The Paradoxical Characteristics of Javanese Women in Campursari Lyrics With Mutual and Rejected Romance Themes: A Critical Reading From a Stylistics Perspective

Cross-sex relationships between a man and a woman have their own appeal as a theme explored by researchers in creative texts such as song lyrics. The various types of cross-sex relationships in these lyrics reflect the varying characteristics of the participants involved and the language choices employed by the songwriter. Didi Kempot's Javanese Campursari song lyrics, for example, contain a dualism of contradictory female characters penned within his love-laden songs about two sorts of cross-sex relationships: mutual and rejected romance. To uncover the ideological effects of the language choices used by Didi Kempot, a set of analytical tools is needed. Thus, the goal of using Jeffries' critical stylistic model to critically read Didi Kempot's Campursari lyrics is to reveal the linguistic strengths in portraying female characters in the lyrics, thereby gaining an understanding of the songwriter's style in selecting and utilizing the potential of the Javanese language in positioning female participants in his song lyrics. Ultimately, this study can provide linguists with theoretical benefits in terms of new perspectives on contemporary stylistic studies and critical text analysis in Indonesia. The study also offers practical benefits in terms of applying critical stylistic perspectives to non-factual texts, such as Javanese song lyrics, to express ideological effects based on the songwriter's language choices and concrete linguistic evidences.