Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Indonesia is a diglossic speech community, where two significantly different "high" and "low" varieties co-exist.The high variety (Bahasa Indonesia/BI) is the official language of government, education, and formal occasions, while the low variety is the non-standard languages commonly spoken in informal ordinary speech.The colloquial Jakartan Indonesian (CJI) is the most prominent non-standard language, predominant in casual speech and associated with urban youth in the capital city, Jakarta, used by most Generations X and Y in informal communication, novels, TV shows, films, and web-based social networks.This article discusses the semantic and cultural analysis of two colloquial Jakartan discourse particles (DPs), i.e. dong and sih.The method used for semantic analysis was the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), a linguistic theory and a practical, meaning-based approach to linguistic analysis, developed by Anna Wierzbicka.The corpus data was taken from 5 novels, namely Hotel Prodeo (Prison, 2010), Doa Ibu (Mother's Prayer, 2009), Dadaisme (Dadaism, 2004), Marmut Merah Jambu (Pink Guinea Pig, 2010), and Shitlicious (2010).It was concluded that DPs mark the difference between H and L varieties and are the salient features in the colloquial speech.However, the usage and meaning of these particles are not considered important in the development of language in Indonesia.Their meanings are hard to pin down because the meaning relies highly on the mood, the intonation and the tone of voice when uttering them.The pragmatic and paralinguistic aspects of the particles are not easily translatable into other languages.The semantic analysis using NSM was attempted to arrive at the semantic core meaning of discourse particles dong and sih so that they are accessible across languages.
Author: Laurentia Sumarni
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2995505763