An Analysis on the Figurative Language Used in the Lyrics of Ed Sheeran's Songs

This study is about the types and the meaning of figurative language produced by Ed Sheeran in the song lyrics with title: One, I’m A Mess, Sing, Don’t, Photograph, Bloodstream, Tenerife Sea, The Man, thinking Aloud, afire Love. The writer is motivated to observe Ed Sheraan’s song because He used figurative languages on his song lyrics. The use of figurative language itself is most noticeable in literary works need tools to convey message as well as beauty and clarity. In this thesis, the writer proposes two questions. Those are the types of figurative language and the implied meaning of figurative language used in Ed Sheeran song lyrics. The writer used the perrine theory to analyze the figurative language that used in Ed Sheeran song lyrics. In this Thesis the writer uses a qualitative approach because are the data collected are in the form of words or documentation. Qualitative research is characterized by its aim, described as allowing a detailed exploration of a topic of interest in which information is collected by a researcher through case studies, ethnographic work, interviews, and so on (Lincoln & Guba in Harwell, 2011: 148). In qualitative research, the tyranny of numbers is abandoned for the enigma of words. It is often seen as rooted in a non-tangible domain, fundamentally experiential and intuitive (Jones, 2004:4), which means that this study served the data without numeric percentage but used descriptive approach. Finally the researcher found the most often uses figurative language was hyperbole, with details: Hyperbole 17, personification 16, metaphor 3, and simile 2. The writer hopes that this study will be useful for the future improvement of studying linguistic, especially about figurative language, and also the writer there will be a good research, which use this thesis as a reference for student in Wijaya Putra University.
Keywords : Figurative Language, Lyrics, Ed Sheeran.