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Library's collection Library's IT development CancelEveryone can read and enjoy poems, novels and drama without having
knowledge of linguistics; however, understanding the language used in a literary
work is very important to help the readers in understanding the content. The writer
herself experienced difficulties when she read Lorraine Hansberry's drama A Raisin
in the Sun which mostly used Black English. In this study the writer is going to find
out the negative syntactic patterns used by the four major black characters and
Lorraine Hansberry's style used in the negative patterns of her play.
By using descriptive method of research, the writer collects all negative
utterances produced by the four major black characters - Walter, Mama, Ruth and
Beneatha as the source of data. In classifying and analyzing the data, the writer uses
relevant underlying theories they are Baker's and Francis's theories of negative
sentence and Labov's theory of Black English negative patterns.
The data is classified and analyzed to find the negative syntactic patterns
used by the four major black characters in this play. Comparison is also done to see
whether these four characters use similar negative patterns. When the patterns
revealed, the writer will see the style that Hansberry used in this play.
The result shows that the negative syntactic patterns used in this play is
Black English negative syntactic pattern - negative syntactic pattern with "ain't" and
double / multiple negative - which is applied consistently on three major black
characters and these three characters use similar negative pattern. This means that
Lorraine Hansberry uses the Black English style in the negative pattern of her drama
A Raisin in the Sun; however, she does not consistently apply it on one major
character.