MENGEVALUASI ULANG KONSEP HOMONIMI JOHN LYONS DALAM KOMUNIKASI BAHASA INGGRIS DAN BUTON (WOLIO): SEBUAH STUDI SEMANTIK DAN PRAGMATIS

WA ODE ALFINA DAMAYANTI. Reevaluating John Lyons’ Concept of Homonymy in English and Butonese (Wolio) Communication: A Semantic–Pragmatic Study. (Supervised by Abdul Hakim Yassi and Sukmawaty). This study aims to examine (1) the forms of homonymy found in English and Butonese (Wolio) communication based on John Lyons’ semantic classification, (2) the reasons why homonymous expressions in both languages require contextual interpretation from a pragmatic perspective, and (3) the extent to which John Lyons’ concept of homonymy is applicable in explaining homonymy phenomena in real cross-linguistic communication. This research employs a descriptive qualitative-comparative method. The data were collected through observation, interviews with native speakers of Butonese (Wolio), dictionaries, and textual analysis, while English data were obtained from films and written texts. The dataset consists of thirty homonymous items in English and thirty in Butonese (Wolio), which were analyzed using Lyons’ (1977) semantic framework and pragmatic perspectives emphasizing context, communicative situations, and shared knowledge between speakers and hearers. The findings reveal that total homonymy is the most dominant form in both languages, followed by homographs and homophones in English and contextual as well as interlingual homonymy in Butonese (Wolio). The study also indicates that although John Lyons’ concept of homonymy remains relevant for semantic classification, it is insufficient to fully explain the interpretation of homonymy in actual communication without the support of pragmatic analysis. Overall, this study demonstrates that homonymy is not merely a static lexical phenomenon, but a dynamic interaction between linguistic form, meaning, context, and culture in communicative practice.