Impoliteness within politeness  

Oleh:

Sosiowati, I Gusti Ayu Gde

Jenis: Article from Proceeding
Dalam koleksi: KIMLI 2018: Kongres International Masyarakat Linguistik Indonesia, 13-16 Agustus 2018, Universitas Papua, Manokwari: “Mengusung Bahasa Indonesia dan Bahasa Daerah menuju Kesetaraan dalam Kebhinekaan.”, page 97-100.
Topik: address term; caste; impoliteness; politeness; maxim
Fulltext: 97-100.pdf (2.16MB)

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This paper aims at presenting the phenomena that takes place in the Balinese society concerning the use of the Balinese address terms. This language feature is one of the ways used by the Balinese to express politeness. This is in line to Watts’ idea (2003) saying that all languages in the world have their own way to express politeness. In Balinese language, the address terms are considered to be very important due to the application of the caste system. The proper way of using the address term is when someone from the lower social status addresses someone from the higher caste by mentioning the label of his/her caste. For example, the common people will address someone from, for example, the caste of ksatria by Gung (the short form of Anak Agung) – Gung Ayu (for female) and Gung Gus/Bagus (for male). This is a polite form of address term which is properly used. However, when the speaker who belongs to ksatria applies that address term to him/herself while talking to another person of any caste, of any age, this will be considered to be impolite because he is praising himself, and Leech (1983) says that someone should be minimizing the praise for himself and maximizing the praise for others. Thus, the improper use of the polite address term can create impoliteness because it can create unpleasant feeling in the part of the speaking partner. This becomes a problem in achieving comfortable communication in modern era like today where people do not respect the caste as much as before. However, in Balinese tradition, showing politeness through address terms is considered a must to show the ‘colour’ (caste) of the participants of a communication. Since this concerns the use of address terms from the higher castes, the violation is frequently found among the castes of brahmana and ksatria. The best way of addressing him/herself politely is by using the pronoun tiang (I). The data for this article was collected through the observation conducted both on the language and the situation of the language use. The study found out that there are several reasons for their using improper address term. The reasons why this address terms are improperly used can be varied, which among others are (1) they are taught by their parents to use that address term to refer to themselves, so they imitate their parents when they are addressed, (2) to introduce his/her caste so that they will be addressed in accordance with their caste, and (3) expressing displeased. The reason that causing the improper use of the address term depends on the situation.

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