People communicate each other in their live. They share feeling, and thought from one and others. Crystal (2005: 3) states that communication is much boarder concept, involving transmission and reception of any kind information between any kinds of life. The definition concludes that every process of sending and accepting information is communication.
In communication, people also need channels of information. The channels are the five human senses that are sound, sight, touch, smell, and sight. From the five senses, the use of sound – the auditory-vocal mode – is the fundamental human communication channel. In practice, the example of the mode is speech. The use of sight – the visual mode – is also familiar in daily communication. The visual mode which uses facial expression or gesture describes as nonverbal language. People usually use words and sentence in communication and it is called verbal language.
Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. All of symbolic phenomena which occur in the universe are described by language. By language people can get knowledge about the universe. Bussmann (2006: 627) defines that language is a vehicle for the expression or exchanging of thoughts, concepts, knowledge, and information as well as the fixing and transmission of experience and knowledge.
Language in communication is meaningful when it is well arranged and relevant with context surrounding the communication. The arrangement and relevance of language is discourse. The term discourse itself is very ambiguous. At first opinion, discourse focuses on analysis of verbal structures and cognitive process and another opinion claims that discourse focuses on interaction in society. However, discourse in general can be distinguished into three focuses.
…the concept of discourse, we already have encountered its three main dimension: (a) Language use, (b) the communication of beliefs (cognition), and (c) interaction in social situation. Given these three dimensions, such as linguistics (for the specific study of language and language use), psychology (for the study of beliefs and how they are communicated), and the social sciences (for the analysis of interactions in social situations). (Van Djik, 2001:3)
In linguistic, Stubbs (1983: 1) states that discourse is a study of the organization of language above sentence or above clause, and therefore to study larger linguistic units, such us conversational exchanges or written texts. It follows that study of discourse is wider than other linguistic studies that only focus in sentence analysis. Discourse analyzes not only describing composition of sentence but also the composition of whole text which contains more than one sentence. In other words, discourse has higher occupation than phonem, morpheme, word, phrase, clause, and sentence.
The study of discourse is called discourse analysis. Discourse analysis is about how sentences combine to form text. It observes whether a text makes sense or not. Text that makes sense should have unity with context surrounding it. The context can be other discourses (text), intention with the writer or speaker, setting, time, place, and other aspects of communicative context.
Text is a unit of language in use, not grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence; and it is not defined by its size. Then, a text is the best regarded as a semantic unit, that is a unit nor of form but of meaning. Thus, it is related to a clause or sentence not by size but by realization. Moreover, a text does not consist of sentences, but it is realized by sentences, and a set of related sentences is the embodiment or realization of a text.
There are two terms that are very fundamental in discourse analysis which studies the relation among a text within the other texts. The terms are cohesion and coherence. Cohesion is the use of language forms to indicate semantic relations between elements in a discourse. It is grammatical and lexical relationship within a text or sentence. It can be defined as the links that hold a text together and give it meaning. Cohesion in English specifies five major classes of cohesive ties, nineteen subclasses, and numerous sub-subclasses. There are two main types of cohesion: grammatical, referring to the structural content, a lexical, referring to the language content of the piece.
Coherence is grammatical and semantic interconnectedness between sentences that form a text. It is the semantic structure, not its formal meaning, which create coherence. Coherency is a condition where sentences in a text hang together. It can occur in relation of sentences that immediately follow each other. Coherency grammatically arises when a text contains transition signals or when it possesses consistent pronoun. Semantically, a text is said coherence when there is unity of meaning among elements of the texts.
Hatch (1992: 1) also defines about discourse analysis and said, “Discourse analysis is the study of the language communication – spoken or written. The system that emerges out the data shows that communication is an Interlocking social, cognitive, and linguistic enterprise.” It concludes that in discourse analysis, the process has some research objects that are spoken or written. Beaugrande (in Van Djik, 2001: 41) states that the spoken and written discourses are from books, newspapers, radio, broadcast, and so on.
The concept of cohesion and coherence are clearly detected in written discourse. It is because written discourse has clearer structure, so the devices of cohesion and coherence can be easier to be observed. Although object of a discourse analysis is spoken, in order to get evidence, the object must be transform into written discourse. Sinclair (2004: 4) says, “Apparently spoken, these discourses may nevertheless display evidence of having been written.”
Newspaper is one of famous medium of written discourses that has been daily consumption of modern society. In newspaper there are many kinds of written discourse such us news article, literature, advertisement, and of course editorial. All of them influence public opinion and it is very reasonable to observe how the composition of discourse in newspaper is.
Editorial is the main article in a newspaper which consists of perspective or opinion of editor of the newspaper (Ariwibowo in Kuncoro, 2009: 33). Editorial uses language in communication practice as an effort in describing the point a view of a media. In this case, editorial persuades the reader to be able to accept the editor idea within symbols that are presented in a text. That is why Adlai Stevenson (in Sobur, 2002: 33) argues, “Editor adalah orang yang memisahkan gandum dari kulitnya dan mencetak kulit tersebut.” It means that editor is the most powerful person in choosing angle of news of the media. The angle or point a view of an editor can be clearly seen in editorial.
As a kind of written text, editorial has specific structure and composition in order to make the reader agree with the editor opinion. Cohesion and coherency devices are important part in creating good and meaningful text. Editorial also has specific cohesion and coherence in its body. There are several kinds of editorial: (1) informative editorial, (2) descriptive editorial, (3) argumentative editorial, (4) provocative editorial, and (5) persuasive editorial.
Editorial is the hurt of newspaper. Newspaper itself is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. Newspapers generally publish stories on local and national political events and personalities, crime, business, entertainment, society and sports. The first newspaper published in Ancient Rome with the name Acta Diurna. It still carved in metal or stone and posted in public places.
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