Metaphors in Pantun for Wedding Ceremony in Malay Langkat Tradition

Pantun is defined as a old poetry of Malay which is used as a means of delivering ideas, attitude, and cultural values (Sri, 2010;6). Along the ceremony of Malaynese Wedding, there are a lot of clauses that are used to express the speaker’s ideas that implies hopes and suggestions to the people. Next, the words of Pantun are also used to express the speaker’s attitude towards the marriage like to entertaint the bride and groom. In addition to delivering ideas and attitudes. Pantun is also used to present the cultural values of Malay that keep the kinship among family members. Words arranged in Pantun in terms of poetic values contain philosophical of life, politeness ethics, laws and society. Malaynese is a closed society so to say something cannot be directly but must be coated with words that make its meaning disguised but easy to understand. The Objectives of this study were to describe the kinds of metaphor, to explain the realization of metaphors, and to elaborate the reasons of using metaphors in Malay wedding ceremony. This study followed the theory of Goatly (1997:136) which divided metaphors into six categories, such as : (a) active metaphor; (b) inactive metaphor; (c) Asymmetric metaphor; (d) Subjective metaphor, (e) dead metaphor, (f) mimatic metaphor. The data of this study were the clauses from Pantun that represented metaphors. This study revealed that there were state types of metaphor such as: asymmetric metaphor was 11 (37%), dead metaphor was 10 (33%), and inactive metaphor was 9 (30%), Metaphors in Pantun was realized in three stages of Malay wedding ceremony, they was Hempang Batang, Hempang Pintu, and Hempang Kipas. In addition to the types and the realization of metaphor, the reasons for using metaphor were to give information, expressive, directive, and fatique.