Semantic changes of illicit drugs slang terms in Indonesia

Meliany, Maria (2003) Semantic changes of illicit drugs slang terms in Indonesia. Bachelor thesis, Petra Christian University.

Abstract

In this thesis, the writer attempts to observe drugs slang terms on several written materials in Indonesia based on their types of semantic change. The writer is interested in analyzing English borrowing and Indonesian words which taken as slang terms by illicit drugs users and dealers community on several written materials in Indonesia because the terms that could be found there, are various, have ambiguous meaning and not easily to be understood. To find out the types of semantic change, she applies the theory of types of semantic change written by Henry Guntur Tarigan (1990). The writer uses descriptive research. The data are taken from three Indonesian Internet websites, two Indonesian magazines, two Indonesian newspapers, a tabloid, two e-mails, and an official letter. In order to analyze the data, she uses one table; that is the table of the types of semantic change. The result shows that there are 5 types of semantic change used, those are specialization; generalization; pejoration; amelioration; and association. Among those patterns, the 2 most common type of semantic change is generalization (86.21%) and pejoration (51.72%).

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