clear cases. Emotions are based on one of two specific kinds of communication in such systems. One kind of communication is propositional. Propositional signals are symbolic: i.e. they have internal structure that plays a part in denotation within the system. The other kind of communication is non-propositional. It is simpler, cruder, and evolutionarily older. Non-propositional signals have no internal symbolic structure or significance to the system. They do not denote anything. We will call these 'emotion modes'" (Johnson-Laird and Oatley, 1987: 31 -2). An act seen as 23



committed in the heat of emotion has a different legal status than the same act carried out in a calm manner. We wonder, "Is this really love?" and "Do I still love him?", according to Schachter and Singer (1962) and Harre (1987), to have an emotion can depend on how we label ourselves in terms of anger, happiness, and so on. Psychologists use these same words in communicating with patients or subjects and in framing hypotheses for research. The theory of emotions that motivates the semantic analysis has been presented in detail elsewhere (see Oatley & Johnson-Laird, 1987). Its central assumption is that emotions serve a communicative function both within the brain and within the social group. In both cases, emotions are simple signals that propagate pervasively within the system. Unlike the signals of a natural language, these signals do not have a propositional structure. The meaning of a propositional signal depends on combining the meanings of its parts according to its syntactic structure, whereas the meaning of a non-propositional signal is not composed out of the meanings of its parts. Its parts have no meaning in themselves. A good example of a non-propositional signal is an alarm call: It has a structure that enables it to be easily recognized, but its significance does not depend on combining the meanings of its parts according to the overall structure of the signal. Here is a deeper list of emotions as described in Shaver et al. (2001), where emotions were categorized into a short tree structure. The researcher will apply the Shaver’s theory. Primary emotion Love

Secondary emotion Affection

Joy

Lust Longing Cheerfulness

Zest

Surprise Anger

Contentment Pride Optimism Enthrallment Relief Surprise Irritation Exasperation

Tertiary emotions Adoration, affection, love, fondness, liking, attraction, caring, tenderness, compassion, sentimentality Arousal, desire, lust, passion, infatuation Longing Amusement, bliss, cheerfulness, gaiety, glee, jolliness, joviality, joy, delight, enjoyment, gladness, happiness, jubilation, elation, satisfaction, ecstasy, euphoria Enthusiasm, zeal, zest, excitement, thrill, exhilaration Contentment, pleasure Pride, triumph Eagerness, hope, optimism Enthrallment, rapture Relief Amazement, surprise, astonishment Aggravation, irritation, agitation, annoyance, grouchiness, grumpiness Exasperation, frustration 24



Rage

Sadness

Disgust Envy Torment Suffering Sadness Disappointment Shame Neglect

Fear

Sympathy Horror Nervousness

Anger, rage, outrage, fury, wrath, hostility, ferocity, bitterness, hate, loathing, scorn, spite, vengefulness, dislike, resentment Disgust, revulsion, contempt Envy, jealousy Torment Agony, suffering, hurt, anguish Depression, despair, hopelessness, gloom, glumness, sadness, unhappiness, grief, sorrow, woe, misery, melancholy Dismay, disappointment, displeasure Guilt, shame, regret, remorse Alienation, isolation, neglect, loneliness, rejection, homesickness, defeat, dejection, insecurity, embarrassment, humiliation, insult Pity, sympathy Alarm, shock, fear, fright, horror, terror, panic, hysteria, mortification Anxiety, nervousness, tenseness, uneasiness, apprehension, worry, distress, dread

Lyrical analysis for classification is a relatively new area of research. Due largely to sites such as Lyrics.com and elyrics.net, millions of lyrics are now available on the Internet to researchers in semi-structured formats that are amenable to webscraping. Lyrics are typically analyzed as part of a music classification task, where songs are classified by genre, mood, or emotion (Cho and Lee, 2006; Hu and Downie, 2010). McKay et al., (2010) use lyrical features combined with audio, cultural, and symbolic features to classify music by genre. The find that lyrics alone are poor indicators of a song’s genre, but that when lyrical analysis is combined with other features, their system is able to achieve high genre classification accuracy. However, some of the songs in their data set were instrumental, so there may not have been enough data for training. The Encyclopedia of Americana (1998) defines song as a short musical work set to a poetic text, with equal importance given to the music and to the words. It may be written for one or several voices and is generally performed with instrument accompaniment. Songs can contain a series of negative lyrics but end on an uplifting, positive note, or vice versa. Love songs in particular can be misleading because the lyrics often express how happy the singer was while in love, and then at the end of the song the singer expresses his sadness over a sudden breakup. Jamalus (1988: 5) states that songs can be said as art works if they are sounded (sung) with the accompaniment of musical devices. 25



Songs may not contain any of the subjectivity clues in a general subjectivity lexicon, yet express positive or negative emotions. For example, the song ”It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me” by Billy Joel includes the following stanza: What’s the matter with the clothes I’m wearing? Can’t you tell that your tie’s too wide? Maybe I should buy some old tab collars? Welcome back to the age of jive. It’s not immediately apparent which of the words in this stanza would have positive connotations; yet, taken together, the stanza expresses a positive emotion. This occurs in both positive and negative songs, and it can be difficult to separate the overall emotion of a song from the sentiments expressed by each line of its lyrics. Songs can express positive emotions about negative things, and vice versa. Rap songs in particular suffer from this problem: their lyrics often express positive emotions about negative events like shootings and robbery. This adds an additional level of confusion to a classification system. RESEARCH QUESTION • what is the dominant semantic emotion used in Maher Zain’s song? RESEARCH METHOD The researher applys library research. Library research is a research that analyse a document, books and soon. The purpose of this research is to collect the data and information by the material helping. Some of the data of library research is collected by historic descriptive research. (Mardalis, 2007. 28) States official documents data include memos, minutes for meetings, newsletters, policy documents, books, proposals, codes of ethics, student‟s records, statement of philosophy, news releases and the like. Based on statement, Maher Zain’s lyric of song is avaible to be researched. RESULT AND DISCUSSION There are 29 love emotion that use in 7 Maher Zain’s songs. 15 joy emotion and 9 sadness emotion. The songs are about, regret, family and love. Based on the title, “For the rest of my life” uses 6 affection emotions (love), 7 cheerfulness emotions (joy) and the song doesn’t use the surprise, anger, and fear emotions. The researcher presume it is because the song is talking about his love to his wife. So, he just express love and joy emotion. The second song, “Number one for me” uses 4 affection emotions (love) and doesn’t use the other emotions. The song is talking about his love for his mom, but sometimes he express his love not by saying I Love U, but by showing his willingness to make his mom happy. For 26



example “I'd like to put a smile on your face every day”. So he only use 4 statement to express love. He also express his joy by telling his activity and another way. The song entitled “Forgive me” uses 6 sadness emotions. The song is talking about regret. He also show his regret by many ways. Sometime he just show it by saying he will prove and by saying his mistake. For example “I wish that I could find the strength to change my life”. So, not always show his sadness in the sentences. No other emotions in the song. “One big family” uses 2 affection emotions (love), 1 cheerfulness emotion (joy) and 1 sadness (sadness). The song is talking about family, most of all he show his love by saying the relationship between them and describing how is family. For example “Oh, you're my brother,You're my sister”, it means he love them, he doesn’t angry to them and does not fear. The next song entitled “I love you so” uses 11 affection emotions and 2 cheerfulness emotions. The song is talking about his love to Allah. Not all sentences show love expression, but sometimes he show it by saying his grateful to God. It means he love Allah. For example, “Whatever I say could never be enough”. “Hold my hand” song uses 3 affection emotions (love) and 2 sadness emotions. The song is talking about brotherly feeling. He doesn’t use the other emotions. She just show how is the brotherhood. For example “Hold my hand my friend, We can save the good spirit of me and you”. The last song is “My little girl uses 3 affection emotions (love) and 6 cheerfulness emotions (joy). No other emotions because the song is talking about his grateful, love, and joy to his girl. From the findings, the researcher can found that so many ways to express our feeling or emotions. The theory said that there are 6 kinds of emotions, they are love, joy, sadness, surprise, fear, and anger. Adit Jamdar and friends found the kinds of emotions in their research that entitled “Emotion Analysis of Songs Based on Lyrical and Audio Features”. They found happy, anger, fear, and sadness. But in this research the researcher found the other emotions, it is grateful. The emotions can show sadness, joy, happiness, love, satisfaction, and maybe other emotions. So, not all feeling is expressed by one emotion and show it directly. We can show it by another word and by describing the feeling. For example, “I praise Allah for sending me you, my love”, “For the rest of my life I'll be with you I'll stay by your side honest and true” and so many other sentences. Overall, it was concluded that by knowing the semantic s emotions of a song people could be more understand about the meaning and the purpose conveyed by the song and that could make the listener become more enjoyable in listening or even singing the song. The researcher suggested to do the further research on the semantic analysis on the different genre of songs and different theme of song based on the emotion categories. The purpose is to 27



find whether there will be any differences in the using of emotion of “grateful” when it comes to another theme of song beside religion song. CONCLUSION The purpose of this study is to find out the dominant semantic emotion used in Maher Zain’s lyric of songs. It was found that the dominant semantic emotion used is the love emotion. This study also found that there is another emotion that was not included in the types of emotion by Shaver namely grateful. Finally, by analyzing the semantic emotion in songs, it will be easier for the listener to enjoy the song and to comprehend the purpose of the song and the messages delivered by the song. REFERENCES Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983). Mental models: Towards a cognitive science of language, inference and conrciourncss. Cambridge University Press. Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Oatley. K. (1988). Are there only two primitive emotions? A reply to Frijda. Cognition and Emotion, 2, 89-93. Fehr, B.& Russell, J. A. (1984). Concept of emotion viewed from a prototype perspective. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 113, 464-486. Mardalis, Metode Penelitian, Suatu Pendekatan Proposal, Jakarta: Bumi Aksara, 2007. Mdler, G. A., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1976). Language andperception. Cambridge Univer- sity Press. Sukmadinata, Nana Syaodih. (2010). Metode Penelitian Pendidikan, Bandung: PT Remaja Rosdakarya. Ortony, A., Clore, G. L., & Collins, A. (1988). The Cognitive structure ofemotions. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ortony, A., Clore, G., & Foss, M. A. (1987). The referential structure of the affective ]lexicon. Cognitive Science, 11, 361-384. Shaver, P., Schwartz, J., Kirson, D., & O'Connor, C. (2001). Emotional Knowledge: Further Exploration of a Prototype Approach. In G. Parrott (Eds.), Emotions in Social Psychology: Essential Readings (pp. 26-56). Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.

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SEMANTIC EMOTION IN MAHER ZAIN'S LYRIC OF SONGS: SEMANTIC ANALYSIS

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