Abstract
Indonesia has two common self – reference pronouns, which are aku and saya. It is traditionally prescribed that education setting students use saya used as formal self – reference pronoun in communication with lecturers. There however seem to have been a shift of students’ choice on how they address the lecturers from saya to aku in recent years. This study aims to investigate pre-service teacher students of Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana in terms of their practice of using aku and saya when communicating with lecturers. The use of close-ended, open-ended, multiple responses and Likert scales questionnaire form was used in eliciting the data. The participants of the study were 130 students of the Faculty of Teacher Training and Pedagogy (FKIP) from various majors and multicultural backgrounds. The findings demonstrate the majority of the students used saya exclusively. However, there were a significant number of students who used both aku and saya with their lecturers. Lecturers’ age, seniority, and personality, intimacy level between lecturers and students, and lecturers’ comfort when a certain self – reference pronoun is used and the setting or social context are factors the students considered in choosing aku or saya with lecturers.
