PRAGMATICS ACQUISITION OF FIVE-YEARS OLD
INDONESIAN CHILDREN IN CASUAL
CONVERSATION
A THESIS
Submitted to the English Applied Linguistics Study Program in a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Magister Humaniora
By:
EVALINE ROSLINA SIMANJUNTAK
Registration Number: 8116112008ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL
i ABSTRACT
Simanjuntak Evaline. Number: 8116112008. Pragmatics Acquisition of Five-years old Indonesian Children In Casual Conversation. A Thesis. English Applied Linguistics Study Program. Postgraduate School. State university of Medan. 2016.
ABSTRAK
Simanjuntak Evaline. Nomor Iduk Mahasiswa: 8116112008. Pragmatics Acquisition of Five-years old Indonesian Children In Casual Conversation. Thesis. Linguistik Terapan Bahasa Inggris. Universitas Negeri Medan. 2016.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Praise the Lord, the writer would like to acknowledge her countless thanks to the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful, JESUS CHRIST who always gives her all the best in this life. Thanks to the Lord because of His help, the writer finished writing thesis entitled “The Pragmatics Acquisition Of Five-Years Old
Indonesian Children In Casual Conversation,”.
I am willing to present my thanks for everyone who has helped me, especially in this thesis. Praise The Lord, all of honours are just for Thee, the Almighty. Then I want to express my sincere thanks to:
1. The writer’s first advisor, Prof. Dr. Busmin Gurning, M.Pd. for his valuable guidance, encouragemet, patient, correlation, advice, and suggestion which are very helpful in finishing this thesis. Then, thank you very much for your time to share your great knowledge and great experiences to me.
2. The writer’s second advisor, Prof. Dr. Sumarsih, M.Pd. who has guide me with her worthy, correction and suggestion to improve the quality of this thesis. Thank you very much for understanding me.
4. Special thanks to my husband, BoimaTambunan, who always stand with me in every difficult moments, who never stop supporting me to finish this study. Even when I had two big accidents when I was on my way, he never ask me to stop or to give up. Great love and spirit that was given to me really made me strong. I love you from my deepest heart, and thank you for being my strength. Without you, I can not stand up straight.
5. The writer’s son, Thorysan Advent Premier Tambunan, you are so handsome and really smart. Your kindness made me able to do this all smoothly. Thank you for giving me a wonderful smile and hug when I feel tired. To my lovely daughter, Lovely Chazeley Tambunan, I am very grateful to have you in my life. Your beautiful smile and your cute sayings always refresh me each time. Be blessed with health, longevity, and love for both of you.
6. To both my parent, Falentin Simanjuntak and Duma br, Gultom, my father and mother in-law (Viktor Tambunan and Rugun Nababan), I deeply appreciate your sacrifices. Love, prayer during days and nights, and attention that you have given to me is a precious thing in my life. Thank you for keeping and caring my kids so that I can finish my study in postgraduate and earned a master’s degree. So proud of you all.
7. To the Headmaster of SMKN.1 Lintongnihuta who has given me permission and support. Hopefully I can apply my knowledge in our school environment especially to our students.
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parents, and children as the subject of this research for willingness, cooperation, and participation in this research.
9. The writer’s beloved friends in LTBI; Kander, Manimbul, Rony, Busry, Saufi, Lukman, Grace, Wariyati, Dewi, Sutarsih, Yuniar, Uzi, Ernila, Elisa, Debora, Widi, and Yulia. Thanks for our togetherness and for every unforgettable moment we’ve had together.
10.To all parties who have generously suggested to improve this thesis, thank you so much. May God bless you all.
The last, this thesis is far from being perfect, but it is expected that this thesis will be useful not only for the researcher, but also for the readers. Hopefully this thesis would give a positive contribution to the educational development or those who want to carry out further research. For this reason, constructive thought full suggestions and critics are welcome to make this thesis better.
Finally, may Jesus Christ hears our prayer.
Medan, February 21th 2017
DAFTAR ISI
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE ... 9
2.1 Language Acquisition ... 9
2.1.1 Theories of Language Acquisition ... 10
2.2 The Proccess of Language Acquisition ... 12
2.2.1 Children’s Language Acquisition ... 15
2.2.2 Interaction and Children’s Language Acquisition ... 16
2.2.2.1 Social Interaction ... 16
2.2.2.2 The Social and Children’s Acquisition ... 17
2.3 Pragmatics ... 18
2.3.1 Pragmatic Language Developmental Chart ... 19
2.3.2 Stages in Pragmatics Acquisition ... 23
2.3.3 The Sensorimotor Period... 23
2.3.4 The Preoprational Period... 24
2.3.5 The Concrete Operational Period ... 25
2.4 Casual Conversation... 26
2.5 Pragmatics Structures of Conversation ... 29
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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD ... 48
3.1 The Design of the Research ... 48
3.2 The Subject of the Study ... 49
3.3 Instrumen of Data Collection ... 50
3.4 The Data of the Study ... 50
3.5 The Procedures of Data Collection ... 51
3.6 The Techniques of Data Analysis ... 52
3.7 The Trustworthiness of the Study ... 55
3.7.1 Credibility ... 55
3.7.2 TransferAbility ... 56
3.7.3 DependAbility ... 56
3.7.4 ConfirMability ... 56
CHAPTER IV DATA ANALYSIS, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS .... 57
4.1 Data Analysis ... 57
4.1.1 Types of Pragmatics Structures of Casual Conversation ... 58
4.1.1.1 Exchange Structures ... 59
4.1.1.2 Turn Taking ... 65
4.1.1.3 Repair ... 70
4.1.1.4 Cohesion ... 71
4.1.2 The Way Of Five Years- Old Children Acquired Pragmatics ... 71
4.2 Findings ... 73
4.3 Discussions ... 76
CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS ... 84
5.1 Conclusions ... 84
5.2 Suggestions ... 86
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Acquisition is ‘a subconscious and intuitive process of constructing the
system of a language, not unlike the process used by a child to ‘pick up’ a
language’ (Brown 2002: 278). Learning is a conscious process in which ‘learners
attend to form, figure out rules, and are generally aware of their own processes.Language is the uniquely human characteristic. Men, women and children have their own languages. Children learn language at a stage when they themselves are developing rapidly. They may also master a second language easily. Generally, they acquire one language then they will master another language that is influenced by their environment in different ways.
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It has been hypothesized that there is a fairly stable order of acquisition of structures in language acquisition, that is, one can see clear similarities across acquirers as to which structures tend to be acquired early and which tend to be acquired late. Acquirers need not have a conscious awareness of the "rules" they possess, and may self correct only on the basis of a "feel" for grammaticality. De Boysson-bardies (1999:37) states that the adults influence the development of children’s language. The children carefully follow the movements of mother’s
mouth and try to imitate them. They distinguish voice and showing a particular preference. They are sensitive to the rhythm and intonation of adults talk. Parents provide predictable repeated situations in which meaning of utterances is clear to the child. And they effectively teach their ideas over to the children. The children never make conversation with other people seriously, but they acquire the language and share the knowledge with other people.
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In addition, Darjowidjojo (2000:49) explains that human beings are born to speak, with an innate gift for figuring out the rules of the language used in the environment. Environment influences the children in conversation. Infants need other people such as their caretakers, parents, friends and people who live around them to motivate them to communicate through crying, cooing, uttering sound or meaningful words which help them to be able to carry out conversations and to communicate their needs and wants with other people in the community.The adjustment in the caretakers speech register served two functions, namely to facilitate understanding and to get the child to be involved in the conversation.
Conversations may be learned in early interactions, such as taking turns and the way they express, as declared by Gleason’s (2005). As a result, this life long process of development was dependent on social interaction and that social learning actually leads to cognitive development. Moreover, generally speaking, the children’s social interaction is firstly occurred in the family. Thus at the beginning, children’s language acquisition will take place with their parents.
Parents will become children’s first teachers.
Casual Conversation can be happen where the participants have equal power in the interaction both of polite and confirming. (Wagner, 2008). Polite is Interactions where little previous and/or future contact is likely and therefore affective feelings between the participants will not be well developed and confirming is Interactions where the participants are in close or continual contact and therefore have developed affective attitudes or feelings towards each other.
Several previous studies prove that children’s acquisition of casual
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conversation. For example, as investigated by McTear (1985), he has examined the pragmatics of children’s conversations. The main pragmatic structures he notes are: greetings, initiations, attention getting, attention directing, and conversation repair e.g. repeating an utterance or requesting or responding to a need for clarification, and use of discourse connectors for topic shift or to continue the conversation after repair and to signal turn taking. Turn taking exchanges can be to initiate, respond, follow-up or conduct a simultaneous response with initiation (e.g. “is it in the cupboard” in response to “where is it?”
Even young children use verbal and non-verbal means to accomplish these activities as well as changes in prosody and variation in politeness depending on the partner.
The other one is a study by Sutopo (2013) which focuses on language acquisition of kindergarten child, he has an assumption that the types of casual conversation acquired by childrenis still in very limited concepts and just got in the purpose to express what the child wants. In this case the commodity exchanged could be either information or goods and services. The roles associated with the exchange relations are either giving or demanding. One of the requirements in the process of studying a child’s language acquisition is to
understand the child’s family background. It is an important fact to be studied so
that the development can be well understood and will give a great deal of contribution to the process of a child’s mental development.
Child’s language is a unique phenomenon because they acquire the
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Every child has different cognitive development. It means even at the same ages they do not have the same abilities in communicating by casual conversation. The example of pragmatics acquisition in casual conversation used by children can be seen on the conversation between 2 boy of five-years-old Indonesian child in, the writer’s own son and his friend. One day, suddenly the writer’s own son
approached his friend and asked. (A): “Punya permen?”
(B): “Punya, nah.”. (issued candy and gave it to A.)
Gramatically the question asked by A to B was just a curiosity whether B have candy or not. But pragmatically it means that A wish B gave him candy. Understanding contained in the speech in the pragmatics study called ‘purpose’,
or the meaning. So, pragmatically the question from A to B is not contained the meaning, but the purpose. In the example above, B had known the purpose of A so that beside answering the question, he also give the candy.
Based on researcher observation in daily activity while interact and communicate with children, she found that most children use pragmatics utterance based on the context. Children understand one each other since they are in the same perception, same area and same context.
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In accordance with the explanation above, in this research the writer is interested in studying about pragmatics acquisition of casual conversation by children of five-year-old as a case study on the writer’s village, Humbang Hasundutan, Sumatera Utara. Three children are decided in this research since this study is language acquisition and conducted as a case study, so it must be investigated personally and can be done on an individual. The writer feels interested in studying this problem by taking Mc Tears theory which main pragmatic structures he notes are: greetings, initiations, attention getting, attention directing, and conversation repair. Further, the age of five chosen in this study becauseas we know that a-five year old children in this period are considered being active speakers with good speaking to communicate his mind. That’s why the writer is interested in observing the children in this age.
1.2 The Problems of the Study
Based on the background of the study above, the problems are formulated in questions as the following:
1. What types of pragmatics structures acquired by five years old Indonesian children in casual conversation?
2. How do the five years-old Indonesian children acquire the pragmatics in casual conversation?
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1.3 The Objectives of the Study
In accordance with the problems, the objectives of this research are:
1. to describe the types of pragmatics structures acquired by five years old Indonesian children in casual conversation
2. to find out the way of how do the five years old Indonesian children acquired the pragmatics in casual conversation.
3. to find out the reasons of why do the five years old Indonesian children acquired the pragmatics in this way.
1.4 The Scope of the Study
The writer conducts this study in the scope of first language acquisition, particularly the casual conversation acquisition as one of the acquisition field in pragmatics. The data is limited to the Indonesian words produced by a five-year-old child in his daily activities. Thus, casual conversation is driven by interpersonal, rather than ideational or textual meanings. To support this claim, it is pointed to: the absence of any pragmatic motivations or outcomes to casual talk, the observation that anything can be a topic of talk in casual conversation (no topics are a prior barred) which suggests that casual conversation is not focused on ideational meanings, the apparent triviality of much of the ideational content of casual talk, which suggests that the important work of casual conversation is not in the exploration of ideational meanings. Rather, any ideational domain (or field) serves as the environment for the exploration of social similarities and differences.
1.5 The Significance of the Study
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1. Theoretically, this study becomes the basic of the further research which is also interested in investigating the same area with different focus and object.
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
5.1 Conclusions
At the last part of this thesis, the researcher presented some conclusions and suggestions related to the findings of the research. Based on the observations, the researcher could conclude that:
1. There are four pragmatics structures acquired by five years old children in casual conversation namely exchange structure, turn taking, repairs and cohesion. While based on the data, it can be seen that the lowest frequency of casual conversation occurrence is in the context of playing and the highest is in the context of relaxing. In this case, the setting is where the child acquires casual conversation. They experience casual conversation as probably the only context in which we are talking in relaxed, spontaneous, and unselfconscious way. In the context of playing, the child utters more rarely than the surrounding people. While, in the context of relaxing, the subject has absolute freedom to express his mind depends on the situation, that’s why the subject has the most frequency in uttering sentences
includes sentences belong to casual conversation.
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uttering particularized pragmatics structures. As we know, that particularized pragmatics structures require particular knowledge to use. In addition, contexts become the most important one for the hearers in getting the speaker’s pragmatics structures in his utterances. Dealing with
generalized pragmatics structures, the specific contexts and particular knowledge are not required to see the intention. Therefore, it becomes the highest frequency in the subject’s acquisition of pragmatics structures. While, the combination of the four types is also the least dominant type of pragmatics structures occurred in the child’s utterances. It’s because of the situation where only the child and the interlocutor who understand the terms used in the conversation and the requirements deal with the topic discussed. In this case, the combination uttered is the combination of the four pragmatics structures and the context is playing.
2. The way of five years-old Indonesian children acquire the pragmatics in casual conversation were by united the environment’s effect, culture,
habits, mood, and their focus on their own mind, needs, and what they were thinking about.
3. The reason of the five-years old Indonesian children acquired pragmatics in they way it is.
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5.2 Suggestions
Based on the conclusions stated above, this study has some suggestions to the readers with may be different positions as follows:
1. To the other researchers, it is suggested to conduct the same topic with more subjects with different ages to see the difference between them so the acquisition of those subjects can be seen more accurately and clearly. 2. To parents or caregivers, it is suggested to use and trigger casual
conversation to children since this pragmatics acquisition is the most meaningful study in language.
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