MAINTAINABILITY OF BAHASA MALAYSIA BY MALAYSIAN STUDENTS IN MEDAN.

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MAINTAINABILITY OF BAHASA MALAYSIA BY

MALAYSIAN STUDENTS IN MEDAN

A Thesis

Submitted to the English Applied Linguistics Study Program in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of

Magister Humaniora

By:

INDRI HARMAILI LUBIS Registration Number: 8126111010

ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM

POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN

MEDAN

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ABSTRACT

INDRI HARMAILI LUBIS. Registration number: 8126111010. Maintainability of Bahasa Malaysia by Malaysian Students in Medan. A Thesis. English Applied Linguistic Study Program. Postgraduate School. State University of Medan. 2016

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ABSTRAK

INDRI HARMAILI LUBIS. NIM : 8126111010. Pemertahanan Bahasa Malaysia pada mahasiswa - mahasiswa Malaysia di Medan. Thesis. Program Linguistik Terapan Bahasa Inggris. Pascasarjana. Unimed. 2016

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All praises belong to Allah, who has commanded us to spread peace to all

man kind and also who gave health, chance and capability to the writer to finish

the thesis. May peace and blessing of Allah be upon Prophet Muhammad SAW

who introduced us good behaviours.

Foremost, the writer would like to express her sincere gratitude to her

advisers, Prof. Amrin Saragih, M.A.,Ph.D and Dr. Anni Holila Pulungan,

M.Hum for the continuous support and guidance to finish the thesis, for their

patience, motivation, enthhusiasm, and immense knowledge given to the writer.

Moreover, the writer would like to express her thanks to the examiners, Prof. Dr.

Busmin Gurning, M.Pd, Prof. Dr. Sumarsih, M.Pd and Dr. Rahmad Husein,

M.Ed for their suggestions, comments and questions for the thesis improvement.

Their guidance helped her all the time of research and writing of this thesis.

Besides her advisers and examiners, she would like to thank to all lecturers of

English Applied Linguistics Program for their encouragement and insights.

Sincere are expressed to her parents, Guntur Lubis and Nurmaisah

Hasibuan. Special thanks for her husband to be Muhammad Rahman, SE for his

motivation and care to the writer Her special thanks also go to her brothers

Mukmin Ikhsani Lubis and Flora Indah Lestari Lubis, S.Pd for their support, love

and care., Last but not least, her thanks to her friends especially of English

Applied Linguistics Programs Ismayani, S.Pd, Elvida Wahyuni, S.Pd M.Hum ,

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Novitri, S.Pd M. Hum ,Muhammmad Mahfuz, S.Pd.I M.Hum, Hiskia Manurung,

M.Hum, Nurhalimah, S.Pd M.Hum for their support and suggestions.

Finally, the writer hopes that the readers will give any comments, respons,

and corrections for the mistakes of this thesis. The writer realizes that this thesis is

still far from being perfect. May this thesis be useful and may it be one of the

references for the next research and enhance our knowledge. May Allah SWT

bless us forever. Amin ya Rabbal ‘alamin

Medan, May 10th 2016

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Background of the Study

The existence of language cannot be separated from human life. According to Holmes (1992), every language represents the temple in which the speaker’s

soul is his/her devotee. It seems that everything related to human life in the

society involves language because it is through the language that interaction

among tribes, ethnic groups, and religions can happen. However, language is not

always able to maintain by the ethnic group especially in the multilingual

societies. People used language as a means of thinking and feeling, as well as a

means of expressing thought and feeling in a society. There are thousands of

languages used in the world. It is because language is a product of culture, which

means that different cultures many have different cultures may have different

languages or different dialects. It is also functioned to show their existence,

identity and culture in the society. On the other words, a community’s way of

using language is a part of the community’s culture, is a way of displaying group

identity. Ways of speaking function not only to facilitate communication, but also

to identity the social position of the speaker, as Crystal (1997) stated that people

keep maintaining their language in order to create cultural diversity, keep ethnic

identity, enable social adaptability, increasing security for the children

psychological, and increase the linguistic sensitively.

Naturally, both human beings and their languages are as one unit that

cannot be separated. A language is so important that it is supposed to be a mean of

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increase or to decrease in their important performance in the society. The

language may use a concept system which donates the community to interpret

reality. The complexity of the language may bring in different views. The views

may be different so the different views on the reality can bring in different

perceptions from many aspects of the lives in the society.

When someone goes to another place, it is very important to keep his/her

own native language. Even s/he could be influenced with language shift in the

new place, but the native one still used in order to maintain it continuously. There

are some reasons for a person or group to go somewhere such as education, live

place, refuges, and so forth. Almost all minority groups who live in such

multilingual circumstance lack political and economic power; minority groups

often become bilingual in the dominant language for both instrumental and

psychological reasons. Even the speakers who are in the process of shifting do not

show the same degree of shift all at once in all of the purposes or situation for

which they use any language. Further, from the stand of dominant group the

presence of minority groups can be an obstacle to communication and, more

importantly, to national integration, it may sound cynical but history supports the

comment of Laponce (1987: 198) that dominant groups tolerate minorities “only

on condition that they accept at least partial linguistic assimilation (learn the dominant language) and keep their member small.”

There is no guarantee that all languages in the world can survive along

with their speakers. The expanding era of this globalization, with a small group of

nations dominating the scene, has got an adverse effect on the language itself of a

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of living, for example, B.J. Habibie (an Indonesian), who study in German. He got

achievement there and be offered to work there because of his ability in his field.

While negative one of the effect, such as: war, politics, catastrophe, human

interference in some case have given conspiracy in making some groups

socio-economically dominant, and also as a consequence promoted the cultures and

language of these groups over those of other non dominant groups, Hudson (1985:

81) defines that culture as the kind of the knowledge which we learn from other

people, either by direct instruction or by watching their behavior.

As Jamil (2008) described in his dissertation which is titled Language use

and maintenance among the Moroccan minority in Britain, Moroccan immigrant

to Britain then there were studies conducted in the seventies and early eighties in

this area by scholars. Not surprisingly, Moroccan language behaviour has changed

in the last decades as a comparison of the findings of the above mentioned

scholars and the data collected in Morocco indicates. The question which arises is

to what extent the British-Moroccans are trapped in a “time warp” and to what

extent the comparative study is helpful in determining the linguistic changes and

the behaviour of the British-Moroccans given the fact that they still have frequent

contact with Morocco.

To avoid language shift or even language endangerment it is essential that

language maintenance or language revitalization be applied soon. Language must

be retained and maintained because language is as a mean of language users'

identity. As it is stated by Holmes (2001:63) where language is considered as

important symbol of a minority group's identity, the language is likely to be

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The efforts in retaining a language in order not to shift which may possibly

cause language endangerment are not easy to do these days. It is due to the

language contact because the high of the mobilization of the people. That's why it

is needed such good of strategy to solve it. The strategy is the policy which will

be given to the conceptual decision or political decision, to solve the language

problem at the national level so that it into daily use and special use language.

Daily use language is the language for communication among them for their daily

needs while special use language is the one for special needs other than daily need

such as talking on a certain event.

As long as a society still uses their languages as their prestige and heritage

from one generation to another so the language also still survives in their lives.

Consequently, a language will be in danger when the community does not use

their own language. It is due to the factors that occur in a certain community. It

possibly happens to bring some issues on the language endangerment to sonic

communities and to their languages, even local languages in Indonesia. Darhemi

(2002) adds that the issue is devoted to problems of endangered languages,

particularly endangered languages spoken by minorities, focusing on the

sociolinguistic study of the causes, circumstance and result of the endangerment,

and other structural and social process related to endangered languages and to

their survival. Also Koenig (2002) states that it attempts to analyse the, causes,

circumstances and results of language endangerment as well as the social

conditions and effects of political intervention in favour of survival of endangered

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In Sumatera, especially in Aceh and Medan, there are a number of

Malaysian students who are registered as college students. In Aceh for example,

they chose to study at IAIN Ar-Raniry because they want to study theologies

filed. Not only in Aceh, in Medan (especially in UIN), they are also registered as

students in some fields that has relationship with theology. The interesting one is

they went to study there in a group. They live in the same dorm and the location

not quite far from the campus. Sumarsono (1990) found that the residential areas

are one of factors of language maintainability. Even the users are minority, but if

they live in the same residential areas, they are able to maintain their physic,

economic and culture.

In addition, from one of the lecturer there, the writer got information that

sometimes, they still use their native language in classroom when they answer the

question. For example when they answer the question, they use their native

language that there are some differences in pronunciation and also meaning. For

example “kami dari kumpulan enam akan membentangkan presentase kami.… “.

In Indonesia, in formal situation such as in school or university, the students

should speak Bahasa Indonesia. Even though some words have the same meaning

(arbitrer) but there are some words that has the same pronunciation but different meaning such as “senang” (in Bahasa) means difficult in Malay.

In daily conversation, they still use their own language each other. As

Thomas (2004:158) stated that how you talk, along with other kinds of social

codes such as how you dress or how you behave, is an important way of

displaying who you are; in other words, of indicating your social identity. When a

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social codes are missing. Identity of a certain culture is showed thorough among

others by language use includes the language use in the society.

Progress in understanding of many aspects of the lives especially the

language use may result in the complexity of reality because the developing

linguistic diversity which has given the characterization of the human beings.

Languages are supposed to be the important part of lives in the society which

transmits the values. Every language which is used in the society shows the

important thing which makes the people understand the values. UNESCO Ad Hoc

Expert Group on Endangered Language (2003:3) defines diversity language is

essential to the human heritage. Each and every language embodies the unique

cultural wisdom of a people. The loss of any language is thus a loss for all

humanity. So, language maintainability is necessary to do in order to avoid losing

of any languages and also humanity. Moreover, Goa (2006:58) states that

successful intercultural communication is a matter of highest importance if human

kind and society are to survive. In addition, Jandt (2003:40) states that language is

a way of marking cultural identity. Language differs, on the other hand, from

other phenomena in that it is used to refer to other phenomena and has usually to

be used to refer beyond itself.

Based on the phenomenon above, the writer would like to study about

language maintenance in Malaysian students who live in Medan especially who

study at UIN.

1.2 The Focus of the Study

The study focuses on language maintenance and language attitude toward

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1.3 The Problems of the Study

Based on the background of the study, the problems to be investigated are

formulated as follows:

(1) What factors induce maintainability of the Malaysia language by

Malaysian students in Medan?

(2) How is maintainability of the Malaysia language realized by Malaysian

students in Medan?

(3) Why does the maintainability of Malaysia language remain in the way it

does?

1.4 The Objectives of the Study

In relationship to the problem, the objectives of the study are:

(1) to describe the factors of Malaysia language maintainability of Malaysian

students in Medan.

(2) to investigate the realizations of Malaysia language maintainability of the

Malaysian students in Medan.

(3) to reason of maintainability remains among Malaysian students in Medan.

1.5 The Significance of the Study

The findings of the study are expected to offer theoretical and practical

significance. Theoretically, the findings potentially enrich theories of language

maintenance especially about Malay language of the Malaysian students in

Medan, the factors influence maintainability of the Malaysian students in Medan,

the pattern of maintainability of the Malaysian students into Bahasa and the

reason of maintainability of the Malaysian students shift into Bahasa. In addition,

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Practically, the findings of the study is potentially contributes information

about maintainability of the Malaysian students in Medan, for students, lectures,

researchers, and also the government. Secondly, the teacher, students, and Malay

can use it to support the reversing of the Malaysian students in Medan. Thirdly,

the findings of this study can inform the finding to the next researcher who has

intended to gain a deep insight especially in Malay language in Malaysian

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MAINTAINABILITY OF BAHASA MALAYSIA BY MALAYSIAN STUDENTS IN MEDAN.