REQUEST STRATEGIES IN BAHASA INDONESIA A PRAGMATIC STUDY.

REQUEST STRATEGIES IN BAHASA INDONESIA

A PRAGMATIC STUDY

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Presented to

T he State University of Medan

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In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements •·or the Degree of Magister Humaniora

In English Applied Linguistics

BY

ERIKSON SARAGIH

REG. NO. 025010053

TllE STATE UNIVERSITY OF ME DAN

(lJNIMED)

~RAD U AT EPR OG RA M

I ~NGLISH

APPl ,JE D LINGUIS'FJCS

APPROVAL

This is to certify that the Magister Thesis of Erikson Saragih, Reg. No.

02501 0053 has been defended and examined by the board of examineers and

approved by Thesis Consultants, and has fulfilled the requirements to hold the

Magister of Humaniora in English Applied Linguist ics.

Medan, 27 August 2004

Approved by :

The Thesis Consultant<;

Consultan I

Acknowledged by:

The Head of LTRI Program

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thcs thesis has been written in ·partial fulfillment of the requirements for

the degree of Magister Humaniora in E nglish Applied Linguistics, Graduate

Program, The State University ofMedan {UNlMED).

The writer admits that he has indeed faced some difficulties in completing

this thesis which lasted for 6 months ~ however, it comes to its present format with

the help of his consultants.

For this reason, he wishes to express his heartiest gratitude to Prof M.

I3utar·butaT, M.A, P.hD, his first consultant and Prof D.P. Tampubolon M.A,

P.hD, his second c;onsullant for their generous assistance, advice and precious

time spent on correcting the thesis manuscripts. His special thanks also go to

Amrin Saragih, M.A, P.hD, Dr. Berlin Sibarani M.Pd, and Prof. Bahren Umar

Siregar, M.A, P.hD, for their continuous constructive criticism, corrections and

suggestions on the manuscripts during the thesis proposal seminar and the

research result seminar. The writer's warm and sincere thanks also go to Prof. Dr.

Jawasi Naibaho, the Head of LTBI program and Meisuri, M.A. for their advice

and val uable encouragement~ and all lectures who have assisted him with their

knowlect'ge and experience during his academic years at the institution.

His deep, heartiest gratitude also goes to Tiamida Nababan, SST, his

beloved wife, who has supported him patiently

and

wisely in writing the thesis.

Also, it goes lo all his classmates who cannot be written one by one for their help

Finally, he is fully aware that the thesis is not yet on its best fonnat;

therefore, any constructive criticism and advice from readers aimed at it further

improvement will be highly appreciated and warmly welcome, so that it can give

significant contribution to the study of request in Bahasa Indonesia.

Medan, September 9, 2004

ABSTRACT

ERIKSON SARAGm. Request Strategies in Bahasa Indonesia, A Pragmatic

Study. Medan: English Applied Linguistics, Graduate Program, UNIMFD 2004.

This study investigates how native speakers of Bahasa Indonesia perform

requests daily. It is a pragmatic study because it investigates both language use

and language usage in a cultured-society in various social situations. In the study

the writer raises two research problem~ I) What strategies are used to perform

requests in Bahasa Indonesia, 2) Which request strategy is dominantly used in

Bahasa Indonesia. The analysis of the strategies used is merely based on the level

of directness as proposed in CCSARP (Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization

Project). The first level is d irect ~ covering, imperative. explicit per formative,

hedge per fonnative, goal statement, and want statement The second leve1 is

conventionally indirect request strategy. This covers query preparatory moda l~

and query preparatory availability. The third is non-conventionany indirect,

consisting of hint: question and hint: statement. The findings show

lhat

fl.rstly,

the three strategies (nine sub-strategies) are used to perform request in Bahasa Indonesia, and secondly subjects use conventionally indirect request strategies

dominantly (48.56%). Query preparatory modal as its sub-strategy is pr~fe rably

used by subjects (42.42%). Therefore, the writer states that the request strategies

proposed by CCSARP are not only applicable in English and other western

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thcs thesis has been written in ·partial fulfillment of the requirements for

the degree of Magister Humaniora in E nglish Applied Linguistics, Graduate

Program, The State University ofMedan {UNlMED).

The writer admits that he has indeed faced some difficulties in completing

this thesis which lasted for 6 months ~ however, it comes to its present format with

the help of his consultants.

For this reason, he wishes to express his heartiest gratitude to Prof M.

I3utar·butaT, M.A, P.hD, his first consultant and Prof D.P. Tampubolon M.A,

P.hD, his second c;onsullant for their generous assistance, advice and precious

time spent on correcting the thesis manuscripts. His special thanks also go to

Amrin Saragih, M.A, P.hD, Dr. Berlin Sibarani M.Pd, and Prof. Bahren Umar

Siregar, M.A, P.hD, for their continuous constructive criticism, corrections and

suggestions on the manuscripts during the thesis proposal seminar and the

research result seminar. The writer's warm and sincere thanks also go to Prof. Dr.

Jawasi Naibaho, the Head of LTBI program and Meisuri, M.A. for their advice

and val uable encouragement~ and all lectures who have assisted him with their

knowlect'ge and experience during his academic years at the institution.

His deep, heartiest gratitude also goes to Tiamida Nababan, SST, his

beloved wife, who has supported him patiently

and

wisely in writing the thesis.

Also, it goes lo all his classmates who cannot be written one by one for their help

Finally, he is fully aware that the thesis is not yet on its best fonnat;

therefore, any constructive criticism and advice from readers aimed at it further

improvement will be highly appreciated and warmly welcome, so that it can give

significant contribution to the study of request in Bahasa Indonesia.

Medan, September 9, 2004

LIST OFT ABLES

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Table 4.1: Request Strategies used 1n Bahasa Indonesia

Table 4.2: Proportion of Request Strategies in Bahasa Indonesia by Male

Table 4.3: Proportion of Request Strategies in Bahasa Indonesia by Female

Table 4.4 : Proportion of Request Strategies in Bahasa Indonesia

Table 4.5: The Hierarchy of Request Strategies performed by Male and Female

Subjects

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1. 1 The Background

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This study investigates now native speaker'Sof Bahasa lndon~sia perfonn

requests in everyday situations. It is a pragmatic study because it investigates both

language use and language usage in a cultured-society in a certain social situation.

Request phenomena by their nature arc reflected in language. Socie1ies

everywhere, no matter what their degree of isolation or their socioeconomic

complexity, shows these same principles at work; yet what counts as polite

requests may differ from one group to another group, from situation to situation.

or from individual to individual. If we can find some underlying b'Tarnmatical and

social regularities which account both for this type of variation and recurrent

patterns, we will have taken a major step in demonstrating and not just claiming

the basically social nature of human language.

Part of the meaning of an utterance is its intended social function. it seems

clear that learning to communicate in a language involves more than acquiring the

pronunciation and grammar. We need to learn how to ask questions) make

suggestions, b'Teet and thank other speakers. In other words, we need to learn the

uses to which utterances are conventionally put in the new language community

and bow uses are signaled. if we are to use the language in a realistic way.

2

have been asked questions, invited to do something, etc. In a terminology

introduced by J.L. Austin (1975), such function s of language are called speech

acts.

Politeness principles are reflected in linguistic universals that are in many

ways equivalent to those discovered by grammarians. However, the methods by

which these universals are derived constitute a significant departwe from current

practice. Grammarians rely on informants' responses to systematic elicitation

procedures to deduce abstract rules. which arc then related to the hypothesis about

the human mind. Brown

and

Levinson's

work,

in

contrast,

takes its source data

primarily from situated conversational exchanges. and generalizations are made

with reference to empirically testable universal of discourse and interaction. By

so

doing,

while using new kinds of data, they are also able to draw on and integrafe

a

long

tradition of research in social anthropology, conversational discourse

analysis and in pragmatics.

According to Crystal ( 1991 ), Pragmatics in modem linguistics has come to

be applied to the study of language from the point of view of the users, especially

of the choices they make the constraints they encounter in using language in

social interaction, and the effects of their use of language has on other participants

in an act of communication. The field focuses on 'an area' between semantics and

sociolinguistics, but the boundaries with these other domains are as yet incapable

of precise definition. Pragmatics is mainly concerned with aspects of deixis,

3

Speech act as one of pragmatics is mainly concerned refers to a theory,

which analyzes the role of utterances in relation to the behavior of speakers and

hearers in interpersonal communication. Jt is not ·an act of speech' in the sense of

Parole, but a communicative activity (elocutionary act) defined with reference to

the intention of speakers while speaking~ the illocutionary force of their utterance,

and the effects they achieve on listeners (perlocutionary elTect of their utterances).

Theoreticians Gordon & Lakoff (1 971) have asserted that essential

principles for performing speech acts are universal. Some empirical researchers

support this claim, such as Brown and Levinson (1978) and Fraser (1978), Both

observed a close formal correspondence in how speech act strategies are realizep

across certain languages. Fraser and Nolan ( 1981 ) who claim that the rel ati~Le

level of ditfercncc conveyed by each strategy is also essentially the same across

languages. However, other empirical evidence disputes strong claim on th.e_

universality of speech act performance. Blum-Kulka' s {1983) two studies on a

large corpus of requests by speakers of a number of languages are especiaHy

convincing in this regard. Blum and Kulka found that certain request strategies

were not shared by languages, that significant differences existed between

languages within shared strategies as well, and that social meaning carri ed by the

same strategy sometimes differed. In another study Blum-Kulka ( 1983)

specifically found Gordon and Lakoff (1971) claim tor universal conversation

postulates to be disconfirmed, and concluded that an essential similarity in speech

4

While many studies have examined the requests as an important part of

speech act as performed by English native speakers, the range of language is still

rel atively small. Requests by native spe akers in Engli sh arc the most frequently

described such as Blum-Kulka & House (1 989), Bilbow ( 1995), and Aijimer

( 1996). However, relatively few studies of requests in Asian languages have been

published in English. Of these, almost all focus on either Japanese by Miyagawa

( 1982) or Mandarin by Lee-Hong (1994 ). lmportanUy, some empirical

descriptions of requests also exist in Bahasa Indonesia such as Hassal T (1997).

He did his research through observation and role-play technique while the writer

focuses merely on the observation done on request occurence. Based on the.

phenomena and universals of the speech act as mentioned above, the writer

investigates the request strategies in Bahasa Indonesia that are performed in

everyday situation. It is a prat,'ltlatic study since it investigates both language use'

and language usage in a cultured society in a certain social situation.

1.2 T he Problems

Based on the background of the study above, the writer proposes two mam

problems to be investigated in this study:

1. What strategies are used to perform requests in Bahasa Indonesia?

2. Which request strategy is more dominantly used in Bahasa Indonesia?

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1.3 The Scope of the Study

The study deal5 with request strategies u~~d by native speakers of Bahasa

Indonesia. The analysis of strategies is merely based on the level of directness.

This study identifies three levels of directness for request. The first level is

'direct' . This includes forms, which convey requistive force by purely syntactic

means such a grammatical mood or an explicit performative verbs. The second

level is ' conventionally indirect' . This comprises indirect formu las that are

conventionalized in the language as a means of requesting. The last level is '

non-conventionally

indirect' (i.e. hints). A hint is

an

indirect requests from which is

not conventionalized in the language, and hence require~ more inference activity

for the hearer to derive the speaker's requestive intent. The subject of the study

win

be the native speakers of Bahasa Indonesia; a half will be male, while anothet

half will be female, living in Medan, north Sumatra.

1.4 T he Objectives of the Study

The objectives of the study are as the followings:

To find out what strategies are used in performing requests in Bahasa

Indonesia.

2. To find out which strategy is dominantly used in pcrrorming requests in

Bahasa Indonesia

3. To find out whether or not universal theories of rectuest strategies are

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1.5 The Significance of the Study

This study is significant:

1. To help

us

understand how requests are performed across

a

wider range of

language, and hence to what extent strategies for performing requests-and

speech acts generaiJy-arc common a c r ~ ss languages.

2. To facilitate cross-cultural communication between native speakers of

CHAPTERV

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

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5.1 Conclusions

Based on data, data analysis and findings above. the writer comes lo the

fol lowing conclusions:

1. There are three request strategies and nine sub ~st rategies used to perform

request m Bahasa Indonesia. The strategies and sub-strategies are: Firstly.

Direct strategy; consisting of Imperative, Explicit Per fonnative, Hedge

P-er formative, Goal Statement, and Want Statement. Secondly,

Conventionally Indirect Strategy covers~ Query Preparatory Modal (QPM)

and Query Preparatory Availability (QPA). Thirdly, Non-Conventionally

Indirect consists of; Hint Question (HQ) and Hint Statement (HS).

2. The ~ubjects use Conventionally Indirect Request Strategy dominantly

(48.56%) compared to the two strategies~ Direct Request Strategy and

Non-Conventionally lndirect Strategy. Moreover, QPM as its sub~strat cgy

then is preferably used ( 42.42% ).

3. ·rhe request across languages of diverse cultures including in Bahasa

Indonesia are performed by highly similar strategies and sub-strategies.

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5.2 Suggestions

Based on the fi ndi ngs and conclusions drawn above, the writer concludes

the fo llowings:

l . It is essential to conduct other research relating to request strategies; not

just on the level of directness but from any other aspect s; formal

complexity, perspective. context, mood and purpose, so that it will enrich

our understanding of request strategies in Bahasa Indonesia.

2. It is also important to investigate to what extent directness of request relate

to politeness in Bahasa Indonesia as well as languages of sub-ethnic

groups, for there is an assumption that the more indirect the request, the

more polite it will sound. The question is \'vhether it occurs in Bahasa

Indonesia and other languages of ethnic groups. Of course, this should be

proven.

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