Sunday born person’s love lives : A case study of horoscopes in 2017

Abstract

          This research was qualitative research combined with quantitative data. It aimed at investigating content and linguistic strategies in horoscopes regarding love life. Content analysis was done using a framework for grouping the meanings of the horoscopes. Then, the analyzed content was examined together with linguistic strategies identified from the use of the discourse analysis framework developed by Jantima (2014). Texts were specifically selected from horoscopes for Sunday born people in ‘Your Stars’ column on Thairath Online website for 365 days, from January 1^st, 2017 to December 31^st, 2017. Frequency and percentage of the love predictions were calculated.

          The results showed that there were 730 love-related horoscopes from the horoscopes for people born on a Sunday.In terms of the content, 365 texts addressed love situations of people in a romantic relationship and 365 texts addressed those not in a relationship. The ‘love’ referred to in the horoscope of the latter group was discussed in reference to a romantic relationship. There were 2 types of love addressed: successful love and disappointed love. The horoscope content did not mention married life. There were more disappointed love horoscopes than successful love horoscopes. Predictions for those who were in a relationship and those were not, often predicted disappointment love more than successful love.

          There were various linguistic strategies used by the astrologer: lexical strategies, such as name and naming and verb forms, clause modification strategies, which conveyed positive meaning and negative meaning, and discourse-pragmatic strategies, such as presuppositions, negation, hedging, speech acts, especially representative and directive categories, metaphor, and intertextuality.