ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 179-185 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 179 javanese reduplication: a study on pangkur jenggleng tv program agustinus hardi prasetyo iowa state university of science and technology hardi@iastate.edu doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.020207 received 17 september 2018; revised 2 january 2019; accepted 25 february 2019 abstract this paper reported a small-scale research on javanese reduplication found in pangkur jenggleng padepokan ayom ayem tv program which was aired in a local tv station in yogyakarta, indonesia. since only few studies are conducted to discuss javanese reduplication, this study was conducted to fill in the gap in the literature by asking these two questions: a) what are the types of reduplications found in pangkur jenggleng padepokan ayom ayem tv programs? and b) what are the semantic functions or categories of those reduplications? the results of this study confirm the previous studies on javanese reduplication which reported that full reduplication (without any lexical category changes) are more frequently used than other types of reduplications in javanese language. this study also confirms the results of previous studies that the dominant semantic functions of javanese reduplication are repetition and pluralization. further studies on javanese reduplication were suggested to gain more knowledge as well as to preserve the javanese language. keywords: reduplication, javanese language, pangkur jenggleng, semantic categories introduction reduplication is the repetition of a morpheme, part of a morpheme or phonological material for semantic or grammatical purposes (finegan, 2015). javanese, like other austronesian languages such as bahasa indonesia, has a great deal of reduplication. javanese is spoken in the central and eastern part of java island in indonesia. it is the native language of more than 42% (98 million) of indonesian population (badan pusat statistik indonesia, 2011). there have been many studies conducted to study javanese language, most of them focused on javanese speech levels (oakes, 2009). javanese has three levels of language (iyake, 2011; robson, 1992 in oakes, 2009): ngoko (low), madya (middle) and krama (high or elevated). however, only very few studies are conducted about javanese reduplication, one of them is iyake’s study (2011). filling in the gap in the literature, this study discussed reduplication in javanese language by replicating iyake’s study (iyake, 2011). iyake’s study ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 179-185 180 reported types of reduplication in javanese and the semantic functions of each reduplication. she found that javanese has reduplicated words which derive from a bound root (lexicalized reduplication or lexical doubling, see also suharno,1982), full reduplication from an independent word (there are two subtypes, the first is reduplication without any grammatical and phonological changes, the second is with phonological changes), and the last type is full reduplication from an independent word with grammatical changes. iyake then provided detailed semantic categories or functions and examples of reduplicated words for each type of reduplication. however, unlike iyake’s study, of which the data were from the interviews with speakers of javanese (she did not mention how many speakers), some dictionaries and from the data provided in poedjosoedarmo, wedhawati, and laginem’s book (poedjosoedarmo, wedhawati, & laginem, 1981), the data in this study were from some episodes of the recorded javanese-spoken tv program called pangkur jenggleng padepokan ayom ayem which are aired on government-based local tv station (in yogyakarta, indonesia). this popular weekly entertainment tv program describes recent issues happening in indonesia generally and yogyakarta specifically (one of the thirty-four provinces in indonesia) where the actors and actresses sing some tembang (a javanese term for song) in the form of pangkur (one of the javanese genres of songs), dance traditional javanese dances and perform humorous (sarcastic, and sometimes, vulgar) monologues or dialogues with each other and with the audience. through those dialogues the moral values or messages are usually delivered. moreover, this study was not limited to report ngoko (low level javanese language) as it was in iyake’s study, but also included madya (middle level javanese language), and krama (high or elevated javanese language). it used the same categorization of reduplication types and semantic functions reported in iyake’s study. this study’s purposes were to confirm iyake’s findings on types of reduplication in javanese language, and to give more recent examples for the semantic categories or functions proposed by iyake. therefore, the research questions in this study were formulated as follows: a) what are the types of reduplications found in pangkur jenggleng padepokan ayom ayem tv programs? and b) what are the semantic functions or categories of those reduplications? research method in the current study, five episodes of recorded javanese local tv program pangkur jenggleng padepokan ayom ayem (aired in oktober – november 2016) which were shared in youtube were used as a source of the data. each episode runs for approximately fifty-minutes. those five episodes were selected since, first, they were the most popular ones during those two-month periods (based on the number of views and likes in youtube). second, the topics of those episodes were interesting since they cover the most up to date issues in indonesia and in yogyakarta, and third, they had comparatively longer duration time (more than fifty minutes) than any other episodes therefore the chance to encounter reduplications in the dialogues was higher. i downloaded those episodes from youtube (e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzdmuzxn8bw), watched and listened to the dialogues or monologues done by the actors or actresses ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 179-185 181 carefully, and then transcribed them. i read the transcribed dialogues twice to get the general impressions of the content and context of the dialogues. in order to identify the reduplication in the transcribed dialogues, the definition of reduplication proposed by iyake (2011) was used in this study. iyake stated that reduplication is “the repetition of a word or phonological material within a word for semantic or grammatical purposes” (p. 6). examples of reduplication are andeng-andeng or a mole (lexicalized reduplication where bound roots are duplicated), bocah-bocah (full reduplication without grammatical/lexical category and phonological changes; here bocah means child and it is reduplicated into bocah-bocah which means children), tuka-tuku (full reduplication with phonological changes; tuku means buy, and tuka-tuku means keep buying things), and partial reduplication (lara which means sick, becomes lelara which means sickness). those reduplications have their own semantic functions or categories. i used the definitions and categories of semantic functions proposed by iyake (2011), robson (1992), kiyomi (1993), and suharno (1982). kiyomi had done an extensive study on semantic categories or functions, and she argued that the most frequent meanings of reduplications across language families in her study are plural and totality for nouns, intensity for adjectives and adverbs, repetition and intensity for verbs. these definitions and categories were my predetermined coding categories (creswell, 2014; maxwell, 2013) to analyze the data. i highlighted any reduplications encountered and listed the sentences where those reduplications occurred in the appropriate columns in the matrix (see appendix a reduplication matric). i also referred to javanese dictionary, online resources (poerwadarminta, 1939; universitas negeri yogyakarta, n.d.), and reference books on javanese grammar to help me identify the part of speech of the roots of the duplicated words, to help me decide to which reduplication types and semantic categories those reduplications belong. i presented the results of the analysis in table 1. findings and discussion in order to answer the first research question of this study, table 1 shows the types of reduplication found in the dialogues. more complete results can be found in appendix a. table 1. types of reduplication in javanese types of reduplicatio n lexicalized reduplicatio n full reduplication without grammatical change full reduplicatio n with grammatical change partial reduplicati on without phonologica l change with phonologica l change number of occurrences 9 29 14 16 0 total: 68 12% 43% 21% 24% 0% as shown in table 1, the most dominant type of reduplication is full reduplication without grammatical and phonological changes which has 29 out of 68 occurrences (43%). in total, 43 (or 64%) out of 68 total utterances of reduplication was full reduplication without grammatical changes. since full ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 179-185 182 reduplication is quite abundant in javanese language, it is easier for the artists to use those reduplications whenever and wherever they need them or to create a new full reduplication. this might explain the high frequency of full reduplication occurrences in the data. this result confirms the previous studies on javanese reduplication which reported that full reduplication (without any lexical category changes) are more frequently used than other reduplications in javanese language (hurch, 2005; iyake, 2011; kiyomi, 1993; oakes, 2009). next, to answer the second research question of this study, table 2 presents the semantic functions of the reduplication. the classification of semantic functions is adopted from iyake’s study (2011), with some additional categories from kiyomi (1993) and robson (1992). table 2. semantic functions of reduplication no semantic categories examples lexicalized reduplication 1 body parts 1 andeng-andeng 2 description of movement 2 ongkang-ongkang 3 place 1 ancik-ancik 3 others 3 moga-moga; mugi-mugi full reduplication: no grammatical change 1 noun pluralization 10 "takonono simbah-simbah kae" =just ask some old people there (in the audience) 2 adjectival pluralization 2 “aku duwe jarik apik-apik” =i have many beautiful traditional clothes” 3 intensification (adjective and adverb) 3 “arepo sepuh-sepuh ki do pada semangat-semangat” =even though they are old, they are so full of spirit. 4 repetitive/repetition (verbs) (c.f. continuation, kiyomi, 1993) 27 “mau tas ngalem koyo ngana kok saiki mekok-mekoke" =before this you praise (me), now (you) called me stupid (repeatedly) 5 similarity and imitation 1 "oh, ono wong-wongan" =oh, (there is a) scarecrow 6 reprove (cf. mild exasperation, robson, 1992) 3 "wong urip ki yo nganggo luput, ngerti-ngerti kok bener" =people living in this world make mistake, (they) don’t suddenly do things right. full reduplication: with grammatical changes 1 verbal use (category change: n x 2 v, or adj x 2v; see kiyomi, 1993) 3 n x 2  v “kudu ngati-ati” =(you) must be careful adj x 2 v "nggihpun, kulo tak cepak-cepak ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 179-185 183 no semantic categories examples rumiyin” =ok, i will prepare things first. verbal use: negation 3 "30 yuta kok ora ana apa-apane" =30 million and there is nothing (no proof of payment) 2 adverbial use 6 “alon-alon wae waton kelakon” =slowly but the most important thing is done other: competition (robson, 1992) 2 "tinimbangane awake dhewe mengko saing-saingan, ketok punjul-punjulan, piye nak pentas bareng wae? =instead of competing, why don’t we perform together? indefinite pronoun (robson, 1992)* (this, according to kiyami, can be categorized as plurality) 2* "nak wong sial niku napa-napa mboten entuk" =well, unfortunate person don’t get anything as shown in table 2, the first most common semantic function of reduplication in javanese is repetition or repetitive meaning (27 occurrences) and the second most common one is noun pluralization (10 occurrences). these findings again support the results of previous studies that the dominant semantic functions of javanese reduplication are repetition and pluralization (kiyomi, 1993). some of the meanings of reduplications in this data cannot be analyzed using semantic categorization proposed by iyake (2011). robson’s semantic functions of competition and indefinite pronoun were used to categorize the data. however, some overlapping terms (e.g. repetition by robson, 1992; repetitive by iyake, 2011; and continuation by kiyome, 1993) were combined because they refer to approximately the same meaning. one interesting thing about the data shown in table 2 is that javanese, like many other languages in austronesian family, is common to have category changes (kiyomi, 1993). as the data show, reduplicated nouns can sometimes category change is a very productive process in austronesian languages. even though the purpose of this study is to record any reduplication regardless of the speech levels, it is interesting to note that most of the reduplications found in this study were ngoko reduplications since most of the utterances were spoken in ngoko (low level javanese). only very few of them are spoken in ngoko alus which is slightly above ngoko, but not yet madya or middle level javanese (the differences between those levels including krama or high level are beyond the scope of this paper to discuss). this is understandable since the main purpose of pangkur jenggleng padepokan ayom ayem is to deliver moral values or messages through simple real life stories of common ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 179-185 184 people and through one type of javanese tembang or songs (which is pangkur). pangkur which means “move backward” is a type of songs usually used to deliver advices about life, friendship, and love. it is a type of songs one sings when she or he gets older and wants to retreat from worldly matters. since this local tv program is very popular and most of the audience who watch this program (both in the studio and at home) are common people, the use of ngoko or ngoko alus will enable the artists to achieve the main purpose of this program easily, and it will create closer and more intimate relationship with the audience. this study was limited since the collected data were only from five episodes of pangkur jenggleng (in november 2016). this study will gain a lot more insights and understanding if various sources of data (spoken and written data, real-life, impromptu speech compared to prepared and rehearsed performances) are considered. the purpose of this study was to identify types of reduplications and their semantic functions not only in ngoko level (iyake’s 2011 study), but also from madya and krama level. however, since i collected data only from a tv program which in fact has more ngoko level reduplication in it, the only data that i obtained was mostly reduplication in ngoko level. this study will report more comprehensive results if more samples of the episodes from the same program or from other tv programs are collected and analyzed. the local tv program that airs pangkur jenggleng also has other favorite programs (e.g. angkringan, ketoprak) directed to different audience which certainly use different register of javanese language. the interesting thing is that since pangkur jenggleng is very popular, other local tv program in other areas in java island also have similar programs, and they are popular as well. this might be the other sources of data collection. since the research questions of this study were to find types of reduplications and their semantic meanings, one interesting finding about reduplication which is phonological changes found in this study was not explored. further research should be conducted to find out more about this phenomenon and whether there are any phonological rules governing these (mostly) vowel shifts. further research on reduplication and other topics in javanese language should be conducted since conducting research has two advantages: gaining more knowledge about the language being studied and at the same time preserving it. i gain a lot more knowledge about my own my mother tongue and i become more aware of how precious this language is since it is part of my identity of javanese people with wisdoms, culture, and moral value contained in the language. if this language disappears, then the wisdoms and the culture of javanese people will disappear as well. questions that my study raise are, what are the types and semantic functions of reduplication in madya and krama level of javanese? will those levels have the same frequency of occurrences of full reduplication without grammatical changes? what are the factors that might influence javanese speakers to choose particular types of reduplication? what are the influences of new technology (i.e. social media) and the politically massive use of bahasa indonesia as the national language and english as the first official foreign language in indonesia to javanese language and its speakers? since javanese language is a compulsory conclusion ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 179-185 185 subject in elementary and secondary schools in central java, what is the appropriate teaching method to teach javanese language to those students? how does technology help teachers and students learn javanese language? what is the role of technology to help preserve javanese language and other local languages? those are the questions that future researchers need to answer. references creswell, j. w. (2014). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). london: sage publications. finegan, e. (2015). language: its structure and use (7th ed.). stamford: cengage learning. hurch, b. (ed.). (2005). studies on reduplication: empirical approaches to language typology. berlin: walter de gruyter gmbh & co. iyake, m. (2011). reduplication in javanese. asian and african languages and linguistics, (6), 45–59. kiyomi, s. (1993). a typological study of reduplication as a morpho-semantic process: evidence from five language families (bantu, australian, papuan, austroasiatic and malayo-polynesian. indiana university. maxwell, j. a. (2013). qualitative research design: an interactive approach (3rd ed.). washington, dc: sage publications, inc. oakes, m. p. (2009). javanese. in b. comrie (ed.), the world’s major languages (2nd ed., pp. 819–832). new york: routledge. poedjosoedarmo, g., wedhawati, & laginem. (1981). sistem perulangan dalam bahasa jawa. jakarta: pusat pembinaan dan pengembangan bahasa, departemen pendidikan dan kebudayaan. poerwadarminta, j. (1939). bausastra jawa. retrieved december 12, 2016, from http://www.sastra.org/bahasa-dan-budaya/38-kamus-dan-leksikon/781bausastra-jawa-poerwadarminta-1939-75-bagian-01-a robson, s. (1992). javanese grammar for students. clayton: monash asia institute. suharno, i. (1982). a descriptive study of javanese. pacific linguistics, series d (45). universitas negeri yogyakarta. (n.d.). kamus bahasa jawa. retrieved december 12, 2016, from http://202.152.135.5/web_kamusbahasajawa/index.php ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 158-166 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 158 illocutionary acts and their relationships with interviewees’ level of trustworthiness in giving information during the making of investigation reports: a case study in situbondo police station ahmad yusuf firdaus, firqo amelia, and sufil lailiyah university of abdurachman saleh situbondo fyrdhaus@gmail.com, firqo.amelia@gmail.com, and sufil.lailiyah@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.020205 received 3 january 2019; revised 15 january 2019; accepted 15 february 2019 abstract this research analyzes the level of interviewees’ trustworthiness in giving information during the making of investigation reports in situbondo police station. searle’s theory of speech acts is used to analyze the data. the level of the interviewees’ trustworthiness is based on the information given by the police officers, which is integrated with the result of the illocutionary act analysis. this qualitative descriptive research produces deep descriptions of the utterances stated by interviewees. taxonomic analysis proposed by spreadly is used to classify the data based on the types of illocutionary acts found. componential analysis is used to reveal the interrelationship between variables. the result of this research reveals that there is a strong relationship between an interviewees’ trustworthiness and kinds of illocutionary acts, and that assertive, which produces a large number of less trustworthy utterances, is the most frequently found illocutionary act. keyword: speech acts, investigation, level of trustworthiness introduction the rising number of criminal cases is no longer a strange matter in indonesia. criminal cases might happen anywhere. along with this issue, the duty of the police officers increases as well. conducting investigations is one of them. in conducting investigations special abilities are needed by investigators. the ability to communicate, the ability to make questions that can reveal the motives of the crimes committed, and the ability to disclose the secrets of the suspects are included in the category of capabilities that must be possessed by investigators. investigation processes are done to uncover the motives for crimes committed. investigation is not an easy thing to do because the reported party does not always disclose the motives. therefore, the researchers examined the investigation processes of several criminal cases situbondo police station. investigation processes are related to the question and answer processes that are carried out by investigators and interviewees. in this study, the investigation mailto:fyrdhaus@gmail.com mailto:firqo.amelia@gmail.com mailto:sufil.lailiyah@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 158-166 159 processes were examined with pragmatics, a branch of linguistics that discusses languages in their application. this research focused on speech acts carried out by investigators and interviewees. therefore, the research problems were formulated in a number of ways, namely the types of illocutionary acts found during the investigation processes and how the use of illocutionary acts influences the interviewee’s trustworthiness. related researches have been carried out by several researchers. hadyani (2014) in her research, examined the types of questions, responses and presuppositions that emerged in investigative interview processes. the research findings show that in the case of fraud and embezzlement, most of the questions are open and a small number of questions are closed. meanwhile, in the case of dump truck theft, most of the questions are open and a small number of questions are closed. another research that is also still related to this study has been conducted by aziz (2014). his research on forensic linguistics focuses on the quality of the question formulas put forward by police investigators and their relation to the potential for full and correct disclosure of information provided, the construction of discourse developed by police investigators to disclose information specifically in relation to the strategy of changing the topic of conversation during the investigation, and the level of compliance or regularity of police investigators in compiling bap as a report containing complete information. literary frameworks speech acts speech acts is a concept first proposed by john l. austin in his book how to do things with words (1962). austin was the first person to express the idea that language can be used to take action through a distinction between a constative utterance and a performative utterance. constative tests describe or report the events or circumstances of the world. thus, the constative utterances can be said to be true or false. grammatically, according to austin, performative speech in english is characterized by the use of the first person subject and the present verb. in addition, performative speech also has several requirements so that it can considered valid. these conditions are usually called 'felicity conditions' (parker, 1986: 13-15; wijana, 1996: 24-27; grundy, 2000: 53; holtgraves, 2002: 11; nadar, 2009: 12-14) speech validity consists of, 1) the actor and the speech situation must be appropriate; 2) actions must be carried out correctly and completely by speakers and interlocutors; 3) the offender must have appropriate intentions. speeches such as “please come here for dinner tonight’ is a valid inviting speech if the speaker has actually prepared a dinner for the evening guests. however, the speech is invalid if the speaker does not prepare any food that night. austin distinguishes three types of actions related to speech, namely: locution, which is the act of pronouncing a sentence according to the meaning of the word or the meaning of the sentence; illocution, which is the act of doing ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 158-166 160 something; and perlocution, which is the effects produced when speakers say something. austin's understanding was followed up by j.r. searle in his book entitled speech acts. moving on from austin's thinking about performative speech, searle (1969) developed the hypothesis that each speech means action. illocutionary action is a central part in the study of speech acts. there are five types of illocutionary acts as revealed by searle (1985), among others:  assertive, namely the form of speech that binds the speaker of the truth to what is said (eg, states, suggests, reports, preaches, shows, mentions).  commissive, speech forms that express certain promises or offers (eg swearing, threatening, promising, and offering something).  directive, the form of speech performed by the speaker with the intention that the opponent is saying what the speaker wants to do (for example: ordering, ordering, begging, asking, demanding, and inviting).  expressive, the form of speech that functions to express or show the psychological attitude of the speaker to a particular situation (for example: praise, criticize, congratulate, thank, apologize, condolence).  declaration, a form of speech that how the content of speech is related to reality (for example deciding, prohibiting, cancelling, firing, naming, lifting, ostracizing, punishing). in addition to the five types of speech acts mentioned by searle, finegan (1992, 307-308) adds one more type of speech action, namely verdictive. verdictive is described as a speech act that makes a guess or judgment (for example regulating, judging, forgiving). research method this is a descriptive qualitative research which describes the principle of cooperation used by the reported parties at the time of investigation at the situbondo police station. bogdan and taylor (1992: 21-22) explain that qualitative research is one of the research procedures that produce descriptive data in the form of speech or writing and the behaviour of the people observed. the data of this study were illocutionary acts uttered interviewees. in addition, it is said that qualitative research is a type of research that does not include numbers and calculations. in this study the data are the result of field observation at the police station. the numbers that appear in this study were only supporting tools to obtain the final results. the main sources of data used by researchers were the interviewees, who were interviewed during the investigation process. the secondary source of data were the investigators. this research is referred to as a fixed case study because before the research was conducted, the problems were formulated. in this study, the researchers analysed the use of illocutionary speech acts uttered by the interviewees at the situbondo police station, as well as their relationships with the levels of trustworthiness. data collection techniques used in this study were sampling techniques (sampling), document analysis, and questionnaires. sampling technique ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 158-166 161 the sampling technique in this study was purposive sampling or also called criterion-based sampling. sampling technique is a way to determine a sample whose amount is in accordance with the sample size that is used as the actual data source, taking into account the characteristics and distribution of populations to obtain samples that represent the population (hadari nawawi, 1995: 152). according to h.b. sutopo (1988), "footage is a special form, or a process that is common in concentration or selection in research that leads to selection". with this technique the selection of informants is done based on the criteria previously mentioned. this sampling technique is also what the writer used to determine the data source needed. document analysis this analysis technique is carried out through reading and recording techniques. document analysis technique (content analysis) is a way to find various things according to their needs and research objectives (yin in sutopo, 2006: 81). sutopo (2002: 69-70) also said that in content analysis researchers are not merely recording important contents expressed in documents or archives, but also the meanings implied. because the documents are in the form of speech transcripts, the authors carried out the document analysis process starting from the investigation process, and paid attention to the illocutionary speech acts used by the reporters, classified the types of illocutionary speech acts that occurred, then analysed the levels of trustworthiness through the illocutionary acts used. interview interviews were conducted to obtain in-depth information about the level of trustworthiness. this stage was carried out after obtaining data and the results of the illocutionary speech act analysis. to improve the accuracy of the results of this study, the researcher used source triangulation and method triangulation. according to bungin (2007: 252) the triangulation process was carried out continuously throughout the process of collecting data until one day the researchers were convinced that there were no more differences, and there was nothing else that needed to be confirmed to the informant. source triangulation source triangulation is a technique of providing varied data sources (santosa, 2012: 47). in other words, data obtained from document analysis is compared with data obtained from interviewees. with this comparison, the data obtained are accountable. method triangulation santosa (2012) states that this is related to the technique of obtaining or collecting data. in this study there are two methods used which are data analysis ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 158-166 162 and interviews. the two results of the study with two different methods are then compared. by reviewing the data with different methods, validated data were produced. method this study used content analysis with a contrastive and ethnographic analysis approach. the analysis was carried out by contrasting the information conveyed by the interviewees with the information provided by the investigator. after that the analysis was continued by looking at the relationships between the parts in the data or the elements involved. the analysis technique according to spradley (1980) includes four steps of analysis: domain analysis, taxonomic analysis, componential analysis, and cultural theme analysis. domain analysis domain analysis is used to analyse images of research objects in general or at the surface level, but relatively intact about the object of the research (bungin, 2007: 204). data selection is done at this stage. the data in this study are illocutionary speech acts used by the reported party in giving information in the investigation room of the situbondo police station. taxonomic analysis taxonomy analysis is an analysis that focuses on a particular domain or subdomain. this analysis classify a large number of data into groups based on the natural category of the object discussed (santosa, 2012: 60). at this stage, the data obtained were classified into the types of illocutionary speech acts used. componential analysis santosa (2012: 63) explained that "computational analysis basically connects the components or aspects (in this case is the category) that has been done on taxonomic analysis." componential analysis is used to analyse relationships between the two elements. in this study, this stage includes the relationship between types of illocutionary speech acts on the levels of trustworthiness. findings and discussion assertive assertive speech acts are forms of speech that bind the speaker to the truth of what is being said (eg, states, suggests, reports, preaches, shows, mentions) p: misnadi, sebelum natta ’oreng, minta restu ka empian? (did misnadi asks for your permission before killing someone?) a: benni minta restu natta'a oreng. kule moliya ka didi, pak. (he did not ask for my permission to hack people, but he only said "i want to go home to didi’s house.") document analysis interview data ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 158-166 163 in the data, the answer to the examinee is an example of assertive speech. in his speech, the interviewee gave a report or statement to the investigator that misnadi, who was the biological child, did not ask for his permission to hack people. the suspect (miswandi) only said he would go home to his wife’s house (didi). directive this speech act is a form of speech that is carried out by the speaker with the intention that the opponent is doing what the speaker wants (for example: ordering, telling, begging, asking, demanding, and inviting). p: nike celuritta empian? (whose ‘celurit’(sickle) is this?) j: tak oning, atanya ka miswandi. (i don't know, just ask miswadi.) the data above shows directive speech where the utterance of the interviewee binds the opponent, namely the investigator to do something as desired by him. in this case, the investigator asked the interviewee about the possession of the sickle. the examiner did not only answer that he did not know whose sickle that was, but also told the investigator to confirm miswandi. commissive commissive speech act is a form of speech used to express certain promises or offers (such as swearing, threatening, promising, offering something). p: bisa diambil? (can we take it?) a: bisa kalau ditebus. (if it is redeemed, yes.) in the speech above, the examined answer is categorized as a commissive speech. commissive speech is a speech that binds the speaker to do something as said. in the conversation, the investigator asked the examiner whether the last car pawned by the examinee could be taken back. the examiner replied that the car could be taken back on condition that it provided a ransom. examination that said the car could be taken if he gave a ransom was a commissive speech because the speaker offered to the opponent he said that he would do something (redeem) the car with a ransom. expressive expressive is a form of speech that functions to express or show the psychological attitude of the speaker to a particular situation (for example: praising, criticizing, congratulating, thanking, apologizing, offering condolences). p: kenapa? (why?) a: saya juga salah, pak, tak pikir-pikir. (i am also guilty, sir, for not thinking about it. the data above is an example of expressive speech acts. the examinee's statement showed that he felt guilty for removing the storage card of his belongings containing the camera. the speaker revealed what he felt (guilty) for the incident. in this case, the investigator asked the reason the investigator had recalled the lawsuit against the shop where the camera was missing. the examiner reasoned that the store was not entirely guilty of the incident because he was examined himself who had removed the card for the storage of his belongings. declarative this speech act is a form of speech that connects the content of speech with reality (for example deciding, prohibiting, canceling, firing, naming, lifting, ostracizing, punishing). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 158-166 164 p: trus kelanjutannya gimana? (what do you do then?) j: mau ditarik, pak, laporannya. (i want to withdraw the report, sir.) the speech is a declaration statement. during the conversation, the investigator asked about how the reports of the investigators were investigated in the case of the loss of the nikon brand camera belonging to the examinee in a shopping place / shop. the examiner replies that he will withdraw his report or claim against the store. examinations that were examined to withdraw his report caused the status of the store where the incident occurred which had previously been reported as being free. therefore, the utterances of the abused above are included in the utterances of the declaration. discussion in its implementation, this study found 137 data that could be classified into five types of speech acts as explained in the following table. table 1. types of speech types of illocutionary acts levels of trustworthiness total high moderate low assertive 52 47 28 127 commissive 1 1 directive 3 1 4 expressive 4 4 declarative 1 1 total 53 5 34 137 assertive speech acts are a type of speech act that is most often used by being examined in the investigation process at situbondo regional police station (93%). as a type of speech act that theoretically, is tied to reality, this speech act indicates that many speeches in this category have a high level of trustworthiness. of the 127 data that used this speech act, there were 75 data (59%) with a high level of trustworthiness: 47 (37%) included in the medium category, and 28 (22%) were in the low category. directive speech acts and expressive speech acts in this study do not produce any speech that has a high degree of trustworthiness. there are four data in this category; three data are moderate and one is low. as a speech act whose speech is considered an evaluation, expressive speech acts produce four data, all of which are low in terms of the trustworthiness. commissive speech act are the least used speech acts of 137 data found, there is only 1 (one) datum included in the category of speech acts that require the speaker to carry out all the things in his speech. the only datum in this category is highly trustworthy. similar to commissive speech acts, declarative speech acts also fall into in the category of speech acts that are rarely found in the investigation process at the situbondo police station. there is only one datum in this category. however, in contrast to assertive speech acts, the use of this speech act in this study are untrustworthy. conclusion ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 158-166 165 assertive speech acts are speech acts that are most often used by interviewees during the investigation process. commissive speech acts are the least used speech acts of 137 data found, there is only 1 (one) datum which fall into the category of speech acts that require the speaker to carry out all the things in his speech. this study also found a relationship between the uses of speech acts and the levels of trustworthiness. overall, the five types of speech acts initiated by searle can be found during the investigation process at situbondo regional police station, and each type has its own tendency. commissive speech acts tend to produce trusted utterances. expressive speech acts, on the contrary, tend to produce untrustworthy utterances. the results of this study can be used as a baseline by researchers and investigators to determine the levels of reliability of the answers given by the interviewer in an investigation process. in addition, these results can also be used as a basis for conducting further research that can be linked to other factors, such as analysis of gestures during the investment process and so on. references austin, j. l. (1962). how to do things with words. london: oxford university press. aziz, e. a., muniroh, r. d. d., hermawan, r., & imperiani, e. d. a. (2014). pengungkapan fakta di pengadilan oleh hakim, jaksa, dan penasihat hukum: analisis linguistik forensik tentang strategi bertanya para pelaku peradilan. penelitian berbasis kelompok bidang kepakaran, universitas pendidikan indonesia. bodgam, r. & steven j. t. (1992).introduction to qualitative research methods. new york: john willey and sons. bungin, b. h. m. (2007). penelitian kualitatif: komunikasi, ekonomi, kebijakan. publik, dan ilmu social, jakarta: kencana prenama media group. coulthard, m. (2005). some forensic applications of descriptive linguistics. veredas coulthard, m. & johnson. a. (2010). the routledge handbook of forensic linguistics. london: routledge. finnegan, r. (1992). oral tradition and verbal art: a guide to research practice. london: routledge. hadari, n. (1995). buku metode penelitian bidang sosial. yogyakarta: gadjah mada university press. handayani. (2014). tipe pertanyaan, respon dan praanggapan yang muncul pada interviu investigatif kepolisian. jurnal parole, 4(1), 38-53. sutherland, e. h. & chessey, d. r. (1960). principles of criminology. (6th ed). philadelphia: lippincott. sutopo, h.b. (2006).metodologi penelitian kualitatif: dasar teori dan terapannya dalam penelitian. surakarta: universitas. sebelas maret. houses of parliament. (2015). forensic language analysis. london: the parliamentary office of science and technology. kartono, k. (1999). patologi sosial. jakarta: raja grafindo persada. nadar, f. x. (2009). pragmatik dan penelitian pragmatik. yogyakarta: graha ilmu. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 158-166 166 santosa, r. (2012). metode penelitian kualitatif kebahasaan. draf buku. surakarta: fakultas sastra dan seni rupa searle, j. (1969). speech acts: an essay in the philosophy of language. cambridge: cambridge university press spradley, j. p. (1980). participant observation. new york: holt, rinehart and winston. tarigan, h.g. (2009). pengajaran sintaksis. bandung: angkasa. ___________________ . (2009).prinsip-prinsip dasar sintaksis. bandung: angkasa. turell, m. t. (2008). the role and task of the forensic linguist in giving evidence. universitat pompeu fabra. wijana, i. d. p. (1996). dasar-dasar pragmatik. yogyakarta: penerbit andi. https://ipji.org/2017/01/01/angka-kriminalitas-tahun-2016-polres-situbondoserahkan-sapi/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 196-203 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 196 literary text conversion as a form of writing literacy activities katarina retno triwidayati musi charitas caholic university retno@ukmc.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.020209 received 17 september 2018; revised 2 january 2019; accepted 25 february 2019 abstract the survey of literacy rate held by the international institution has placed indonesia in the last position compared to other countries surveyed. this shows how low the country’s reading and writing culture. on the other hand, the indonesian language becomes the subject that is positioned as the medium to communicate diverse concepts of knowledge. therefore, the indonesian language is used as the instrument to gain knowledge or, to put it simply, topics discussed in indonesian language learning involve other subjects. in addition, text-based learning is an important thing in the implementation of indonesian language learning. one of the texts that can be used in learning indonesian is literary texts. this article discusses the description of text-based language learning in forms of the text conversion and the example of text-based language learning using literature as the main text. learning using literary text conversion is one of the writing literacy activities that can be implemented in schools. keywords: indonesian learning, literacy, text conversion, literature text introduction the literacy rate in indonesia is one of the alarming problems. evidence shows that indonesia has in the low rate of literacy. various surveys support the statement, such as the survey held by programme for international students assessment (pisa) in 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2012. in addition to pisa, a literacy survey was also held by progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) in 2006. the survey shows that indonesia is in the very low position compared to several countries surveyed (kharizmi, 2015). the survey result shows a low culture of reading and writing. in fact, according to goddy et al., literacy originally interpreted as reading and writing activities has changed in terms of its meaning and application. it transforms into the basic of reading and writing for gaining and manipulate knowledge through written texts. changes in literacy are based from the metalinguistic analysis of grammatical units into the structure of oral and written text and from the impact of human history to the philosophical and social consequences of western education (musfiroh, 2016). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 196-203 197 thus, literacy is often associated with skills in language learning. in its development, literacy is not only a part of language learning, but it also involves various subjects. in addition, it is also used as the pattern of high-order thinking skills (hots) in assessments of various subjects. on the other hand, language learning especially indonesian is considered as the medium to communicate diverse concepts of knowledge. this expects students to gain other knowledge by mastering indonesian. in this case, indonesian becomes the medium to adopt, develop, and communicate knowledge (mahsun, 2014). the design of text-based indonesian learning is expected to also provide a space for students to develop their various thinking structures. this is because each text has a thinking structure that is different from one another. the more types of texts being mastered, the more thinking structures are mastered by students. therefore, there are four approaches used in the indonesian language learning, namely, thematic approach, genre-based approach, pedagogy-genre approach and context and language integrated learning (clil) approach. the genre-based approach is an approach used in language learning that emphasizes on the creation of meaning at the entire level of the text (derewianka, 2003). in its implementation, this approach is commonly used in the development of writing skills so that this approach seems to be limited to the development of writing skills only. the ultimate objective of text-based language learning is that students are able to use texts based on the social purpose of the text. this learning also needs to be accumulated from models provided, the generic structure, the language elements to students’ ability to construct a text. thus, the outcome of genre-based approach and the text-based learning is not only writing but also producing various kind of texts. the limited portion of literary material to be used as a learning medium in the 2013 curriculum becomes one of the criticism that arises when discussing materials in the indonesian language subject. according to mahsun (2014), literature material is well presented, although the portion is not presented at one level. the material appears on each level or class and it develops the contexts on the modelling learning stages. mahsun (2014) states that language and literature materials are integrated in the literary genre and language teaching. furthermore, in the text conversion activities, the use of literature text is advantageous because students can enrich their knowledge of universal humanitarian values contained in literature texts. therefore, literature learning is expected to support the learning that emphasizes on the competency of students’ attitudes. according to the previous description, this article discusses the forms of textbased learning that involve literary texts and non-literary texts. furthermore, this article describes examples of text-based language learning that can be applied. findings and discussion language learning especially in literary materials seems to have low priority. it is not in line with the statement in the curriculum that literature becomes the learning material in which the position is equally important as the linguistic ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 196-203 198 material. it is stated that in the 2013 curriculum, literary learning and language learning can be applied simultaneously (mahsun, 2014). the condition in which literary learning is not considered as the first priority in language learning appears in various language learning. it means that language learning focuses on students’ ability in mastering the language. in this case, pragmatic approaches, communicative approaches, and other approaches prioritize the communication skills. the implication is that language learning is dominated by providing materials in the form of grammar, vocabulary, and so on. at the same time, literature, considered as one of the language products, does not become a priority. this is because of literary learning leads to the form of literary study. therefore, literature becomes a sequel material of the students’ ability in language learning. the study in literature can be done in various ways. the ways that can be used to analyze literary works are by using the theories of structuralism, stylistics, semiotics, feminism, and many more (triwidiyati, 2011). one of the theories mentioned earlier is structuralism. as the name implies, this theory believes that the structure of a literary work can be broken down. it means that the study of a literary work is done by observing the literary work itself as an independent output. according to the theory of structuralism, a literary work is an autonomous work in which the analysis is done by only observing elements in the literary work. the elements are characters, characterizations, backgrounds, plots, language styles, point of views, themes and messages. in its development, the theory of structuralism reflects the marxist’s view. marxism is a view that does not believe that a text is an autonomous thing. marxism believes that a text (including literary works) is an ideological system that cannot be separated from the struggle of social forces in the community in fighting for their control over the economic resources contained in their surroundings (hudayat, 2007). the combination of the theory of structuralism and marxism produces the theory of genetic structuralism. therefore, the theory of genetic structuralism is a literary study that analyzes structures in its literary works (the literary work as the autonomous work), the author’s sociocultural studies and the sociocultural studies occurring when the literary work is published. thus, the theory is recognized by studying the literary work based on its intrinsic and extrinsic structure. this approach was coined by lucien goldmann, a french literature expert (iswanto as cited in jabrohim, 2003). the genetic structuralism is developed by goldmann based on the thinking of another marxist, georg lukacs. goldmann states that there is no conflict between literary sociology and structuralist school of thought (teeuw, 1988). this approach not only agrees with the structuralism approach that considers literature as an autonomous work, but also agrees with marxism approach that tends to be positivistic and ignores the sense of literature of literary works. the genetic structuralism approach revises the weakness of the structuralism approach and the marxism view. the weakness of the structuralism approach is the consideration of a literary work as an autonomous work. besides, the study of its literary work ignores the role of author as an inseparable part of a literary ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 196-203 199 work. meanwhile, marxism considers a literary work as a product or reaction to a social event. the weakness is that as a literary work is close to social realities, it still contains imaginative elements. based on the description above, it can be concluded that the genetic structuralism approach recognizes the connection in literary work elements. those elements are authorships, social ideologies, and the literary works. thus, the analysis of literary works by using this approach involves those elements. the genetic structuralism approach can be simply described in the following figures: however, in the implementation of literature learning in the classroom, teachers sometimes only give the analysis of intrinsic elements. based on the researcher’s analysis, this is because of the long duration the teachers have in analyzing the elements, so that they don’t have more time in teaching other literary materials. on the other hand, genre-based approach is applied in language learning especially in literary learning to be in line with language learning. mahsun (2014) states that in the 2013 curriculum, linguistic material and literary material are put together. in addition, text conversion activities can be done by using literary texts. the literary texts are converted either in the same type of text or different type of text. on the other hand, learning with the 2013 curriculum also uses a scientific approach. mahsun (2014) states that this scientific approach in the language learning requires the same process as other learning processes. students do not have to collect the data, analyze the data and then present the data. the data gathering process can be conducted by firstly analyzing the literary text. students can do this activity individually or in groups, based on the teachers’ instructions. in this activity, students analyze intrinsic and extrinsic elements. the analysis can be conducted by using all the intrinsic elements in the literary texts or taking the basic analysis such as characters and characterization. the next stage is analyzing the data (mahsun, 2014). the analysis is conducted by: 1) grouping the data based on the support in the development of particular structures. 2) processing the data, information and facts into sentences 3) connecting sentences into coherent and cohesive paragraphs 4) determining the transitional signals that connect paragraphs in order to form a linguistically correct text. 5) writing a text containing the appropriate generic structure ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 196-203 200 literary works analysis using the generic structuralism approach is used as the basic process of students’ language learning with the text conversion. one of the examples of the analysis using the genetic structuralism approach is a novel titled “a woman named arjuna” by remy syaldo. the novel consists of five series namely a woman named arjuna: philosophy in fiction, a woman named arjuna: synology in fiction, a woman named arjuna: javanology in fiction, a woman named arjuna: batakologi (knowledge of batak) in fiction, a woman named arjuna: minasanologi (knowledge of minahasa) in fiction. the main character of the five novels is a female character named arjuna. she is an indonesian citizen of chinese and javanese descent. she decided to continue her study in amsterdam. she met her lecturer named jean-claudie van damme, a jesuit priest who later became her husband. on the first novel series, the main discussion between the main character and other characters is about philosophy. on the second novel series, the discussion is dominated by the topic of chinese science that has entered indonesia and a historical series of chinese relation in indonesia. on the next series, the topics discussed are javanese thoughts, history and civilization reviews. on the fourth series, the story is dominated by the adventure story in tanah batak (batak land), which is arjuna’s father’s homeland and all social cultural information of batak ethnicities. while on the last series, the journey to the arjuna’s mother’s homeland leads to a series of messages of peace, diversity and tolerance in the religious and social life among minahasa societies. after discovering the character of arjuna and its relationship with the authorship, students eliminate the data that is not needed. for example, the data related to the character, jean-claudie van damme (jcd), arjuna’s husband. in this case, students do not only focus on the character, arjuna. furthermore, students connect the data that has relationship with remy syaldo and the character of arjuna. the characteristic of arjuna that is not relevant to the authorship’s data is ignored. besides, in the classical discussion, the groups can choose which character will be the focus of their group discussion so that it will not overlap with other group discussion results. the example is an analysis with the genetic structuralism approach in the novel a woman named arjuna conducted by the author. the author’s critique to the christian religion is a form of his thoughts on the religion he professes. the author who is a christian and also a son of a priest states that christians have hafiz tradition (reading the scripture) and it is even stated that very few christians are devoted to the scripture (khatam) (triwidiyati, 2018). this is different from the tradition of muslims (represented by arjuna) as shown in the following citation. ...although he is a professor of theology who used to study the christian scripture, it does not mean that he knows exactly all the contents from genesis to revelation. it is actually because christians do not have hafiz tradition or even khatam tradition. as for the khatam tradition, even only 1 in 10,000 people may not be able to memorise the contents of scripture with a praise. in contrast, the muslims, as shown by mother’s tradition, she was khatam (finished reading) al quran since she was 14 years old. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 196-203 201 (sylado, 2014) in islam, being khatam of al-quran is interpreted as reading the whole verses in the al-quran. there is another term mentioned in the citation above, hafiz. hafiz is the person who can memorise the al-quran correctly and precisely. in the islamic culture, hafiz al-quran is certainly considered better than khatam al-quran. however, implementing the teachings in the al-quran is certainly far better than just memorizing and reading the whole verses in the al-quran (triwidiyati, 2018). in addition to criticizing the chistian religion (the author’s religion), he also criticizes the islam believers (triwidiyati, 2018). this is shown in the following citations. … in semarang, my grandmother asked, “tomorrow, will you go to yogya and then magelang?” “yes grandma,” i said. then grandma said. “don’t forget, before meeting ki murgiyanto at dawn, you should pray first.” “ok grandma,” i said. and grandma was talking right to me. “you never forget to pray, don’t you?” (syaldo, 2015) the grandma’s questions to arjuna shows the author’s perspective about muslims’ commitment to doing their worship. the author through grandma asks whether a muslim has properly performed the prayer on time or not. by that question, the character of grandma reminds the character of arjuna to her obligation as a muslim (triwidiyati, 2018). on the other hand, the author also gives explanation about shalat (islamic worship). the character of grandma is told to convey the teachings of the king of solo, pakubuwono iv, wulangreh and then grandma sings a traditional song entitled asmarandhana, which is translated as in the following citation: ... is: “people living in the world should carry out the commandments in religion, the islamic five daily prayers should not be abandoned, those who leave them will get misfortune. this is important for those who still want to serve the country” (syaldo, 2015). based on the one part of the research result above, the focus of discussions for each group can be distinguished. for example, group 1 focuses on remy syaldo’s criticism of the hafiz tradition. while another group focuses on the discussion of sholat. both groups can use the authorship’s data in a form of remy syaldo’s religion, knowledge and habit in writing fiction with a strong database. the analysis conducted by students can also involve materials from other subjects. for example, students can associate literary studies with religion subject. therefore, students can further deepen their knowledge in other subjects. in this case, language learning activities, especially indonesian is the media of gaining knowledge. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 196-203 202 from the character of arjuna whose hobby is reading and delivering databased idea like the author, students will indirectly find out the data to support the arguments. thus, students will read and strengthen their references. this will be a concrete effort to increase literacy. the final result of this group discussion is a new article containing group opinions about the relationship between the character of arjuna and remy syaldo as the author. this writing is called the text conversion. by producing a new form of text, students have done learning activity with the genetic based approach. at the same time, this data-based learning also shows scientific learning as well as meaningful literacy activities. the explanation above is described into a figure as follows: with the implementation of literary language learning above, the language and literary learning are expected to be conducted simultaneously. therefore, literary text is used as one of the ways to conduct the language learning activity. in addition, students’ ability in literacy can be trained and improved by a demand to read various references to produce new texts. this learning can be conducted by involving other subjects. thus, the assignment of one or more subjects can be realized in a main task. this makes it easier for students to do their tasks. another benefit that can be obtained is that teachers do not have to give excessive tasks. by this conversion text, teachers can assess the aspect of attitudes such as students’ active participation in their discussion. this aspect can also measure their responsibility in submitting the task on time and there is no plagiarism because the learning process is conducted continuously and related to other aspects. the assessment can also be conducted to the measure the aspects of knowledge and skill. in the aspect of knowledge, students can assess the accuracy of the second text which is the result of text conversion, such as the pattern of grammar (for the language) and how deep the analysis is. the aspect of skill can be done by assessing students to communicate their ideas. this can be done by assessing their presentation in communicating the results of the discussion. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 196-203 203 conclusion the low literacy rate in indonesia can be caused by various things. one of them is the literacy activity that does not accommodate students’ improvement in literacy. on the other hand, literary learning seems to be separated from language learning. literary learning involving text conversion activities is expected to bring several benefits. students can get a chance to broaden their knowledge by reading various literatures, performing discussion and producing new texts involving language skill or language learning. the learning examples explained above also accommodates the assessment of attitudes, knowledge, and skill. the attitude of active participation and responsibility becomes the aspect of assessment. the knowledge score can be obtained from the accuracy of the text conversion result and the analysis. meanwhile, the skill score can be obtained from students’ ability in communicating their discussion result. the example of this learning activity is still in the form of a design that can be followed up with the implementation of field research activities. thus, the strengths and weaknesses of these learning activities example can be further corroborated by the field data. references derewianka, b. 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(2015). perempuan bernama arjuna: javanologi dalam fiksi. bandung: nuansa cendikia. triwidayati, k. r. (2011). strukturalisme genetik bilangan fu karya ayu utami. hasil penelitian. palembang: program pascasarjana universitas sriwijaya. triwidayati, k. r. (2018). kajian strukturalisme genetik pada novel perempuan bernama arjuna karya remy sylado. hasil penelitian. palembang: universitas katolik musi charitas. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 29-37 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 29 respect: a simple method to avoid plagiarism in efl context behnam aghayani independent researcher, islamic republic of iran correspondence: behnam.aghayani@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v5i1.3670 received 9 september 2021; accepted 23 september 2021 abstract academic plagiarism, consciously or unconsciously, is on the rise and it hurts the scientific community. so, regarding the absurd nature of this academic misconduct, the present study aimed to introduce and develop a new and simple method, called respect, to avoid plagiarism in efl context. to this end, first, the reasons behind plagiarism and factors that influenced on plagiarism have been discussed. second, all types of plagiarism have been identified and then, some important studies on plagiarism in efl context have been reviewed. finally, the components of respect have been defined. based on the key role of respect, it would eliminate plagiarism not only in the efl context but also in all areas of science. moreover, it is hoped that we will no longer see the occurrence of such academic misconduct by following the strategies to avoid plagiarism in academic writings. in addition, some recommendations to avoid plagiarism have been provided at the end. keywords: plagiarism, academic misconduct, efl context, efl learners introduction academic integrity and ethics are two key terms in the academic context that any researcher attempts to consider this principle in his/her writing. however, some researchers, consciously or unconsciously, forget to consider this principle, which leads to plagiarism. plagiarism, according to das and panjabi (2011), “is the wrongful presentation of somebody else’s work or idea as one’s own without adequately attributing it to the source” (p. 67). debnath (2016) considered plagiarism as “a silent epidemic in scientific writing” (p. 164), in addition, bouville (2008) believed that it is “a crime against academy” (p. 1) and “what makes plagiarism reprehensible is that it involves an unfair acquisition of scientific credit” (helgesson & eriksson, 2015, p. 100). in general, plagiarism is a poison in the research community that leads to writing invalid and worthless articles. due to the absurd nature of this academic misconduct, it not only damages the author’s reputation but also discredits his/her university. there are many reasons behind plagiarism; for example, mohammed et al. (2015) found that insufficient knowledge regarding the subject is main reason for plagiarism. furthermore, according to jereb et al. (2018), main reason for ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 29-37 30 committing plagiarism is simple access to the internet. a number of studies reported factors that influence plagiarism which include academic achievement differences, gender differences, and age differences (newstead et al., 1996), individual factors, contextual factors, and institutional factors (mccabe et al., 2001), lack of compatible styles between different disciplines, lack of students’ investment in their education, lack of knowledge, and situational ethics (auer & krupar, 2001), lack of deterrence, lack of understanding, temptation and opportunity, and efficiency gain (park, 2003), lack of strong belief in plagiarism detection (martin, 2005), situational factors, and individual factors (giluk & postlethwaite, 2015), and gender differences (jereb et al., 2018). however, mohammad hosseinpur et al. (2018) in their study among iranian academic community found following reasons driving plagiarism: 1. lack of sufficient guidance from the earliest levels of education 2. incidence of cheating and laziness among students 3. the demand to write articles by supervisors and students to obtain greater degree 4. grades and position the simplicity of university admission in ma and phd level types of plagiarism the various types of plagiarism have been identified that are presented in table 1. table 1. types of plagiarism types of plagiarism definition sham paraphrasing walker (1998) defined it as “material copied verbatim from text and source acknowledged in-line but represented as paraphrased” (p. 103). patchwriting (also known as mosaic plagiarism) according to howard (1999), patchwriting is “copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym for another” (p. xvii). illicit paraphrasing it “occurs when material is paraphrased but writers do not include an in-text citation to acknowledge that the information was borrowed from another work” (strittmatter & bratton, 2016, p. 6). other plagiarism it occurs when “material copied from another student’s assignment with the knowledge of the other student” (walker, 1998, p. 103). verbatim copying (also known as copy & paste plagiarism) it defined as “material copied verbatim from text without in-line acknowledgement of the source” (walker, 1998, p. 103). recycling according to walker (1998) it refers to “same assignment submitted more than once for different courses” (p. 103). ghost writing according to knapp and hulbert (2017), “it describes the writing of material by one person (the writer) for use by another (the client) who will be credited with its authorship” (p. vi). purloining it refers to “assignments that are the work of other ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 29-37 31 students with or without their knowledge” (leung & cheng, 2017, p. 1646). secondary source plagiarism according to sharma and verma (2020), it “occurs when a researcher uses a secondary source but purposefully cites only the primary once within the secondary” (p. 2). paraphrasing plagiarism it occurs when “a source is paraphrased but not acknowledged in the text” (buckley, 2015, p. 354). plagiarism of the form of a source it refers to “cases in which the plagiariser does look up the primary sources but does not acknowledge a systematic dependence on the citations in the secondary source” (mcnamee et al., 2006, p. 118). plagiarism of ideas according to mohammed et al. (2015), it refers to “theft of a new idea or a theory presented anywhere. the plagiarist then conducts research based on this idea/theory and presents it as if it is his/her own without acknowledgment of the source” (p. 8). plagiarism of text (also known as direct plagiarism, word‑for‑word plagiarism, and copy-cutpaste plagiarism) it “occurs when a researcher takes an entire paragraph from another source and includes it in his own research writing” (mohammed et al., 2015, p. 8). self-plagiarism (duplication) it “referred to as a reuse of previously published works without providing adequate references” (lin, 2020, p. 302). collusion it refers to “asking someone else to write a piece of work for the plagiarist who then presents it as if it’s his own” (mohammed et al., 2015, p. 8). translational plagiarism (also known as crosslanguage plagiarism) it refers to translation “novel data or ideas from one language to another, representing it as unique and one’s own creation without crediting the original work” (gray et al., 2019, p. 57). repetitive research plagiarism it includes “repeating or reusing of data or the entire text from a study with similar methodology and results without properly attributing or citing it” (sharma & verma, 2020, p. 2). complete plagiarism (stealing) according to laxmi (2018), it occurs “when a researcher takes a study, a manuscript or other work from another researcher and simply resubmits it under his/her own name” (p. 737). style plagiarism it refers to “copying an author’s reasoning style or concept even when the texts are fully paraphrased” (eisa et al., 2015, p. 384). metaphor plagiarism it refers to “copying someone else’s metaphors in describing a particular subject” (eisa et al., 2015, p. 384). potluck paper it occurs when “the writer tries to disguise plagiarism by copying from several different sources, tweaking the sentences retaining most of the original phrasing” (mahmood & mahmood, 2014, p. 221). labor of laziness according to mahmood and mahmood (2014), it occurs ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 29-37 32 when “the writer takes the time to paraphrase most of the paper from other sources and make it all fit together effort on original work” (p. 222). poor disguise it occurs when “the writer has retained the essential content of the source, he or she has altered the paper’s words of phrases” (mahmood & mahmood, 2014, p. 221). word switch plagiarism it occurs when “someone copies another’s published work with some words changed to avoid suspicion” (sutar, 2017, p. 2). authorship plagiarism it refers to “putting one’s name to someone else’s work” (sutar, 2017, p. 2). photocopy it occurs when “the writer copies significant portions of text straight from a single source, without alteration” (mahmood & mahmood, 2014, p. 221). data fabrication it occurs when the writer “making up of data, results extrapolation and recording or reproducing them” (arya, 2013, p. 28). studies on plagiarism in efl context in last decade, mu study’s (2010) draws more attention on plagiarism in the field of english language as foreign language (efl). he found that efl students have poor knowledge about plagiarism in academic writing. rezanejad and rezaei (2013) in their study among 122 efl learners in iran explored on efl learners’ perception of plagiarism. they came to conclusion that ‘easiness of plagiarism’ is the most important reason for plagiarism. moreover, ahmadi (2014) examined plagiarism among 132 efl learners (both male and female) in iran. the results from his study showed that efl learners used different types of plagiarism in their academic writing. he also found that gender has no significant effect on plagiarism. the findings from amiri and razmjoo’s study (2016) among 12 efl students revealed that teachers’ ignorance of plagiarism, inadequate writing and research abilities, peer pressure, the need to deliver high-quality papers, and the easiness of plagiarizing are the important factors that lead to plagiarism. furthermore, babaii and nejadghanbar (2016) investigated the reasons for plagiarism among 156 iranian graduate students of applied linguistics. the results showed that students’ unfamiliarity with the concept of plagiarism is primary reason for carrying out plagiarism. in another study, al darwish and sadeqi (2016) examined the reasons for plagiarism in efl writing course among 121 female students. they came to conclusion that the efl students done plagiarism to pass the course with good grade. besides, zarfsaz and ahmadi (2017) explored on the reasons of plagiarism among 150 efl learners. based on their findings, efl learners’ inadequate knowledge to avoid plagiarism in their writing is the major reason of plagiarism. fazilatfar et al. (2018) found that citation instruction has significant effect on efl learners to avoid plagiarism in their writing assignments. moreover, mustafa (2019) in his study on 34 efl students in indonesia found that 94 percent of the participants knew what is plagiarism but 66.67 percent of them didn’t know that paraphrasing without citation is a kind of plagiarism. in addition, “88.89 percent ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 29-37 33 of the students considered that patchwriting is not plagiarism” (mustafa, 2019, p. 74). a simple method to avoid plagiarism the present study aims to provide a new simple method to avoid plagiarism in efl context. this method named “respect”, that its notion is firstly introduced by aghayani (2015), is an acronym of seven functions that prevent efl learners to do plagiarism in their writing. the components of respect are presented in figure 1. figure 1. the components of respect referencing the way in which an author acknowledges the sources he/she used in his/her writing is called referencing. there are two types of referencing in the academic writing: in-text citation and citing the source(s) at the end of writing. both types are necessary and this way is the first step that helps efl learners to avoid plagiarism. effective note-taking when an author distinguishes his/her own writing style from the other author writing style he/she used effective note-taking. the effective note-taking not only prevent efl learners to do plagiarism but also can boost their english writing skills. summarizing it refers to the concise version of main text that includes key concepts in an author his/her own words. it also allows efl learners to create a summary of original text without any copy. paraphrasing when an author restates the original text in his/her own words, he/she used paraphrasing method. as paraphrasing promotes efl learners english writing, it can be considered as valuable skill in efl context. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 29-37 34 effective quoting effective quoting refers to direct quotation in a way that is absolutely correct. that is, the author needs to use quotation marks and provide the author’s name, work’s publication date, and page number. it is a basic training for efl learners to avoid plagiarism in their writings. citing your material when an author used material somewhere that previously published by himself, he must to cite the previous one in the current one. this practice helps efl learners to avoid self-plagiarism. timing according to comas-forgas and sureda-negre (2010), “a large number of assignments and poor time management by students (or, similarly, procrastination) lead students to consider plagiarism as an easy way” (p.228). therefore, timing, as the last component of respect, prevent efl learners to do plagiarism. conclusion the current study aims to introduce a new and simple method, called respect, to avoid plagiarism in efl context. to this end, first of all, the author provided the reasons behind plagiarism. besides, all types of plagiarism have been identified and then, the author reviewed some important studies on plagiarism in efl context. finally, the components of respect have been defined. based on the literature, it can be concluded that efl learners can avoid plagiarism in their writing by following respect. it is hoped that respcet will be able to eliminate plagiarism not only in the efl context but also in all areas of science. moreover, it is hoped that we will no longer see the occurrence of such academic misconduct by following the strategies to avoid plagiarism in academic writings. in addition to using respect and concerning recommendations for efl learners, the author highlights the following: 1. use a plagiarism detection tool 2. study the common citation guides (e.g., apa, mla, harvard, and chicago) 3. increase their awareness of academic integrity and ethics 4. improve their writing skills. 5. understand the reasons behind plagiarism references aghayani, b. 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(2017). investigating some main causes and reasons of writing plagiarism in an efl context. international journal of applied linguistics and english literature, 6(5), 214-223. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.6n.5p.214 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 61-69 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 61 functions of metaphor in the lyrics of rayola’s song nasrul gadjah mada university nasrulsn@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.020107 received 8 november 2017; revised 8 december 2017; accepted 26 august 2018 abstract this study aims to show some of the functions of the metaphor used in the lyrics of rayola’s song. rayola is a singer of minang’s songs from padang. the method used in this research is qualitative research in three stages: stage the provision of data, data analysis, and presentation of the results of the data analysis. sources of data in the form of a song sung by rayola, consisting of 8 albums rayola ever published and commercialized. the theory used in this research is the theory of metaphor which is initiatived by lakoff and johnson (1980) as well as the theory of metaphor functions according to stefanowitsch (2005). the results of this study revealed that there are at least seven functions of metaphor contained in the lyrics of rayola’s song 1) to concrete human experience, 2) creating space imagination, 3) soften the language, 4) means to achieve aesthetic effects, 5) to attract attention, 6) to beautify the tone, and 7) pleasing to be heard. keywords: metaphor, metaphor functions, folk songs, rayola, minangkabau introduction discussion of the song can not be separated from the use of language in the lyrics. the song is a blast expressive feelings or thoughts are issued regularly in the form of sound. waluyo (1987: 1) explains that the songs we listen to are not merely beautiful language, but the content of his poetry moreover capable of entertaining humans. the beauty of a song lies in diction or choice of words used. style of language or stylebecomes problem or part of diction or choice of words to question whether or not suitable use of words, phrases or specific clauses to a particular situation (keraf, 2009: p.112). the lyrics of the song has a typical style of the beautiful language, but full of meaning. semi (1988: p.106) states lyric isa short poem that expressesemotions. the words in the song composed by the author withconsidering both aesthetics shades of meaning of words, diction appropriatetones, and other creative elements. when separated from the elements of the music, the melody, rhythm, rhyme, andpreparation lines and stanzas, the lyrics can be analyzed as text (sudjiman 1992: p.64). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 61–69 62 rayola is a minang’s singer who has a distinctive vocal sound and talented. it proved she successfully issued 8 albums consisting of 1) hanyo punyo cinto, 2) takana kasiah di pakanbaru, 3) rindukan ayah, 4) cinto tak sampai, 5) manikam jajak, 6) basandiangbukan jo cinto, 7) luko batahan surang, and 8) pakasiah tak baramuan. in the lyrics of her songs performed are found metaphors that are used as figurative language as well as a means to convey a message. metaphor is a way to solicit ideas, ideas or other things that are used in the lyrics of rayola’s song. the purpose of the use of metaphors for several reasons. these reasons can be concerned about the beauty and cognitive function. it is considered important due to the function studied more deeply is deemed important enough. in addition as a garnish language of metaphor function is very useful for the composer and the audience / listener. the purpose of this study only focuses on the function of metaphor contained in the lyrics of rayola’s song. the function is meant metaphorically function as a figure of speech. metaphor comes from the greek(meta and pheron), meta meaning more while pheron which means move. it's a figure of speech in which a word or phrase used to describe one who does not have a literal reference (mcglune, 2007: p.109). kridalaksana (2008: p.152) is the use of another word or phrase to another object or concept is based on figurative or equation. in line with the statement, chaer (1984) and keraf (2009) say that metaphor is a kind of analogy that compares two things directly, but in the short form. in studies using metaphor theory initiated by lakoff and johnson (1980). in their book, the metaphor we life by, they argue that: "theconcepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. they also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. thus spake our conceptual system plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. if we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor "(lakoffand johnson,1980)". directly, through their statement, they wanted to convey that metaphor is not only appears in humans but it can also appear in everyday life, in the experience, and human actions. the basic structure of metaphor is very simple consists of two things: something that is being discussed (compared) and something that is used as a comparison. if the two are close together, the metaphor would appear yet expressive quality of nothing at all. conversely, if the distance between these two things pretty much, the more effective metaphor (sumarsono, p. 2012: 265-266). according to richard (1972: p.97), the theory of metaphor can be seen that the metaphor has three main elements in it, namely: 1) vehicle or the source domain is the domain that serves as a means to convey a metaphor in the form of words or figurative expression itself. 2) tenoror the target domain that contains ideas, concepts, objectsdescribed, discussed, figured, symbolized, and compared 3) groundor a sense that is similarities between the vehicle and the tenor in the form of a relation equation can be objective: the shape, place, character, or any ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 61–69 63 combination in between and similarities emotive, concept, function, andsociocultural. in connection with the function of metaphor, there are two hypothesis: stylistics hypothesis and cognitive hypothesis (stefanowitsch, 2005). stylistics hypothesis refers to the ornamental function, namely that the metaphorical expression is believed to be ornate language used. cognitive hypothesis refers to cognitive function, namely that the expression of metafiris contains concepts that form an integral experience in everyday life. metaphor functions referred to in this article is referring to the use of interest metaphorical expression that has the power or force that exceeds the literal sense of the phrase. owned power metaphorical expression consists of intensify, refine, transform diversity, beautify, facilitate a concept is understood. the basic five power which is based on the underlying function sequentially metaphor related to concretize, refine, emotive function and other functions. method this researchuses three stages: stage research providing data, stage of data analysis, and presentation of the results of data analysis. at the provision of data using simak methods (sudaryanto, 1988:), the researcher observed attentively the language in the lyrics of rayola’s song that uses the metaphor. after the data is found, classified into certain parts by the realm of metaphor sources. furthermore, the data recorded in the data card. at data analysisstage using a padan method (sudaryanto, 1993: p.13), the method of determining the data analysis is outside, apart, and do not become part of the language(langue)concerned or studied. data were analyzed is determined by means of deciding which of the mental power possessed sorting researcher then followed by a referential sorting techniques. furthermore, using comparison technique that appeal equate which is equate principal staple in the realm form the source and the target domains. translational technique is also required in this study in order to change the minang language to indonesian. at the stage of presentation of the data analysts use informal methods and formal methods (sudaryanto, 1993: p.145), using a formulation of words can even with its technical terminology and use the formulation signs or symbols. findings and discussion some findings about the function of metaphor contained in the lyrics rayola’s song can be structured as follows. to concrete human experience the things that are abstract in life can be concretized by using metaphors. abstract objects that can not be captured by sensory can be illustrated with the help of metaphors. how is an abstract object that can be concretized is a mechanism that is unique. through a complicated metaphor can be explained with a simple, consider the following offerings: 1. takuik ko duri cinto manusuk hati afraidthis love’s thorn stabs heart 'afraid thorn this love stabs heart (1.rus.2) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 61–69 64 2. tasamsam duri cinto be touched thorn’s love ‘be touched thorn’s love’ (4.b.6) through metaphor, the concept of love can be explained and be seen in example (1). abstract’s love then is figured with the word duri.the word duri juxtaposed with the word love is a metaphor. love is figured as a thorn, it can hurt, stabbing or can injure. of those referred to in this metaphor is the love that is 'thorns' may barb. through the realm of plant sources can be prefigured the concept of love. a similar concept can be seen in the example (2) love is figured as a strap that is a depiction of love that can bind like a rope. abstract’s love realm source can be concretized with inanimate objects that rope. creating space imagination space imaginationis a picture in the mind of the something without direct experience through the senses. imagination (kbbi, 2008: p.526) is the power of thought to imagine (in fantasy), or creating images (paintings, essays, etc.) the event is based on reality or experience of a person; delusion. in this case, that meant imagination in the metaphor is to imagine a pattern or concept of something through a metaphor. this happens because of the power of imagination that appear as a result of the process in a metaphor metaphorical. metaphor try to bridge it by describing the abstract to the concrete. generally, the things that are abstract described by the metaphor, but there are also things concretely described. love is hard to define even the true meaning. in the dictionary yet, the concept of love is elusive because every human being has their definitions. through metaphor, the concept of love that can be simplified with imaginative space. 3. dulu sabiduak kito baduo first one boat we were both 'first we were both of the boat' marangkuah dayuang marendo cinto holding the paddle crochet love 'to hold the paddle crochet love' (2.tmp.3) 4. diantaro kito lamo tajalin cinto among us long standing love 'among us have long intertwined love' indak denai sangko putuih jadinyo unexpecte to break would happen 'i was not expecting to break up eventually' (4.rsg) some feel that love is a fabric that can be embroidered. love can be decorated with beautiful things. the word crochet is commonly used for fabrics, materials fabrics, silk and garments. however, juxtaposed with the word love crochet forming figurative meaning. in addition, as a complement of other elements located on dulu sabiduak baduo that has long been the love relationship is established, it is designated by the dulu sabiduak baduo . in other words as a complement lies in marangkuah dayuang 'holding paddles that seeks to achieve a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 61–69 65 certain goal together. so, in the example (3) of the things want to describe is their love story that has happened already quite long with many obstacles and barriers in order to achieve a common goal. through the example (4) the story of the journey of love that can be imaginated by using theboat dulu sabiduak kito baduo and do a trip with the paddle there. the next love is figured as something that can be put together. something that split can be combined with the name of love. this can be seen in the example (4) tajalin cinto 'entwined in love'. love is figured withword tajalin 'established'. selanjutkan complement of the idea of love can be seen from these words advanced indak denai sangko putuih jadinyo 'not what i expected would break uphappens'. the shape figure illustrates that i never thought that a love affair that has been established will be broken. through the example (4) the story depicted a love story of the character me which has long been the case then broke in the middle of the road. two different perceptions about the journey of love arises because love is an abstract thing that is in the thoughts and feelings that can not be defined easily. through metaphor, the concept of love was imagined into a variety of stories that fill the story of the characters involved in it. these two examples illustrate that love is a life journey that is taken by people who want to feel that love. love can also be interpreted as a long process, which does not guarantee the end of a love that would be wonderful. soften the language in certain occasions, something that is sometimes considered taboo for phrased properly. so, we need something that is considered taboo replacement looks more refined. it is also found in the lyrics of rayola’s song, songwriter deliberately doing so in order to be good to hear. by using metaphors such purposes can be done. this is because one of the characteristics of the metaphor is to equate one thing with another. 5. ayah jo mandeh bapisah cinto father and mother goodbye love 'father and mother split of love' (3.bl.1) 5a. ayah jo mandeh bacarai mother and father divorced 'father and mother divorced' example (5) and ( 5a) are two forms that are almost the same meaning. example (5) is a metaphor that is marked with the notationword bapisah 'split'combined with the word cinto'love',forming a predicative metaphors. while in the example (5a) is not a metaphor because it does not have a figurative meaning, for example (5a) is a direct meaning. metaphor in the example (5), the object to be figured was a divorce. however, by using a metaphor, the term divorce can be smoothed by replacing the word becomes a metaphor. the word divorce for some people is something that is considered ugly, bad and has negative connotations, especially when used in the lyric of folk song . the wordsbapisah cinto 'goodbyelove' is seen as more subtle than the word divorce. parting words of love can be used as a "definition" of divorce / separation through metaphor. in that instance, contained a function to refine the language with the goal of politeness. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 61–69 66 means to achieve aesthetic effects metaphor functions are the other means to achieve the aesthetic effect. this is related to the basic concept of metaphor is comparing something else because there are similarities. metaphor as figurative language spoken language can create catchy. 6. bamulo cinto tajalin di antaro kito begins love existed between us 'our love started among us' (7.lsbs.1) 6a. bamulo cinto tajadi di antara kita begins love happening between us 'love happens between us' 6b. bamulo cinto tibo di antaro kito begins love comes between us 'love come between us' through the example (6) can be compared with the sample (6a) and examples (6b) which is more beautiful figurative language to express the love that occurs between both figures. predicative metaphors of the third exampleword tajalin 'exists' is considered more aesthetic and concept of intertwined it suitable for use in the sample (6) in short, love is figured into some object that can be put together. love is an abstract concept that can be realized to be something that can be put together. the lyrics is one of the informative media that convey ideas, ideas and thoughts of the creator of the lyrics. to that end, consideration using proper grammar, manners and beautiful into a strong reason to use a metaphor as one means to achieve the aesthetic values in the songs, especially folk songs. attention function of the most common metaphor is to attract attention. this is based, that metaphor becomes a medium to convey something ordinary into something exaggerate (considered to be outstanding). the applicability of these figurative terms will create more interesting to hear even though its literal meaning would be the same. here are some of the data found in the lyrics of the song rayola. 7. tapi denai takuik jo kumbang but i fear with the beetle 'but i fear with the beetle' (1.hpc) 7a. tapi denai takuik jo laki-laki but i fear with the man 'but i fear with the man' metaphor in the data (7) the word kumbang 'beetle' is one example of nominative metaphors for the symbol of figurative only in that metaphor. beetles are metaphors for men. use of the beetle is certainly the goal is not merely to complement it, but make it more interesting lyrics. example (7a) can be comparable, although equally pointed in males, but the use of the word beetle is considered more attractive. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 61–69 67 to beautify the tone metaphorsin the lyrics of rayola’s song also has the function of a way to beautify the tone. the function is found by way of repeating certain parts of the metaphor to give a certain effect that support the function of the tone beautified. this is done with consideration as an effective way if it is compared with other means if without repetition. these methods are commonly used in songs, especially folk songs. in songs generally use the way of repetition, the repetition of certain parts, even the repetition almost most of the lyrics of the song. however, the lyrics of rayola’s song, the repetition can be found in the form of metaphor. in addition to the form of metaphor, another form will be ignored. that is not part of this research study. the repetition shape can be seen in the example (8), which uses the word laruik 'soluble' which is a form of metaphor action. figurative meaning to be figured that i was getting late for love. the main thing is to be conveyed to the sample (8) is a love that can make people late to the atmosphere, can also soundly asleep with love. love likesomething that can make a blend with specific circumstances. metaphoric in the example (8) will be tested based on the presence or absence of such repetition. the shape whether they can be expressed as a function to beautify the tone. consider some comparative examples. 8. denai lah laruikdilaruik cinto i have solubled solubled love 'i have solubled solubled because of love' (8.ad) 8a. denai lah larut cinto i have solubled love ‘i have solubled love’ 8b. denai lah dilarut cinto i have solubled by love 'i have solubled by love’ example (8) when compared with the example (8a), even though both use the word soluble, figurative meaning will appear different. in the example of figure (8) have already explained that i was in a state of "dilarut" love while examples (8b) explained that the figures i've dissolve in love. in the example (8b) appears almost the same meaning, but the effects that arise only mediocre. will be different from the meaning that appears in the example (8) is a confirmation of the specific points that solubled by love. with the repetition, as well as beautify the tone also serves as the emphasis on certain points in the song. pleasing to be heard metaphor has another function, namely as an alternative to convey something so pleasing to beheard. the lyrics are part of the language that will be delivered through music. the use of metaphors in the lyrics of the song also be considered to be pleasant to hear, not boring and uncomfortable to hear because the language is conveyed using figurative language. with the metaphor, the aim that the song is nice to be heard can be achieved. through metaphor, we can make the words used in the song lyrics are easy to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 61–69 68 digest and will provide certain effects. rayola’s song lyrics found on goal these functions are in the form of metaphor in the following example. 9. di antaro kito lamo tajalin cinto among us longentwined in love' 'among us has long been entwined in love' (4.rsg) 9a. di antaro kito lah lamo tajadi cinto 'among us happened a long time love 'among us happened a long time love 'metaphorin the example (9) uses the verb tajalin' entwined 'whereas in example (9a) using the verb happened. the second form of this metaphor, the words entwined considered more pleasing to be heard because the word gives a positive impression, soft, and polite. in contrast to the example (9a) using tajadi word 'happened'. the word is heard as it gives the impression of a dramatic, terrible, and give a different effect. although the meaning of the metaphor of the two data are similar, metaphorical form entwined in example (9) to be considered as having a function to be pleasing to be heard. conclusion rayola’s songs is one of minangkabau’s songs which use minang’s language and have quite a lot of figurative language, especially in the form of metaphor. based on research of the lyrics ofrayola’s song, argued that metaphor is a means to express language, and ornate language is also a means to achieve certain functions. these functions are part of the songs are sung, and the messages to be conveyed. the metaphorical expression that is directly or not directly related to the songs sung by singer. the results of this study indicate that the function of the metaphor used in the lyrics of rayola’s song is intended as follows 1) to concrete human experience, 2) creating space imagination, 3) soften the language, 4) means to achieve aesthetic effects, 5) to attract attention, 6) to beautify the tone, and 7) pleasing to be heard. references keraf, g. (2009). diksi dan gaya bahasa (rev.). jakarta: gramedia. kridalaksana, h. (2008). kamus linguistik. jakarta: gramedia pustaka utama. lakoff, g., & mark, j. (1980). metaphor we live by. chicago: the university of chicago press. ogden, c.k., & richards, i.a. (1972). the meaning of meaning. london: routledge. semi, a. (1988). antomi sastra. padang: angkasa raya. stefanowitsch, al. (2005).the function of metaphor: developing a corpus based perspective. international journal of corpus linguistics 10(2), pp.161-198. sudaryanto. (1988). metode linguisitk bagian kedua (metode dan aneka teknik pengumpulan data). yogyakarta: gadjah mada university press. sudaryanto. (1993). metode dan aneka teknik analisis bahasa. yogyakarta: duta wacana university press. sudjiman, p. (1992). serba-serbi semiotika. jakarta: gramedia. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 61–69 69 sugiono, d., dkk. (2008). kamus besar bahasa indoneisa (4 th ed.). jakarta: gramedia pustaka utama. sumarsono. (2012). pengantar semantik (adaptation from semantics, an introduction to the science of meaning karya ullmann tahun 1997). yogyakarta: pustaka pelajar. waluyo, h. j. (1987). teori dan apresiasi puisi. jakarta: erlangga. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 253-263 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 253 the track record of usd student organizations: a young driyarkara creativity revolution intan printina brigida sanata dharma university, indonesia brigidaintan91@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010211 received 8 september 2017; revised 19 january 2018; accepted 21 february 2018 abstract this article describes the track record of student organizations (ukm) at sanata dharma university (sdu). this study tried to reveal the contribution of student organizations as a creativity revolution especially for students’ personality development, which will lead to the progress of sdu. the research type was a descriptive qualitative research which aims to elaborate the history of student organizations in sdu based on the viewpoint and spirit of young driyarkara. the method of the research were interviewing, gathering data, and analyzing results. the result of this study indicated that student organizations in sdu have contributed to improve students’ personality developments such as mental and physical development, cognitive and social development, public speaking and also vocal skill. thus, the students are not only competent in hard skills but also soft skills which prioritize human values. keywords: track record, student activity units, creativity, young driyarkara revolution introduction a student organization is one of the distinctive features owned by academic society of sanata dharma university (sdu) outside their curricular activities (academic activities) and co-curricular activities (freshmen personality development program--ppkmb). thus, student organizations are extracurricular activities which enrich their creative talents and help develop their personalities. student organizations (unit kegiatan mahasiswa—ukm) or commonly known as a campus activities community is a place where students can engage in multiple interests and channel their hobbies, ideas, aspirations and energy to make the most of their time. ukm is considered as a means to enhance their soft skills. this is in line with the rules of kemendikbud ri (indonesia’s ministry of education and culture) no.155/u/1998 about student organization general guidelines (pedoman umum organisasi kemahasiswaan) in universities which stated that intra-college student organizations is a vehicle and means of student self-development toward the expansion of insights, increased their scholarly quality and integrity to achieve the goal of higher education. mailto:brigidaintan91@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 253-263 254 ukms in sanata dharma university have given birth to excellent individuals proven with various achievements which will be discussed in this research. however, one limitation is identified from many ukms in sanata dharma university which is their track record. sanata dharma university has recorded only small number of achievements of the whole bunch of student organizations whose activities and progress are unknown by many people including students. there are some related studies being reviewed in this study especially those related to ukms’ track record. the review of related studies provide several theories, such as, theory of ukms, creativity, and the principle of driyarkara on humanizing young human. the purpose of student organizations is to promote intentional involvement, facilitate leadership, and encourage student growth by interacting with various identities that distinguishes them from other groups. this opportunity help develop the cohesiveness between groups. cohesiveness between groups is defined as an agreement of the members in achieving their objectives and mutual acceptance among the members of the group (munkitar, 2008). the more engaged they are to the objectives, the closer they get as team members. according to munkitar (1985), creativity is the ability to create new combination, based on existing data, information or the elements. the results created are not always new things, but can also be combination from the existing things. in addition, csikszentmihalyi (in clegg, 2008) states that creativity is an action, ideas, or products that change something obsolete becomes something new. creativity is one of the basic needs of human being, which is the need of self-actualization which is the highest stage in human needs’ hierarchy (maslow, in munkitar, 2009). basically, everyone was born with their innate creative potential. creativity can be identified and nurtured through proper education (munkitar, 2009). according to the naccce (national advisory committee on creative and cultural education) (in craft, 2005), creativity is imaginative activity which produces valuable new results. furthermore, feldman (in craft, 2005) defines creativity is: “the achievement of something remarkable and new, something which transforms and changes a field of endeavor in a significant way . . . the kinds of things that people do that change the world.” while according to rogers (in zulkarnain, 2002), creativity is human tendency to actualize themselves in a manner conforming with their own ability. from that sense, creativity is one of the essential elements in students activities in order to enhance their personality development and to actualize their potential so they will feel themselves more meaningful and valuable. there is a thought that simply uplifts every human being over an understanding that driyarkara’s thoughts contradict the opinion of a philosopher, thomas hobbes with his statement “homo homini lupus”, which means man is a wolf to other human beings. while driyarkara has a new notion of “homo homini socius”, which means man is a friend for others. he tried to put his thinking as the foundation of the new human education, in order for humans to become more aware of their existence as the subject of all material in the world without neglecting their neighbors (wardaya, 2009). driyarkara’s concept can represent various kinds of problems. driyarkara combines his theological concept with malebranche’s view to formulate the goal ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 253-263 255 of human existence. his views are influenced by heidegger’s view of existence and the javanese philosophy. driyarkara agrees the problem of existence as a central theme that connects all other human activities. human consciousness includes being aware of their existence and also aware of their purpose of existing. it is what spreads in driyarkara discussion room when commenting on other realm of activities such as social, human, culture and also education. he thinks that men who exist are able to realize the purpose of his life, what potential he can produce, and what he should do. the more interactions generated and resulting in a uniform routine will potentially lead to several new discoveries as humans attempt to conquer nature. method the track record of ukms in usd as a means to channel students’ creativity, which is also in line with sdu’ motto “intelligent and humanist”, was studied using the descriptive qualitative method by conducting interview or oral history study. the data were in the form of collected documents and oral sources conducted by interviewing in sanata dharma university’s ukms and supported by the researchers’ observation. sutopo (2006, p.139) states that qualitative research always presents its findings in the form of detailed, complete, and profound description of the process on why and how things happen. using descriptive qualitative research, researchers was able to capture the qualitative description with detail information (sutopo, 2006, p.227). research report showed the data from various sources to answer the research problem. data analysis technique used in this research was inductive approach. the process and meaning were highlighted in qualitative research or in historical study. oral history research is data collection in the form of photo documents and other documents based on the formulation of the problem in this study. therefore, this research required two observers to collect data and researchers to analyze data. findings and discussion the discussion of the track records of student organizations will be divided based on the organizations’ contribution to the development of student’s personality which is in line with driyarkara’s notion “humanizing young human“. the contributions are mental and physical development, cognitive and social development, public speaking and also vocal training. student organizations of sdu that can hone mental personality and work the body among others are grisadha, mapashada, tutu club, karawitan, football, menwa, tsd, aikido, basketball, inkai, kempo, and taekwondo. resembling praying, dancing is the soul and spirit of grisadha, so the two are inseparable, because the soul and the spirit form an art. dancing has been considered as some kind of a dialogue with the god almighty. there are also performances that have been wrapped up gracefully by grisadha like the performances tangkuban perahu (2007), dewi sri (2008), tangkuban perahu part 2 (2009). as time goes by, grisadha is increasingly acknowledged as a student organization with a lot of potential. other than that, in 2010 grisadha participated in a regional level competition (selekda). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 253-263 256 figure 1: roro mendut performance in october 16, 2015 source : grisadha student organization mapasadha is a student organization in sdu which has stood since october 18, 1981 concerning environmental group. in its 32 years of operating, there are a lot of activities that have been carried out by mapasadha. there are routine activities like mapasadha anniversary, dikjut (further education), and regeneration. furthermore, there are also other activities like earth day celebration and expedition. activities in open nature can be dangerous, so it needs careful planning. management includes planning, organizing, actuating, and controlling. figure 2: mapasadha expedition-gede pangrango mountain 2017 source: mapasadha student organization tutu (to universe that utopia) means ‘to the world that believes in dreams more than anything’. fitting with its philosophical meaning, ballet student organization, tutu club, defines itself as an organization which is formed because of the common dreams or hopes of sdu students who have interest and talent in the field of ballet. tutu club was officially appointed as a student organization on october 21, 2011. the objective of tutu club is to be a place where students who love and wanted to develop themselves in the art of ballet and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 253-263 257 to hone their organizational abilities in the field of student organization management as well as being a committee of internal events or public events. figure 3: tutu club participated in pomda cup source: tutu club the soccer student organization stood around 2000s and, at that time, was only operating to accommodate students who love playing soccer and train them to participate in pomda cup (a selection event for pomnas soccer teams in d.i.y contingent). through this organization students can hone their interest and talent that they possessed so they can become professional soccer players with a lot of achievement and can bring honor to sdu. in 1993, the art student organization karawitan was established when usd was still ikip sanata dharma. karawitan organization has the objective to promote indonesian art and culture by introducing the art of wayang kulit (shadow puppet show), art festival karawitan gending gerejani (sekar geni) and other festivals to society in hopes of resuscitating people both inside and outside of campus to realize how rich this country is because indonesian heritage has its own unique diversity which makes that inheritance highly qualified if it is preserved well. figure 4: picture of sekar geni festival in 2017 source: karawitan student organization the student organization student regiment (menwa) of sdu stood in may 4, 1985, but it was not yet officially formed. back then, menwa organization was ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 253-263 258 still under the auspices of indonesian national army (tni) and was not under the auspices of the university. in its development, in 2000 menwa was officially taken under the university’s care. this happened because of reformation and the decision letter (sk) from 3 ministers, the minister of defense, the minister of education, and the minister of sports. so, menwa organization is managed by university and is led by the rectorate, especially vice rector iii. menwa organization has its roles in various events such as a mass mangrove planting action, the hoisting of the red and white flag in national independence day which is held in sdu and making sure the independence day flag ceremony goes without a hitch, also the role menwa plays in a blood donor event where menwa works together with ksr organization to ensure the event that was held in around may 2017 went smoothly. figure 5: the participation of sat-menwa ignatian sdu in a student senate of the faculty of economics atmajaya yogyakarta university in 2015 source: menwa student organization teater seriboe djendela (tsd) is one of the art student organizations in sdu that specialized in the field of theatrical play. established in may 14, 1999 in ngobaran beach, gunung kidul, the first members of tsd came from kethoprak sadhar budaya community, one of the first art activist communities to exist in sdu. experiments of various genres are the result of tsd’s interaction with various theater community either with theater communities from other campus or an independent theater community. the interactions are made through a hospitality visit or through the tsd members’ individual involvement with other art communities in various projects, such as involvement with bagong kussudiarja foundation, bengkel mime theater, umar kayam foundation, etc. aikido was born in yogya in 1996, being brought by haris martono, the student of milda gustiana (bandung). haris who was still in kyu-2 later became a trainer and laddy lesmana as the first dojo chairman in yogya, who first had to train in a dojo outside of the city in semarang. on the initial management, they were helped by oerip handoko and sutoyo. after numerous times of changing their location, in the early september of 1997, by the effort of andi and theo, the dojo of sdu was opened. therefore, the sanata dharma aikido dojo is the oldest aikido dojo in yogyakarta. the contribution of aikido in the development of students’ soft skills is to gain harmony with one self and their environment in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 253-263 259 the form of martial arts in accordance with the philosophy and teaching of o’sensei morihei ueshiba as well as producing a qualified trainer (sensei) who can pass on aikido in accordance to o’sensei’s teaching. in 2007, the basketball student organization was recently established as a student organization in sdu. in 2008, sdu’s women team gained the first rank in yogya and was set to represent yogyakarta in the national league. through those activities, students become more responsible in managing their activities both in campus and in basketball community, they become more disciplined, have higher sportsmanship in participating in the competitions, and it improves student’s cooperation in reaching the common goal. figure 6: documentation of basketball organization team source: basketball student organization in may 25, 1971, inkai was officially established as an institution member of forki and by pb forki, inkai was chosen to represent indonesia. the vision of inkai organization isto shape karate who master not only the martial arts technique but also the value inside and are able to align themselves with the spirit of 3c (competence, conscience, compassion). the objective of inkai is to build students’ soft skills to ; 1) become a place to develop students’ potential; 2) to raise the flag of sanata dharma through karate; 3) to shape an individual with integrity; 4) to shape a tough individual; 5) to shape a humble individual with etiquette. figure 7: photos of inkai organization activities source : inkai student organization ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 253-263 260 shorinji kempo of sdu has been around since 1992 founded by the late dr. christina siwi hkitayani. shorinji kempo organization of sdu was initially named kempo organization, but because there were changes in ad/art perkemi (shorinji kempo indonesia brotherhood). then the name was changed. the contribution of kempo organization in sdu students’ personality development is to create kenshi students that care about society, have high discipline, and are dignified through mental and physical development as well as becoming a martial arts organization that has national level achievement. figure 8: photos of kempo organization activities source: kempo student organization sdu taekwondo was first held in tuesday, august 25, 1987 by sabeum nim ir. didi s. margono. sabeum nim ir. didi s. margono was the first trainer of sdu taekwondo group until the present time. taekwondo besides improving one’s soft skills also give someone a martial arts training that is useful to protect themselves from every threat especially physical threats. sdu taekwondo organization participated in kejurnas 2015, “taekwondo national open championship”. sdu student organizations that aim to improve oneself with knowledge as well as socializing are natas organization, ksr, and community service organization. ukpm (student’s press activities student organization) natas was established in the 80s (but natas ad/art that we have managed to found was signed november 1, 1993). this organization domiciled in sdu yogyakarta. at that time, there were a lot of students who liked to hold a discussion on intracampus problems as well as nation-wide polemics. they raised a lot of issues and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 253-263 261 it felt necessary that the general public had to know. the only way was to write the things they had discussed in an alternative media in the form of bulletin. ksr student organization was inaugurated on september 22, 1986. the vision of this organization is to combine the principles of cooperation with qualified student resources that uphold honesty, fairness, piety, and entrepreneurial spirit. in its development, kopma student organization is a place to develop students’ creativity which is expected to be able to give benefits to students in self development so that when they are trusted into the working environment, they have prior experience and the ability to work in teams. from the beginning of its foundation in 2000 until 2006, community service student organization experience development every year. based on community service chairman agus wahid santoso the most significant development in his time in community service organization can be seen in 2014 2015, it can be seen through the teamwork they did. community service organization was invited by vice rector 3 to give a presentation about the work program of community service organization in front of students from sogang korea. in the field of education, the members of community service organization become volunteers to teach in community schools. the organization works with two community schools: kampung juminahan community school and kampung jogoyudan community school. other than that, community service organization works together with kemetiran church and sdu lppm to develop sambel (sanggar maria belajar). sdu student organization that can train public speaking and vocals are masdha student organization and students’ choir cantus firmus (cf) student organization. in october 15, 1990 a community radio student organization : masdha radio was formed. the idea behind the name of the radio itself came from the abbreviation of sanata dharma students (mahasiswa sanata dharma) that became “masdha”. of course as a community, this radio organization becomes a place where students can give their ideas. the organization’s visions that also help in building sdu students character are to maintain a comfortable familial atmosphere for all crew members, do an internal fix of masdha and develop each division job description, to establish collaboration with other student organizations and a few work partners outside of campus, and to increase monthly profit. students choir “cantus firmus” was first founded in 1981 as a church choir with the name driyarkara. then this choir evolved into a public choir in 1991, and was in the sub unit of art organization. after getting a lot of achievement in october 20, 1998, this choir was established as an official student organization in sdu yogyakarta and at that exact date, students choir cantus firmus’ birth and the birthday was settled. the contribution of students choir cantus firmus students organization in the development of students character are : improving self discipline through routine training that is held every evening plus additional training when the time of a competition is near, increasing responsibility through a lot of long and rigorous training, improving individual’s ability to do better in daily time management between daily activities, campus activities, and vocal trainings, improving individual’s vocal ability and quality. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 253-263 262 figure 9: harmony of indonesia concert source: private document figure 10: expo 2011 source: students choir cantus firmus a couple of student organization documents are needed as a proof of students’ creativity development and the progress of sdu. but, until now the records have not been tracked. from the research that has been done in order to finish this article, it proves that sdu needs to give their attention seriously in order to support students character other paying attention to only their academic struggle. in accordance with driyarkara’s mission which is “humanizing young human” this article presents the track records of sdu student organizations, that exist to open our minds so that we can create young driyarkara generation and lead the university to be ready to meet every challenges. conclusion the result of the research managed to trace the student organizations’ track records and from the data gathered, there are 19 student organizations which manage their documentations well. those student organizations are ; (1) grishada, (2) lens club, (3) mapasadha (4) masdha, (5) tutu club, (6) soccer, (7) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 253-263 263 karawitan, (8) menwa, (9) natas, (10) community service, (11) teater sanata dharma (tsd), (12) students cooperation (kopma), (13) aikido, (14) basketball, (15) inkai, (16) kempo, (17) voluntary corps (ksr), (18) students choir cantus firmus, (19) taekwondo. some others have the dynamics in their developments but still remain standing until today. references driyarkara, n. (1980). driyarkara tentang manusia. yayasan kanisius: yogyakarta. elfindri. (2011). soft skills untuk pendidikan. baduose media. goleman, d. (2003). kepemimpinan yang mendatangkan hasil (1 st ed.). yogyakarta: amara books. lestari, t. (2014). efektivitas teknik pelatihan melalui penghayatan pengalaman (experiental learning) terhadap peningkatan kohesivitas kelompok kerja unit kegiatan mahasiswa. retrieved from http://repository.upi.edu/7171/ mulyono, i. (2011). dari karya tulis ilmiah sampai dengan soft skills. bandung: yrama widya. munandar, u. (1985). mengembangkan bakat dan kreativitas anak sekolah. jakarta: grasindo jakarta. putra, i.s. & pratiwi, a. (2005). sukses dengan soft skiils. bandung: univ. teknologi bandung. sailah, i. (2008). pengembangan soft skills di perguruan tinggi. jakarta: direktorat jenderal pendidikan tinggi. zulkarnain. (2002). kretativitas dan kontrol diri. yogyakarta: ilmu cendekia ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 247-255 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 247 english phonology for language learners: exploring learners’ preferences ika adhitiyan utami and alies poetri lintangsari universitas brawijaya dhitadhitiyan@student.ub.ac.id; alieslintang@ub.ac.id doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i2.3234 received 24 march 2021; accepted 30 march 2021 abstract english phonology is an absolutely necessary subject that should be mastered by foreign language learners in learning english. it is taught mostly at university level. however, there are still many students who are not aware of how important learning english phonology is and less interested in learning this subject. there also has been little study that concerns students' preferences in learning english phonology whereas knowing students’ preferences on topics or themes used in learning materials is a good step to make better learning outcomes. this study aims to investigate the most and least preferred topics and themes by efl (english as a foreign language) students during english phonology learning. this was a descriptive quantitative research by using a cross-sectional survey design. the data was collected with questionnaire from 112 participants of english education study program students. the result showed phonological process pattern in english becoming the most preferred topic and theme while segmental phonology becoming the least preferred topic and theme in learning english phonology. keywords: efl student, english phonology, learning english, pronunciation, student preference introduction learning english is certainly not an easy thing, especially for foreign language learners. english is a dominant language which is globally used in many sectors of life such as in business, politics, technology, science, education, and many more (crystal, 1997; nunan, 2003). in indonesia, the status of english is as a foreign language. it means that english is not frequently used in daily life, especially by students. mostly english is only used when they are studying at school or only as target language (the language used as a learning objective). there are components that must be mastered in learning english. pronunciation is a part of language components. the way people pronounce english is an important skill to pay attention to. as stated by brown (1991), learners’ pronunciation ability will influence their english learning outcomes. however, many foreign language learners still have difficulty in pronouncing english words. one of the reasons is the influence of their mother tongue, indonesian language, on their target language, english (gozali, 2019). adeline (2020) claimed that indonesian students face difficulty in pronouncing english because there are differences in language sound systems between indonesian language and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 247-255 248 english. she also explained that students feel less motivated to check the correctness of their pronunciation when pronouncing words in english, for example in pronouncing /g/ sound correctly. incorrect pronunciation can cause a change in meaning of the word. it can lead to misunderstanding. mentioned by savitri and andrianto (2021), efl students need to be aware of english sounds to understand the language accurately. this is why learning english phonology is quite important. english phonology according to rabiah (2018), phonology is a part of language subsystem. it explains that learning a language is inseparable from learning phonology because phonology is a part that forms language. phonology is the study of sound systems, that is about how the sound in a language can be produced, patterned, and functioned (hyman, 1975; catford, cited in fikry, 1988; collins et al., 2008). this means that learning phonology is important in order to know how to pronounce language correctly. the existence of phonology is closely related to phonetics. phonology also discusses phonetics in terms of transcribing the speech sounds. however, they are both different. dardjowidjojo (2009) claimed that the difference between phonology and phonetics lies in focus of the study. the focus of phonetics is in formation, production, and perception of sounds rather than the way how sounds are directly used and formed. phonology in each language can be different. the example is in english phonology. in learning english phonology, there are several topics that can be studied which are accent difference, intonation analysis, phonetics transcription, speech rhythm, segmental phonology, phonological process pattern in english, vowel system, and consonant system. in pronouncing a language, everyone from different countries can have a different accent. accent is “several ways in which language can be pronounced” (collins et al., 2008, p.2). it is also in speaking english. there are different ways of speaking english such as british english, american english, australia english, indian english, singaporean english or chinese english, and etc. supported by mahmud (2018), even the language that people speak is the same language, people can have several differences such as influenced by dialect, etc. these differences can be caused by mother tongue or first language used in daily life. intonation belongs to phonological phenomena. intonation refers to “the pattern of rises and falls in pitch across a stress speech” (becker & bieswanger, 2017, p.67). according to becker and bieswanger (2017), pitch is also called accent which is the normal melodic height that an individual can reach when his/her vocal folds vibrate. spence (2014) expressed that intonation analysis deals with analyzing the intonation patterns which are tonality, tonicity, and tone. tonicity is “the division of continuous speech into melodic units called tone groups”, while tonicity is “the placement of the melodic nucleus or tonic of each group of tone” (spence, 2014, p.5). tone is variations of pitch that affect the meaning of a word (becker & bieswanger, 2017). collins et al. (2008) described that phonetics transcription is an indicator which can show a small details articulation of any particular sound by using differently shaped symbols, e.g. [ɂ ɹ], or by adding little marks (known as diacritics) to a symbol, e.g. [ɑ̃ ṱ]. then, becker and bieswanger (2017) claimed ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 247-255 249 phonetic transcription as a way to transcribe spoken language using square brackets which reflect the actual pronunciation in very detailed. in example, the phonetic transcription of ‘language’ is [ˈlæŋgwɪdʒ]. segmental phonology is one of recognized branches in phonology. it deals with the analysis of speech into phonemes (or segmental phonemes), which correspond fairly well to phonetics segments of analyzed speech. crystal (1981) stated that segmental phonology is how analyzing speech into variant units, or segments, as the primary of the sound system. furthermore, becker and bieswanger (2017) defined segmental phonology as individual sounds function in a language which is called segments. chomsky and halle (1968) mentioned that segments consist of vowels and consonants. vowels and consonants can be referred to as segmental phonemes. form of words and sounds can change when they occur in connected speech (becker & bieswanger, 2017). this is a natural process called phonological process. phonological process is “rules used to simplify pronunciation of words in a language” (leung & brice, 2012, p.2). in this process, there are several processes adapted from becker and biswanger (2017). these processes consist of strong and weak forms, assimilation, and liaison. vowel system is one of main topics in learning english phonology, which is side by side with the topic of consonant systems. mahmud (2018) explained that this topic focuses on how vowels can be pronounced by speech organs and differences between one sound to another when it is produced. mahmud also mentioned that there is a specific symbol of each sound that can differentiate the sounds. adapted from dardjowidjojo in mahmud (2009), there are 11 vowels in english which are /i:/, /ɪ/, /e/, /ɛ/, /ӕ/, /ә/, /u:/, /u/, /ɔ/, /o/, and /a/. dardjowidjojo also stated that the vowel system has four parameters in vowel production. the parameters are the height of the tongue, the position of the tongue, the protrusion or rounding of the lips, and the tense or lax state of the muscles. mahmud (2018) explained that the consonant system focuses on how consonants can be pronounced by speech organs and differences between one sound to another when it is produced. it is similar to the vowel system that every sound in the consonant system has a different and particular symbol to differentiate each sound. there are 24 consonants in english which are /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, /f/, /v/, /ð/, /θ/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /h/, tʃ/, dʒ/, /m/, /n/, /η/, /w/, /r/, and /y/ (dardjowidjojo, 2009). adapted from dardjowidjojo in mahmud (2009), consonants have five parameters in explanation which are state of the vocal cords (voiced or voiceless), lateral or central, oral or nasal, place of articulation, and manner of articulation. students’ preference in learning english phonology students are one of indispensable components to increase the power of learning, especially in this case is language learning. however, each student has differences in which this can affect the results of learning. according to naka (2015) stated that what distinguishes students from each other when learning in the classroom is not their physical characteristic, but the differences can be seen in the way they study, the topics they are interested in, the length of time they study, the motivation they need, the type of environment they are comfortable studying ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 247-255 250 in, and many more. it means that there are many different factors that can determine students’ success in learning a language. to increase students’ success in language learning, teachers’ roles are very needed. as a teacher, it is needed to discover what and how students want to learn (papangkorn, 2015). therefore, it is also important to pay attention to students’ opinions about what they want to learn. what students want to learn indicates learning material which is related to topics or themes given. each student can have a different opinion about which topics or themes that they are interested in. then, it can be called students’ preference. students’ preference is a choice chosen by students based on their more liking for one option over another. the choice of students’ preferences when it comes to learning can be comprehensive. this can lead to preferences towards learning strategies, learning styles, learning topics or themes, and many more. many studies have conducted research on students’ preferences in learning strategies and learning styles, but only a few studies have conducted research on students’ preferences on topics or themes of learning material. lintunen and mäkilähde (2013) declared that there was still rare to do research on teaching and learning phonetics, especially on aspects of student preferences, even though students’ opinions influence the results of the learning. interesting topics given to the students can help to increase students’ motivation when they are learning language (harmer, 2001; naka, 2015). shabani (2012) also mentioned that interesting topics given in foreign language learning is a factor which can influence the success of learning. students can have different perspectives about their interesting topics in learning. in a small interview that the researcher did to some students, one of the main reasons stated is they find english phonology to be difficult to learn so they are less interested in learning this subject. furthermore, knowing which topics that make students interested will help to motivate students in learning english phonology. it can be known by investigating students preferences’ on topics and themes which are given in english phonology learning. this study dealt with students’ preferences in learning english phonology. the purpose of this study was to investigate the most and least preferred topics and themes by efl students during english phonology learning using a descriptive quantitative approach. result of this study was expected to make better learning in english phonology subjects, especially to the materials which are given by the lecturers based on students’ preferences to the topics and themes in english phonology subject. method this study used a descriptive quantitative method by using cross-sectional survey design. cross-sectional survey design is a type of research design by making inferences from collecting data of a large population at one point of time (lavrakas, 2008). according to setia (2016), participants in this cross-sectional survey are selected based on criteria set by the researcher without being given any treatment then. this research design is suitable for answering the research question of this study because it is in accordance with the purpose of holding this research that is to get a conclusion from the data taken from large numbers of participants at same time. this study involved 112 participants from 4th and 6th ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 247-255 251 semester students of english education study program, faculty of cultural studies, universitas brawijaya in the academic year 2019/2020, who have taken english morphology and phonology course. the participants were randomly selected without considering any specific categorization. instrument used in this study was questionnaire. the questionnaire was adapted from lintunen and mäkilähde (2013) by choosing just six statements and changing one statement from eleven available statements which were part of content of lecture series and adding one different statement. five statements adapted from lintunen and makilahde were accent difference, intonation analysis, phonetic transcription, speech rhythm, vowel system, and consonant system. one statement changed was assimilations changed into phonological process pattern in english, while one different statement added was segmental phonology. these changes and additions were made to suit the topic used in this study which was english phonology because previous research was more focused on english phonetics. the statements were completely with a five-step likert-scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” that students have to choose based on their preferences. validity and reliability tests have been carried out before the instrument was used to collect data. the validity test functions to test that data collected has covered the actual condition of research (ghauri & gronhaug, 2005). the result was valid because all scores of ryx value was 0.495 and above which showed that it was higher than r table value which was 0.306. the reliability test functions to test a measurement of a phenomenon providing stable and consistent results (carmines & zeller, 1979). the result was reliable because all cronbach's alpha value was 0.852 and above which was more than r-table of 0.306. data analysis is a part of process of collecting the data (marshall and rossman, 1999). the data was collected by using google form as an online questionnaire. the data of this study consisted of students' answers to the eight topics and themes based on their preferences in learning english phonology. for answers strongly disagree was worth 1 point, disagree was worth 2 points, neutral was worth 3 points, agree was worth 4 points, and strongly agree was worth 5 points. then, the data was calculated using the statistical package for the social science (spss) and analyzed descriptively. findings and discussion english phonology is a course that is taught at university level. it becomes one of subjects taught in the 4th semester in english education study program. this subject is taught together with english morphology subject in english morphology and phonology course which has three credits. in this section, the researcher tried to explain the survey result to answer the research question: “which topics and themes are the most and least preferred by efl students during english phonology learning?”. the data result was gained from a survey conducted from may 21st until june 8th, 2020. the link of google form was distributed to 4th and 6th semester students who have taken english morphology and phonology class. the total respondent involved in this research was 112 respondents. the respondents consist of two groups of students which were 103 of 4th semester and 9 of 6th semester students. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 247-255 252 figure 1. percentage of students involved from the research problem, the researcher wanted to find out the preferred topics and themes that students chose in learning english phonology. the researcher tried to calculate the result of data by spss. the data was shown in bar chart completely with percentage for each topic and theme. figure 2. percentage of students’ preferred topics and themes in the figure, there were eight available topics and themes in english phonology subject. the percentage was the result from data calculation of percentage strongly agree and agree answers by students. the students chose the topics and themes based on what they thought which topics and themes that they interested in and preferred in learning english phonology. according to an online survey using google form that had been done, the result most of the students chose 80.4% on phonological process pattern in english. this result consisted of 29.5% strongly agree answers and 50.9% agree answers. in the middle result of the percentage, there were 76.8% students choosing the vowel system, 76.7% students ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 247-255 253 choosing the intonation analysis, 75% students choosing the accent differences, 74.2% students choosing the speech rhythm, and 69,7% students choosing the consonant system. the difference in proportions was not that far. while we can see that the phonetic transcription and the segmental phonology were less chosen by students. 65.2% of the students chose the phonetic transcription and the segmental phonology as their preferred topics and themes. the aim of this study was to investigate the most and least preferred topics and themes by efl students during english phonology learning. the research finding showed most students choosing phonological process pattern in english (80.4%) and least students choosing phonetic transcription and segmental phonology (65.2%) as their preferred topics and themes in learning english phonology. the researcher compared the finding of this study with previous study conducted by lintunen and mäkilähde (2013). the result of that previous study was accent differences becoming the most preferred topic which reached 69.2% percentage higher than other topics, while the consonant system becoming the least preferred topic which reached 5.3% percentage. agustina and andrianto (2021) conducted the same study as lintunen and makilahde did and got result of the vowel system (28.2%) as the most preferred topic and segmental (13.6%) as the least preferred topic. from the findings of three studies, it can be concluded that there was a different result on most and least preferred topics and themes chosen by students. papangkorn declared that as a teacher, knowing what students’ want to learn is a must. as stated by harmer, students who were given an interesting topic in learning got increased motivation. finding out the most and least preferred topics and themes in learning english phonology is a way to discover one of students’ needs to increase their motivation in learning. however, problems faced by students in learning english are not just the less interesting topics they get. as explained by adeline, students' lack of awareness in checking the correctness of their english pronunciation was one of the stumbling blocks in learning a language. rokhman et al. (2020) explained that a crucial skill which has to be considered in learning english well is phonemic awareness. they added that phonemic awareness is a valuable help for improving speaking skills by more accurately dissecting deeper into the sounds which can improve vocabulary by understanding the words, pronouncing it correctly, and avoiding word writing mistakes. conclusion all in all, knowing students’ preferences especially on topics and themes in learning english phonology is essential to enhance the quality of teaching, to meet learners’ expectations, to support learning and learning motivation. although each student may have different preferences in learning english phonology, it is needed to know what they are interested in. the result showed that phonological process pattern in english became the most preferred topics and themes which reached 80.4% percentage higher than other topics and themes, while phonetic transcription and segmental phonology became the least preferred topic which reached 65.2% percentage. theoretically, the result of this research is expected to help further researchers who conduct research in english phonology field, especially dealing with students’ preferences. the further researchers ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 247-255 254 hopefully can find appropriate ways to improve students’ preferences in learning english phonology using least topics and themes so the learning process will be more effective. practically, the result of this research is to help the students to get better outcomes in learning english phonology because their preferences are researched and needed to enhance learning activities. so, the learning process is not only seen and considered from the lecturers’ point of view, but it is also from the student's point of view. one limitation of this research was the data collection only using questionnaire. references adeline, f. d. (2020). pronunciation problems of indonesian efl learners in pronouncing /g/ sound. educafl: journal of education of english as foreign language, 3(1), 1-16. doi: 10.21776/ub.educafl.2020.003.01.1 becker, a., & bieswanger, m. (2017). introduction to english linguistics (vol. 2752). utb. brown, a. (1991). teaching english pronunciation: a book of reading. london: rotledge. carmines, e. g., & zeller, r. a. (1979). reliability and validity assessment. newbury park, ca, sage. doi: 10.4135/9781412985642 chomsky, n., & halle, m. (1968). the sound pattern of english. new york: harper & row, publisher. collins, beverly, & mees, i. m. (2008). practical phonetics and phonology: a resource book for students (2nd ed). new york: routledge. crystal, d. (1981). segmental phonology. in: clinical linguistics. disorders of human communication, 3, springer, vienna. doi: 10.1007/978-3-7091-40017_2 crystal, d. (1997). english as a global language. cambridge: cambridge university press. dardjowidjojo, s. (2009). english phonetics and phonology for indonesian. jakarta: yayasan obor indonesia. fikry, m. r. (2010). resume of phonetic and phonology. retrieved on january 21st, 2021, from https://originalresearch.blog.uns.ac.id/ ghauri, p., & gronhaug, k. (2005). research methods in business studies. harlow, ft/prentice hall. gozali, i. (2019). developing phonics material to improve the spoken english of indonesian tertiary students. kne social sciences 3, 379–379. doi: 10.18502/kss. v3i10.3920 harmer, j. (2001). the practice of english language teaching (3rd ed.) harlow: longman. hyman, l. m. (1975). phonology: theory and analysis. usa: holt, rinehart and winston. lavrakas, p. j. (2008). encyclopedia of survey research methods. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications, inc, 1-0. doi: 10.4135/9781412963947 leung, c. b., & brice, a. e. (2012). an analysis of phonological processes involved in spoken english of hong kong primary pre-service teachers. language testing in asia, 2(2), 42. doi: 10.1186/2229-0443-2-2-42 lintunen, p., & mäkilähde, a. (2013). learning english phonetics: preferences and attitudes. proceedings from: phonetics teaching and learning https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412985642 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-4001-7_2 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-4001-7_2 https://originalresearch.blog.uns.ac.id/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 247-255 255 conference. london, uk: university college london, 5-7. retrieved on october 3rd, 2020, from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294888009_learning_englis h_phonetics_preferences_and_attitudes mahmud, m. (2018). teaching of phonology. 1-15. retrieved on october 27th, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325110491 marshall, c., & rossman, g. b. (1999). designing qualitative research (3rd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. naka, l. (2015). identifying students’ needs to enhance the quality of english foreign language learning. knowledge: international journal, 41(174), 377-381. retrieved on october 30th, 2020, from: http://ikm.mk/ojs/index.php/kij/article/view/4285 nunan, d. (2003). the impact of english as a global language on educational policies and practices in the asia-pacific region. tesol quarterly, 37(4), 589–613. doi: 10.4324/9780203096888-14 papangkorn, p. (2015). ssruic students’ attitude and preference toward error corrections. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 197, 1841-1846. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.07.244 rabiah, s. (2018). language as a tool for communication and cultural reality discloser. 1-11. doi: 10.31227/osf.io/nw94m rokhman, m. f., lintangsari, a. p., & perdhani, w. c. (2020). efl learners’ phonemic awareness: a correlation between english phoneme identification skill toward word processing. jess (journal of english educators society), 5(2), 135-141. doi: 10.21070/jees.v5i2.467 savitri, n. a., & andrianto, f. (2021). preferences and attitude toward english phonetics learning: the perspectives of indonesian efl learners. educafl: journal of education of english as foreign language, 4(1), 5762. doi: 10.21776/ub.educafl.2021.004.01.06 setia, m. s. (2016). methodology series module 3: cross-sectional studies. indian journal of dermatology, 61(3), 261. doi: 10.4103/0019-5154.182410 shabani, m. b. (2012). different learning style preferences of male and female iranian non-academic efl learners. english language teaching, 5(9), 127– 137. doi: 10.5539/elt.v5n9p127 spence, r. (2014). english phonetics: unit 9.1 (pp. 105-126). retrieved on december 1st, 2020, from http://www.spence.saar.de/courses/phonetics/phon1401topic09/phonetics201 40630-beamer.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325110491 https://dx.doi.org/10.4103%2f0019-5154.182410 http://www.spence.saar.de/courses/phonetics/phon1401topic09/phonetics20140630-beamer.pdf http://www.spence.saar.de/courses/phonetics/phon1401topic09/phonetics20140630-beamer.pdf ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 38-46 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 38 countering xenophobia and racism through short stories for history students novita dewi sanata dharma university, indonesia correspondence: 19novitadewi@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v5i1.3697 received 19 september 2021; accepted 24 september 2021 abstract short stories provide suitable reading materials to enrich the study of american history. using literary works can help foster transformative history teaching, especially when discussing the violent past to construct a better future. this study aims at examining two american short stories that deal with racism and prejudice. used as primary data are “désirée’s baby” (1893) which tells about racial intolerance in a pre-civil war plantation society; and “shame” (1964), a story about intolerance experienced by a black schoolboy. critical reading method is applied by making contextualization with different american historical periods. the results show that (1) themes of xenophobia, racism, and intolerance are evident in these short stories; (2) authorial backgrounds help explain their dealing with the history of racism shown in their works; and (3) stories of inter-racial relations make good reading supplements for teaching american history. in conclusion, literature is history which is beautifully condensed that can help raise students’ awareness about the evil pasts and to grow a historical empathy in facing current realities in order to build a more just, civil, and compassionate society in the future. keywords: racism, short stories, xenophobia introduction the essence of teaching history at all education levels is to foster not only critical thinking in conducting historical analysis but also to grow awareness of the diversity and complexity of human beings’ socio-cultural, economic, and political experiences over time. unquestionably, the objectives, nature, and challenges in learning history remain issues worth investigating from time to time (kartodirjo, 1989; senen & barnadib, 2004). one of the recent research trends in indonesia, for example, is to conduct research on online history teaching and its impacts that has grown rapidly during the covid-19 pandemic (amboro, 2020; far-far, 2021). while amboro (2020) claims that this pandemic is a historical event to be studied contextually, far-far (2021) argues that synchronous meetings during the pandemic is often proven ineffective although it is the most viable way for the current situation. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 38-46 39 the studies above are very important at present, but the use of literary works as historical sources is equally important and this field has not received much attention. literary texts have proven to be quite effective as a learning resource as exemplified in history teaching across the globe, for example in america (stoddard, 2012; vansledright & kelly, 1998), australia (clark, 2004), and europe (einhaus, 2016; hower, 2019). in general, literary works that are used as historical “texts” can help develop some conceptual knowledge and historical empathy. imaginative works are useful to assist learners in understanding and making judgments on important events including controversial issues in history. besides, short stories are flexible to use as supplementary materials. online learning that has been running since the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic makes it possible to provide students with learning materials or resources for enrichment, including short stories that are relevant to the historical topic being studied. students of history can allocate their own time to read the literary enrichment materials. it is this kind of critical, creative, and contextual learning of history that makes research on american short stories important. therefore, analysing american short stories that can be used as learning materials in teaching american history is useful to enhance history teaching. indeed, american literature and american history are inseparable as evident in the wealth of studies that link the two fields. to name but one literary text, david mamet’s glengarry glen ross continually piques the interest of both literature and history scholarships (e.g., kavan & burne, 2009; mianani, 2019; sepehrmanesh & dehghani, 2014). further, studies on the positive impacts of reading historical fictions toward the development, understanding, and empathy of learners have been widely documented (cruz & thornton, 2013; sanchez & mills, 2005; stambuk, 1999). many studies have also shown the success of this method of using short stories in history teaching (frost, 2012; sanchez & mills, 2005; vansledright & kelly, 1998; youngs, 2012). students develop an understanding of past conditions and realize that all living beings are connected to one another. novels, for instance, provoke readers to think, feel, and visualize real historical figures in the past. through literary texts, readers also gain a better understanding of not only the historical sequence of events but also how human histories have developed over time. reading literature, readers also learn to recognize biases and prejudices as well as various viewpoints and ways of dealing with differences. based on the above background, this research will answer the following question: which american literature in the form of short stories can be studied and taught critically to build historical empathy when dealing with bleak realities such as hypocrisy, racism, and intolerance? the dynamics and political changes that have been so fast in america lately can perhaps be concurrently examined – to what extend the nation’s past history is represented in literature. method this research is a textual, descriptive-qualitative study. first of all, an extensive library research was carried out, namely listing american literary works in the form of short stories that correspond with the historical milestones of the nation. data were obtained through previous studies on the existing works through textbooks, recent scientific journal articles, papers, theses/dissertations, and other ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 38-46 40 relevant sources. from these directory data obtained, two short stories were chosen as primary data for further examination. the secondary data (articles, scientific journals, synopses, book reviews in newspapers or magazines, etc.) concerning the context of the short stories and relevant events in american history were examined next. furthermore, critical reading method were applied to interpret the three short stories. corresponding themes were finally determined, i.e., hypocrisy and racism. the two short stories chosen for discussion may shed light on the current dynamics and political changes in the post-trump america. each text and its analysis can later be used as supplementary learning materials in teaching american history. findings and discussion contesting xenophobia the imaginations of slavery and racism alongside their implications are evident in american literature. for example, written in 1893 by kate chopin, “désirée’s baby” follows the tragedy of an intermarriage in the state of louisiana during the antebellum period. to synopsize the story briefly, désirée was the adopted daughter of monsieur and madame valmondé, french creole aristocrats in louisiana. abandoned by her parents as an infant in the pre-civil war era, she later grew into a beautiful woman. she married armand aubigny, the son of another wealthy and respectable french creole. when désirée’s baby was born, people were surprised because the skin color was dark, resembling that of an african descent child to armand’s disappointment. armand became cold to the point that he ridiculed and let désirée go. the young mother took the baby out and walked into the swamp; and the two were never to be seen again. armand burned désirée’s belongings, including all the letters they wrote for each other. among the bundles of letters was a letter from armand’s mother, madame aubigny, who lived in france. she wrote to her husband to keep a secret about the fact that their son armand had black ancestors. the historical context of this short story is slavery in the southern region of the united states. the history of slavery in america can be traced mainly to the southern periphery states such as mississippi and louisiana, where cotton and sugarcane plantations once required large numbers of slaves to sustain the economy (cook, 2016). it is the region that becomes the setting of most chopin’s works that have earned her a name as a feminist writer because she critically underscored gender bias and social inequality. chopin, whose real name is katherine o’flaherty, took as backgrounds of her stories the multi-layered lives of louisiana society. she witnessed american history that was impacted by the effects of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. society became increasingly stratified culturally, economically, and politically that was finally culminated with the civil war. it turned out that war and reconstruction were also unsatisfactory, followed by a severe financial crisis in 1873. the presence of african people in america began in 1619 when twenty african slaves boarding a dutch ship arrived in jamestown, the first british colony in the continent (blackwell, 2011). european settlers subsequently brought more slaves to the united states for they made cheap labor forces. bloodlines, reputation, and family status were very important in the plantation culture of precivil war southern america. in the soul of black folk, w. e. b. du bois the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 38-46 41 african american scholar who was an influential figure in african american movement and literature has this to say: “the main problem of the twentieth century is the problem of color-line.” (stepto, 2003, p. 339). marriage, friendship, and other relationships were heavily influenced by social stratification and power. désirée’s origin was unclear because monsieur valmondé, désirée’s adoptive father, found the beautiful baby “between two stone pillars” on the front fence of his house (chopin, 2014). armand used désirée’s obscure background as the cause of the darkened color of their baby’s skin. the social hierarchy in louisiana in the mid-19th century had placed white landowners at the top of the social ranks and black slaves at the bottom; hence, the arrival of the anglo-americans in the state of louisiana resulted in the enactment of stricter laws to govern slavery. injustice and physical as well as mental abuses against the african slaves have left smudged historical imprints that are hard to erase (hirsch & bell, 1998). armand comes across as xenophobic, unlike his parents and the adopted parents of désirée who managed mixed-race realities better. american southerners were said to be generally nostalgic about their past that seemed stable and uncomplicated. but kate chopin was not. she wrote her fictions in the style of a realist author (sutomo, 2017; tadjibayev, 2020; wheeler, 1994). it is clear that her writing style is straightforward and does not play with fancy words to cover reality. although she married to a businessman oscar chopin who was part of the high society in louisiana at that time, she did not hesitate to write as it was about the realities of her people. chopin confronted xenophobia and hypocrisy of the upper class. armand’s characterization, for example, is that of a young man commonly found in the rich family such as owners of large plantations. armand was depicted as a violent young master and he often tortured the slaves in his family plantation. in teaching the history of the united states of america, we can add short stories like “désirée’s baby” to the list of enrichment reading materials. stories about conflicts triggered by cultural arrogance and xenophobia can help open the awareness of the learners. reading such a story, they learn to respect differences, fight for justice, and uphold human dignity while studying the history of a nation. we can comprehend why modern slavery like human trafficking, for example, still persists until today and how to rectify the problem. learning from people in the past as portrayed in literary works can help foster historical sensitivity and empathy so that the same mistakes are not repeated whilst finding some new ways to correct them (stambuk, 1999; stoddard, 2012). resisting racism written in 1964 by dick gregory, a humorist, civil rights movement activist, and social critic, the second story “shame” is also a story of discrimination. an orphan african american boy named richard was infatuated by his classmate helene tucker who was rich, clean, and smart. richard was so poor that he went to school with no breakfast, wearing his only clothes that he had to wash, dry off, and put on again to school only to see helen. like any ordinary boys, richard wanted recognition and attention from his love interest until one day he learned about shame. that was the day when richard’s teacher called out each name of the students whose father would like to donate to the community chest for the poor black families in the neighborhood. richard would like to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 38-46 42 donate the more money he had already saved than helen’s father to impress the girl. upon knowing that the teacher left out his name, richard was told that the donation was for people of similar social status with him and that he did not even have a father. the teacher’s comment made the little boy embarrassed. this incident had impacted his life that he managed to get it over when he turned 21. “shame” is set in gregory’s own time when african americans suffered racial inequalities. afro-americans were considered noteworthy and treated like animals in the society. to quote arnez in his essay about dick gregory and other black authors, “to be a negro in white america is to be branded as a lesser mortal. yet even against these tremendous obstacles, the negro has forged a culture which americans of every race are only now coming to understand and to appreciate” (1969, p. 61). the narrator of the story was able to fully recover from his bitter childhood experience after several years when he had a family of his own. his teacher’s comment – “we know you don't have a daddy.” – clearly depicts intolerance of the dominant white culture toward the colored people (gregory, p. 2). it is true that richard was wrong for lying that his “father” would like to donate some money. richard was not blameworthy here because he sincerely wished to give the money even if his reproachable action was to gain the attention of helen, the “light-complexioned little girl with pigtails and nice manners” (gregory, p. 1). unlike the teacher, the students came across as more tolerant. the narrator says this: “helene tucker turned around, her eyes full of tears. she felt sorry for me. then i couldn’t see her too well because i was crying, too.” (gregory, p. 3). empathy was also shown by the whole class as told by the narrator thus: “everyone had heard what the teacher had said, everyone had turned around and felt sorry for me.” (gregory, p. 3). next, the narrator in “shame” presents another miserable occurrence near the end of the story. little richard failed to help a homeless man who was beaten to bleed in a restaurant. the boy intended to pay for the 25-cent-food that the man ordered. richard saved some money by selling newspapers and shoes polishing. the wino man felt offended. shouting, he snubbed angrily: “keep your twenty-six cents. you don’t have to pay, not now. i just finished paying for it.” (gregory, p. 3). the wino later apologized, but richard could not help feeling rejected as he moaned, “i was pretty sick about that. i waited too long to help another man.” (gregory, p. 4) here we see the author’s pretext beneath this short story: american people are too ignorant and arrogant to help each other. gregory’s short story calls for respect and sympathy to the weak and marginalized, in this case, a poor black american boy. thus, in “shame” one can read racism in american history whereby the white society at that time denied the rights of the african american their status as the united states citizens. despite abraham lincoln’s 13th amendment to the u.s. constitution that declared slavery illegal, african american continued to face discriminatory and racist treatments. through his writing gregory attempted to enable the oppressed to voice out their rights without offending their dignity. indeed, outstanding writers began to emerge, thanks to the civil rights movement that gregory helped to support. like their fellow black activists, he advocated to end segregation and racism. to grow black nationalism, these writers promoted human rights and justice for all in their works. gregory was one of the numerous african american authors of the twentieth century who ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 38-46 43 continued to write about the lives of the blacks in battling prejudice and inequalities. besides writing, gregory was known more as a celebrated comedian who used humor as social criticism. race-related violence had left a deep, personal impact on gregory and this was reflected in, for instance, the protagonist in “shame”. as a poor fatherless boy, gregory himself, like little richard, was often bullied by his schoolmates and neighbors. except for his later success as an entertainer, gregory found that the color of his skin continued to impede him throughout his unfinished university life and a brief military career, hence his firm commitment to fight racism. it seemed that 1963 was the most unforgettable year for gregory despite his delight of having his name mentioned in 1963’s who's who in america (harris, 1982). gregory lost his two-and-a-half-month-old son (also named richard) and his best friend was murdered in a race-riot. right after attending the two funerals, gregory flew to the south to grieve with the family of the four schoolgirls who were killed when a bomb exploded during a sunday morning service in the 16th street baptist church in birmingham, alabama on september 15, 1963. two years later gregory was shot but survived when addressing a crowd during his peaceful activism. he refused to be taken to a hospital until the police had dispersed the black protesters. like martin luther king, he employed a non-violence method in battling racism. on august 19, 2017 gregory died of heart failure at 84 and forever remembered as a multi-gifted artist who struggled for human as well as animal rights. teaching history of the civil rights movement can therefore be made effective by supplying students with stories like “shame”. besides, a close look at the author himself helps broaden the students’ understanding of the brutal physical and political oppressions, racial humiliation, and socio-economic deprivations experienced by the african american society dated back from the slavery time. there has been a huge amount of improvement on civil and human rights for the african american today, despite the fact that inequality and discrimination remain unresolved issues. conclusion this research has shown that the two short stories from american literature, namely “désirée’s baby” and “shame” are suitable to use as supplementary reading materials in american history class. the short stories provide a chronicle of how human history has developed by identifying american society’s racial prejudices and how the nation has responded to and coped with differences over time. it has been shown that, first, intolerance almost always colors every phase of civilization. intolerance towards individuals or groups who have different skin colors from the dominant group is depicted in these stories. intolerance occurs because the majority feels superior compared to the marginalized other. the stories portray the reality of american white supremacy. the obsession with skin color made armand aubigny not realize that in fact he inherited the blood of the dark skin-colored race he had always underestimated. meanwhile, little richard in dick gregory’s short story was bullied by his teacher and people in his neighborhood because of his poverty and dark skin. further, these characters gave their respective responses to the marred race-relations. désirée gave up and had ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 38-46 44 nothing to do to correct the situation as she herself was a victim of her bigot husband. in different ways, richard managed to get over the pain of racial discrimination in his adult life. secondly, the short stories studied emerge from a social framework that has been consistent on racial domination and oppression of the colored-people into which each author was born. after marrying her husband who was a native of new orleans, louisiana, kate chopin was familiar with slavery life in antebellum louisiana. she observed and wrote about how the creole survived in the south. despite his humble origin, dick gregory took up various jobs before his success as an eminent comedian and civil rights activist, thanks to his multi-talents and the fact that he knew what it meant to be poor and bullied because of his skin color. thus, it is partly inspired by their own respective lives that the three authors represent the fictive characters’ dilemmas, fears, hopes, thoughts, and many other feelings. finally, in relation to the study of american history, both short stories make historical events more alive, interesting, and meaningful to learn. diverse important facts and details in some certain historical periods of any nations are often easier to remember when recounted imaginatively through literary works. above all, if transformative history teaching is the goal, suitable reading materials like the short stories discussed may help increase students’ empathy and acceptance of self and others. references amboro, k. 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(2012). understanding history through the visual images in historical fiction. language arts. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 29-36 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 29 the sea, the volcano and the tiger: some animistic symbols in oral tradition and modern indonesian literature marina frolova institute of asian and african studies moscow state university m.v.frolova@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010103 received 5 march 2016; revised 21 february 2017; accepted 7 july 2017 abstract the article deals with the idea of rediscovering three basic images of indonesian culture: the sea, the volcano and the tiger, with the help of folklore and splendid literary works of modern indonesian writers as well. novels by mochtar lubis (harimau! harimau! 1975), eka kurniawan (lelaki harimau, 2004), and budi sardjono (sang nyai, 2011) are taken as a source. the enriched traditional meanings of some animistic symbols appear in different light in each novel, rediscovering the layers of main plot and characters connotations in different ways of neo-traditionalism, deconstruction and remythologization. keywords: animistic symbols, malay and javanese basic archetypes and tradition, modern indonesian literature. introduction the significant role of the mighty animistic patterns in malay and indonesian culture is written enough. a number of great scholars and explorers of nusantara made ethnographical and anthropological studies about shamanism and widespread belief in spirits and ghosts. studying the rituals and the everyday life oddities for the western eye, r. wessing, r.e. jordan, n. mulder, j.j. ras, w.w. skeat, k.m. endicott and many others viewed closely upon rudimental images of ancient animism of malay archipelago. however, quite a small amount of scientists paid enough attention to the folklore and literature precisely focusing on its sources. exceptions were made by specialists in malay and indonesian literature. w. rassers, t.g.t. pigeaud, b. parnickel and v. braginsky achieved important results in reconstructing the system of regional animistic images, which root into the undiscovered past of the indonesian islands. for example, due to their works we can also comprehend the role of the ship image in malay tradition and the powerful clown-figures (punokawan) of the javanese shadow plays in theatre, oral tradition and its transformations in the modern indonesian literature. with the developing of literature studies in nusantara, we can continue to fill in the information gap about other images and signs, which mark the whole indonesian culture and represent the mindset of the native people. mailto:m.v.frolova@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 29-36 30 the article deals with the idea of rediscover three images of indonesian culture: the sea, the volcano and the tiger, with the help of folklore and splendid literary works of modern indonesian writers as well. novels by mochtar lubis (harimau! harimau!), eka kurniawan (lelaki harimau), and budi sardjono (sang nyai) are taken as a source. the objects of the present paper are the symbolical models of ancient beliefs of indonesians, which are “pulled up” from the original literature. the subject deals with cultural particularities of animistic symbols, their enrichment through the influence of the other cultures. theory the archaic and the tradition pre-writing tradition of nusantara includes oral folktales (cerita rakyat), magic spells (mantra, guna-guna), shadow plays (wayang purwo). the original “literature of the tradition” covers the divine revelation of the shaman, recitation by heart of the scholar, puppet master’s (dalang) improvisation of some slightly fixed texts like shadow theatre scenario (pakem). these conglomerate of mixed texts represent the gradual enrichment of the original content by the external influences, remarkably brought by indian (vii-xiv centuries) and middle eastern (xiv-xix centuries) civilizations. from the linguistic perspective, two main court and high-literary languages have been used, malay and javanese (each in its old form). information about animism is taken from the malay texts because of the historical lingua franca role of malay language as a mediator; some of the examples are taken from malay translations of original javanese texts (cerita panji), with its core in theatrical performances (wayang kulit). ancient myths, mirrored in shadow plays, folktales and first written literature, collect the images of the universe. the main features of this picture are the following. 1) axis mundi, the world axis, represented as world mountain or a world tree – we can witness this in special figure of wayang, gunungan of kayon, called so after “mountain” (gunung) and the “tree” (kayu). the “fire-mountain”, of the volcano, is the place of sakti concentration, the magic power. 2) the journey to the land of the dead can be managed by the means of the special transport – the boat or the ship, which plays the important role in everyday life of the archipelago. 3) crossing over the jungle forest always means the struggle and the defeat of the wild beast. 4) the helpful servants are always in the picture – several figures of the jests and clowns, who accompany the prince. those figures, as proofed, also known as punokawan, are the mighty spirits of the volcanoes and the hosts of the java island in disguise, the ancient fertility deities. 5) the semangat substance and the ability of some chosen ones (dukun) to turn into the animals and nature objects, and the old and wide-spread belief into the were-tigers, based on the semangat concept and the mutual isomorphism of “inanimate” objects, animals and men. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 29-36 31 6) the cult of the great goddess, in her most ultimate aspects of batari durga, the female ruler of destruction and death, and the famous nyai roro kidul, the queen of the southern sea. these patterns formed inseparable with hinduism and buddhism, which did not eliminate the strong animistic basic and the beliefs in ghosts and evil spirits, and the divinization of the natural objects. but the islamization brought new perspective for these powerful images. preserving the old meanings of them, such as defeating the beast meant the initiation of the hero, sufi tradition from the middle east added the other significant meaning. the defeated beast begins to mean the defeated wreath in the ones heart, nafsu ammarah. the modernity in our opinion, the segment of the recognized modern indonesian literature before the independence (the balai pustaka and the pujangga baru generations) cannot provide the sufficient base of archaic symbols due to its turn to the western narrative strategies and its explore of the western styles of the literature. the rich experiments of early indonesian writers and poets, however, can ensure the great themes of other cultural studies. we cannot deny also the fact, that young indonesian literature moved on very fast, and absorbed different modern features of the world’s literature after 1945. the “great come back” to the search of the national roots occurred in late 1960es – 1970es and the fascinating process of neo-traditionalism lasts till now (braginsky, 2001). the ancient myths, traditional images and well-known plots re-actualize in “big literature”, in highleveled novels created by the most recognized national indonesian writers. their works open good opportunities of interpretation of the traditional symbols in the contemporary literature. theory application the traditional were-tiger and the modern deconstruction of the sufi path the novel tiger! tiger! (harimau! harimau! 1975) by mochtar lubis (1922-2004) is built on the plot-forming symbol of the tiger. the novel was published in the mid-seventies, and we will not reflect about its content in here much, because of numerous studies about this masterpiece of new indonesian literature. just one remark – the young hero buyung managed to defeat the beast and to kill “the tiger in his heart”, as a couple of times reminded to the reader. here lies the idea of the traditional literature – the defeat of the nafsu ammara, the sufi concept of the animal nature of the human beings, the dark side of their souls, and the destructive chaos. the multifaceted character of the tiger also represents the allah’s wreath and the divine vengeance for the sinners, due to the main solid islamic discourse of the novel. the contemporary writer eka kurniawan (born in 1975) gives different perspective on the tiger image. his second novel man tiger (lelaki harimau 2004) is a postmodern ‘penny dreadful’ mockery, picked up from cerita horror and cerita hantu of mass-market, inspired by productive horror-novelist of the soeharto era, abdulla harahap. eka kurniawan manages to combine and remix the indonesian ‘pulp fiction’ full of murder, erotic and mystic, cheap comics and their much more serious origin – the nusantara folktales about were-tigers. the family background of the main character, young anti-hero margio, recalls the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 29-36 32 social realism style, in the spirit of hopeless reality of the poor as displayed in plays and novels by prominent soviet writer, maxim gorky. the gloomy backlight and the dense narrative reveal the unpleasant scenes of provincial life as the grotesque. expressive franz kafka-motives are about to break in. the shamanic gift, inherited from the grandfather, gives margio the power of supernatural power possession. not alike the young buyung character from mochtar lubis novel, margio surrenders to the chaotic power and commits a crime, scene of which show up in the first chapter: “its not me. it’s the tiger in me” (kurniawan, 2004, p. 39), and the were-tiger materialized in margio – in the last: “at the same moment the tiger came out of him. white as a swan” (kurniawan, 2004, p.192). the proof of the plot element about the magical shamanic bound of the grandson and the grandfather is caused by the less formal communication between them and is found in the works of anthropologists (frazer, 1960, p.172). grandfather talked a lot about genies of both sexes, but the most incredible story was about the tiger. “many villagers have become friends with the tigers… they received a special gift, which has been passed from generation to generation… far ancestors have forgotten who in the kin was the first to enter into relations with the tiger” (kurniawan, 2004, p.47). margio received the gift in the erotic dream, which means that the ‘kurniawan’s tiger’ shows up as ancestors’ gift and refers to the mythological plot about the zoomorphic sex partner. totemism gets humans closer to animals. putative ignorance about the role of the father in the conception brings to the substitution of the human ancestor with spirits, which are more close to the natural power” (levi-strauss, 2008, p. 25). female spirits, or celestial wives, usually interfere in the shaman’s trance experience, accompanied with strong sexual emotions” (eliade, 2014, pp.64-66). then the plot gets to the breaking of the level (according to eliade). after the obtaining the shamanic gift margio becomes bloodthirsty, turns to the wild beast, crossing over the worlds of the humans and of the spirits. till now some societies believe that the mental decease can be caused by the possession of the evil spirits: in the realistic way the story of margio can be understood as historia morbi of a village psychopath. at the same time the description of the tiger-spirit is not threatening: it is big, white and transparent. the only person who sees it its margio’s sister, who is convinced the tiger came to save them from the harm. this image of margio’s tiger lies closer to the folklore rimau kramat, or the white tiger spirit-guard, which roamed the sacred places like tombs of the sufi saints (skeat, 1990, p.163). the main core of the novel is made by the means of deconstruction, the complex method of collection and dismantling. unlike the heroes of oral traditional cerita rakyat and its written “brothers” – fixed malay texts in arabic script called hikayat, unlike the mochtar lubis’ buyung, the neo-traditional hero, eka kurniawan’s margio did not pass the test of defeating his own wreath and passions. his “tiger” is stronger than his mind. the fall of the young hero resembles the modern and post-modern philosophical ideas of the chaotic rule of dark matters. to underline this, eka kurniawan uses dark red paint in the descriptions. according to tradition, like wayang, the red face of giants (raksasa) is a spot of wreath and reckless minds. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 29-36 33 in sufi tradition, nafsu – or the animal soul of humans – can be displayed as images of strange beasts and visions like the mouse escaping from the throat (schimmel, 2012, p. 121). the modification of nafsu – nafsu ammarah is ones angry soul, the image of it can be seen apart from the body. before the murder margio experiences strange state of body and soul similar to shamanic trance, called lupa in malay and indonesian (lupa literary means “to forget”). the sufi adepts were familiar with the conditions called fana’ – the transition to revelation and annihilation in the allah’s realm. the path to this is commonly called tarikat. we can say that margio is turned to be an anti-hero, anti-adept, who goes down the anti-path (anti-tarikat). the post-human margio is back to the animal nature of its far ancestors. the chaos in our souls is the tiger. this warning of eka kurniawan is a masterpiece of new indonesian literature, undoubtedly. the sea and the volcano – remythologization of the javanese spiritual duality the opposite process of the deconstruction is the conservation the tradition by keeping it up-dated and up-graded in order to fit the nowadays needs and aspirations. the modern indonesian writer budi sardjono (born in 1953) managed to publish successfully a number of novels, main characters of which are the specific javanese deities of the sea and the volcano in his bestseller “the queen of the southern sea” (sang nyai, 2011). european romantics of the first part of the xix century (like ernst theodor amadeus hoffmann) used the method of duel conception of reality. it seems that budi sardjono adopted some romanism features, like romantic irony and humor, and put his protagonist, journalist sam, in between the reality and the fantastic realm of javanese spirits and mighty deities, like kyai sapu jagad and nyai roro kidul. the strong javanese mysticism (kejawen) aura is preserved in budi sardjono’s works, which are popular and quite simply written. addressing the wide audience budi sardjono introduces the bizarre world of javanese beliefs to his readers, and the main pathos of his novels it aimed to save the tradition to the next generations. the duality of javanese mysticism roots in general austronesian myths about the great opposites, the sky and the earth, the peak of the mountain and the sea bottom, and also about the sun and the moon, their sacred marriage and close kinship. the warden of the volcano merapi is represented in multiplied images of all-mighty deity and in some human-like figures, like kang petruk. “laughing man” with “bun of hair tangled on the top of his head” is “tall”, has “long nose” and “big belly” (sardjono, 2011, p. 31). the wayang-alike character helps the protagonist save the inhabitants of the merapi mountain slopes to escape from the eruption. a lot of studies are devoted to semar, petruk, gareng, bagong as main punokawan characters in javanese wayang. the change of their names in some sources (in cerita panji texts they are called persanta, jerude, punta, cemuris etc.) does not change the main idea, that the punokawan figures are the all mighty deities of ancient truly agrarian times of java. semar is no one but batara ismaya, the big brother of batara guru (the divine teacher, or shiva – m.f.). semar and his clown company descended to the earth to guide the royal princes and to save ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 29-36 34 them from the harm, but sometimes they act silly and make everyone laugh at their comic behavior. being close to common people, semar is responsible for the whole java land, he is its spirit and its emblem (kresna, 2012, pp.55, 60-61). hosts of sakti power, semar and other punokawan are related to the places of its concentration – the mountains and the volcanoes. volcano can display the whole universe – the upper world at its peak and the underworld in its craters. tantu panggelaran, the mythological javanese chronic, mention the god brahma striking the iron in the crater of volcano, named after him – bromo (parnickel, 1973, p.270). folk culture enabled the indian god to be the magician and the blacksmith. sometimes this deity is called after the second popular punokawan – petruk. his honorific name “kyai sapu jagad”, used in the novel of budi sardjono, etymologically comes from the words “great master”, “broom” and “universe”. sweeping the world, the master keeps it clean and in balance. also he is addressed as sunan gunung lawu, or “lord of the lawu mountain”, another sacred peak in central java. the plurality of the same object is the common case in animism. nature is not the opposite for the humans – on the contrary, they are isomorphic and can be mutually transformed and manifest in each other. the human character of sam in budi sardjono’s novel gets close to the divine and to the strange metamorphosis of two main javanese deities, nyai roro kidul and petruk. the last one is represented in the novel like the adviser and the guardian of the merapi crater. the journey to kang petruk’s place of habitat – the cave – lies through the forest. actually, sam arrives in the old-times yogyakarta city. crossing over space and time repeats the traditional hero’s path to the other kingdom (read: other world). the cave of petruk is the boiling crater of merapi, and its master feeds his oven with human bodies to keep the fire in balance. the phantasmagoric scene is also the reminder, that the blacksmiths (and first of all, the smiths of keris, javanese sacred daggers) were considered in many cultures like the devil’s servants. however, in java the power over the fire and the metal means nothing bad – on the contrary, the blacksmiths are closer to the divine; they can obtain the sakti power and other magic skills. the underworld blacksmith kyai petruk is keeping the harmony and the balance of the universe, as his close friend and alliance nyai roro kidul does. this honorific name is not the only one. ricklefs mentioned a dozen of them: retna dewati, prabu roro rat jawi, sang retno, sang dewi, kajeng nyai roro kidul, gusti ratu kidul etc. (ricklefs pp.64-74). the name used in the novel is nyai roro kidul. nyai matches kyai and makes the opposite of male and female. the female (roro) master, the ruler of the south (kidul) has a cult which is still thriving in nowadays java. myths of her origin often reveal the story of a skin disease, which made the royal girl throw herself from the cliff into the sea. she was crowned the queen of the south sea (in java it means the indian ocean – m.f.) by its inhabitants, the spirits and magic underwater creatures. the skin disease is the mark of her snake-like nature and the rudiment of the former hypothetically existed snake cult (she can be also referred as nagini from indian origin). her manifestation as nyi blorong is a local image of a “mermaid” with big snake tail. snake nature helps her to keep a sharp eye on all the gold and treasures hidden in the earth (jordan, 1997). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 29-36 35 chthonic image of the goddess links with the female, cold archetype of the ocean, the symbol of the cosmic chaos. the water has a double nature as a source of life and death at the same time. it is no coincidence that the javanese think of the danger not because of the volcano, but the ocean. they believe that the drowned and the victims of a shipwreck are taken as servants of nyai to the sea bottom. in order to prevent the anger of the goddess, ceremonies and rituals like labuh and larung are taken place, the fleet of offerings for nyai’s good will (wessing, 1997, p.106). not alike dewi durga, nyai roro kidul does not have her wayang figure or mask, but is commonly represented as a wise and beautiful lady of ripe age, wearing gorgeous javanese dress of the turquoise color. budi sardjono creates her image according to these beliefs. he also did not forget about the sacred marriage: not a secret that science islam came to java, the sea goddess is told to become a lover of all the sultans of mataram kingdom (xvii-xix centuries). the belief is circulating till now: the rulers of yogyakarta and of solo (surakarta) are said to have a relation with her (pigeud, 1964, p.211). despite the conversion to islam, the island of java keeps the belief in the sea and volcano deities. the reflection of the old dual image ‘mountain-sea’ tracks back to the xix century, to the ‘records’ of goddess of the sea and master of the mountain royal meetings. there is also told that then the master is out of java, the role of the warden overcomes to the sea goddess. this superstition is in harmony with the main principles of the javanese dualism (geertzp, 1960, p.23). the main figure of the budi sardjono’s novel, nyai roro kidul herself (split in her many manifestations – the novel characters), is proofed to be a nice living myth and another emblem of the javanese culture. the modern novel demonstrates the actuality of the basic archetypes for the javanese, and, of course, for the other ethnics of indonesia. the motivation for the creating such characters, as the ancient deities, lies in the concept of the retained balance of the archaic culture as much as in the conscious chose of stylization. the archaic patterns, the myths and the original images are also known as archetypes of the human psyche. the “eternal presence” of such archetypes as fire, water, male, female etc. made the contemporary book worthy and interesting. appeal to the constant opposites and balance in our lives helps to revive and to rehabilitate the well-known symbols of java and to strengthen the all-indonesian cultural identity. budi sardjono tells about the new search of the roots and the new attempt to adopt the past. conclusion chosen novels are representing three basic concepts of indonesian culture, coded in symbols. there are three big worlds: the sakti-ful heaven or mountain peak, the earth, full of heroes, antagonists, wild beasts and mediators – shamans, the underworld, like the underground craters and caves and the sea bottom, full of chthonic creatures. the enrichment of main mythological symbols happened in the ‘medieval’ (according to european periodization – m.f.) times, when the strong wave of islam overcame the old religions of hinduism and buddhism and its fusion with the local animistic beliefs. new paradigm brought the sufi ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 29-36 36 connotations to the old images, turning them into the symbols with additional meanings. the europeanization gave new perspectives for the literary proses, but only in last few decades the indonesian authors started to search for the foundation of their literature not abroad, but in the very country. ‘back-to-basics’ concept, neotraditionalism, recalled ancient patterns and plots of traditional cerita. some of the new indonesian writers reviewed the main images and showed their ambiguities to the reading audience by deconstructing the core principles of the traditional symbols. animism is a powerful source of symbol creating, and the very process is well known for indonesian oral tradition and the modern literature. the few chosen symbols of animistic genesis drive the literature forward and review the myth in different ways. like sea, volcano, tiger, gods and spirits, myth is the greatest symbol of his own. references braginsky, v.i. (2001). the comparative study of traditional asian literatures: from reflective traditionalism to neo-traditionalism. london: routlege. eliade, m. s. (2014). archaic techniques of ecstasy. russian: (n.p.). (original work published 1951). frazer, t. m. (1960). rusembilan: a malay fishing village in southern thailand. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. geertz, c. a. (1960). the religion of java. london: free press of glencoe. jordaan, r. e. (1997). the mystery of nyai lara kidul, the goddess of the south ocean. archipel, 28, 99 -116. retrieved from www.persee.fr/docaspdf/arch_00448613_1984_num_28_1_1921.pdf kresna, a. (2012). punakawan: simbol kerendahan hati orang jawa. yogyakarta: narasi. kurniawan, e. (2004). lelaki harimau. jakarta: pt gramedia pustaka utama. lévi-strauss, c. t. (2008). the savage mind. russian: (n.p.). (original work published 1962). lubis, m. (1975). harimau! harimau! jakarta: pustaka jaya. parnickel, b. (1973). the tale of sang boma. moscow: nauka. pigeaud, t. g. (1964). java in the 14 th century: a study in the cultural history. the hague: nijhoff. ricklefs, m. c. (1974). jogjakarta under sultan mangkubumi 1749-1792: a history of the division of java. london: oxford university press. sardjono, b. (2011). sang nyai: wajah cantik sarat misteri dan karisma roro kidul. yogyakarta: diva press schimmel, a. (2012). mystical dimensions of islam. (original work published 1975). retrieved from http://www.fatuma.net/text/schimmel.pdf skeat, w. w. (1900). an introduction to the folklore & popular religion of the malay peninsular. new york: barnes & noble, inc. wessing, r. (1997). nyai roro kidul in puger: local applications of a myth. archipel, 53, 97-120. retrieved from www.persee.fr/docaspdf/arch_00448613_1997_num_53_1_3395.pdf http://www.fatuma.net/text/schimmel.pdf ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 57-66 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 57 sebastian rodrigues’ character changes due to japanese social power in the silence movie maria gratia da silva and priyatno ardi doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.030105 received 22 july 2019; revised 12 august 2019; accepted 19 august 2019 abstract the present study investigates the changes of the characteristics of sebastian rodrigues, a catholic priest, before and after experiencing the social power in japan. it also investigates the influences of the japanese social power on the changes of sebastian rodrigues’ characteristics in the silence movie. the setting of the movie is the seventeenth century in japan, on which christianity was banned. sociocultural-historical approach was employed to analyze the movie. the results of the analysis shows that sebastian rodrigues’ characteristics before he experiences japanese social power include being compassionate, faithful, optimistic, and unconfident. after he experiences the social power, his characteristics change into helpless, despair, oppressed and senseless. the japanese social power influences rodrigues’ characteristics in five ways, namely forcing him to find the unfairness and violence, catching him, mocking him, making him witness the murder, and forcing him to apostatize. hence, the power changes rodrigues’ characteristics. keywords: silence movie, social power, characteristics introduction people in society are influenced by social power, which refers to an asymmetric control over valued resources in the social reactions (galinsky, gruenfeld & magee, 2003). the power forces people to obey orders without giving their agreement. it happens because the value in the society supports the social power to exist. the social power fundamentally shapes societies, organizations, and individuals (fiske and markus, 2012; wrong, 1996). as a result, it influences how individuals act according to the value of the society, influencing and changing the characteristics of people in the society. the issue of power and the changes of characteristics due to the power are reflected in literary works. as one of literary works, movie represents the life of people in society (spiker, 2012). according to kellner and ryan (1988), hollywood movies from 1960s to present are usually connected to the political movements. besides, a movie can also reflect the influences of social power on someone’s characteristics. sanata dharma university merriedasilva@gmail.com and priyatnoardi@usd.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 57-66 58 the present study discusses a movie entitled silence. the setting of the movie takes place in the seventeenth century in japan, a time when christianity was prohibited. according to brunce (1955), christianity arrived at the country in 1549, in the middle of civil war known as the sengoku period. the first missionaries were portuguese jesuits, who were supported by the emerging supreme ruler, namely oda nobunaga, and several christian daimyos, such as otomo sorin and omura sumitada. they supported christianity because of two reasons, namely their needs of a new spiritual authority for rising leaders and countering the buddhist and shinto sanctions and their needs in making use the christian missionaries from spain and portugal to furnish them with advance in trading. brunce (1955) also adds that the missionaries became both the lower and high classes of society. they could adapt easily to japanese people through charity and medical care. however, the supreme powers did not care about the new religion, but their needs. after nobunaga died, protestant christian organizations started appearing in japan. they tried to replace the catholic jesuits position. in july 1587, oda nobunaga’s successor, toyotomi hideyoshi, ordered to banish the christian missionaries (urakawa, 1927; watsuji, 1963). in september 1591, the decree of prohibiting christianity was issued. the decree declared that christianity failed to conform the syncretistic religious tradition that protected the order of the country. since then, all of japanese christians had to stay hidden from governmental purges. they became the “hidden christians” or kakure kirishtan of japan and had to live their spiritual life underground (brooke, 2003). hideyoshi declared his edict that the christians converted the whole population of japan forcibly by eradiating the native culture and destroying shinto shrines and relics. the japanese hidden christians or kakure kirishitan were isolated from the actual holy texts and the goods of christianity. their isolation made them blend christianity, shinto, and buddhism together. the silence movie depicts that a character can be affected by social power. power gives someone an ability to control society and to influence someone’s traits, behavior and characteristics (yang et al., 2015). sebastian rodrigues in the silence movie is a victim of social power which existed in japan at the persecution era (montevecchio, 2017). this study aims to analyze the changes of sebastian rodrigues’ characteristics before and after experiencing the japanese social power. furthermore, it seeks to investigate how the power influences his characteristics. method the silence movie the silence movie takes the setting of time in the seventeenth century, telling about two portuguese jesuit priests who visit japan, namely sebastian rodrigues and fransisco garupe. their mission is to find their lost spiritual teacher, i.e. jesuit father ferreira. ferreira is sent to japan in order to spread christianity. father rodrigues and father garupe are sent to the country to find the words of him. unfortunately, they find the fact that ferreira has renounced his faith in japan after being tortured by the super power. that news provokes rodrigues and garupe to ask father valignano, the head priest in their college, to travel to japan. they go to japan by the guidance of kichijiro. in japan, father garupe and father ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 57-66 59 rodrigues find the unfairness and violence against christians. christianity is prohibited in japan. there are thousands of christians who pray in silence. people cannot pray and join the mass freely because there is no priest left. the inquisitor usually checks the people’s faith to make sure there is no christians in japan. christian people who are caught by the inquisitor will have a deadly torture. rodrigues and garupe live in silence in the middle of forest. they come to villagers’ house silently to celebrate a mass. they decide to separate in order to find father ferreira. in their separation, rodrigues is caught by the inquisitor because of the betrayal of kichijiro. the inquisitor forces rodrigues to apostatize. however, his faith is very strong. one day, the interpreter of inoe-sama brings rodrigues to see garupe and some christian prisoners at the beach. they decide to be drowned rather than to apostatize. the faith of rodrigues starts to be decreased because of the silence of god. the violence against christians, most of whom are people from the low class, changes rodrigues’ characteristics. he gives up with the condition. he decides to apostatize because he does not want other people who helped him to be killed. after he apostatizes, rodrigues and ferreira work for the inquisitor to check all the goods which come from other countries. all christianity signs are prohibited. they work for the inquisitor until they are passed away. he does not talk about his faith to the world until he passes away. however, rodrigues has a big faith to jesus as god’s son in his deepest heart. approach of the study the researchers employed sociocultural-historical approach to discover how japanese social power which was portrayed in silence movie influences sebastian rodrigues’ characteristics. according to rohrberger and woods (1971), a sociocultural-historical approach is used in order to find an idea by emphasizing the culture which exists in civilization. rohrberger and woods (1971) mention that social and historical condition of an author can impact the literary works. the story, setting, and characters in a literary work can be influenced by the historical and social aspects. findings and discussion sebastian rodrigues’ characteristics before and after experiencing japanese social power sebastian rodrigues has five characteristics which appear quite often before he experiences japanese social power, namely compassionate, faithful, optimistic, brave, but unconfident. however, his compassionate characteristic changes into the oppressed and helpless feelings after experiencing japanese social power. rodrigues’ compassionate characteristic enables him to feel others’ suffers. however, the japanese social power makes him lack of power. as a result, he feels oppressed and helpless. he cannot do anything in order to help others in suffers. a scene which bears out the compassionate characteristic of sebastian rodrigues showing his helpless feeling is when he finds that the prisoners and garupe are going to be drowned. interpreter : “i should tell you, these christians already trampled and denied their faith at the inquisitor's office.” ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 57-66 60 rodrigues : “if they did what you wanted, then let them go. let them go. they did what you wanted. so let them go. please. please! please! please! let them go!” (01:51:39-01:51:55) the conversation shows his compassionate characteristic through his reaction in finding others’ suffer. he focuses on the prisoners’ life. this conversation shows sebastian rodrigues’ helpless feeling to make the prisoners free. the faithful characteristic of sebastian rodrigues turns into the senseless. rodrigues has proved his loyalty to father ferreira through his speech, reaction, and thoughts. however, after he decides to apostatize because of his love to others, he does not show his loyalty to father ferreira, even to jesus christ as his god. his faithful characteristic contrasts with his senseless characteristic. his optimistic and brave characteristics also turn into despair feeling. despair feeling refers to the condition of someone who cannot bear the burden and suffer. the person who feels despair does not see any possibilities in solving the problems. his optimism changes into his desperate feeling. the influence of japanese social power on sebastian rodrigues’ characteristics inoe-sama is the elite power in this movie. he has the power to rule society because he works in government. he is the governor of chikugo (01:29:3201:29:35) and also the inquisitor (01:29:36-01:29:39) who orders the persecution of christians. he has an unlimited power in this regency. there is no one who can deny his order. this reality is supported by the traditional social action in japan which puts the highest power in the leaders. it relates to japanese custom and tradition which believe in god of the sun. they believe their leaders have been chosen by the god. inoe-sama’s order to do the persecution towards christians is also supported by many other people because of the value-rational social action. most of japanese are buddhists and they believe that other religions are not appropriate with buddhists’ value. it is obvious in the conversation between the interpreter and rodrigues before rodrigues is brought to the prison. the interpreter : “we have our own religion, padre. pity you did not know this yet.” rodrigues : “no. no, no. we just think a different way.” the interpreter : “true. you believe our buddhists are only men. just human beings.” rodrigues : “even a buddha dies. like all men. he is not the creator.” the interpreter : “you are ignorant. padre, only a christian would see buddhists simply as men. our buddha is a being which men can become. something greater than himself if he can overcome all his illusions. but you cling to your illusions and call them faith.” (01:20:39-01:21:18) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 57-66 61 from the conversation, the researchers find that japanese people believe in buddhism. this form of social action supports the regulation of inoe-sama. additionally, it gives inoe-sama a high power to insist people to obey his order. power and authority becomes two different things. inoe-sama can be regarded to have both of power and authority. for japanese christians, inoe-sama is regarded to have the power to force them to apostatize and to deny their faith toward deus as seen in the conversation among jisama, mokichi, garupe, and rodrigues. jisama and mokichi inform the power of the inquistor to banish christianity in japan. jisama : “other villages are so dangerous. you do not know who to trust. everyone fears the inquisitor, inoue-sama.” mokichi: “inform on christian, and they give you 100 pieces of silver.” jisama : “200 for a christian brother. and for a priest, 300.” (00:19:55-00:20:20) as the elite power, inoe-sama can do everything in order to devastate christianity and force the christians to deny his faith by apostatizing. there is a routine test in every villages in order to find hidden christians. people must step on jesus’ pictures and deny the faith of christianity. the one who rejects or fails in the test will be punished. they will be killed in the cross like jesus. this regulation of inoe-sama is a coercive action. hence, inoe-sama is regarded to have the power to force people to do his commands. the violence also happens in order to banish christianity in japan. however, in most of japanese non-christian people’s opinion, inoe-sama has the authority to do the persecution towards japanese christians and the priests. according to weber (1968), inoe-sama has the traditional authority. most of japanese people believe that as a leader of chikago, inoe-sama has a traditional and legitimate right to exercise an authority. it also relates to the social reaction towards the value that supports inoe-sama’s regulation. most of japanese people also agree with inoe-sama. they think that chritianity brings the danger to japan. according to brunce (1955), christianity arrived in japan in 1549 and it was supported by oda nobunaga at the first time. oda nobunaga supported chirsitianity because of the political reasons. he wanted to look for the new spiritual authority for rising leaders and also for countering the buddhist and shinto sanction of the traditional powers. the two reasons that were used by oda nobunaga succeed to change some people’s mind and supported him in the political area. however, after the death of oda nobunaga, hideyoshi ordered the christian missionaries to be banished. he thought that christianity was a danger. not only that, the existence of christian forced people to eradite native culture and destroying shinto shrines and relics. for that reason, the edict in 1614 was made. it stated that people were illegal to be a christian or attempt to change people into christian. the letter from father ferreira is written in 1633. that letter provokes rodrigues and garupe to travel to japan in 1640, almost 30 years after the edict exists. therefore, the edict and the traditional authority of inoe-sama support him to have a strong right to do the persecution towards christians although it violates human rights. inoe-sama also states his view about christianity in japan. there are thoughts that believe christianity is danger. it is also mentioned in the movie. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 57-66 62 it is mentioned in the conversation between inoe-sama and rodrigues with the help of the interpreter. inoe-sama: “in that case, the daimyo's concubines were all jealous and they fought and fought without end. so the daimyo of hirado drove them away from his castle, and peace came into his life again. do you think this story has a lesson?” rodrigues: “yes. that this was a very wise man.” inoe-sama: “i'm glad. that means you understand the daimyo is like japan, and these concubines are spain, portugal, holland, england. each trying to gain the advantage against the other and destroy the house in the process! since you say this man is wise you will understand why we must outlaw the christian.” (01:43:08-01:44:06) from the dialogue of inoe-sama, the researchers find the similarity between inoesama’s and hideyoshi’s thoughts. it shows the thoughts about christianity as a danger is the value-rational form of social action among japanese people. moreover, the existence of the edict which is the regulation in japan at that time improves the power and authority of inoe-sama. as the result, the social power creates the lack of power for christians. thus, it influences the characteristic of sebastian rodrigues as the priest in the silence movie. the influence of japanese social power on sebastian rodrigues’ characteristics the characteristics of sebastian rodrigues before he experiences japanese social power are compassionate, faithful, and optimistic. however, his unconfident characteristic frequently appears. the doctrines, pressures, and violence which are used by the inquisitor change some characteristics of rodrigues. he faces the change in his characteristics before and after experiencing japanese social power. the social power influences rodrigues’ characteristics. it changes his characteristics by forcing him to find the unfairness and violence, catching him, mocking him, making him to witness the murders and forcing him to apostatize. forcing him to find the unfairness and violence during the mission in japan, rodrigues serves people in tomogi and goto. in tomogi, he serves christians with his partner, garupe. however, he serves christians by himself in goto. when rodrigues serves in goto, he is picked up to go back to tomogi because the inquisitor has already known that the priests came to japan. the inquisitor and the guards do the unfairness and violence toward the villagers in order to insist them to show they are not christians. three villagers of tomogi are caught in order to do the test and they are failed. then, they face the punishment which deliver them to the death. rodrigues sees the process of killing action and his unconfident characteristic appears. he cannot stand the suffer of others. the death of three villagers influences his characteristic. after the death of three villagers, rodrigues and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 57-66 63 garupe decide to separate. rodrigues goes back to goto and finds no one there. his unconfident feeling appears and becomes stronger by reason of the japanese social power that he faces. the researchers find out that the unconfident characteristics of sebastian rodrigues becomes stronger through his thoughts. in his thoughts, he asks father valignano for giving him the support in order to face the reality. rodrigues: “father valignano, you will say that their death is not meaningless. surely god heard their prayers as they died. but did he hear their screams?” (01:01:03-01:01:14), rodrigues: “how can i explain his silence to these people who have endured so much? i need all my strength to understand it myself.” (01:01:15-01:01:24) the destroyed goto also represents the japanese social power to sebastian rodrigues. the strengths of social power in japan gives a right to destroy a village and kill all of the villagers. his unconfident characteristic becomes worse. he thinks that he has brought the misery to the christians in goto. sebastian rodrigues’ thoughts deliver his guilty feeling directly. rodrigues: “i’m just a foreigner who brought disaster, and that’s what they think of me now.” (01:03:38-01:03:44) the unfairness and violence which he finds in japan bring about his guilty feeling and trigger his unconfident characteristic becomes stronger. the influences of japanese social power on his characteristics start from here. catching him in his being desperate and lonely, rodrigues meets kichijiro in goto. he feels afraid of kichijiro since he has denied his faith in tomogi. however, kichijiro shows his hospitality and treats him well. he begins to trust kichijiro anymore and they walk together until he feels thirsty. when rodrigues drinks and washes his face at the river, the guards catch him. he is brought to a place with some christian villagers who are caught like him. there is a conversation between rodrigues and monica, one of the prisoners. in accordance with the conversation, the unconfident characteristic of him grows into the despair. the despair feeling appears in his reaction as shown below. monica : “he wanted his name to be like our priest, juan. who died in unzen.” rodrigues : “there will be many more joining him. you understand? why are you looking at me like that? why are you so calm? we are all about to die. like that.” (01:13:49-01:14:20) after being caught, rodrigues shows his unconfident characteristic slowly turns into oppressed, helpless, and despair feelings. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 57-66 64 mocking him sebastian rodrigues is paraded through the villages in nagasaki after he is caught. he is brought to the inquisitor. in his way, a lot of people look angrily at him. he prays to god in his heart to give him spirit in facing the reality. one of villagers also throws the rock to him. moreover, the guards who open the gate and prepare the prison also show their glower toward him and other prisoners. sebastian rodrigues realizes his powerless in japan. it triggers him to feel helpless, oppressed, and despair. making him to witness the murders in the prison, sebastian rodrigues is treated well. the inquisitor gives him and all of prisoners the foods three times a day. during his arrestment, the inquisitor and all of his people attempt to insist rodrigues to do apostasy. they attempt to have a discussion with him. however, his faithful characteristic makes him does not change his mind. since the discussion cannot change sebastian rodrigues’ mind, inoe-sama orders his people to do the other ways in order to insist rodrigues. the executor kills one of prisoners in front of others. juan’s head is cut by the executor. this fact is shocking rodrigues as well. he screams and tries to open the door (01:39:06-01:40:06). after seeing the killing action in front of his eyes, he feels despair. it becomes worse after he is brought to a beach and finds garupe and all of other prisoners are drowned to the sea. according to the interpreter, they are drowned because rodrigues rejects to apostatize. the main purpose of the inquisitor is making the padres to deny the faith. the interpreter states it directly to rodrigues. interpreter: “we want the padre to deny, and be an example to them.” (01:52:03-01:52:07) the struggle of inoe-sama as the inquisitor in forcing rodrigues to apostatize does not finish there. the inquisitor orders his people to bring him to meet father ferreira by the guidance of the interpreter. ferreira is not a priest anymore. he has apostatised and changes his identity becomes sawano chūan. inoe-sama uses sawano chūan to insist rodrigues to apostatize. at the night when there are some prisoners are hung in the pit, rodrigues is forced to apostatize. sawano chūan encourages rodrigues to apostatize. he tells rodrigues that the prisoners are hung because of rodrigues’ fault. the inquisitor is going to free them as soon as rodrigues apostatizes. rodrigues : “no.” father ferreira : “you can spare them. they call out for help just as you call to god. he is silent, but you do not have to be.” rodrigues : “they should apostatize. apostatize! god help me. apostatize! korobu! korobu!” father ferreira : “but they have apostatized. many times over. they're here for you, rodrigues. as long as you don't apostatize, they cannot be saved. a priest should act in imitation of christ. if christ were here... if christ were ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 57-66 65 here, he would've acted. apostatized for their sake.” (02:15:12-02:16:04) the power of inoe-sama and the support from society is too strong to be opposed. rodrigues’ love to others is also very strong. finally, sebastian rodrigues agrees to apostatize. forcing him to apostatize the japanese social power forces him to apostatize. after his apostasy, sebastian rodrigues’ faithful characteristic changes into senseless. he cannot feel anything about faith anymore and does not give his loyalty to anyone else. he states it directly in his speech to sawano chūan. inoe-sama also gives him a new identity. he becomes okada san’emon, the man who has already passed away and left a wife and a son. in his new identity, rodrigues or okada san’emon does not say anything about his faith due to his being powerless in japan. the japanese social power has changed a good priest with compassionate, optimistic, and faithful characteristics into one with oppressed, helpless, despair and senseless characteristics. his unconfident characteristic before experiencing the japanese social power also triggers him to be powerless conclusion after analyzing movie, the researchers draw two conclusions. first, sebastian rodrigues is a dynamic character. before he experiences the japanese social power, he is compassionate, optimistic, faithful, and unconfident. after experiencing the japanese social power, he becomes oppressed, despair, helpless, and senseless. the way rodrigues reacts to the violence and unfair conditions in the japanese society proves that he has a strong compassion as a jesuit priest. however, his unconfident characteristic usually appears when he finds the hard occasion. after he experiences japanese social power, the characteristics of sebastian rodrigues turn into oppressed, helpless, despair, and senseless. his oppressed and despair feeling are getting worse when he has to confront the violence and others’ suffer. his low position makes him feel helpless. he cannot do anything to defend. as a result, he becomes senseless. his faithful characteristic changes into the depriving of the feeling. second, sebastian rodrigues comes to japan when the edict of extermination of christianity occurs. the value-rational and traditional social action in japanese society provoke inoe-sama’s power and authority as the inquisitor and the governor of chikugo become very strong. some of his characteristics change because of the social action and social power in japan. sebastian rodrigues feels oppressed, despair, unconfident, and helpless. the japanese social power influences sebastian rodrigues’ characteristics by making him find unfairness and violence, catching him, mocking him, forcing him to witness the murders, and finally forcing him to apostatize. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 57-66 66 references brook, j. (2003). ikitsuki journal; once banned, christianity withers in an old stronghold. retrieved on march 31, 2018 from http://newyorktimes.com/2003/12/25/world/ikitsuki-journal-once-bannedchristianity-withers-in-an-old-stronghold.html brunce, w. (1955). religious in japan: budddhism, shinto, christianity. santa barbara, california: greenwood press. cambridge history of japan. (1991). cambridge: university of cambridge press. cambridge history of japan. (1988). cambridge: university of cambridge press. fiske, s., & markus, h. (2012). facing social class: how societal rank influences interaction. new york: russell sage foundation. galinsky, a. d., gruenfeld, d. h., & magee, j. c. (2003). from power to action. journal of personality and social psychology, 85(3), 453-466. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.3.453 kellner, d., & ryan, m. (1988). camera politica: the politics and ideology of contemporary hollywood film. bloomington: indiana university press. monthevecchio, a. (2017). silence. journal of religion and film, 21(27), 1-4. rohrberger, m. and woods, s. (1971). reading and writing about literature. new york: random house publisher. spiker, j. (2012). gender and power in the devil wears prada. international journal of business, humanities and technology, 2(3), 16-26. urakawa, w. (1927). kirishitan no fukkatsu: ressurection of catholics in japan. tokyo: nihon katorikku kankokai. watsuji, t. (1963). complete works of watsuji tetsuro. tokyo: iwanami shoten. weber, m. (1968). economy and society: an outline of interpretive sociology. berkeley, california: university of california press. wrong, d. (1996). power: its forms, bases, and uses. new brunswick, new jersey: transaction. yang, w., jin. s., he, s., fan, q., & zhu, y. (2015). the influence of power on humanity: self-dehumanization in powerlessness. plos one, 10(5). retreived on may 12, 2018, from http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125721 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 208-220 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 208 for fear of islamic looks: a reflection of displaced “selves” within islam idha nurhamidah and sugeng purwanto universitas islam sultan agung semarang and universitas stikubank (unisbank) semarang idhanurhamidah@unissula.ac.id and sugeng_purwanto@edu.unisbank doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i2.3116 received 13 february 2021; accepted 29 march 2021 abstract the study discusses a triggering issue of those indonesian muslims who frequently feel uneasy to socialize with other muslims with arabic looks to neutralize islamic brotherhood in the indonesian context of unity in diversity. a survey was made available online for over three months to get public responses concerning the issue. sixty-two responses were collected for further analysis. findings of the study revealed that most of the respondents expressed fear of arabic looks because of terrorism-related activities resulting in deep personal hates. fears were also felt due to the image that such a group of muslims have deteriorated the local cultures of indonesian origins. still, others expressed fears of those distinctive individual muslims because of a frequent political demonstration staged by those types of muslims against engineered issues caused by discrepancies in political views to terminate the president. the authors offer recommendations for those with such islam phobia to learn more about the truth of islam from distinguished clerics from recognized muslim organizations or to read islamic literature to create peace of mind amid the wrong mindset about islam, and finally to put aside egocentrism in the spirit of unity in diversity, only to fight against radicalism. keywords: islamic looks, egocentrism, radicalism introduction historically, islam started to grow in indonesia (nusantara) near the end of the majapahit kindom of king brawijaya v whose son, raden patah founded the first islamic kingdom of demak (mussadun, 2019). governance of islamic kingdom was strictly practised under of the wali sanga—nine charismatic clerks whose main duty was to be responsible for the spread of islam across the indonesian archipelago while to serve as the members of the advisory board to raden patah, king of demak islamic kingdom (1500-1518). not only did the king perform in state-related duties but also act as a religious leader (zamharir et al., 2020) mailto:idhanurhamidah@unissula.ac.id mailto:sugeng_purwanto@edu.unisbank ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 208-220 209 except for sunan kalijaga, the other eight clerks were dressed like arabians—robes, turbans, beards, beads, and any other thing related to arabic attributes. sunan kalijaga maintained to wear black traditional clothes he created by himself similar to chinese traditional clothes. in indonesian movies about the struggle of islam, the walisanga were characterized as being powerful and charismatic individuals with islam-based magical strengths. they were good at self-defence and traditional medical practices. each wali had special expertise, for example, sunan giri was an expert of making gamelan music instrument aimed to promote islam (rahayu et al., 2020) while laymen were characterized as marginalized—wearing only shorts and headgears without having islam-based magical power. the walisanga were highly respected due to their wisdom and superpower— being viewed as those close to allah, the almighty. this group of religious clerks and their communities were referred to as the first group of islamic historiofig.y in indonesia called traditional historiofig.y, characterized by religious and magical aspects (fatiyah and hariyanto, 2018). this group of clerks employed local wisdom in the spread of islam—evolutionary than revolutionary (kasdi, 2017), assimilating the local cultures with islamic teaching. therefore, laypeople behaviorally practice traditional rituals but with the arabic (islamic) prayers (fatiyah and hariyanto, 2018) and sometimes a mixed language between a local language and arabic to produce new yet powerful prayers (mantra). concerning the legal practice, such as shalat, a five-time-a-day standard of islamic ritual, javanese muslims, for example, maintain the original rituals. in other words, they maintain the 5 pillars of islam. in this respect, a new term “islam kejawen” (javanese islam) was coined to accommodate their religious practices. it is sometimes called “islam abangan” (reddish islam) which is, somehow, related to clerks, sunan kalijaga or syekh siti jenar (susilo and syato, 2016). to accommodate the practices of ‘naturalized’ or traditional islam, an islamic group or mass organization called “nahdatul ulama” (nu for short) was established by k.h. abdul wahab hasbullah and k.h. hasyim asy’ari, on january 31, 1926, in surabaya, east java to preserve traditional islam, institutionalized in pesantren (islamic boarding schools). it had something to do with preparing indonesia for its independence, for example by “banning the muslim youths from entering the dutch military service, prohibiting the muslims from supporting the dutch army, and rejecting the dutch aid which was offered to the nahdlatul ulama’s madrasas” (ismail, 2011). the nu santris (students/ disciples) have been so far those of the grassroots even though at the moment one of them managed to get the second-highest position in the government of the republic of indonesia, the vice president, kh. ma’ruf amin. some others have got several good positions in both the private and governmental sectors. however, in indonesia there was also a group of muslims who initiated a positive movement or renaissance (if it may be called so) or modernism, to return to the original teaching of prophet mohammad (peace be upon him). in 1912, it was kh. ahmad dahlan who established a mass organization of muslim accredited by the sultanate and dutch colonial government—14 years before the establishment of nu. his mission was to modernize islam. thus, muhammadiyah ijhs, e-issn 9999-2345, p-issn 1234-5678, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 208-220 210 was often referred to as a modernist islamic and educational organization to synergize with its struggles (kim, 2010). viewed from its legal standing, nu stood against dutch colonial government while muhammadiyah was accredited by the sultanate and dutch colonial government. it was good for the dutch to be able to divide muslims into these two big mass organization. however, it remains a history leading to the independence of indonesia. the authors are pretty sure they contributed a lot to the achievement of indonesia's independence in their ways (ismail, 2011). there used to be discrepancies between these two big mass organizations in political views, religious practices. extremely speaking, in one neighbourhood, there was one mosque for muhammadiyah followers and another mosque for nu practitioners. but now, they could cooperate in some ways under the spirit of unity in diversity as seen in their cooperation against radicalism in jember (amal, 2016). in other words, these two mass muslim organizations have similar grounds for ‘hand in hand’ developing the republic of indonesia (nkri). nu and muhammadiyah along with their sympathizers, including nonmuslim groups of people have now been fighting against radicalism, to be exact islamic radicalism (fealy, 2004). the role of women was important in antiradicalism movement as revealed in cirebon assuming that women were most often used as perpetrators with a feminine approach it was argued that women should be positioned distinctively high by developing religious literacy, changing the paradigm of communication, reviewing and updating learning curriculum, and socializing with other religious groups and setting institutional net-working (gumiandari and nafi’a, 2020). however, due to the complexity of muslims, the program found it hard to implement. some individuals, assumed to be the "radical" people themselves, started questioning the definition of 'radicalism'. the government, religion ministry, found it complicated to answer such a 'misleading' question. the progress of anti-radicalism movement seems to be stagnant; moreover within which the global covid-19 pandemic broke out (sohrabi et al., 2020) to shake the whole world without exception. it was argued that to identify radicalism acts was not difficult at all (sirry, 2020). upon the fall of soeharto in 1998, particular groups of radical muslims described as ‘white-robed and turbaned muslim militiamen’ have found a rather smooth path for their struggle for immediate implementation of syari’ah law. they simply staged a political demonstration in front of the parliament, shouting “allahu akbar!!” explicitly implying "god, the greatest", but implicitly meaning “kill, go to hell, kafir., and any other form of hate speech. another example as set out by mietzner was that arab-indonesian islamic "clerics" were threatening to "sweep" foreigners from indonesia (mietzner, 2018). other cases, such as sweeping places of interests, restaurants open on ramadhan day-time, have been around up to now to be exact during the era of reformation (adi et al., 2019). in jokowi’s administration, both in his first and second half of presidency, radicalism has been everywhere—off-line through political demonstrations performed by 212 alumni, financed by anonymous opposing elites, hate speeches by particular clerks and online through producing hoaxes and hate speeches in social media. the government’s tolerance to these “democratic” activities had been wrongly translated as if they could have done anything freely without rules. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 208-220 211 we would not like to mention any names of groups or individuals to protect their privacy. the problem to which we would like to respond is the silent majority consisting of people under pressure, in fear of islamic looks who are now marginalized as foreigners in their motherland. method a survey (google form) in bahasa indonesia was made available online for over four hours to get public responses regarding the issue of radicalism in the indonesian context. fifty-five to fifty-eight responses—depending on the items— .returned for further analysis. we would mention the number of responses in each item. based on the results of the analysis and discussion, we would offer recommendations for the betterment of life in indonesia under the spirit of unity in diversity. findings and discussion narrated below is a discussion on the findings of the survey conducted through google form. there were 58 responses for further analysis. the results of the survey are presented in figures of pies for ease of description. radicalism in indonesia below is figure 1 representing the existence of radicalism in indonesia. figure 1. radicalism in indonesia fig. 1 shows that most of the 58 respondents (86.2%) believe that there is radicalism in indonesia and only 12.8% doubted that there was radicalism in indonesia. this low percentage indicates that the respondents may not be interested in this kind of issue. however, none of them gave negative responses. thus, it is very clear that radicalism does exist in indonesia. precaution is therefore of high necessity. radical people will attempt anything possible to create chaotic situations against the legal government. have they done so? they have. we think it is still fresh how they protested against the parliament on the legislation of pancasila ideology guide (hip) staged https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1faipqlscjnl_pr0rjvntmrykhrisij5mg7wbdgip-1b5fiptc1ltz8w/viewform ijhs, e-issn 9999-2345, p-issn 1234-5678, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 208-220 212 by a group of radical people organized under pa 212 islamists. even though the government had expressed “disagreement” against the legislation, their demonstration went on. their primary interest is not in the legislation of hip or whatever but to terminate the legal government. it was overheard in their oration that they wanted to topple down president jokowi and to ban pdip (democratic party of struggle), the president’s primary political supporter. such a situation has been politically predicted (lane, 2019). the main characteristics of radicalism regarding what characterizes ‘radicalism’ is shown in fig. 2 below figure 2. the main characteristic of radicalism radicalism is characterized as opposing the current government for a particular purpose. therefore, the majority of the 58 respondents (91.4%) justified that radicalism refers to an idealism that opposes the current government as also further justified in oxford dictionary defines 'radicalism' as (in politics) a belief favouring fundamental reforms (horby, 1987). in other words, radical people are those who oppose the government regarding whatever policies or achievements it has made. they tend to ignore laws and regulation. whenever the government makes blunders or policy malpractices, they will launch severe even illogical protests. this situation is not at all favourable in any country. it is, therefore, logical to assume/believe that radicalism has to be eradicated. in this context, jokowi's administration has been in the right track to have an anti-radical policy even though it is stagnant as possibly caused by the outbreak of coronavirus-19 which has shaken the world. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 208-220 213 perceived radicalism perceived radicalism can be seen in fig. 3 below: figure 3. perceived radicalism radical islamists in indonesia—though not applicable to all islamists—are identified by how they are dressed, namely as white-robed and turbaned muslim militiamen. for women, they are robed and fully-veiled (left only two eyes). in this survey, on being next to people dressed as such, the 58 respondents are relatively distributed. most of them (48.3%) feel uneasy; 36.2% of them ignore; while the last 14.5%f them feel just fine. surprisingly, there is a majority of the feeling of fear among people when socializing with people of arabic looks— wearing arabic attributes. we term this 'islam-phobia’ in which we fell strange or foreign in our own country when confronted with such looks. in this respect, a variety of reactions may occur, such as leaving them alone, feeling discomforts, but unable to do anything. the ‘displaced selves’ can be the right term, without physical and spiritual comforts. personal judgment on radical demos regarding personal judgment, displayed below is fig. 4, representing how respondents judged radical demos organized by the 212 radical groups. figure 4. personal judgment on radical demos ijhs, e-issn 9999-2345, p-issn 1234-5678, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 208-220 214 seen from fig.4, most of the 58 respondents (91.4%) expressed discomforts regarding radical demos regularly staged. only very recently did they stage another demo in front of on parliament building, in demand for cancellation of 'pancasila ideology guide' legislation as they claimed 'related to communism, a set-back issue to frighten people. historically, they should have remembered that in soeharto's regime, there was the legislation of p4 (guide to internalization and implementation of pancasila) which turned out to be a tool to maintain soeharto's status quo. the other 8.6% of the respondents expressed 'ignorance' regarding the multiple radical demos. at the moment, it can be assumed that they have been fed up by such silly and useless activities. personal worries on radicalism personal worries on radical demos are also of concern. demos consume energy from both parts—the government and the radical people. we would like to know the respondents' views on such multiple demos. the results are revealed in figure 5. below: figure 5. personal worries on radical demo surprisingly, most of the 58 respondents (65.5%) expressed worries about (1) the cost of security and public facilities destructions. the later can be minimized since the 212 radical group claim to be such a professional demonstrator leaving no public facilities destroyed. what about how much money the government must lose in, for example, one day demo? it was argued that the government spent idr 100 million. such a big amount of money, which can be used to build a hospital in papua, president jokowi quoted as saying. however, the second high proportion (32.8%) is still to safeguard public facilities next to the government’s budgeting on demo. personal emotive attitude in arabic looks (in men) presented below is figure 6. regarding the personal emotive attitudes on arabic looks experienced by the respondents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-7s4reaiwa ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 208-220 215 figure 6. personal emotive attitudes on arabic looks (in men) there were 57 respondents. surprisingly, though with a little difference (3.5%), more respondents (45.6%) expressed ignorance of arabic attributive clothes and the other (42.1%) expressed ‘fears’. the rest (8.8%) expressed ‘respect with fears’. some of them have learned to socialize the ‘radical’ by expressing ignorance. it is quite similar to covid-19 pandemic. after a certain period of 'large scale social restriction', we have to implement 'new normal' with a strict protocol of social distancing. we never know how they feel to have to make social interaction with people of different cultural attributes. we hope that they are doing just fine. fearful individuals (42.6%) are exactly the displaced ‘selves.’ they have lost their freedom to live in their country. they are probably frightened by possible blasts at one time or another. they are not to blame at all. what about another proportion (54.6%)? the choice ‘ignorance’ needs clarification but for the time being, we assume that they are doing social distancing with muslims of arabic attributes. personal emotive attitude in arabic looks (in women) on personal emotive attitude regarding arabic looks (in women), figure 7. below represents the respondents’ responses. figure 7. personal emotive attitudes on arabic looks (in women) ijhs, e-issn 9999-2345, p-issn 1234-5678, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 208-220 216 to our surprise, a significant proportion (50.9%) of the 55 respondents expressed “respect with fear” regarding women dressed in robes and full veils over their faces with only two eyes left open. meanwhile, 41.8% of the respondents expressed ‘hates’. the rest (7.3%) expressed ‘fear’. the current study should have been accompanied by in-depth interviews with respondents. the problem that it was not, was that the study took place in the time of covid19 pandemic. personal assumptions on radicalism we also would like to find out the respondents’ personal assumptions on radicalism. fig. 8 below represents their responses. figure 8. personal assumptions on radicalism possibility of radicalism solution we are in particular questioning whether or not radicalism can be eradicated from indonesian dreamland. fig. 9 below illustrates the respondents’ responses. figure 9. possibility of radicalism solution most of the 57 respondents (75.4%) are very optimistic about the possibility of radicalism solution. meanwhile, 22.8% of the respondents remain 'in-between' namely adding up another possibility. only very few respondents are pessimistic about the possibility of radicalism solution. we are committed to excellence to their optimism under unity in diversity, driving away racial, religious differences. cross-regional cooperation among people of different religions is required to realize the optimism to eradicate radicalism from indonesian motherland. it ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 208-220 217 should be remembered that radicalism is not always related to any particular religion. it can belong to any group of people with a view to making a chaotic condition without logical thinking. in other words, it is about ego-centrism of one identical fanatics. once a group of people were radically indoctrinated, it takes a very long time to neutralize them to be ordinary people. we have to solve the problems comprehensively, never partially. with our full efforts, we hope to finalize everything to help the government realize its national program without any obstacles. parties to solve radicalism problems we would like to know the respondents’ views regarding who would be responsible for solving radicalism problems. what are the real/factual problems of radicalism? included in the problems are (1) to convert the radical people to normal people, meaning that they would be just like ordinary muslims without any political practices, (2) to help the marginalized muslims who are identified as being in fear of other muslims with full arabic attributes though they may not perform radical activities. this is of great importance since full arabic attributes have become an enigmatic social judgment as “belonging to terrorists’. although, it should be kept in mind that wearing full arabic attributes does not necessarily mean ‘radical’, only by gradual process would those marginalized individuals be naturalized. any phobia cannot be cured in a single day. it needs processes. fig. 10 below illustrates who would be responsible for solving radicalism problems. figure 10. party to solve radicalism problems the last item to discuss is “who will be responsible for solving radicalism problems?” we offer three choices of responses. our assumption is correct as the majority of the 58 respondents (77.6%) expressed a choice that it is the responsibility of the government and the people to solve radicalism problems. meanwhile, 13.8% of them expressed that it was the government’s sole responsibility to solve the radicalism problems, and ironically the rest (8.6%) expressed a personal concern that it was the people’s responsibility to solve the problems. ijhs, e-issn 9999-2345, p-issn 1234-5678, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 208-220 218 it is still a good idea that the majority of people still realize the importance of cooperation between the government and the whole population of our beloved nkri (the republic of indonesia). conclusion despite increasing confidence in the success of gigantic foreign company acquisitions, overall development of infrastructure (negara, 2016), including the betterment of transportation system, digital business management, improved banking and economic sectors (primadini, 2018) an upgrade of income per capita, indonesia is now encountering two different problems, concerning its political stability—jokowi’s presidential position and silent majority’s fear of islamic radicalism, parasites destroying islam from within. despite frequent failures, including religious blasphemy in the case of ahok (peterson, 2020), radical groups of the opposition have been struggling to terminate joko widodo’s presidency. however, he is still under allah's protection. every bit of their actions against jokowi's presidential position hit nothing. at this point, we have to increase our precautions against all possibilities of occurrence regarding the safety of our nation, in particular, to secure jokowi's presidency. we are happy that the president himself is not over-reactive about political bullying, be they in the form of hate speech, privacy, regular demos and the like. he remains calm but cautious. the silent majority of people are in fear of islamic looks demonstrated daily by the radical groups of people, resulting in disgrace of local values and cultures. anywhere in every corner are a number of muslims dressed in full arabic customs. this has resulted in a gradual loss of atmospheric looks of indonesian muslims in general. as well, the 2019 presidential election demonstrated high friction of national disintegration with religious-political contestation (winarni et al., 2020). some of us have been silenced to witness the disgrace of our cultural heritage. it is therefore important that religious preachers be restructured against producing hate speech that will bring about provocation ending in governmental chaos (burhani, 2020). some people are not patient enough to see the slow responses of the government against radical oppositions who have signalled cruel attitudes and behaviours. they always compare the steps that would be taken in suharto's order baru against such a group of intolerance and radicalism. we may forget that we are now living in a different era with a different security model. silent majority of people in fear of radical looks have realized that they cannot do anything without the support of the authority. it is recommended that they learn more about islam from charismatic and dignified islamic scholars preferably from any of the two big mass muslim organizations—nu or muhammadiyah. each of them has demonstrated a commitment of excellence to safeguard indonesia before and after indonesia's independence. they can simply ignore the existence of those who would jeopardize indonesia. they have to believe that everything is going to be all right under the current government of indonesia supported by the majority of people, the police and the army with all necessary deterrence. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 208-220 219 references adi, a., sari, m., & setyowati, r. 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(2020). religio-politics of islamic group in the contestation of 2019 indonesian presidential election. politik indonesia: indonesian political science review, 5(1), 22-46. zamharir, h., noer, m., & lubis, s. (2020). khalifatullah panatagama: continuity & change in the practice of political islam in modern indonesia. journal of social political sciences, 1(1), 29-40. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 47-55 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 47 potehi in new order’s restraint: the lost of inheritor generation of chinese wayang culture hendra kurniawan sanata dharma university hendrak@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010105 received 1 may 2016; revised 3 march 2017; accepted 5 august 2017 abstract this article aimed to describe the history of wayang potehi development in indonesia especially during the new order period that became a dark time for its development. this study used historical research methods including heuristic step or source searching, source critics, data interpretation, and historiography or historical writing. the results showed that wayang potehi began to develop in indonesia as the coming of chinese immigrants around the 17th century and experienced acculturation with local culture. wayang potehi experienced dark times when emerged the discriminatory rule of the new order government against all things related to chinese culture. the restraint to freedom of expression and preservation of wayang potehi cut off the chain of inheritor generation. keywords: wayang potehi, chinese, new order, cultural inheritors introduction before the coming of hindu culture, the natives of archipelago had known wayang as a medium to worship the ancestors. wayang was considered the embodiment of ancestral spirits that later adapted into javanese culture. there were some varieties of wayang from wayang kulit, wayang beber, wayang suket, wayang golek, wayang wong, and many others. ironically from the long list of wayang’s inventory in indonesia, wayang potehi is often excluded. wayang potehi is brought by the chinese migrants to indonesia. this culture was in the performing art form that showed characters in puppet form. in the show, wayang potehi played wise tales from china. like wayang in general, potehi was also full of life values. furthermore as a meeting with the local culture, wayang potehi in indonesia also experienced acculturation process. nevertheless, this wayang still doesn’t lose its trademark and became one of the chinese cultural identities. the political changes in indonesia that occurred after the 1965 incident which actually gave significant impact on wayang potehi’s existence. on behalf of the latent danger of chinese communism influence, the new government issued discriminatory rules that further strengthened anti-chinese sentiments. the new order attempted to fuse chinese into tribes that dominated the area where they mailto:hendrak@usd.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 47-55 48 lived. the assimilation effort first began by eliminating all their cultural identities or could be cited as cultural genocide. through presidential instruction no. 14 of 1967, all forms of chinese culture and traditions such as chinese new year, wayang potehi show, barongsai, and so on could be celebrated only among families in the house or temple. the shackles over three decades had become a serious threat that led to chinese culture genocide. no wonder if wayang potehi was not included into the babon wayang’s book because the data source and generation that supports it was also limited. based on the thought above, this research attempts to review the history of wayang potehi development in indonesia until it finally began to lose the inheritors generation due to discriminatory policies of the new order government. therefore, this study focuses on (1) the history of wayang potehi development in indonesia, (2) the fate of wayang potehi in the new order era, and (3) the lost of inheritor generation of wayang potehi as one of the cultural identity. theory in javanese, wayang means shadow. according to mulyono (1975, p.11) the root of word wayang was "yang" with variations of the word "yung", and "yong". it means unstable, uncertain, unsettled, flying and moving around (note the words: goyang, huyung, doyong). so wayang contained the meaning of shadows that moving around, not fixed, and seem faintly. slowly the word wayang not only became name of the shadow show but also had widespread meaning to be puppets and dramas played by human (wayang wong). the art of puppetry is a traditional classical cultural art that is noble, full life’s value and noble life, ended by winning goodness and defeating the evil. the art of puppetry generally includes complex performing arts. it contains at least seven elements of art there are drama art, art or painting, sculpture or craft, literary arts, sound art, music art, style or dance art (haryanto, 1988, p. 2-5). the mixing of these various art’s elements allows wayang to be so many kinds from wayang kulit, wayang beber, wayang golek, to wayang wong. the wayang show is part of the ancestor culture that was believed to have existed before the coming of outside influence. it means wayang appeared since prehistoric times when ancestors just knew animism and dynamism (mulyono, 1975, p.56). while some other experts argue that wayang got influence from outside cultures such as india and chinese (haryanto, 1988, p. 35). the influence of india or hinduism appeared in wayang purwa story that took bharatayudha and ramayana stories. although the influence of chinese wasn’t significant, it couldn’t be separated from the origin of wayang that also exists in china. chinese influence could also be studied from chinese immigrants especially hokkien. they were famous for bringing a puppet culture called wayang potehi. wayang potehi is included in the puppet show. kuardhani (2012, pp.5-7) explains that china recognized three types of three-dimensional puppet, namely: rod puppet, strings puppet, and glove puppets. so wayang potehi is included in the glove puppet show because it is is played by entering the hand into the doll’s body. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 47-55 49 as a form of culture, wayang certainly has a cultural support community as well as the cultural inheritor. cultural inheritance can work well if freedom of expression and efforts to develop the culture are given in wide space. the development of art and culture is needed to be able to accommodate and foster creativity of the artists, to increase the society's art appreciation, to expand the opportunity to enjoy culture art, to preserve the culture, and to raise the spirit and passion of nation building (guritno, 1988, p. 9). method this research was a literature research with historical method to describe the history of wayang potehi development, the fate of wayang potehi in the new order era, and the lost of the inheritor generation of wayang potehi. according to gottschalk (1985: 32), the historical method includes (1) heuristics: the collection of sources, (2) criticism or analysis: assessing the source, (3) interpretation or synthesis: interpreting the source, and (4) historiography: writing. data were collected using literature review techniques. the sources used were in the form of books. external criticism was conducted to determine the originality and credibility of the source, while internal criticism was conducted to look at the content and compare source with each other or source triangulation. historical analysis technique prioritized the interpretation acumen by interpreting source's content to obtain a profound and holistic review. an analytical tool was used theoretical review to examine the cultural social context and the use of multidimensional approach (kartodirdjo, 1992, p. 2). the last step was done comprehensive history writing by assembling the facts obtained. findings and discussion the existence of many kinds of wayang, including wayang potehi as an ancestral cultural heritage showed that the root of wayang culture is not only penetrated into the archipelago. kwee kek beng in the koloniale studien magazine (unknown year published) outlined the word similarity between chinese wa-yaah (hokkien), wo-yong (cantonese), and wo-ying (mandarin) that means shadow performances (haryanto, 1988, p. 36). it was same as wayang in javanese. mulyono (1975, p. 11) explain the root of word wayang was "yang". kong (1999) records that the history of wayang shows in ancient china could be traced back to the early period of the qin dynasty. mo jing's book told about a dark box designed to see images from a light’s beam through small hole. in the emperor wendi period, the han dynasty, supposedly the emperor's concubine often entertained the crown prince by playing a puppet made from leaves in front of the window. a dutch scholar, g. schlegel in his writings chineesche brauche und spiele in europe told the story of emperor wudi from han dynasty who used shadow as the concubine’s image to let go of his longing. at that time the emperor was very sad because his very beloved concubine named madame li was dead. the royal physician named li shaoweng made a puppet from leather that resembled madame li. madame li's image was projected with candlelight at the night. from a far the emperor enjoyed it as a longing remedy (mulyono, 1975, p. 14-15; kong, 1999, p. 321-322). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 47-55 50 according to kong (1999, p. 322), wayang art growed rapidly in china during the song dynasty (920-1279). at the time wayang were made from goat leather carved into a puppets and colored. honest figure was given a good face, while the bad were given bad face. wayang show spread to hunan, hubei, fujian, guangdong, jiangsu, and zhejiang provinces. despite the weak evidence that wayang kulit in java was influenced by chinese, it was not impossible that chinese migrants helped to develop wayang art that had existed in java for centuries before. another case with wayang potehi that originally came from china. this traditional puppet show art originated in fujian, the main origin of indonesia’s chinese immigrants. potehi is derived from word poo (cloth), tay (pocket), and hie (puppets). kong (1999, p.319) explains potehi is a rather small wooden puppet. the head is connected to cloth pocket, and the outer clothing worn wayang characters' clothes. dalang’s hand put in the pocket to control the doll’s motion, especially on the head and both hands. it was said that wayang potehi originated from the story of five death penalty prisoners during the tang dynasty (617-918). according to wardani and widiyastuti (2013, pp.70-71), while waiting for execution, they passed the time by playing a piece of rectangular cloth that one end was tied to resemble head shape. this puppet’s movement was accompanied by music from existing cutlery. the emperor knew it and freed them to develop that new art. sometimes people said that wayang potehi adopted peking opera art in small form. the dolls were made up uniquely with various symbolic meanings according to their character. as time goes by, the entertainment function of wayang potehi also developed into ritual function. wayang potehi shows was often regarded as an appropriate means of conveying gratitude, praise, and prayer to the gods and ancestors. it was believed to bring blessings and abundant sustenance. associated to the ritual function, wayang potehi was usually played in front of the temple by first praying. now wayang potehi show can be performed anywhere in its function as a entertainment means. wayang potehi includes into three dimensional puppets. variants of threedimensional puppet in indonesia is quite a lot. mastuti (2014, p.40) said it was among others wayang golek from west java, wayang unyil from betawi, wayang dangkluk from bali, wayang si gale-gale from tapanuli, wayang kaet/gaet from riau, wayang cicak in tanjung pinang, wayang baco-puraga in makassar, and wayang gantung/marionette in west kalimantan. some of them also have chinese influence, so on some sides they are similar to wayang potehi. wayang cicak, for example, was introduced by chinese community in tanjung pinang. wayang baco-puraga was also played like wayang potehi with the life story and daily relation of makassar tionghoa community. wayang gantung alias chiao theu that was developed in singkawang, west kalimantan even used hakka language as an instruction language. furthermore, wayang potehi was generally more developed in java. specifically in yogyakarta also found wayang kulit cina-jawa (wacinwa) or chinese-javanese wayang kulit by gan thwan sing (kuardhani, 2012, pp.13-20). mastuti (2014, p.48) quoting brandon (1967) in clara van groenendael (1993), stated that wayang potehi came to java around the beginning of the 20th ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 47-55 51 century. allegedly wayang potehi was brought by the hokkien tribe through semarang and surabaya in the 1880s. wardani and widiyastuti (2013, p.71) mentioned earlier around 1735 along with the wave of chinese immigrants to java. kuardhani (2012, p.30) has a similar assumption that in the 17th century, wayang potehi show was already popular in batavia. at first, wayang potehi was often held in temple with chinese hokkien dialect as the instruction language. this traditional spectacle used indonesian and also javanese language. however, in the suluk’s part chinese language (especially hokkien) was still used to give cue guiding code to the music’s rhythm that accompanied wayang potehi. there were 3 types of suluk namely (1) laay..., to give the code that the music rhythm should be slow, (2) ban po tjiauw gi..., the music rhythm should be rather fast, and (3) ji ma tjiauw gi..., the music rhythm must be fast (wardani and widiyastuti, 2013, p.72). in principle, wayang potehi show indeed has a certain gamut sequence. mastuti (2014, pp.81-82) explains the show begins with the opening music, all instruments was played (lauw tay). furthermore, sehu alias dalang opens the show with four gods of wayang potehi (hok lok sioe tjwan), namelybie tjo (god of longevity), gong kiem liong (the richest god), tjho kok kioe (god of rank), and tjhai tjoe (smart kids). by offerings and hio, sehu recites a prayer for the one who implements votive. the opening character then appears with a monologue followed by dialogue (jejer or story telling), war scenes, and ending. before the new order period, wayang potehi show was very close to the society especially in java. kuardhani (2012, pp.91-92) noted interesting information that once in the night market of sekaten yogyakarta, a small theater was established exclusively for wayang potehi show. in 1963, semarang, it was also easy to find the stage of wayang potehi placed on a cow cart. this stage's design was unique because it didn’t need to unload pairs if they want to move the stage. in addition, wayang potehi shows were found in the celebrations of chinese day or vow ceremonies and celebrations held by the chinese community. wardani and widiyastuti (2013, p.75) describes the function of wayang potehi wasn’t limited to religious issues, but also marriage, ruwatan, supitan, and others. time staging is adjusted to the celebration time, it could be a few days or a few hours only. after the 1965 incident’s outbreak, chinese community was affected. allegations that were still affiliated to the communism of people's republic of policy was applied to merge chinese with local community. especially about the chinese culture, the government issued presidential instruction no. 14 of 1967 concerning the prohibition of chinese worship, customs and culture in public but should only be done internally in families or individuals. certainly this prohibition had a significant impact on wayang potehi development. wardani and widiyastuti (2013, p.72) interviewed a sehu named thio tiong gie. according to this senior dalang since the issuance of presidential instruction during the new order period, he had performed only one wayang potehi show in public. at that time he was pressed because there was a boy who insisted didn’t want to be circumcised if there was no wayang potehi show. since ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 47-55 52 the prohibition emerged, wayang potehi was only performed at the temple at certain celebrations only. reduction of the show in public made wayang potehi show changed the show’s format. wayang potehi performed serially, usually lasted for two hours in the afternoon (at 15:00 to 17:00) and two hours at night (19:00 to 21:00) with different plays on each session (kuardhani, 2012, pp.35-36). one story on each series completed in about one to three months. the determinant of the show’s duration depended on the amount of funds collected from the donors who had a vow. in contrast to wayang kulit for example, people who invited them had to pay the entire show for one story at once for six to seven hours (all night). this difficult situation also influenced on wayang potehi's pakem. suluk that must be pronounced in hokkien became rote, especially for dalang who was no longer mastering hokkien language. moreover many sehu weren’t from among the chinese then. in the meantime, the chinese tended to be apathetic and reluctant to preserve wayang potehi. besides, economically the sehu profession was less promising, new order political pressure also became a frightening threat. not infrequently the suluk experienced a shift from the original words and no longer accordance with the standard. the existence of wayang potehi that had been for centuries in java naturally brought it into acculturation nuances. the encounter of cultural products and human supporters that differ from each others produced harmonious collaboration. nevertheless, wayang potehi wasn’t allowed to develop during the new order period. the rulers gave the stigma ‘the other’ or ‘liyan’ to wayang potehi. even though many supporters (dalang, musicians, audiences) are javanese, but wayang potehi was still considered a "property" of the chinese and not part of indonesian culture. as time goes by, wayang potehi shows was no longer referred to peking opera arts. the dalang gained much new insight from javanese wayang like wayang kulit or wayang golek. because wayang potehi was mostly found in east java and central java, the acculturation with javanese culture was so thick. the use of language, dialect, musical instruments, and the interlude songs adopted the local culture. of course it didn’t rule out the collaboration possibility with local culture other than java. moreover there were several forms of arts similar to wayang potehi scattered in various areas, such as wayang cicak, wayang gantung, wayang baco puraga, and so on (mastuti, 2014, p.40). the use of local languages and dialects, for example javanese, was often used in joke part. however, unlike the wayang kulit performances, during the goro-goro scene the dalang was dare to slip a satire joke about political issues of government. at that time sehu didn’t dare to touch on political issues. let alone satirize the government, getting a permission to play wayang potehi show in the temple wasn’t an easy matter (wardani and widiyastuti, 2013, p.78). besides language and dialect, acculturation occured on the use of musical instruments. kuardhani (2012, pp.36-39) mentions there were chinese musical instruments in wayang potehi show namely rebab (erhu), lute, trumpet, flute (bien siauw), tambur, gembreng besar (toa loo), and perforated wood box (piak ko). furthermore, javanese musical instruments that were part of gamelan were also ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 47-55 53 often used, such as bonang, saron, kendang, and gong. interlude songs were often used javanese songs, but with chinese music rhythm. cultural dialogue in wayang potehi show could also be created through the taken plays. generally the theme of story told about heroism, history, empire, until the lives of the gods. some of themes that were often staged still refer to chinese stories such as the legend of samkok (three kingdoms), poei sie giok, sie djien kui ceng tang, sie djien kui ceng see, soen go kong (monkey king) alias see yu (journey to the west), and some others. compared to wayang kulit, wayang potehi was still minimal creations story (lakon carangan or composition). mastuti (2014, pp.50-51) mentions there were two main factors that hampered the wayang potehi development. there were 1965 incident and presidential instruction no. 14 of 1967. this situation resulted in the need of permission from the local security to perform every wayang potehi show, especially in big cities. the only different one was found in gudo, a village in east java, the political sentiment was relatively small and didn’t affect wayang potehi development. even now gudo become the main base of wayang potehi and the sehu. in general, however, the new order became a dark time for the development and preservation of wayang potehi. for more than three decades, chinese culture had faced genocide efforts. as a result, at least one generation of chinese suffered an uncertainty of cultural identity. the reforms had brought chinese culture to appear unabashedly in public. in 2000, president abdurrahman wahid alias gus dur revoked presidential instruction no. 14 of 1967 regarding the prohibition against chinese culture through presidential decree no. 6 of 2000. since this phenomenon, the chinese culture including wayang potehi began to develop. the euphoria of chinese cultural freedom didn’t significantly increase the number of wayang potehi enthusiasts. more than three decades of the restraint had made wayang potehi poor of inheritors, let alone successor cadres as dalangs and musicians. mastuti (2014, pp.140-141) recorded the cultural preserver of wayang potehi in indonesia was only about 54 people consisting of 14 dalang and the remaining was dalang’s assistants and musicians. interestingly many of them were javanese who previously had no ties to chinese traditions and wayang potehi. according to mastuti (2014, p.104), these javanese-born sehu mostly came from cities in east java, such as surabaya, sidoarjo, and tulungagung. initially they followed the chinese dalang by becoming a wayang potehi musician. eventually they were believed to be the dalang's assistant. furthermore they began to learn puppetry from senior dalang, especially chinese sehu. their skills were increasing by self-taught and learning from experience when replacing the dalang who was unable to attend. the lack of interest of young chinese to wayang potehi was strongly influenced by economic and political factors. wayang potehi’s dalang profession didn’t give a fixed income. the fact was exacerbated by political factors during the new order that had succeeded in wayang potehi's torpor. whereas the existence of an art was very dependent on the supporter community. preservation of wayang potehi mainly depended heavily on the inheritors, communities ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 47-55 54 including dalang, musicians, potehi doll craftsmen, spectators, to the observer and maecenas. certainly in addition to supporter societies, cultural inheritance will only occur when there was a freedom of expression. natural reforms have blown the wind of freedom for chinese culture. then emerged the resinicization effort that means a revival on interest of chinese cultural roots (chang, 2012). however, the breakup of one-generation chain has resulted in the reification of chinese culture become not-easy thing. self-awareness as a chinese may still exist, but young generation’s interest to revive their culture is not sticky. these reification efforts will increasingly have trouble when chinese culture was still seen as a product that should be introduced and accepted for granted. this fact can’t be denied by the strong view of self-essentialism. kleden (1986) considers that culture needs to be seen as a process rather than a product. so it isn’t only judged from essentialism perspective because it will only create the culture's preservers and connoisseurs. however, wayang potehi now almost run out of community of supporters. by understanding culture as an ongoing process, the younger generation must be brought to know the cultural heritage according to the current context. wayang potehi as a local culture must maintain an open, fluid, and dynamic identities in its struggle amid national and global culture. moreover, due to the rules' political pressures in the past and as the times progressed, the support society also had undergone an inevitable change of identity. as one of the cultural heritages, wayang potehi is expected to be preserved in accordance with the context of time. the dynamism and flexibility to survive in current currents are a manifestation of its cultural superiority. some things to consider in the effort to reconnect the cultural chain of wayang potehi heritage include (1) wayang potehi isn’t final and rigid cultural product, but it is dynamic and fluid (2) wayang potehi must be acceptable to many people including younger generation, (3) wayang potehi is a means of developing creative power. another important thing which must be recognized is that wayang potehi is also part of the national culture. wayang potehi should be placed similar to other wayang arts. in the puppet museum's guide book published by the ministry of education and culture in 1984, wayang potehi wasn’t mentioned. the only thing that might be close to this was the canton chinese puppet show (depdikbud, 1984, p.78). it confirmed how wayang potehi was systematically alienated from the national cultural treasures during the new order period. the thing that is no less important is the chinese culture development through education. during this time, potehi's dalang candidates learned wayang by self-taught or nyantrik with senior dalang. as a result there is no institutionalized effort to preserve wayang potehi. formally the skills of potehi puppetry may also be studied in art institutes, for example in the puppetry department. hopely it can promote wayang potehi to the next generation of culture inheritors who are really involved and melu handarbeni (feel belonging). thus wayang potehi doesn’t stop as a cultural product but cultural process that is lived from generation to generation. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 47-55 55 conclusion a wayang performance was known in china with the terms wa-yaah (hokkien), wo-yong (cantonese), and wo-ying (mandarin). one of the chinese wayang performances that developed in indonesia is wayang potehi. wayang potehi is a wayang golek adopting peking opera arts. wayang potehi developed in indonesia around the 17th century along with the coming of china’s immigrants and then experienced acculturation with the local culture. it means that wayang potehi has become one of the ancestral cultural heritages of nusantara. if previously the wayang potehi was very close to society, entering the new order period the situation changed. wayang potehi experienced dark times with the discriminatory rule that prohibited freedom of expression for chinese culture. there was a systematic attempt to isolate wayang potehi from the national cultural heritage and its supporting community. entering the reformation period, chinese culture gained a freedom of expression. so, the development and preservation of wayang potehi is expected to be a cultural process that is continuously lived by the inheritors’ generation. reference chang, y. h. (2012). identitas tionghoa pasca-suharto: budaya, politik, dan media. jakarta: yayasan nabil dan lp3es. departemen pendidikan dan kebudayaan. (1984). buku petunjuk museum wayang. jakarta: depdikbud. gottschalk, l. (1985). mengerti sejarah. jakarta: penerbit universitas indonesia. guritno, p. (1988). wayang, kebudayaan indonesia dan pancasila. jakarta: penerbit universitas indonesia. haryanto, s. (1988). pratiwimba adhiluhung: sejarah dan perkembangan wayang. jakarta: penerbit djambatan. kartodirdjo, s. (1992). pendekatan ilmu sosial dalam metodologi sejarah. jakarta: penerbit gramedia. kleden, i. (1986). sikap ilmiah dan kritik kebudayaan. jakarta: lp3es. kong, y. (1999). silang budaya tiongkok-indonesia. jakarta: pt bhuana ilmu populer. kuardhani, h. (2012). mengenal wayang potehi di jawa. yogyakarta: yensen project network. mastuti, d. w. r. (2014). wayang potehi di gudo: seni pertunjukan peranakan tionghoa di indonesia. jakarta: pt sinar harapan persada dan pt aksara warta mandarin (indonesia shangbao). mulyono, s. (1975). wayang: asal-usul, filsafat dan masa depannya. jakarta: badan penerbit alda. wardani, n. e & widiyastuti, e. (2013). jenis-jenis teater wayang di surakarta. surakarta: uns press. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 236-246 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 236 nasal prefixes as denominal verb formers in javanese language nanik herawati and dwi bambang putut setiyadi widya dharma university klaten correspondence: akunaniherawati3@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i2.3220 received 26 february 2021; accepted 30 march 2021 abstract this research focuses on nasal prefixes as denominal verb formers in javanese language. the formulation of problem can be stated as follows: (1) how is the form of denominal verbs with nasal prefixes? (2) what is the function of nasal in the forming of denominal verbs? (3) what is the meaning of nasal prefixes in denominal verbs forming? the goal of this research is to describe the function of nasal in the forming of denominal verbs in javanese language. research methodology includes: research strategy, location of the research, data and the source, data collection technique, data analysis technique, and the analysis of the result. there are three results, they are: (1) the form of denominal verbs with nasal prefixes in javanese language (2) the function of nasal in the forming of denominal verbs of javanese language (3) the meanings of nasal prefixes in the forming of denominal verbs. keywords: nasal prefixes, verbs, nouns, derivation introduction many researches has discussed about morphology in javanese language, but it’s hard to find the one that focuses on the forming of words with derivation, especially focus on the forming of denominal verbs. affixation is a part of morphology. the other processes are reduplication and compounding. nasal affixes can form denominal verbs; it means that the basic form of noun is attached an affix [n-] and becomes a verb. it is called denominal verb, that is, verb is derived form a noun. nasal affixes can be derivative and inflective. derivative nasal can form new word that lexically is different with the basic form; it also has different word category. but the attachment of nasal affix to basic form sometimes does not change the word category. in other words, the basic form and the new one have the same category. this research will discuss about nasal affixes {m-, n-, ng-, ny-, and nge-} that form denominal verbs in the javanese language. therefore, the basic form is a noun and the formers are nasal affixes. the research on derivation and inflection can be found in paper of verhaar (1996: 143). it states that inflection is morphemic word changing that maintains lexical identity of the word. whereas, derivation is morphemic word changing ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 236-246 237 that results new word with different identity. verhaar states that inflection process maintain the class and identity of the word; and derivation word forming with different class and identity of the word. for example, the word maku ‘to nail’ is derived from the basic form paku ‘nail’. the word maku and paku are two words with different class and identity. (1) bapa mundhut paku ning toko wesi. ‘father bought nails at hardware store.’ (2) bapa nembe maku meja ingkang sempal punika. ‘father nailed the broken table.’ the word paku is noun; the maku is verb. nasal prefixes in javanese language has five allomorph, they are: {m-}, {n}, {ng-}, {ny}, and {nge-}. the verb [n-] is active transitive and intransitive. active verbs happen when the subject does the action. the subject (s) acts something and have the emphasis; whereas the object (o) is less emphasis. denominal verbs with prefix [n-] can be formed from basic morphem beginning with consonant or vowel. there are some rules of forming word with nasal, they are: (1) prefix [n-] will become /m/ when the basic morphem begins with consonant /b/, /p/, and /w/. examples: bobor ‘vegetables bobor’  mbobor ‘to make vegetables bobor’ paku ‘nail  maku ‘to nail’ warung ‘shop’  marung ‘to open a shop’ (2) prefix [n-] will become /n/ when the basic morphem begins with consonant /t/, /th/, /d/, and /dh-/. examples: tali ‘rope’  nali ‘to bind’ thuthuk ‘knock’  nuthuk ‘to knock’ dhadha ‘chest’  ndhadha ‘to bear’ dalang ‘mastermind’  ndalang ‘to become a mastermind’ (3) prefix [n-] will become /ng-/ when the basic morphem begins with vowel /a/, /e/, /u/, /o/, /i/, and also begins with consonant /g/, /k/, /r/, /l/, and /y/. examples: ani-ani ‘knife to pick up rice’  ngani-ani ‘to harvest rice with aniani’ endhog ‘egg’  ngendhog ‘to lay egg’ ibu ‘mother’  ngibu ‘to suppose someone to be one’s mother’ obor ‘torch’  ngobor ‘to lightt the torch’ rabuk ‘fertilizer’  ngrabuk ‘to fertilizer’ labur ‘paint’  nglabur ‘to paint’ kapal ‘boat  ngapal ‘to sail’ (4) prefix [n=] will become /ny/ when the basic morphem begins with /c/, /s/, and /j/. examples: cathut ‘pincers’  nyathut ‘to pull out something with cathut’ soto ‘vegetables soto’  nyoto ‘to eat vegetables soto’ jenang ‘porridge’  njenang ‘to make porridge’ (5) prefix [n-] will become /nge-/ when the basic morphem is only one syllable. examples: lap ‘rag’  ngelap ‘to wipe’ pel ‘mop’  ngepel ‘to mop the floor’ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 236-246 238 gong ‘music intrument’  ngegong ‘to beat a gong’ based on the above explanation, the formulation of the problems can be stated as follows: 1. what is the form of denominal verbs with nasal prefixes? 2. what is the function of nasal in the forming of denominal verbs? 3. what is the meaning of nasal prefixes in the forming of denominal verbs? morphology according to verhaar, morphology (2001) is the basic unit in language as gramatical unit. as in the word ngepel ‘to mop the floor’, based on phonology it has five phonemes; based on morphology it has two minimal units, [nge-] and pel. the minimal unit is called morphem. there are two kinds of morphem: independent morphem and bound morphem. the independent morphem is a unit or free form in speech; it can stand alone to have the meaning. examples: adus ‘to take abath’, lunga ‘to go’, turu ‘to sleep’. while bound morphem cannot stand alone to have a meaning; it needs other morphem to make a meaning. for example: morphem /nge-/, it does not have any meaning. many language experts have done the research on morphology, such as tambubolon (1983), simatupang (1983), subroto (1985), ekowardono (1988), sunoto (1990), uhlenbeck (1982), kridalaksana (1998), verhaar (2001), ermanto (2008), poedjosoedarmo (2016), nanik herawati (2017). affixation affixation is one of marphologic processes, like reduplication and compounding. words are formed by adding prefix at the beginning of the words, or inserting infix in the middle of the words, or adding suffix in the end of the words, or confix (the combination of them). sasangka (2001: 36) states that the affixation in javanese language has four kinds, they are: (1) ater-ater ‘prefix’ (2) seselan ‘infix’ (3) panambang ‘suffix’ (4) ater-ater and panambang ‘prefix and suffix’. poedjosoesdarmo (2016) states that javanese prefixes are [n-, dak-, ko-, di-, ke-, sa-, pa-, pi-]. javanese infixes are [-in-, -um-, -el-, -er-]. javanese suffixes are [-i, -a, -e, -an, -na, -ake, -ane]. javanese confixes are [ke-an, ke-en, pa-an, n-a, n-i, n-ake, n-ana, n-e, di-e, di-ana, di-ake, sa-e, -in-ake, -um-a]. his statement is in line with other language experts that words are formed with affixation. positon of prefix is at the beginning of the word. javanese prefix anuswara [n-] has five allomorphs, they are [m-, n-, ng-, nya-, nge-]. the other prefixes are [dak-, ko-, di-, a-, ma-, ka-]. this research will focuss on the nasal prefixes in the forming of derivative words. word category poensen (1987) states that javanese word category consists of (1) tembung aran ‘noun’ (2) tembung wasesa ‘article’ (3) tembung watak ‘adjective’ (4) tembung kriya ‘verb’ (5) tembung wilangan ‘number word’ (6) tembung sesulih ‘pronoun’ (7) tembung panerang ‘adverb’ (8) tembung ancer-ancer ‘preposition’ (9) tembung panyilah ‘conjunction’ (10) tembung sabawa ‘interjection’. so ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 236-246 239 poensen classified javanese words into 10 kinds. padmosoekotjo (1987) also explains the same category. verb javanese words knows two kinds of verbs, they are (1) basic verb, such as lungo ‘to go’, adus ‘to take a bath’, turu ‘to sleep’, gojek ‘to play’, adang ‘to cook rice’ (2) derivative verb, such as maku ‘to nail’, nyapu ‘to sweep’, nggunting ‘to sew’, ngecet ‘to paint’, nyemprit ‘to blow wistle’. if derivative verb comes from a noun, it is called denominal verb. it means that the verb comes from a noun added with prefix. according to poedjosoedarmo (2016) verb is a word that implies action. the verb has morphologic sign, that is, it can follow the slot: 1) [n-] l, [nl-i], and [nl-ake] for example: nuthuk ‘to beat’, nuthuki ‘to beat several times’, nuthukake ‘to beat for someone else’ 2) [nl-a], [nl-ana], and [nl-na] for example: macula ‘please hoe’, maculana ‘please hoe several times’, maculna ‘please hoe for someone else.’ 3) [dak-n], [dakn-i], and [dakn-ake] for example: daknulis ‘i write’, daknulisi ‘i vewrite for several times’, daknulisake ‘i write for someone else’. according to wedhawati (2016) verb has some characteristics, they are: 1) verb can be added with denial word ora ‘do not’, but cannot with dudu ‘to be not’ 2) verb cannot be applied in the degree of comparison 3) verb can function as a predicate 4) verb cannot be followed with word that implies intensifying 5) verb can be followed by adverb 6) basic verb can function as a command, while derivative verb cannot. noun according to poedjosoedarmo (2016) a noun is a word that marks or names an object. it can stand alone, does not depend on other word. javanese noun can be classified into some ways. according to the meaning, there are concrete nouns such as macan ‘tiger’ and pari ‘rice’; and there are abstract nouns such as akal ‘sense’ and kejujuran ‘honesty’. derivation gorys keraf (1978) states that morphemic process changes lexical identity of a word. derivation is distinguished into two categories: 1) derivation as morphemic process that changes lexical identity followed with changing of categorical status, such as paku ‘nail’ (n) becomes maku ‘to nail’ (v) 2) derivation as morphemic process that changes lexical identity without changing of categorical status, such as labu (v) becomes nglabuhi (v) in other words, derivation is morphologic process that can change word identity both transpositional and untranspositional. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 236-246 240 denominal verbs the forming a verb from noun is called denominal verb. the basic word is a noun processed with affixation or reduplication and becomes a verb. according to nanik herawati (2017) denominal verb is a verb from basic form gunting ‘scissors’ becomes menggunting ‘to cut with scissors’. morphemic analysis, that word has two morphemes, they are {n-} and the basic form  {n-} + d = vn. other examples: paku ‘nail’  maku ‘to nail’  [n-paku]; sapu ‘broom  menyapu ‘to sweep’  [n-sapu]. method this research has some goals, they are (1) to describe the nasal form in the process of forming the denominal verbs in the javanese language, (2) to analyze the function of nasal in the forming of denominal verbs, and (3) to describe the meaning of nasal prefixes in the forming of denominal verbs. that’s why the structural description is used in the research. the topics that will be reviewed in this research cover: research strategy, research location, data and the data source, data collection technique, data analysis technique, and result presentation. this research uses description method,that is, describing the language phenomenon accurately and carefully. data collection, according to sudaryanto (1992), is called kualitative description. it collects data based on the facts so that the description is real. the location of this research is in the library to gain the written data. besides that, the research is also held in klaten and solo to gain the data from the native speakers of javanese language which is daily spoken. the data is words having nasal prefixes [n-: m-, n-, ny-, ng-, and nge-] which are kinds of ragam ngoko ‘lower language’. derivative nasal prefixes are taken when they are verbs coming from basic form of nouns. the data source which is used is primary data and secondary ones. the primary data is many found the panjebar semangat magazine; while the secondary ones from daily speeches of society in klaten and solo. data collection technique the technique of data collecting are listening technique and noting technique. (1) listening technique means that we listens carefully to the speakers to gain the nasal prefixes of derivative denominal verbs, (2) noting technique means that we note accurately the data gained. data analysis technique to analyze data, technique two-two and technique expansion technique are used. to find the rule in analyzing data, three methods are used: (1) equivalent method (2) agih method (3) intropective reflection method. these methods are described in the book of sudaryanto (sudaryanto, 2001) 1. technique two-two to analyze the process of derivation with nasal prefixes, technique two-two is used. this technique shows wheather there is lexical identity difference or not concerning the category of the words. affixation can change the category of words, eg, from a verb becomes a noun and like versa. the technique two-two can be described as follows: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 236-246 241 gunting ‘scissors’ (n)  nggunting ‘to cut with scissors’ (v) garu ‘rakes’ (n)  menggaru ‘to harrow’ (v) paku ‘nail’ (n)  memaku ‘to nail’ (v) the opposition of the two words gunting (n) and nggunting (v) shows the different word category. the changing process from a noun to a verb is called denominal verb. the opposition of the two words shows different category after affixation process; to be exact, nasalisation. the same thing happens also for the words garu (n) and paku (n) which become nggaru (v) and maku (v). other words: sapu ‘broom’ (n)  nyapu ‘to sweep’ tukang ‘workman’  nukang ‘to work as workman’ cat ‘paint’  mengecat ‘to paint’ the category of the words is changed at the result of nasalisation from nouns to verbs. it is denominal verb. 2. expansion technique this technique expands a certain lingual unit with other lingual unit. it can be described as follows. 1) lik tarja tuku pacul ning pasar wedhi. ‘lik tarja bought a hoe at the market.’ 2) lik tarja macul ning sawah. ‘lik tarja hoed at the field.’ the word pacul in the first sentence can be expanded with number: lik tarjo tuku pacul loro ning pasar wedhi. ‘lik tarjo bought two hoes at the market.’ the word pacul can also be added with denial word dudu ‘is not’ as in the sentence iki dudu pacul ‘this is not a hoe.’ the word macul in the second sentence can be expanded with words of tenses: arep ‘will’, wis ‘has’ and durung ‘not yet’. 3) lik tarja arep macul ning sawah. ‘lik tarja will hoe at the field.’ the words of tenses show that the word macul is a verb. result presentation presentation of the result produces certain rule. they are: a) formulation with sentences is called informal method b) formulation with symbols or signs, for example sign of arrow (  ), brackets (…), and quotation marks (“ ….”) findings and discussion 1. denominal verb with nasal prefixes the nasal prefixes forms, {n-} has five allomorphs, they are {m-, n-, ng-, ny-, and nge-}. the nasal prefixes can change nouns into verbs, that is denominal verbs. the rules are as follows: a. nasal will be in the form of {m-} when followed with basic morphem beginning with consonant /b, p, and w/ 1) baso ‘round meat’  mbakso ‘eat baso’ titin tuku baso. ‘titin bought baso’ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 236-246 242 titin lagi mbakso nang warung. ‘titin is eating baso at cook shop. 2) pincuk ‘small container from leaves’  mincuk ‘to make pincuk’ ani pinter gawe pincuk. ‘ani is skilled at making container from leaves.’ ani lagi mincuk sego gudhangan. ‘ani is eating rice and vegetables with pincuk.’ 3) wadung ‘ax’  madung ‘to cut something with an ax’ bapak tuku wadung ning pasar kartosuro. ‘father bought an ax at the market.’ bapak lagi madung wit ringin nganti gobyos. ‘father is cutting down banyan tree.’ b. nasal will be in the form of {n-} when followed with basic morphem beginning with consonant /t-, th-,d-, dh-/ 4) dubang ‘red saliva’  ndubang ‘spit red saliva’ simbah yen mbuang dubang ning pojok omah. ‘our grandmother the red saliva at the house corner.’ sedhelo-sedhelo simbah ndubang. ‘simbah very often spits red saliva.’ 5) dhadha ‘chest’  ndhadha ‘to pat the chest’ ibu seneng dhahar dhahda ayam. ‘mother likes to eat chicken chest.’ dheweke dari juara banjur ndhadha. ‘he’s the champion, then he pats the chest.’ 6) tempe ‘side dish from soy’  nempe ‘to make side dish from soy’ tuti nggoreng tempe kriyuk. ‘tuti is frying side dish from soy.’ tuti lagi repot nempe. ‘tuti is busy making side dish from soy.’ c. nasal will be in the form of {ng-} when followed with basic morphem beginning with consonan /k-, g-, r-, l-, y-/ 7) karung ‘sack’  ngarung ‘to put something into the sack’ marsudi melipat karung dengan rapi. ‘marsudi folded the sack neatly.’ marsudi lagi ngarungi jagung. ‘marsudi is putting the corn into the sack.’ 8) kayu ‘wood’  ngayu ‘to become like wood’ lawange digawe saka kayu jati. ‘the door is made of teak wood.’ pohunge wis kesuwen, padha ngayu. ‘the casava is too long, it became like wood’ 9) gambar ‘picture’  nggambar ‘to draw.’ tini dhuwe gambar pemandangan. ‘tini has a picture of sscenery.’ tini nggambar gunung loro. ‘tini draws two mountains.’ 10) rabuk ‘fertilizer’  ngabuk ‘to fertilize’ lik tarno tuku rabuk. ‘lik tarno bought fertilizer.’ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 236-246 243 lik tarno sekeksuk ngrabuk ning sawah. ‘lik tarno fertilized at the field all day.’ 11) labur ‘paint’  nglabur ‘to paint’ asep gawe labor dinggo tembok. ‘asep made paint mixture for the wall.’ asep sarapan sadurunge nglabur. asep has breakfast before he paints the wall.’ 12) oyot ‘root’  ngoyot ‘to become root’ oyot pelem kuwi ngrusak pager. ‘the root of mango tree damages the fence.’ wortele wis ngoyot. ‘the carrot has rooted.’ 13) uyuh ‘urine’  nguyuh ‘to urinate’ uyuh pancen pesing ambune. ‘the aroma of urine smells realy awful.’ yen nguyuh yo dang disentor. ‘if you urine, soon flush it.’ 14) idu ‘salive’  ngido(ni) ‘to spit to someone’ yen idu aja sakenggon enggon. ‘mind your spit, please.’ aja seneng ngidoni kancane. ‘don’t spit your friends. 15) endhog ‘egg’  ngendhog ‘to lay egg’ sarmi nggodhog endhog kanggo bancakan. ‘sarmi cooked eggs for thankgiving.’ pitike ngendhog ana kebon. ‘the hen lays egg at the yard.’ 16) andhong ‘horse cart’  ngandhong ‘to ride on horse cart.’ dirman duwe andhong loro. “dirman has two horse carts’ ibu tindak pasar candhi ngandhong. ‘mother goes to the market by horse chart.’ d. nasal will be in the form of {ny-} when followed with basic morphem beginning with consonant /c-, j-, s-/ 17) copet ‘pickpocket’  nyopet ‘to pickpocket’ akeh copet ana nang pasar malem. ‘there are many pickpockets at the fair.’ wong kuwi ketangkep pas arep nyopet. ‘that man was caught when he would pickpocket. 18) jago ‘cock’  njago ‘to make someone a candidate.’ pak joko duwe jago loro. ‘joko has two cocks’ aku njago dulurku dadi lurah desaku. ‘i make my relative a candidate of my village headman.’ 19) susu ‘milk’  nyusu ’suckle’ adi nyimpan susu nang botol. ‘adi kept the milk in the bottle.’ anak kucing kuwi lagi nyusu. ‘the kitty is suckling.’ e. nasal will be in the form of {nge-} when basic morphem only consists of one syllable. 20) cat ‘paint’  ngecet ‘to paint’ tukua cet ning toko abadi kana. ‘please, buy a tin of paint at to abadi shop.’ bapak lagi ngecet pawon. ‘father is painting the kitchen.’ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 236-246 244 21) bis ‘bus’  ngebis ‘to go by bus’ wong loro kuwi nyegat bis ana halte. ‘those men stopped the bus at the bus-stop.’ bocah-bocah mangkat nang sekolah ngebis. ‘the children go to school by bus.’ 22) tik ‘typewriter’  ngetik ‘to type using typewriter’ mesin tik jaman biyen dadi barang mewah. ‘at the old days, typewriter was a luxury goods.’ ani ngetik nganti wengi. ‘ani typed the paper till late at night. ‘ 23) rem ‘brake’  ngerem ‘to brake’ paklik tono lagi ndandani rem motor. ‘uncle tono is repairing the brake of the motorcycle.’ sopir bis kuwi wis ngerem kanthi alus. ‘the bus driver has braked the bus softly. 24) pel ‘mop’  ngepel ‘to mop yu jum umbah-umbah pel. ‘yu jum is washing the mop.’ yu jum lagi ngepel kamar. ‘yu jum is mopping the room.’ 2. function of nasal in denominal verbs forming the function of nasal prefixes {n-} is to form active transitive verbs. some examples of active denominal verbs with nasal prefixes are nggaru ‘to harrow’, nyapu ‘to sweep’, nyiduk ‘to take water‘, nguping ‘to eardropping’. nasal prefixes {n-} indicates modality, that is, indicating something real. the transitive verbs from nouns can be indicative, imperative, subjunctive. 3. the meaning of nasal prefixes in denominal verbs forming nasal prefixes {n-}+ d have some meaning as follows: a. to do action as indicated in the basic form 1) jenang ayune nglenga. ‘the porridge ayu contains much oil.’ nglenga ‘to contain oil’ (v) from lenga ‘oil’ (n) 2) mas budi esuk-esuk wis ngebel. ‘brother budi has phoned early in the morning.’ ngebel ‘to phone’ (v) from bel ‘phone’ (n) b. to do the activity with the basic form 3) ibu ngasta roti bolu. ‘mother brings cake bolu.’ ngasto ‘to bring something with arm’ (v) from asta ‘arm’ (n) c. to become or to contain something like the basic form 4) gulene nggajih. ‘the curry contains much fat.’ nggajih ‘to contain fat’ (v) from gajih ‘fat’ 5) sepedane ora nate diresiki ngganti ngarat. ‘the bike is never cleaned up till rusty.’ ngarat ‘to become rust’ (v) from karat ‘rust’ (n) d. to play or to sound the basic form 6) anakku senengane nyuling. ‘my son loves to play flute.’ nyuling ‘to play flute’ (v) from suling ‘flute’ (n) e. to do or to bring something like the basic form ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 236-246 245 7) budi menyang sawah nyeker. ‘budi went to the field with bare feet.’ nyeker ‘to walk with bare feet’ (v) from ceker ‘feet’ 8) sardi senengane nguping. ‘sardi loves to eardropping.’ nguping ‘to eardrop’ (v) from kuping ‘ear’ f. to ride the basic form 9) pardi ngepit ontherl saben esuk. ‘sardi usually goes on bike every morning.’ ngepit ‘to go on bike’ (v) from pit ‘bike’ (n) 10) titi ndhokar menyang pasar. ‘titi goes to the market on horse cart.’ ndhokar ‘to go on horse cart’ (v) from dhokar ‘horse cart’ g. to produce something as indicated in the basic form from the body 11) pitik katene wis ngendhog lima. ‘the chicken has lay five eggs.’ ngendhog ‘to lay egg’ (v) from endhog ‘egg’ 12) yen nguyuh kudu disiram. ‘if you urinate, please flush it.’ nguyuh ‘to urinate’ (v) from uyuh ‘urine’ (n) conclusion the conclusion can be taken from the above review as follows. nasal prefixes {n-} in the forming of denominal verbs with nasal sound have five allomorphs, they are {m-, n-, ng-, ny-, and nge-}; the function of nasal prefixes {n-} are to form active verbs. examples of transitive active verbs are: nggaru ‘to harrow’, nyapu ‘to sweep’, nyiduk ‘take water’, nguping, ‘eardrop’. nasal prefixes {n-} indecates modality, that is, indicating something real, and: nasal prefixes {n-} in the forming of denominal verbs have some meaning; they are: to do action as indicated in the basic form, to do the activity with the basic form, to become or to contain something like the basic form, to play or to sound the basic form, to do or to bring something like the basic form, to ride the basic form, and to produce something as indicated in the basic form from the body references herawati, n., rustono, r., & poedjosoedarmo, s. 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(2001). metode dan analisis bahasa pengantar penelitian wahana kebudayaan secara linguistik. yogyakarta: duta wacana university press. uhlenbeck, e.m. (1982). kajian morfologi bahasa jawa. jakarta: djambatan. verhaar, j,w.m. (2001). asas-asas linguistik umum. yogyakarta: gajahmada university press. wedhawati. (2001). tata bahasa jawa mutakhir. jakarta: pusat bahasa. yasin, s. (1988). tinjauan deskriptif seputar morfologi. surabaya: usaha nasional. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 44-56 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 44 sound assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto heidy wulandari stkip soe, ntt heidywulandari0@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.030104 received: 31 july 2019; revised 19 august 2019; accepted 26 august 2019 abstract this study was conducted to identify and describe the kinds of assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto. descriptive qualitative was used in conducting the study. the data were collected from uab meto native speaker’s speech transcription and analyzed using category identification and integration. the results of this study indicates that there are ten kinds of assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto which are grouped into five classifiers. phonological assimilation and morphophonemic assimilation are grouped into assimilation based on form, regressive assimilation and progressive assimilation are grouped into assimilation based on direction, contact assimilation and distance assimilation are grouped into assimilation based on distance, assimilation in word and assimilation at word boundary are grouped into assimilation based on position, and consonant assimilation and vowel-consonant assimilation are grouped into assimilation based on inventory of sound. since the current study focuses on classifying the types of assimilation in uab meto and their occurences, it is recommended that the further study may concerns on each type of assimilation of amanatun dialect of uab meto for deeper investigation. keywords: assimilation, amanatun dialect, uab meto introduction as one of phonological rules, assimilation is the change of a sound to be more like another sound under certain conditions. according to akram and qureshi (2014) assimilation occurs when there is a process of sound modification to be more similar to its neighboring sound. dawood and atawneh (2015, p. 79) adds that “assimilation occurs because two sounds share common features in place or manner.” moreover, khattab (2018) states that assimilation is a phonological process which produces new and similar sounds and happens in all languages of the world. in this case assimilation occurs on both major parts of sounds, consonants and vowels. types of assimilation has been classified by experts such as assimilation by process (vowel assimilates consonant feature, consonant assimilates vowel feature, consonant assimilates consonant features, and vowel assimilates vowel feature), assimilation by time (historical (diachronic) and contextual (synchronic) assimilation), assimilation by distance (contact and distance assimilation), ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 44-56 45 assimilation by direction (progressive and regressive assimilation), and assimilation by form (phonological and morphophonemic assimilation) (muslich, 2011; rose, 2011; jurgec, 2013; rezaei, gowhary, and azizifar, 2015; vancova, 2016; demirezen, 2016; al-deaibes (2016); boersma, baker, rispens, and weerman, 2018; napitupulu, 2018). as stated by khattab (2018) assimilation occurs in all languages of the world. in english there is phonetic assimilation on voiceless alveolar stop sound /t/ in the word [top]. in this word the sound is aspirated and pronounced /thop/. it is different if the sound is in word [stop]. the word will become unaspirated and is pronounced /stop/. the change happens because of the influence of the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ which precedes the voiceless stop alveolar /t/. phonemic ‘assimilation also occurs in english, in the word [bad pain] which is pronounced /bappain/. voiced alveolar stop sound /d/ in [bad] becomes voiceless bilabial stop unaspirated sound /p/ because of the influence of voiceless bilabial stop unaspirated sound /p/ in the following word [pain]. in dutch, phonetic assimilation occurs in word [zakdoek] which is pronounced /zagdoek/. voiceless velar stop unaspirated sound /k/ becomes voiced velar stop unaspirated sound /g/ because of the influence of voiced alveolar stop sound /d/ (verhaar in abidin, 2016: 169). in iranian dialect, assimilation also occurs to the consonants for example in word [panbe] which means cotton is pronounced /pambe/. the voiced nasal alveolar sound /n/ becomes voiced nasal bilabial /m/ under the influence of the voiced stop bilabial /b/ (hosseinzadeh, ehsani, shariati, and sharifi, 2014). as one of languages of the world, uab meto also possesses the process of sound asssimilation. uab meto is a language which is used by atoni meto in timor island. uab means language, meto means dry, atoni means man, and timor island is a dry island in east nusa tenggara. so uab meto is the language of man or people who live in a dry land that is timor island. uab meto or dawan language is an austronesian and a central-eastern malayo-polynesian language spoken by 700000 speaker (2009 census) in west timor. (bellamy and metboki, 2014 and benu, 2019). more specifically, uab meto is spoken in three dialects by three groups of people in south middle timor. the grouping is based on three historical kingdoms namely amanatun, amanuban, and mollo kingdom. assimilation has been studied in a numerous ways. zuraiq (2009) suggests that assimilation rules between arabic and english are comparable but arab learners of english did not produce anticipated patterns regarding consonantal assimilation. nuhiu (2012) found assimilation as the cause of albanian speakers’ difficulty in pronouncing english speech sound. febriyanti (2015) analyses assimilation in the selected song lyrics of avenged sevenfold and found four kinds of assimilation consisting of nasalization, dentalization, rounding, and fronting in the first song and three kinds of assimilation consisting of nasalization, dentalization and fronting in the second song. edwards (2018) conducted a study on uab meto which analyzes the morphology and phonology of metathesis in amarasi, a region in timor island. as one of the results, two types of vowel assimilation namely mid vowel assimilation and assimilation of /a/ are suggested. there have been many studies on assimilation in languages and uab meto yet no one on assimilation in uab meto especially on amanatun dialect. hence the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 44-56 46 current study aims at classifying the kinds of assimilation occur in amanatun dialect of uab meto and describing the process of those kinds of assimilation. method this study was descriptive qualitativ. in collecting the data, the speech of uab meto native speakers (three native speakers) was recorded. then it was transcribed and the transcription was analyzed using category identification and integration. finding and discussion answering the research question, there are ten kinds of assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto. those ten kinds of assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto are classified based on form, direction, distance, position, and inventory of sound. below are the description of the kinds of assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto and the process of their occurrences. assimilation based on form the first two types of assimilation are classified based on the form. they are phonological assimilation and morphophonemic assimilation. phonological assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto occurs because of the same manner of articulation between the assimilated consonant and the resulted consonant and the close position of place of articulation between the resulted consonant and the assimilating consonant. in this case, phonological assimilation only affects pronunciation. in uab meto, voiced alveolar nasal consonant /n/ assimilates into voiced bilabial nasal consonant /m/ under the condition before labial consonants (/p/, /b/, and /f/). moreover, the voiced alveolar nasal consonant /n/ also assimilates into voiced velar nasal consonant /ŋ/ under the condition before voiceless velar stop consonant /k/. below are examples of phonological assimilation in uab meto. 1. /in palen kau? he ?uhan/ becomes /im palen kau? he ?uhan/ 3rd sg order 1st sg to cook 3rd sg order 1st sg to cook s/he order me to cook s/he order me to cook s/he orders me to cook s/he orders me to cook 2. /au? an boko na?ko kuan/ becomes /au? am boko na?ko kuan/ 1st sg buy pumpkin from village 1st sg buy pumpkin from village i buy pumpkin from village i buy pumpkin from village i buy pumpkin from village i buy pumpkin from village 3. /au? sos faun feu?/ becomes /au? sos faum feu?/ 1st sg buy shirt new 1st sg buy shirt new i buy shirt new i buy shirt new i buy new shirt i buy new shirt 4. /in main kun / becomes /in maiŋ kun/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 44-56 47 3rd sg laughs herself 3rd sg laughs 3rd sg refl s/he laughs herself s/he laughs herself s/he herself laughs s/he herself laughs in contrast to phonological assimilation, morphophonemic assimilation affects the pronunciation as well as the meaning. this kind of assimilation is shown by cliticization in amanatun dialect of uab meto. the process of cliticization in amanatun dialect of uab meto occurs by mixing process of shortening and assimilating sound. shortening sound forms the first sound which signal pronoun as subject by taking the last consonant of pronoun. then this consonant is placed on the beginning of adjective or verb. since the adjective or verb is started with consonants, then vowel harmony is needed to break the cluster created by the addition. the resulted break is called epenthesis. epenthesis is based on assimilation in form of vowel harmony. table 1. the paradigm of uab meto cliticization persons pronouns clitics sample root1 derived words 1st sg au? ? niu? ?u niu? 1st pl(in) hit t niu? taniu? 1st pl(ex) haim m niu? miniu? 2nd sg hom m niu? muniu? 2nd pl him m niu? miniu? 3rd sg in n niu? naniu? 3rd pl sin n niu? naniu? in the table above high back rounded vowel /u/ is chosen as the connector because of the influence of the same vowel in the subject /au?/ and rounded vowel /o/ in the subject /hom/. meanwhile high front unrounded vowel /i/ is chosen as the connector because it is affected by the same vowel /i/ and bilabial sound /m/ in the subject /him/ and /haim/. moreover, open front unrounded /a/ is chosen as the connector because it is affected by the unrounded vowel /i/ and alveolar sounds /t/ and /n/ in the subject /hit/, /in/ and /sin/. assimilation based on direction regressive assimilation and progressive assimilation are the next types of assimilation which are grouped into assimilation based on direction. regressive assimilation occurs when the preceded sound changes to match the following sound. in this case regressive assimilation occurs phonologically. shortly, regressive assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto is formulated as follows: ad represents assimilated sound, r represents the result sound, and ag represents assimilating sound. the formula above involves the change of voiced alveolar nasal consonant /n/ as assimilated sound into voiced bilabial nasal consonant /m/ as the result sound under the influence of labial consonants as ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 44-56 48 assimilating sound. below are the examples of regressive assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto. 1. /hom muhan pena?/ becomes /hom muham pena?/ 2nd sg 2nd sg cl-cook corn 2nd sg 2nd sg cl-cook corn you sg cook corn you sg cook corn you cook corn you cook corn 2. / in boin au? ?anah/ becomes /im boin au? ?anah/ 3rd sg call 1st sg poss child 3rd sg call 1st sg poss child s/he call my child s/he call my child s/he calls my child s/he calls my child 3. /him sosan fafi laku/ becomes /him sosam fafi laku/ 2nd pl buy pig cassava 2nd pl buy pig cassava you buy pig cassava you buy pig cassava you buy cassava for the pig you buy casava for the pig 4. /sin ka nabuan fa?/ becomes /sin ka nabuam fa?/ 3rd pl do not gather (do not) 3rd pl do not gather (do not) they do not gather (do not) they do not gather (do not) they do not gather they do not gather as shown in the examples, the consonant assimilated are those preceding the assimilating ones. the change happens by imitating the place and manner of articulation of the assimilating sound. on the other side, progressive assimilation occurs when the following sound assimilates to match the preceded sound. it occurs through morphophonemic process in uab meto clitics. below is the paradigm: ad represents assimilated sound, r represents the result sound, and ag represents assimilating sound. followings are the examples of progressive assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto. 1. 1. a. /au? ?u-mnah/ 1st sg 1st sg.cl-hungry i hungry i am hungry b. /?u-mnah/ 1st sg.cl-hungry i hungry 2. 2. a. /hom mumas/ 2nd sg 2nd sg.cl-beautiful you beautiful you are beautiful b. /mumas/ 2nd sg.cl-beautiful you beautiful ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 44-56 49 i am hungry c. */au? mnah/ *?mnah you are beautiful c.*/hom mas/ */mmas/ 3. 3. a. /sin na?moko?/ 3rd pl 3rd pl.cl-arrogant they arrogant they are arrogant b. /na?moko?/ 3rd pl.cl-arrogant they arrogant they are arrogant. c. */sin ?moko?/ */n?moko? 4. 4. a. /in na?maet paku?/ 3rd sg 3rd sg.cl-switch off lamp he/she switches off lamp he/she switches off the lamp b. /na?maet paku/ 3rd sg.cl-switch off lamp he/she switches off lamp he/she switches off the lamp /na?maet paku/ 3rd pl.cl-switch off lamp they switch off lamp they switches off the lamp */in maet paku/ */nmaet paku 5. a. /haim miskau ko?/ 1st pl 1st pl.cl-carry you we carry you we carry you b. /miskau ko?/ 1st pl.cl-carry you we carry you we carry you c. */haim skau ko?/ */mskau ko? 5. 6. a. /him mihin/ 2nd pl 2nd pl.cl-know you know you know b. /mihin/ 2nd pl.cl-know you know you know c. */him hin/ */mhin/ *= cannot be accepted grammatically and semantically it is seen from the examples that the clitics is created on the following word is based on the sound possessed by the preceding word. this process proves the existence of progressive assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto. assimilation based on distance the next types of assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto are contact assimilation and distance assimilation which are grouped into assimilation based on distance. contact assimilation is assimilation which occurs between two closed sounds. below is the paradigm. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 44-56 50 in the formula above ad represents the assimilated consonant, r represents the result consonant, and ag represents the assimilating consonant. to be clearer, followings are examples of contact assimilation: 1. /fun bo?es am nua?/ becomes /fum bo?es am nua?/ month ten and two month ten and two the twelfth month or december the twelfth month or december 2. /in main kun/ becomes /in maiŋ kun/ 3rd sg laugh 3rd sg ref 3rd sg laugh 3rd sg ref s/he laugh herself she/he laugh herself s/he herself laughs s /he herself laughs the examples above are included into contact assimilation because the assimilated consonant and the consonant influences it are close without any border. in the first example voiced alveolar nasal consonant /n/ changes into voiced bilabial nasal consonant /m/ directly before voiced bilabial stop consonant /b/ as assimilating sound. in the second example, voiced alveolar nasal consonant /n/ changes into voiced velar nasal consonant /ŋ/ directly before voiceless velar stop consonant /k/. there is no border between assimilated and assimilating sound. they are not separated by any vowel or consonant. that is why this kind of assimilation is called contact assimilation. there is also distance assimilation in which the assimilating and assimilated sounds are not close. they are separated by some other consonants and vowels. this happens only on morphophonemic assimilation because there is morphological process. the formula which presents distance assimilation is: ad represents assimilated feature, r represents result sound, ag represents assimilating sound, v represents vowels, and c represents consonants. next are the examples of distance assimilation: 1. 1. /au? nao kuk/ 1st sg go 1st sg refl i go my self i myself go 2. 2. /hom muah kum/ 2nd sg 2nd sg.cl-eat 2nd sg refl you eat yourself you yourself eat ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 44-56 51 3. 3. /him mimolok kim/ 2nd pl 2nd pl.cl-talk 2nd pl refl you talk yourselves you yourselves talk 4. 4. /in main kun/ 3rd sg 3rd sg.cl-laugh 3rd sg refl s/he laugh her/himself s/he her/himself laughs 5. 5. haim mi?tolo? kim/ 1st pl ex 1st pl.cl-hide 1st pl refl we hide ourselves we ourselves hide 6. 6. /hit malin kuk/ 1st pl in happy 1st pl refl we happy ourselves we ourselves are happy 7. 7. /sin kae kun/ 3rd pl cry 3rd pl refl they cry themselves they themselves cry 8. in examples above, the last consonant on every subject pronoun stimulates the forming of the same consonant or other consonant with similar feature at the end of each of the reflexive pronoun. the process on the examples above (on the bold characters) is called distance assimilation because the consonants have no direct contact but they are separated by word boundaries and some other consonants. assimilation based on position the next types of assimilation which are group into assimilation based on position are assimilation in word and assimilation at word boundary. assimilation in word occurs when the assimilated sound and assimilating sound are in the same word. below is the paradigm: in the paradigm above, ad represents assimilated sound, r represents the result sound, and ag represents assimilating sound. here are the examples of in word assimilation of amanatun dialect of uab meto 1. /anbi/ /ambi/ in in 2. /anbai/ /ambai shout shout 3. /anfai/ /amfai/ night night in examples 1 and 2 voiced alveolar nasal consonant /n/ changes into voiced bilabial nasal consonant /m/ under the condition after voiced bilabial stop consonant /b/ which follows it directly in the same word. the same process also occurs on the third example in which voiced alveolar nasal consonant /n/ becomes ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 44-56 52 voiced bilabial nasal consonant /m/ under the influence of voiceless labiodental fricative consonant /f/. assimilation which occurs in the three examples is called assimilation in word because they occur when the assimilated sound and the assimilating sound are in the same word. in addition, assimilation in words in amanatun dialect only occurs on the three words above. in contrast, assimilation in word boundary happens to the sounds which are in close position but of two different words. here is the paradigm: ad represents assimilated sound, r represents the result sound, ag represents assimilating sound, and # is word boundary. below are the examples: 1. /haim fain fe?/ becomes /haim faim fe?/ 3rd pl go home first 3rd pl go home first we go home first we go home first we go home first we go home first 2. /in pules kau?/ becomes /im pules kau?/ 3rd sg praise 1st sg 3rd sg praise 1st sg s/he praise me s/he praise me s/he praises me s/he praises me 3. / au? sen kiu/ becomes /au? seŋ kiu/ 1st sg plant tamarin 1st sg plant tamarin i plant tamarin i plant tamarin i plant tamarin i plant tamarin as seen in the examples, the assimilated and assimilating sounds are not in the same word. they are separated by word boundary. however, since they have close point of articulation, assimilation may occur between them. assimilation based on inventory of sound the last types of assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto are consonant assimilation and vowel-consonant assimilation which are grouped into assimilation based on inventory of sound. consonant assimilation occurs when the change happens to a consonant because of the influence of another consonant. this occurs phonologically. following is the paradigm. the paradigm shows the process of consonant assimilation in which there is a change of consonant into another consonant because of the effect of a consonant. here are some examples and explanation dealing with consonant assimilation. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 44-56 53 1. /sin ka nen fa/ becomes /siŋ ka nem fa/ 3rd pl do not hear do not 3rd pl do not hear do not they do not hear do not they do not hear do not they do not hear they do not hear 2. /poe kalan-kalan/ becomes /poe kalaŋ-kalan/ touch indiscriminately touch indiscriminately touch indiscriminately touch indiscriminately touch indiscriminately touch indiscriminately 3. /sin ka nen fa/ becomes /siŋ ka nem fa/ 3rd pl do not hear do not 3rd pl do not hear do not they do not hear do not they do not hear do not they do not hear they do not hear 4. in pao ko?/ becomes /im pao ko?/ 3rd sg wait 2nd sg 3rd sg wait 2nd sg she/he wait you she/he wait you she/he waits for you she/he waits for you 5. /sin boe sin fanu?/ becomes /sim boe sin fanu?/ 3rd pl wash their clothes 3rd pl wash their clothes they wash their clothes they wash their clothes they wash their clothes they wash their clothes the first and the second examples show that there is change from voiced alveolar nasal consonant /n/ into voiced velar nasal consonant /ŋ/ because of the influence of voiceless velar stop consonant /k/. the third example shows the change from voiced alveolar nasal consonant /n/ into voiced bilabial nasal consonant /m/ under the influence of voiceless labiodental fricative consonant /f/. the fourth example shows that there is a change of voiced alveolar nasal consonant /n/, into voiced bilabial nasal consonant /m/ because of the influence of voiceless bilabial stop consonant /p/. the fifth example shows a change on voiced alveolar nasal consonant /n/ into voiced bilabial nasal consonant /m/ because of the influence of voiced bilabial stop consonant /b/. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 44-56 54 meanwhilevowel-consonant assimilation occurs when the change occurs to a consonant and vowel because of the influence of a consonant and a vowel. this assimilation occurs in morphophonemic process. below is the paradigm. the paradigm shows the role of assimilation in epenthesis and cliticization. here are the examples: 1. 1. /hom mu-neuk in fanu?/ 2nd pl 2pl cl-loose 3rd sg poss shirt you loose his/her shirt you loose his/her shirt 2. 2. /in na-mas/ 3rd pl 3rd pl cl-beautiful she beautiful she is beautiful 3. 3. /haim mifaun/ 1st pl ex 1st pl.cl-wash our hands we wash our hands we wash our hands 4. 4. /au? ?uniu?/ 1st sg 1st sg.cl-take a bath i take a bath i take a bath 5. 5. /sin na?ko skol/ 3rd pl 3rd pl.cl from school they from school they are from school 6. 6. /him mi?sua?/ 2nd pl 2nd pl.cl-naughty you naughty you are naughty from the examples it can be seen that vowels and consonants in the subject pronouns affect the forming of vowel and consonant as clitics in the following words. it is proven that there is vowel-consonant assimilation in uab meto. conclusion there are ten kinds of assimilation in amanatun dialect of uab meto which are grouped into five classifiers. those belong to assimilation by form are phonological assimilation and morphophonemic assimilation. phonological assimilation occurs on consonants especially alveolars, nasals, velars, and labials while morphophonemic assimilation occurs in cliticization covering vowels, labials, nasals, alveolars, and glottal. those belong to assimilation by direction are regressive and progressive assimilation. regressive assimilation occurs when labials, velars, alveolars, and nasals change to match their following sound while progressive assimilation occurs when vowels, labials, nasals, alveolars, and glottal change to match their preceding sound. assimilation by distance are contact assimilation and distance assimilation. contact assimilation occurs when two closed sounds are produced without any barrier while distance assimilation occurs between two sounds are separated by vowels and consonants. next, assimilation in word and assimilation at word boundary are classified into assimilation by position. assimilation in words occurs on the sounds located in the same word. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 44-56 55 assimilation at word boundary occurs in the sounds in different words and the words separated by word boundary. last, assimilation by sound inventory includes consonant assimilation and vowel-consonant assimilation. consonant assimilation occurs only on consonants. the assimilated sounds, result sounds, and the assimilating sounds are consonants, while vowel-consonant assimilation occurs between vowels and consonants. the existence of vowel and consonant in the subject pronoun stimulates the forming of similar vowels and consonants as clitic in the word following the subject. since the current study focuses on classifying the types of assimilation in uab meto and their occurences, it is recommended that the further study may concerns on each type of assimilation of amanatun dialect of uab meto for deeper investigation. references abidin, z. 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(2009). assimilation processes by arab learners of english. retrieved on august 25, 2019 from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259761302. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 228-239 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 228 evaluation of the spread of radicalism, extremism, and terrorism in indonesia's defense using agent-based simulations *hendra nurdiansyah1, hikmat zakky almubaroq2, agung risdhianto3, and much mualim4 1,2,3,4republic indonesia defense university, indonesia hendrasyahran@gmail.com1, zakkyauri94@gmail.com2, ag_ung85@yahoo.co.uk3, and mualimdrt@gmail.com4 *correspondence: hendrasyahran@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5382 received 16 november 2022; accepted 22 february 2023 abstract the issue of national disintegration is one of the most crucial in the defense of indonesia. one of the causes of national disintegration is the existence of radicalism, extremism, and terrorism (ret). radical entities can change using extreme means including violence through acts of terror in achieving their goals. efforts continue to be made by the government in anticipating the spread of this ret. using agent-based simulation modeling techniques, some characteristics in the ret such as numbers are affected, driving factors, the number of agents in a region, and effective strategies. therefore, this study is aimed at evaluating the spread of ret in indonesia using agent-based simulations. this research is qualitative descriptive by trying to collect qualitative data as an initial input for the creation of flowchart designs and agent-based simulation models that will eventually be verified and validated. the results of this study illustrate the agentbased simulation in the spread of ret using netlogo software by paying attention to several parameters such as incubation period, possible exposure to radicalism, extremist severity, availability of rehabilitation centers, and the rate of terrorism infection. from the results of the simulation, it can be said that the parameter greatly affects the percentage of radical agents, agents who are extremists until they become terrorists. this factor can be evidence for policymakers to reduce the spread of ret effectively by increasing religious understanding, strengthening the sense of nationalism and defending the country, and implementing community empowerment strategies. the evaluation of the spread of this ret can eventually strengthen indonesia's non-military defense. thus, good defense will have implications for the continuous development and achievement of indonesia's goals. keywords: agent-based simulation, defense, evaluation, indonesia, ret introduction an independent, sovereign, just, and prosperous indonesia is the goal of the indonesian nation and state as stated in the preamble to the 1945 constitution of mailto:hendrasyahran@gmail.com mailto:zakkyauri94@gmail.com mailto:ag_ung85@yahoo.co.uk mailto:mualimdrt@gmail.com mailto:hendrasyahran@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5382 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 228-239 229 the republic of indonesia. this goal is fought for by maintaining sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the safety of the entire nation amid actual and potential threats. presidential regulation number 8 of 2021 concerning the general policy of state defense for 2020-2024 explains the two threats. actual threats for the next five years include violation of border areas/foreign intervention, separatism and armed rebellion, piracy, piracy, and hostage-taking of indonesian citizens, terrorism and radicalism, cyber threats, threats of intelligence or espionage, threats of psychological warfare, biological weapons attacks, disasters nature and the environment, theft of natural resources, disease outbreaks, drug trafficking, and abuse, and the impact of the birth of the industrial revolution 4.0. the potential threats are conventional war or open conflict (foreign invasion), nuclear weapons, the economic crisis, the threat of a pandemic, and foreign immigrants. as an actual threat, terrorism and radicalism must be handled. the director of deradicalization of the national counterterrorism agency (bnpt) revealed that there is a separate process for a person to change from a radicalist to an extremist, to becoming a terrorist (ansori et al., 2019). radicalism underwent a total and drastic change. radicalism overturns existing values, its characteristics are that they are intolerant or have no tolerance for groups who have different understandings outside their group. they also tend to be fanatical, and exclusive, and do not hesitate to use anarchist methods. in addition, radical entities can change using extreme means including violence through acts of terror in achieving their goals. therefore, radicalism, extremism, and terrorism are one unit that becomes the focus to be overcome immediately. radicalism, extremism, and terrorism (ret) have been addressed by the indonesian government as actual threats through the implementation of prevention, prosecution, and recovery. for example, in the context of prevention, the government has carried out both direct socialization and digital literacy about ret and its dangers. the reason is, the distribution is not only in face-to-face meetings but also using the internet. the head of bnpt revealed that terrorists spread their understanding with propaganda, starting from the recruitment process to even funding with online activities (bnpt, 2021). in addition, deputy 7 of the state intelligence agency said that the isis terrorist network uses social media for propaganda (liputan6, 2021). the problem is that this spread continues even during the current pandemic and it is feared that it could spread to various regions in indonesia. one of the efforts that can be done in anticipating the spread of ret is by simulating it in the form of a model. the modeling technique used is agent-based modeling. this agent-based model simulation can be used by decision-makers in studying how small changes in behavior and interactions can affect output in a population through modeling interactions (currie et al., 2020). in addition, agentbased simulation applications have also been used in various fields, namely in social, political, and economic sciences, including traffic simulation, customer flow management, stocks, innovation diffusion, evacuation modeling, adoption dynamics, and operational risk and organizational design (bonabeau, 2002). based on the previous explanation, the author determines several problem formulations, namely: 1. what is an agent-based simulation to prevent the spread of ret? ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 228-239 230 2. what are the things that must be considered by policymakers and the public in preventing the spread of ret? 3. how can the evaluation of the spread of ret strengthen indonesia's defense? this research is aimed at several things, namely: 1. knowing the meaning, intent, and purpose of agent-based simulation to prevent the spread of ret. 2. knowing the important conditions that provide steps for policymakers and the public to prevent the spread of ret. 3. analyzing the benefits of evaluating the spread of ret in strengthening indonesia's defense. literature review and research focus radicalism is an understanding or tradition that wants social and political change or renewal by violent or drastic means (kbbi kemendikbud, 2021). prof. dr. irfan idris stated that radicalism overturns existing values, the characteristic is that they are intolerant or have no tolerance for groups that have different understandings outside their group, they also tend to be fanatical, exclusive and do not hesitate to use anarchist methods. alex p. schmid (2013, p. 56) defines an extremist group as a group that adheres to the notion of extreme violence. compared to radicalists, extremists tend to be closed-minded, intolerant, and anti-democratic and can justify any means to achieve their goals. extremist groups are also closed-minded. this group is different from radical groups, groups that adhere to radicalism. meanwhile, according to law number 15 of 2003, terrorism is the use of violence or the threat of violence that creates a widespread situation of terror or fear of people and causes mass casualties, by seizing other people's property, resulting in damage or destruction of vital objects. strategic, environmental, public facilities, and state facilities. a high tendency to adopt ideals or ideologies to extremes or radicals will lead to various kinds of behavior in individuals. bnpt (2012) states that terrorism in indonesia will continue to grow if it continues to be fostered. meanwhile, radicalism is the fertilizer for acts of terrorism. the tendency of high closedmindedness contributes to the individual's interest in radical ideologies and decision-making to carry out acts of terror. someone who has been exposed to a radical ideology will usually voice their understanding. when this is deemed insufficient, he will resort to violence or extreme actions even if he has to sacrifice himself to achieve goals or damage the existing status quo. this individual has a low tolerance and shuts himself off from the environment. he will categorize his environment into two parts, namely friends and foes. a radical person or group can experience change using extreme means. extreme violence describes the form of acts of violence based on radical or extremist beliefs, in other words when a person's understanding of his previous beliefs turns into an understanding in the context of violence, the individual has the potential to become a terrorist (bjelopera, 2012, p. 2). extreme violence through acts of terror is influenced by many things. starting from the influence of international factors such as global injustice, arrogant foreign policy, and colonialism. in addition, it is also influenced by domestic factors such as ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 228-239 231 perceptions of injustice, welfare, education, disappointment in the government, and revenge. apart from international and domestic factors, other factors are cultural factors, namely because of shallow religious understanding, narrow and textual interpretations of religion, and indoctrination of wrong religious teachings. agent-based modeling (abm) is defined as a simulation modeling technique in which a system is modeled as a collection of agents and the relationships between them (bonabeau, 2002). abm uses a bottom-up approach to see how the interaction of individual behavior can affect system behavior with computer-based simulations. abm is highly congruent with social systems because of the ease with which agents can map to recognizable social entities and the natural hierarchical organization that is easily visible in social systems (borrill & tesfatsion, 2011). abm is a paradigm of testing and theoretical development (smith & conrey, 2007) with independent and dependent variables. in the case of abm, independent variables (or "parameters") are adjusted by the experiment, while dependent variables are measured throughout the model or after the model. thus, evaluating the spread of ret as part of social conditions in the community is very appropriate if it is carried out using abm simulation-based modeling. the main element in abm modeling is the agent. each agent acts and behaves according to the rules made in his environment. there are three elements in an abm, namely (macal & north, 2010): 1. a set of agents, their attributes, and their behavior. 2. a set of relationships and methods of interaction is a typology that underlies connectedness and defines how and with whom agents interact. 3. agent environment. the agent interacts with its environment in addition to other agents. these three elements are the basis for developers in making simulation models that are by existing social conditions. karandeep singh, mazhar sajjad, and chang-won ahn (2016) describe simply how the process of an agent adapts and reacts to an ever-changing simulation environment. this is described as follows: figure 1. agent based simulation concept source : (singh et al., 2016) andré calero valdez (2020) make a simulation with abm to see how to level the graph and the number of people infected with covid-19 so that it can still be handled by maintaining physical distance and adjusting the capacity of the hospital provided. by creating an interface for the coding shared by valdes, it can be displayed in figure 2 below. agent (individual, households, firms, etc.) random data agent interactions agent’s rule base (deterministic) inputs behavioral outputs ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 228-239 232 figure 2. interface simulation by valdes (2020) method this research is descriptive and qualitative to find the meaning of a phenomenon experienced by the research subject (moleong, 2017). phenomena in the spread of ret such as perceptions, motivations, actions, and so on holistically. furthermore, it is presented in the form of words and language by utilizing natural methods. the data used in this paper is secondary data, whether published or not. secondary data are generally in the form of historical reports, evidence, or records that have been compiled in archives (documentary data). the techniques used to collect data in this paper are: 1. literature study, literature studies are carried out by looking for relevant data sources and studying them from various literature such as books, journals, and legal documents; 2. documentary and documentation studies are carried out by reading reports from previous writings and journals related to this writing. in this method, the author moves only the relevant data from the necessary sources or documents; 3. discussion, data collection using discussing ideas with people who are competent in this matter to solve certain problems related to this paper; 4. intuitive-subjective, the opinion of the author is subjectively involved in analyzing the problem under discussion. qualitative data is used as the initial conditions of the simulation such as the frequency of occurrence of the ret threat. in addition, the initial conditions are also the behavior of the spread of ret in influencing the community and the factors that are considered the most important by the community. these three things are important in determining the extent to which a person decides to participate in and be affected by ret. furthermore, a simulation model is made by taking into account the conditions that exist in the real world. after the model design is made, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 228-239 233 verification and validation are carried out so that a comparison between the simulation results and the actual situation appears. findings and discussion agent-based simulation in the spread of ret if the spread of ret is allowed, there will be areas whose people are exposed to ret, causing separatism. furthermore, the spread of ret will also have an impact on the emergence of destructive actions caused by extreme groups to acts of terror that occur in various regions in indonesia. thus, the spread of ret is classified as an infectious disease. in addition, research by nur amalia and fathul (2020) reveals that psychology has a very significant role in fighting terrorism and radicalism. by adopting the valdes (2020) simulation described earlier, a simulation model with abm was created on the evaluation of the spread of ret with some adjustments. in addition, a social psychology approach is also used in making an appropriate model for the spread of ret (smith & conrey, 2007). in general, the simulation flow of the spread of ret can be explained as follows: 1. agent starting condition: normal. 2. at the beginning of the simulation, there is one agent who is exposed to radicalism (the agent can still carry out activities as usual). 3. randomly depending on the chance of being exposed to radicalism, other normal agents within the infectious radius will be exposed to radicalism. 4. agents exposed to radicals for a specified duration of time will become extremists. random chance of being an extremist. in addition, radical agents can return to normal and have immunity against the spread of ret. 5. if there are agents who are extremists while rehabilitation and assistance are not met, then they can become terrorists. however, if there is still room for rehabilitation and assistance, the agent will be treated. the random chance of an extremist agent being a terrorist depends on the level of exposure to terrorism that is determined and a radical agent has a greater chance than a normal agent. in addition, extremist agents may have immunity from exposure to ret spread. the flow of agent-based simulation in this study can be seen in figure 3. the simulation was carried out with the help of netlogo software (wilensky, 2021). the simulation results observed were the percentage of the number of affected agents, the percentage of the number of agents who died, and the length of time the outbreak lasted. simulations are carried out repeatedly to see variations in simulation results. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 228-239 234 figure 3. flowchart simulation spread of ret start defines the parameters count agent normal characteristic capacity program distance level simulation agent not infected set agent as infected? contact with agents exposed to radicalist that will infect other agents random chance of getting infected? depends on the chance of getting infected agent exposed to radicalist invulnerable agent randomly severe depending on severity? the number of extremist agents exceeds the capacity of the rehabilitation program? agents exposed to terrorism finished agent infected more than incubation? agents exposed to extremism ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 228-239 235 there are many approaches used to recruit someone to become a terrorist or extremist. gerwehr and sara suggested that one of the traditional ways to do this is to infect by including an agent in a population. when the target population is difficult to reach, 'agents' can be included to pursue recruitment from within, using direct and personal appeal. social bonds between recruiters and targets can be strengthened by raising complaints, such as marginalization or social frustration (gerwehr & daly, 2006; the united nations, 2017, p. 13). the simulation display is shown in figure 4. figure 4. agent-based simulation results in the spread of ret the picture above is an agent-based simulation for ret spread with infection parameters of 10%, extremism severity rate of 15%, terrorism infection rate of 10%, incubation time of 10 days, ret duration of 7 days, and capacity rehabilitation center of 100%. the result is 1.5% exposed to terrorism. the percentage value of agents exposed to terrorism depends on the values of the specified parameters. evaluation of ret spread can be seen on the graph with color indications for each condition of the agent. important conditions to prevent the spread of ret the possibility of infection by radicalism can be estimated based on the resilience of the community's ideology (lemhannas ri, 2020). it is also closely related to religious knowledge. in addition, socialization and literacy of nationalism and defending the country are important keys to the spread of ret in indonesia. how likely a person is to be exposed depends on the deradicalization program carried out by the government. the better the deradicalization program, the lower the possibility of transmission of radicalism that will potentially become extremists. in this radical change to extremism also pay attention to the incubation period. this is based on research conducted by the setara institute (2015) that ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 228-239 236 deradicalization must also be directed at radical groups. if the group is ignored, it is the same as facilitating the incubation of radical groups to become terrorists. the severity of extremists is based on the assistance and rehabilitation program carried out by the government (setiawan, 2021). rehabilitation is a process carried out in making individuals return to normal. the definition of behavior is concerned with changing the way a person behaves which involves an intervention to eliminate an individual's tendency, desire, or need for something (robinson & crow, 2009, p. 2). this requires an ongoing program of people exposed to extremism. without this program, it will increase the level of distribution of cooperation in the community. in addition, the availability of rehabilitation will have an impact on the development of terrorism in the community. the simulation takes place randomly by generating several possibilities that are adjusted with interchangeable parameters. from the simulation, it was found that the basic importance of taking action is to reduce the possibility of exposure through increasing several literacy and socialization programs related to religion, a sense of nationalism, and defending the country to various levels of society to provide resilience or immunity to recruitment from radicalist agents. the absence of a deradicalization program is an incubation period for radical agents who will become extremists and even terrorists (ismed, 2021). the severity of extremism must be minimized through the legal process to provide a deterrent effect for extremists. the provision of rehabilitation centers is also important for extremist actors so that they do not become terrorists. in addition, the percentage level of exposure to terrorism in the community must be anticipated, for example through intelligence activities, forming public opinion about the dangers of terrorism, and implementing equitable development in various regions in indonesia. the implementation of this development is closely related to justice which is an important key in the emergence of terrorism. evaluation of the spread of ret in strengthening indonesia’s defense ret is defined as a non-military threat to be aware of (indrawan and efriza, 2017). several events in indonesia continue to live the life of the nation and state. this is a must for the government to be proactive in dealing with the spread of ret. by using a defense approach, the threat of ret spread is a non-military threat that will be handled with non-military defense. evaluation of the spread of ret is carried out in achieving a strong nonmilitary defense. the emergence of separatism seems to be a problem that has not been resolved until now. for example, terrorism in papua is still a domestic problem in indonesia. acts of terror carried out by the kkb caused widespread casualties, damaged public facilities, caused anxiety, and threatened the safety and security of the people of papua and west papua (kurnianingrum, 2021). another thing that comes to the fore is that religious extremism, be it islam, jews, protestants, catholics, hindus, or buddhists, has the phenomenon of extremism in its adherents. even the buddha, who is not extreme by many, is now also associated with extremism as happened with his rohingya ethnicity in burma (hasyim, 2017). this needs to be a common thought about reducing the spread of ret in various parts of the country. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 228-239 237 program evaluation is the process of systematically gathering empirical data and contextual information about an intervention program—specifically answers to what, who, how, whether, and why questions that will assist in assessing a program’s planning, implementation, and/or effectiveness (chen, 2014). in another word, evaluating the programs means reviewing the programs that have been carried out by the government in dealing with the threat of the spread of ret. the program to prevent the spread of ret with proactive methods such as increasing religious understanding, socialization, and literacy of nationalism and defending the state, as well as community empowerment, must continue to be improved (yasa, hamad, syauqillah, and puspitasari, 2022). the reason is that all forms of radicalism, extremism, and terrorism greatly interfere with state sovereignty and hinder the achievement of the goals of the indonesian state and nation. in other words, a strong non-military defense will have implications for the continuous development and achievement of indonesia's goals. conclusion in this article, several conclusions can be drawn, namely: 1. agent-based simulation in preventing the spread of ret is carried out with the help of netlogo software. flowcharts are used to create a suitable model for preventing and anticipating the spread of ret. 2. in this study, an agent-based simulation was carried out to see the effect of the incubation period, the possibility of being exposed to radicalism, the severity of extremism, the availability of rehabilitation centers, and the level of influence of terrorism on the spread of ret. the simulation results show that these five parameters greatly affect the percentage of agents exposed to radicalism, extremism, and terrorism. the simulation results provide empirical evidence on matters that need to be considered by policymakers and the public by defining the possibility of being exposed to radicalism, the severity of extremism, and the level of influence of terrorism. these three things are defined as increasing religious knowledge in 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(2022). strategi menangkal paham radikalisme pada perguruan tinggi : studi kasus keterlibatan mahasiswa universitas indonesia dalam aksi terorisme. jurnal keamanan nasional, viii(1), 74–91. https://doi.org/10.19165/2013.1.02 https://setara-institute.org/radikalisme-dan-terorisme/ https://kanal.cilacap.info/ci-42345/pelatihan-transformasi-konflik-dalam-rehabilitasi-dan-reintegrasi-mantan-pelaku-ekstrimisme-kekerasan https://kanal.cilacap.info/ci-42345/pelatihan-transformasi-konflik-dalam-rehabilitasi-dan-reintegrasi-mantan-pelaku-ekstrimisme-kekerasan https://doi.org/10.2991/icassr-15.2016.90 https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868306294789 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sumidu/covid19shiny/master/infections.nlogo https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sumidu/covid19shiny/master/infections.nlogo http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 264-275 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 264 man and woman identity in dalihan na tolu magdalena br marpaung university of darma agung medan, indonesia correspondence: marpmaqdie@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5519 received 13 december 2022; accepted 1 march 2023 abstract this research derived from the phenomenon that men of toba batak must be respected more and are treated differently from women. to define the truth of the phenomenon this study analysed the ideology of toba batak; dalihan na tolu which is composed by (1) somba marhula-hula, (2) elek marboru, and (3) manat mardongan tubu by analysing the syntactic and semantic structure of it and adapted the ecolinguistic approach to defined man and woman identity by arran stibbe. the syntactic and semantic analysis on dalihan na tolu defined the identity of men and women as follows: (a) men as brothers in toba-batak community are leader, decision makers, they are positioned the highest in the ideology and have more arguments in doing their responsibility to love sisters. (b) women as sisters in tobabatak community are the second position in the ideology and for both syntactic and semantically are proved have to be strictly respect brothers, they have less argument to do it. however, men and women of toba-batak, due to their contribution to ‘manat mardongan tubu’ are positioned the same. keywords: dalihan na tolu, ecolinguistics, identity, man, woman introduction dalihan na tolu deep-rooted in the toba-batak community, strongly characterizes the toba-batak people. governed by the community, dalihan na tolu is reflected in all rituals of toba-batak as it is composed of three regulations (1) somba marhula-hula, (2) elek marboru, and (3) manat mardongan tubu. these three sentences map the toba-batak community into three groups hula-hula or brothers, boru or sisters, and dongan tubu or siblings. these parts of the community are regularly applied in any rituals and ceremonies of toba-batak. for example at a wedding party, the component of dalihan na tolu (hula-hula, boru, and dongan tubu) must be completed otherwise the party will be canceled. however, each part of dalihan na tolu of hula-hula, boru, and dongan tubu is structured unequally, hula-hula is positioned highest, above boru and dongan tubu. this unequal position defined the identity of men and women in toba-batak. and so, dalihan na tolu defined and shared not only the value and beliefs of the toba-batak tradition but also the identity of man and woman (harianja & sudrajat, 2021; sahrul & daulai, 2019; sihombing, 2018; suharto et al., 2022). mailto:marpmaqdie@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5519 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 264-275 265 dalihan na tolu which shares value and beliefs in a community is a part of ecology philosophy or ecosophy (stibbe, a. 2015). ecolinguistics defines language (written or spoken) as stories of the environment. assuming language is powerful in telling stories about the environment, ecolinguistic structured the issues from ideology, framing, metaphor, evaluation, identity, conviction, erasure, salience, and narrative (dastenaee & poshtvan, 2018; ghorbanpour, 2021; wei, 2018). examining the man and woman identity in dalihan na tolu, this study applied the parts of an analysis of ecolinguistics in the question of ‘how is the identity of man and woman in dalihan na tolu? supporting the analysis, the systemic functional linguistic theory is applied to show the meaning of dalihan na tolu in microanalysis. dalihan na tolu and its previous related literature originally, dalihan na tolu refers to three stones used to make a fire for cooking. it symbolizes cooperation, balance, and unity. there must be three stones arranged in triangle sites to lift the cooking bowls. the following picture is an illustration of how the three stones are arranged to lift the cooking bowl. figures 1 & 2. the 3 stones used to set the fire the first picture on the right side is the illustration of dalihan na tolu which consists of three stones as the formation of the society in toba-batak ethnic. the three stones are the symbols of (1) hula-hula, (2) boru, and (3) dongan tubu. philosophically, there’s only if the three stones exist and are arranged, then the cooking bowl can stand on it while the fire is set for cooking. the second picture on the left side shows how the existence of three stones well-arranged can function and suit the bowl. this is the original meaning of dalihan na tolu. related to the illustration and as has been mentioned in the previous part, dalihan na tolu is a value shared with three sentences of (1) somba marhula-hula, (2) elek marboru, and (3) manat mardongan tubu. this is a value or belief shared in the toba-batak community among people marriage. again, dalihan na tolu divide toba-batak community into three groups of hula-hula, boru, and dongan tubu. hula-hula is also called a brother, and boru is also called a sister, while dongan tubu is defined as siblings. however, the essence of dalihan na tolu is the relationship of those three parts in the toba-batak community, it is about how sister behaves brother, how the brother behaves sister, and finally how they related one to another as siblings (arwita et al., 2017; daulay, 2022; harianja & sudrajat, 2021; hutagaol et ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 264-275 266 al., 2020; sembiring et al., 2019). the following is a figure to illustrate the description of dalihan na tolu. figure 3. the relation inside the value of dalihan na tolu the figure above explains the following facts about dalihan na tolu: 1. dalihan na tolu is a system of value shared in toba-batak community 2. it mapped the toba-batak community into three parts of hula-hula, boru, and dongan tubu. 3.the essence of that value is the relationship between the three parts or the regulation of how they interact with one another. 4. dalihan na tolu stated that a sister must respect her brother or somba marhula-hula, then a brother must love his sister or elek marboru, and siblings must care, and give attention one to another or manat mardongan tubu. 5. implicitly, it defined that man and woman, each of them is positioned in the part of hula-hula, boru, and dongan tubu. for a toba-batak man who marries a toba-batak woman, he will be placed in the position of boru in his wife's family, and so a toba-batak woman who marries a toba-batak man will be placed in the position of hula-hula in her husband family. however, as long as a man and woman of toba-batak marry a man and woman of toba-batak, the same position of them is called dongan tubu. there is research on the influence of dalihan na tolu to stop prostitution in the batak environment. the findings mention the customs of dalihan na tolu effectively guard the man and woman relationship from prostitution and one of them is by expressing ideas in polite words and sentences (siregar et al., 2016). then, research investigating the use of dalihan na tolu in project-based learning methods of learning in improving study achievement. surprisingly, the finding said that 71% of students collaborated in the project-based learning improved their achievement through the system of dalihan na tolu (arwita et al., 2017). research investigating the scope of dalihan na tolu in toba-batak life defined it as the ideology of toba-batak people covering all parts of ethnic rituals such as weddings, funerals, newborn babies, etc (sihombing, 2018). further, the research of dalihan na tolu as a tool for reducing conflict in toba-batak life is also defined as a good finding such as it was proven effective to avoid conflict and arguments (harahap & hasibuan, 2018). then, another research on using dalihan na tolu to prevent negative social life in the digital era also defined good findings of dalihan na tolu is effective in continuing family relations better (lubis et al., 2019). next, brother + wife sister + husband sister + husband hula-hula boru ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 264-275 267 research on using dalihan na tolu in enhancing tourism visits to tourism sites in lake toba is defined effectively as proven effective in inviting tourism to visit the tourism site by the people values of dalihan na tolu (sembiring et al., 2019). another research is telling about how dalihan na tolu is even able to enhance the relations of batak people in a different province (sahrul & daulai, 2019). another research investigated the effective way of illegal logging and finally, it was found that dalihan na tolu approach is effective in avoiding illegal logging (a. s. harahap & hasibuan, 2019). research also proved that the system of dalihan na tolu in toba-batak life is effective in guarding religious tolerance, ethnic cooperation, and safety guards (muda & suharyanto, 2020). moreover, a study of qualitative research is applied in investigating the relief of dalihan na tolu in stones place in north tapanuli and its function in reminding people to keep the essence of dalihan na tolu (hutagaol et al., 2020). the research defined the kinship relationship in the use of dalihan na tolu (harianja & sudrajat, 2021). another research also defined the function of dalihan na tolu in returning the essence of the family relationship of the toba-batak people (soetanto & gandha, 2021). research on defining the meaning of mangupa in medan society is closely related to the principles of dalihan na tolu (daulay, 2022). last, the research was also investigating how the principles of dalihan na tolu enhance the friendship and system of social life in toba-batak society (suharto et al., 2022). ecolinguistics and the previous related research language is a powerful entity that reflects human life. language recorded or written, tells stories including the environment or ecology philosophy ecology ecosophy (ghorbanpour, 2021). stibbe (2015) defined language as the story we live by, which is reflected in whole parts of life at the level of ideology, framings, metaphor, identity, evaluation, convictions, erasure, salience, and narratives. those 9 (nine) sources of ecolinguistic analysis are leveled. ideology is the value or beliefs shared in a community or society. it is defined as destructive, ambivalent, and beneficial. the value or beliefs are framed and expressed in the form of metaphors, the metaphors are valued in people’s minds or evaluations, and the evaluation is pictured as the identity which is described into facticity of true or false or called a conviction. the conviction is defined as unworthy or called erasure and worthy or important or called salience. however, the story is concluded in narratives as the last part of ecolinguistics (ahmed et al., 2021; vaishali & rukmini, 2021; wei, 2018). there was a research of emotive ecolinguistic focused on the gadrauths words in the bible, it was gothic bible symbols. the findings said that the existence of gothic symbols or gadrauths words depended on three factors (1) the time of the story, (2) the culture in the story, and (3) the existence of neologism. the research also defined that gothic gadrauths were all ecological terms both for christian and pagan which is emotional, positive, or neutral. it was also defined that the context of gothic gadrauths was ecological for it was similar to the germanic culture and described wulfila’s ideas about christ soldiers (sorokina, 2020). there was also an analysis of metaphors in an advertisement for it assumed that the advertisements use metaphors to attract the consumers, after taking the data by corpus approach there were 13 advertisements were analyzed by using the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 264-275 268 metaphor theory by lakoff and stibbe. the finding said that advertisements in the newspaper used metaphors to attract consumers’ feelings due to the goods being advertised. this research enhanced their analysis by exposing the reasons the advertisement used metaphors in that is to let buyers overlook the advertisement and feel attracted to it (ahmed et al., 2021). there was a study exploring the interrelation of culture and nature in a novel entitled l’amaomao through stibbe’s concept of ideology and evaluation especially the picture of the environment in the folktale. it was defined that the picture of the environment in the l’amaomao folktale is positive since it needs sustainability which is expressed in the very close connection between nature and the people. the analysis also defined that the folktale honored nature well because it showed an abundance of vocabulary due to the naming of nature. this study also criticized the western culture due to some ways considered to perceive the environment. a study analyzing documentary films due to the environmental issues exposed the laymen’s narrative parts which stated that the documentary films, in their laymen’s narrative parts, frequently express fear and threat due to environmental issues such as pollution, global warming, or deforestation. the study also defined that the expression of fear and threat is commonly found in parts of the analysis (mliless et al., 2021). furthermore, a study analyzing the framing of animals in quranic discourse found that animals in qur’an are framed into beings, benefactors, ornaments, and celestial signs. these findings got after analyzing the data from the qur’an by stibb’'s theory of ecolinguistics (hameed, 2021). an analysis of ecology and language is also applied in tholkappyam; an ancient tamil linguist to see the relationship of ecology, language, and culture through the tinai theory. the findings stated that the tinai frame is applicable to overlook the interrelation of culture, language, and ecology (vaishali & rukmini, 2021). in another analysis of iranian high school english textbook, by analyzing six high school english textbooks it was found that there was very little or low expression of the environment due to the limited ability of the book's producer to create english material that related to the ecology (faramarzi & janfeshan, 2021). the study of foregrounding environment and language is existed in ecospiritual tourism in rebo buntung, after observing the location it was found that the action of maintaining ecology spiritual, culture, and language, especially the interrelation positively affects the people's relationship harmony and also the economy level due to the location as tourism site (supatmiwati et al., 2021). then the other study due to the language and ecology is on the analysis of vegan pamphlets which campaign the suggestion to stop killing animals. the findings stated that the pamphlets and brochures of vegan contain salience, conviction, and ideology as parts of ecolinguistics (zhdanava et al., 2021). an ecology and pedagogue perspective on paulo freire’s influence was applied in the analysis with the finding that paulo freire’s is important to be developed in education, utopia, citizenship, and globalization (misiaszek, 2021). an analysis of a news report about the trade war of sino us defined there were ecology terms that are mixed and complex, however, the variance of low and high happened to the dynamic of the trade war (franklin et al., 2022). the review of previous related literature defined some parts of analysis interrelated the language and ecology from stibbe’s theory, those are concluded into ideology, framing, metaphor, evaluation, identity, salience, erasure, and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 264-275 269 narrative. moreover, the reviews also explain the interrelation of one part of the analysis to another. it was defined as leveled and related one to another. concerning this study, the analysis overlooks the relation of the environment of toba-batak to the man and woman identity as it is expressed in dalihan na tolu. method this is a qualitative study, exposing the natural phenomenon inductively (creswell & creswell, 2018; soegiyono, 2011). there are two instruments administered in this study (1) observation and (2) interview. the instrument of observation is used to take the data of dalihan na tolu as the value and beliefs of the society. the instrument of the interview is used to validate the meaning of dalihan na tolu from an informant. the informant in this study is a native speaker of the toba-batak language, the process of interviewing an informant to validate the content of dalihan na tolu is also called elicitation. the data in this study are three sentences in dalihan na tolu, those three sentences will be analyzed in the method of content analysis by applying two theories of (1) syntactic and semantic structure analysis and (2) identity in ecology and language. the data were analyzed in two steps microanalysis and the implementation to language and environment or man and woman identity. findings and discussion findings the following findings are divided into (1) syntactic analysis findings, (2) semantic analysis findings, and (3) the meaning of dalihan na tolu due to the syntactic and semantic analysis findings. the syntactic analysis findings syntactically, the content of dalihan na tolu is headed by the verb which is formulated by the prefix mar+ noun. it is proved by the method of substitution to both of somba, elek, and manat then to the words of marhula-hula, marboru, and mardongan tubu. the substitution method defined that the first words of each line functioned as adverbs though they are naturally verbs and adverbs. the following is the syntactic structure: [[somba]adverb [marhula-hula]verb] *respect having brothers ‘respect your brother’ [[elek]adverb [marboru]verb] *love having sister ‘lover your sister’ [[manat]adverb [mardongan tubu]verb] *care your friends ‘be caring to your friends’ though it is translated differently in english, the head of each line of them is the morphological form of a noun which becomes a verb. in toba batak language ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 264-275 270 (tbl), the addition of the prefix marto a noun can change the noun to become a verb, look at the following examples: [[mardongan]verb [au]agent [tu imana]oblique] ‘i am his friend’ [[marhula-hula]verb [au]agent [tu imana]oblique] ‘i am his sister’ the two clauses above in tbl are composed of verbs that are formulated in the prefix mar+ noun. in the two clauses, the verbs are mardongan and marhulahula. the existence of mardongan and marhula-hula equals nouns with auxiliary meanings on them. the syntactic analysis defined that the main message of dalihan na tolu is placed in the words of marhula-hula, marboru, and mardongan tubu. the semantic analysis findings syntactically, it was defined that the main message is placed on the morphological forms of marhula-hula, marboru, and mardongan tubu and those words are modified by the words of somba, elek, and manat. here is the unique thing in the meaning of dalihan na tolu because the regulation of the message is placed in the modifier. somba is a transitive verb, then elek is a ditransitive verb, and manat is an adverb. look at the examples below: somba – transitive verb [[ikkon somba]verba [do ho]agent [tu hula-hulam!]recipient] *must respect you to your brother ‘you must respect your brother’ elek – ditransitive verb [[mangelekkon]verba [imana]beneficiary [buku i]patient [au]agent] *beg her the book i ‘i beg her the book’ manat – adverb [[manat mardalan]verb [imana]agent] *slowly walk he ‘he walks slowly’ the analysis above shows how the degree of arguments somba, elek, and manat have. as a transitive verb, somba has a definite argument of agent and oblique, then elek has more arguments of an agent, direct object (patient), indirect object (beneficiary, recipient), and oblique. while manat is an adverb, it is attached to the verb and modify it. from this analysis, by defining the number of arguments, scientifically can be proved the strength of the verb; somba is a verb with fewer arguments than elek. the following is the figure to define the arguments in dalihan na tolu: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 264-275 271 (1)somba marhula-hula, (2)elek marboru, (3)manat mardongan tubu the analysis above contributed to the following meaning of dalihan na tolu: 1.due to its order, the first line refers to a woman (sister), but due to the syntactic and semantic analysis findings, the highest degree of the verb refers to a man (brother). 2.women due to their responsibility to respect men (somba marhula-hula) have to do it strictly to the action for there is no space/ arguments to deny it. however, the men of toba batak due to their responsibility (elek marboru) have some space/arguments to do it. 3.those syntactic and semantic findings defined a different value to the identity of man and woman in toba batak. 4.syntactic and semantically, dalihan na tolu clearly defined women as part who have to obey the order of dalihan na tolu while men are clearly defined as part who have some space/arguments due to their responsibility in it. due to the findings above, man and woman's identities are defined differently and not equal. man, who is structurally positioned the highest, is a symbol of pride. men or brothers or sons in toba-batak are born to be leaders. they are decisionmakers, the one who is obliged to be respected. due to the second order, brothers in toba-batak are also responsible to love and guard sisters, meanwhile, men are identified as guardians and full of care of the third order, men as parts of siblings are defined as coordinative, cooperative, and supportive people. similar to men's identity, women in toba-batak are pictured clearly in dalihan na tolu. sisters are the ones who must respect their brothers as decisionmakers or leaders in the family. however, they are objects of love to be guarded, cared for, and treated tenderly and politely. sisters in toba-batak are identified as someone who knows how to respect their brothers and behave with them respectfully and politely. concerning sibling relations, sisters in toba-batak are defined the same as brothers, as parts who are coordinative, cooperative, and supportive. discussion language expressed the harmony of ecology, language, and culture simultaneously. a community expresses culture in language and ecology. ecology is the environment where the community exists with their culture which is expressed in language. this is the concern of ecology and language, to overlook the existence of ecology in language or how language expresses ecology. languagedefined culture as part of ecology varies in points of view or levels. the expression of ecology in the language is the widest in value or beliefs shared or ideology. the manat somba elek adverb = no arguments transitive = arguments ditransitive = more arguments ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 264-275 272 value which is shared is possibly destructive, ambivalent, or beneficial. the ideology is framed using metaphors which is evaluated in community understanding abstractly. the evaluation produces identity which is defined as facticity or conviction. furthermore, convictions are identified as salience as a negative value and erasure as a positive value. the benefactor and endangered value of facticity is told in narratives. an article entitled ‘masculinity, health, and ecological destruction’ by stibbe (2006) explained how an explanation of a health magazine can express health identity in the existence of protein milk. in that article, the health identity is expressed from some words related to muscles such as solid muscle, bigger biceps, build this body, etc. compared to the health data/related research which said that protein milk especially protein does not always bring health but also contributes some negative effects, the findings stated that the health magazine extremely highlights the product of protein milk, the health magazine is found to idolize the product of protein milk. it is assumed that way since even though the data and related research in health discipline explained some negative effects of protein milk on the human body, the health magazine still highlighted the protein milk for their benefit. similar to identifying the identity of man and woman in dalihan na tolu, this study analyzed the sentences in value. this study defined the sentences into imperative, with material and predicator which produce goals and complements. this study defined somba, elek, and manat as the expression of orders while hulahula, boru, and dongan tubu are goals which are existed in the community of tobabatak. this study defined men as pride, someone to be honored, the highest in order, and decision-makers. while a woman is defined as the object of love, someone to be treated tender and politely. however, both men and women are identified as coordinative, cooperative, and supportive in creating a harmony of life. in this study, dalihan na tolu is defined as a beneficial ideology that is framed as the relationship in the toba-batak community by the expression of somba, elek, manat as the metaphors and exited the evaluation of hula-hula, boru, and dongan tubu. the ideology, frames, metaphors, and evaluation finally defined the identity of man and woman in dalihan na tolu as the value or beliefs shared in the tobabatak community. conclusion this study defined dalihan na tolu as values or beliefs shared in the tobabatak community. in defining the identity of man and woman, the sentences which are expressed the value are analyzed by the meta-function. the following are the conclusion of the study: 1. dalihan na tolu shared beneficial value in the community, and it is defined as a beneficial ideology. 2.the value which consisted of somba marhula-hula, elek marboru, and manat mardongan tubu are structured equally as imperative sentences with material processes and predicator-producing goals and complements. 3.the shared value frames the relationship in the community through the existence of somba, elek, and manat as metaphors. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 264-275 273 4. the metaphors evaluate the presence of hula-hula, boru, and dongan tubu which finally identify the identity of man and woman in the toba-batak community. 5. the value which is shared in the community stated that toba-batak people are ordered to respect, love, and live together in the community. 6. men or brother identity are defined as the highest, leaders, guardians, and decision-makers. in sibling relationships, men are defined as coordinative, cooperative, and supportive persons. 7. women or sister identities are defined as the object of love, someone who should be treated politely and respectfully. similar to men, women in 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(2021). representing nonhuman animals as equals: an ecolinguistic analysis of vegan campaigns. journal of world languages, 7(1), 26–57. https://doi.org/10.1515/jwl-2021-0003 https://doi.org/10.24912/stupa.v3i1.10807 https://doi.org/10.18178/ijlll.2020.6.4.275 https://doi.org/10.17977/um059v2i12022p37-47 https://doi.org/10.21512/lc.v15i2.7497 https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.51 https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2018.1547983 https://doi.org/10.1515/jwl-2021-0003 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 96-106 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 96 american dream as reflected in david mamet’s glengarry glen ross sindhy sintya mianani airlangga university sindhysintya@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.2019.030109 received 29 june 2019; revised 16 august 2019; accepted 26 august 2019 abstract david mamet is one of the greatest modern american playwrights whose works have dominated the stages during the twentieth century. his work entitled glengarry glen ross is a great echo of the world about the businessmen in the united states. this study is devoted to the analysis of david mamet’s glengarry glen ross based on marxism point of view, in which it focuses on the power praxis portrayed within its story. by so, this study scrutinizes how american dream creates unethical and immoral american corrupted society in mamet's glengarry glen ross and how the notion of american dream is being challenged. the findings of this study show that the salesmen’s choices, preferences, wants and desires are affected by ideological practices. these ideological practices represent the production of corrupted ideology for the notion of american dream is being reduced and merely a utopian notion. thus, eventually, david mamet’s glengarry glen ross displays a deeper conception that the salesmen or working class people in general, are the subjects of the capitalism. keywords: marxism, american dream, capitalism introduction the notion of american dream is as old as the very foundation of america itself. it also becomes the belief that leads the innumerable immigrants to america who expected a better life as american dream itself claims “that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (jefferson, 1776, p. 1)”. as they feel exhausted from the tyrannies and muffling limitations of the old world, thought of the new continent offers a land of opportunities and redemption for their dreams. but from the very beginning, the ignorance, prejudice and greed inherited in human nature starting to deter the true meaning of the dream, thus turning it into a nightmare. thus, one might claim that american dream has been reduced for it is corrupted since the outset, despite the fact that there has always been a controversy over whether it was corrupted originally or diverged and reduced from its true essence and eventually become corrupted. mailto:sindhysintya@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 96–106 97 realizing this phenomenon, some authors express their criticism and cynicism toward american dream. such criticism and cynicism can be seen from f. scott fitzgerald’s the great gatsby (1925), arthur miller’s death of a salesman (1949), john steinbeck’s the grapes of wrath (1962), and david mamet’s glengarry glen ross (1984). all of these literary works revolve around the reduced and corrupted notion of the american dream during the period of the great depression in 1920s till 1930s. this period witnesses the decline of america‘s great power leading to the state where america deals with a wave of suspicious and corruption emerged among its people. being affected by this condition, everyone simply only cares about his/her own interest, regardless of all normal communal issues. each individual looks for the fulfillment of his/her aspirations and hopes regardless to their values, ethics, and other people’s desires. it is said that the source of the corruption of the notion of american dream is none than the ideology of american system itself. given such issues, david mamet as one of the important playwright who experienced these social problems, wrote his work entitled glengarry glen ross. mamet's play reflects his extreme engagement with some of the american unresolved concerns. mamet shows his views to be as anti-capitalist playwright. mamet’s glengarry glen ross is deemed as the awareness of the ideology of the dominant class in which the issue of struggle for life in the bossiness is evident. it is a portrait of a battle for survival as well as struggle in which the salesmen long for a dream of being free. in addition to that, glengarry glen ross are also full of businessmen deprived of any human warmth and compassion and are constantly steeped in an atmosphere of fear, greed, and ruthlessness. in other words, the higher the pressure, the lower the ethics are. his play, then, is said to able to express his concerns regarding this matter by giving such valuable criticism of materialism and greed that echo in american society. david mamet’s glengarry glen ross is a play telling the story of real estate salesmen in america. the play is considered as mamet’s most noticeable work for it has win three obies, a new york drama critics award, the outer critics award for distinguished playwrighting, a joseph jefferson award, the society of west end theatres award, the pulitzer prize, also some numerous nominations for academy awards for screenwriting. thus, david mamet is also deemed as a “seminal figure in contemporary american drama whose gift for acute social observation, depth of moral vision, and continuing productivity account for his broad critical respect” (begley, 2004, p. 4). moreover, as bigsby (2004) suggests, that in a utopian society such as america, only the past and the future offer a true form. in between, is a provisional world in decline, reaching for a perfection beyond immediate reach, existing between impure nostalgia and importunate hope. therefore, mamet’s glengarry glen ross can be said as the embodiment of a preoccupation with rootlessness which feels both as discontinuity with the past and the failure of connection with the present. glengarry glen ross depicts the essential role of the business ethic in shaping american values. thus, as a result, moral dilemma becomes the main issue in this play, for people are trapped between their desire to possess the land or gain from its sale and their longing for old value systems. this condition give the illusion of the glorious past and a utopian future, compared to the devastating ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 96–106 98 conditions of the present time, functions as a defense mechanism, employed to avoid the confrontation of the horrifying reality of their existence. given this premise, this study attempts to analyze david mamet’s glengarry glen ross in the light of power praxis and its relation to the american dream using marxism theory. by doing so, the corrupted and reduced notion of the american dream and its principles express a contradiction between reality and what befalls. the enchantment of the american dream, then, comes to the extent that they the splendid dreams of the past are juxtaposed with the utopian future promised by the american dream. literature review marxism theory was founded by karl marx, a german philosopher and friedrich engels, a german sociologist. in the beginning, this economic theory is called as ‘communism’ rather than ‘marxism.’ this theory was first introduced in communist manifesto on 1848. its aim is to bring about a classless society based on the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. while other philosophies seek to understand the world, marxism seeks to change it. marxism sees progress as coming about through the struggle for power between different social classes. it views history as something ‘motored’ by the competition for economics, social, and political advantage rather than succession of power or gradual process. it is also believed that . . . society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of monetary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of destruction has cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. and why? because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. the productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary they have become too powerful for these conditions by which they are fettered, and so as soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property (marx & engels, 1985, p. 86). marxist theory also argues that the way ones think and experience the world around is either wholly or largely conditioned by the way the economy is organized. under a medieval, feudal regime people will have thought and felt differently from the way that we think and feel now, in a capitalist economy that is, an economy in which goods are produced, the ‘mode of production’, by large concentrations of capital and then sold in a free, competitive, market. what marx believes, then, is developed into the marxist model of society which sees society constituted by a base or material means of production, distribution, and exchange and a superstructure consisting ‘cultural’ world of ideas, art, religion, law, etc. by such notion, marxism also pays attention to the exploitation of one social class by another, seen especially in modern industrial capitalism. the result of this exploitation is alienation which is the state which comes about when the worker is ‘de-skilled’ and made to perform fragmented, repetitive tasks. along with this fact, marx adds that “for exploitation, veiled by ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 96–106 99 religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.” his statement, then, can be said to justify that the capitalist goals and questions of profit and loss are paramount. workers are also beret of their full humanity and in other words, become things. method in order to obtain a comprehensive overview of the research problem, this study utilizes marxism approach. this approach embodies the notion that a society consists of two classes namely base and superstructure. thus, to examine the two mentioned society classes, the main method of data analysis called the method of thick description was employed. the thick description method was originally presented by geertz (1998, pp. 1253-1278) to examine the cultural ideas behind a cultural phenomenon. this method is used to compensate for the close reading method developed by new criticism by linking the cultural codes in the text analyzed by reconstructing the various practical and socio-cultural structures surrounding the text, which is not explicitly referred to by the text (budianta, 2006, pp. 10-11). analysis of research data is also reinforced by the hermeneutic method developed by paul ricoeur (klemm, 1983, pp. 74-108). ricoeur’s notion on hermeneutic theory, suggests that the ultimate goal of an interpretation is to understand the nature of the discourse, the aspects relating to the text, the process of textual understanding, and the subjective conditions in the understanding of the text. with regard to these points, interpretation is said to achieve adequate results. findings and discussion a brief review on marxism marxism theory was founded by karl marx, a german philosopher and friedrich engels, a german sociologist. in the beginning, this economic theory is called as ‘communism’ rather than ‘marxism.’ this theory was first introduced in communist manifesto on 1848. its aim is to bring about a classless society based on the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. while other philosophies seek to understand the world, marxism seeks to change it. marxism sees progress as coming about through the struggle for power between different social classes. it views history as something ‘motored’ by the competition for economics, social, and political advantage rather than succession of power or gradual process. it is also believed that . . . society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of monetary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of destruction has cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. and why? because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. the productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary they have become too powerful for these conditions by which they are fettered, and so as soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property (marx & engels, 1985, p. 86). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 96–106 100 marxist theory also argues that the way ones think and experience the world around is either wholly or largely conditioned by the way the economy is organized. under a medieval, feudal regime people will have thought and felt differently from the way that we think and feel now, in a capitalist economy that is, an economy in which goods are produced, the ‘mode of production’, by large concentrations of capital and then sold in a free, competitive, market. what marx believes, then, is developed into the marxist model of society which sees society constituted by a base or material means of production, distribution, and exchange and a superstructure consisting ‘cultural’ world of ideas, art, religion, law, etc. by such notion, marxism also pays attention to the exploitation of one social class by another, seen especially in modern industrial capitalism. the result of this exploitation is alienation which is the state which comes about when the worker is ‘de-skilled’ and made to perform fragmented, repetitive tasks. along with this fact, marx adds that “for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.” his statement, then, can be said to justify that the capitalist goals and questions of profit and loss are paramount. workers are also beret of their full humanity and in other words, become things. summary of david mamet’s glengarry glenn ross the first act of the play consists of three scenes all taking the place setting at a chinese restaurant. the flamboyant atmosphere of the chinese restaurant is significant since it ironically represents that the corrupt base of business hides under its delicate surface. glengarry glen ross begins with shelly levene, the oldest of the salesmen, trying to convince williamson to give him premium leads. in fact, it might be odd for the readers, at their first confrontation with the words like lead and sit, to determine what these words actually refer to. yet, mamet gradually reveals in the course of the play that a lead is an appointment with a prospective client, that a sit is the actual confrontation and that the board is the office salesmen’s graph charting the four salesmen’s relative success. moreover, it becomes clear that there are two sets of leads which include premium leads that are more likely to win and non-premium or ordinary leads that are almost worthless and most probably fail. as levene’s flattering and then threatening of williamson come to no conclusion, he grabs at bribing him as a last resort which of course fails since he cannot afford it. following the first scene, the second scene represents moss and aaronow discussing the unfairness of mitch and murray towards them after all their honest services for the company. in the following moss suggests that they should break into the office, steal the leads and sell them to jerry graff who directs a rival company. jon tuttle explains coveting the power and income of mitch and murray, who reap the profits of others’ labor and admiring the savvy of jerry graff, who went into business for himself. thus, it is safe to say that on this scene moss actually casts himself in the role of executive and doles out the dirty work of breaking into the office to whoever is desperate enough to be his minion. moss’ act is said to prove that the salesmen not only swindle the gullible clients, but also they cheat on each other whenever they get a chance. moss cunningly tries to persuade aaronow to commit the break-in and when he does not give up to his temptation, moss threatens that aaronow would be an accomplice, willy-nilly, since he listened to the plot. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 96–106 101 in the third scene, roma delivers a confusing monolog to a total stranger, named lingk, sitting in the next booth, in order to inveigle him into buying worthless land. roma philosophizes about the freedom of the individual and creates the illusion that the individual must be a risk-taker. then, he subtly connects the freedom of the individual, the capability of taking risks and security to buying land. it clearly anticipates that lingk will be duped into buying a little worth property. it is quite evident from the way he builds on conviction in the power of the individual to achieve his goal which is selling worthless land. this act is simply intended to coax and disorient lingk, or in short, to trap him. by subtly distorts the meaning of the individual that lingkt has in mind and equates taking risks with being independent, roma pretends that he is totally indifferent to selling land. yet, he implicitly points out that buying the land he offers is the first step to be independent. his statement, however, is inherently paradoxical since whereas he asks lingk to believe in himself, roma urges him to put his trust in him and let roma decide for him. the second act of the play shows the ransacked office the morning after the break-in. baylen, a police detective, is present in the office to interrogate the staff. as roma anxiously enters the office and asks about the stolen contracts, it becomes clear that he has closed the sale to lingk in the previous act and is now worried about his documents. however, williamson assures him that his contract has been filed and sent to downtown. meanwhile, levene enters the office jubilantly announcing that he has just closed a deal with the nyborgs. having been interrogated by the detective, moss furiously humiliates levene while roma applauds his recent success. then, roma all of a sudden sees lingk outside the office and immediately enlists levene to improvise a show to distract lingk from cancelling the contract. however, the improvisation fails because williamson intervenes and assures lingk that his check has been cashed. thus in the end, lingk escapes the trap and roma furiously turns at williamson and warns him that he owes him a cadillac. levene inadvertently, through a lapse of tongue, reveals to williamson that he is the one who ransacked the office. moreover, the worse comes to the worst when williamson viciously tells levene that the deal with the nyborgs is dead since they are “nuts”. as levene leaves to be interrogated by the detective, roma tells williamson that he and levene work together as a team and from that time on he keeps his commissions plus fifty percent of levene’s commissions. the play ends as roma heads out to the restaurant to hook another gullible customer. american dream as reflected in david mamet’s glengarry glen ross at the beginning, the play dramatizes four desperate salesmen who work with a real estate office in chicago which is supervised by a cold manager, williamson, who hands them out leads and sends them out to persuade gullible customers to buy worthless land in florida. as the story progress, the play also demonstrates how for these men all human relationships are narrowed down to business transactions and how their lack of morality drives them to commit robbery under the guise of free enterprise. with the idea that the difference between robbery and chicago salesmanship is only a difference of degree, these hardboiled real-estate salesmen have no moral consciences. what they are selling has no value tracts of undeveloped land which cannot be developed. the only commodity that has value for them is the “lead,” the contact with the potential ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 96–106 102 buyer. some leads are valueless, the value of the lead depending on the wealth and gullibility of the client. levene: i'll tell you why i'm out. i'm out, you're giving me toilet paper. john. i've seen those leads. i saw them when i was at homestead, we pitched those cocksuckers rio rancho nineteen sixty-nine they wouldn't buy. they couldn't buy a fucking toaster. they're broke, john. they're cold. they're deadbeats, you can't judge on that. even so. even so. alright. fine. fine. even so. i go in, four fucking leads they got their money in a sock. they're fucking polacks, john. four leads. i close two. two. fifty per… . . . levene: moss, jerry graff, mitch himself...those guys lived on the business i brought in. they lived on it...and so did murray, john. you were here you'd of benefited from it too. and now i'm saying this. do i want charity? do i want pity? i want sits. i want leads that don't come right out of a phone book. give me a lead hotter than that, i'll go in and close it. give me a chance. that's all i want. i'm going to get up on that fucking board and all i want is a chance. it's a streak and i'm going to turn it around. (pause) i need your help. (pause). williamson: i can't do it, shelly. (pause). levene: why? williamson: the leads are assigned randomly... levene: bullshit, bullshit, you assign them... what are you telling me? williamson: apart from the top men on the contest board (mamet, 1984, 1.1.84-103). however, despite their impoverished morality, from the beginning of the play, it is clearly perceived that the salesmen are under severe pressure more than any other time since half of them are on the verge of failing the selling target. in order to encourage the salesmen to work harder, mitch and murray, as the heads of the company, have declared a sales contest according to which the top seller wins a cadillac, the runner-up wins a set of steak knives, while the other two will get fired. little did these salesmen know, the competition is just a disguise to gain profit as much as they can, thus, driving these salesmen crazy. moss: to say “i'm going on my own.” ‘cause what you do, george, let me tell you what you do: you find yourself in thrall to someone else. and we enslave ourselves. to please. to win some fucking toaster...to...to... and the guy who got there first made up those [rules]. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 96–106 103 . . . moss: something. to pay them back. (pause). someone, someone should hurt them. murray and mitch . . . someone should rob the office. aaronow: huh. moss: that's what i'm saying. we were, if we were that kind of guys, to knock it off, and trash the joint, it looks like robbery, and take the fuckin' leads out of the files...go to jerry graff (long pause). aaronow: what could somebody get for them? moss: what could we get for them? i don't know. buck a throw...bucka-half a throw...i don't know...hey, who knows what they're worth, what do they pay for them? all told...must be, i'd... three bucks a throw...i don't know. aaronow: how many leads have we got? moss: the glengarry...the premium leads...? i'd say we got five thousand. five. five thousand leads. aaronow: and you're saying a fella could take and sell these leads to jerry graff. moss: yes (mamet, 1984, 1.2.114; 147-162). the way these salesmen behave under the so called “lead” illustrates that capitalism is indeed entangled in the highly competitive atmosphere which revolves around ones’ survival. these salesmen are left with no other choice except to privilege their own self-interest over the failure of others. furthermore, it is mandatory to pay attention even though the system encourages these salesmen to act independently, not all of them experience the similar degree of freedom. in fact, they are nothing but a machine. roma: i swear it's not a world of men it's not a world of men, machine it's a world of clock watchers, bureaucrats, officeholders what it is, it's a fucked up world there's no adventure to it. (pause.) dying breed. yes it is. (pause.) we are the members of a dying breed (mamet, 1984, 2.1.432). such exploitation on mamet’s glengarry glen ross, then, indicates how business is elevated to the level of a sacred ritual under capitalism. when business transactions are all that matter, greed and avarice permeating the life of these salesmen, hence force them to be always closing through fabricating false stories ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 96–106 104 and deceiving their clients in order to secure their top place on the board and more importantly, to win the cadillac which is the prize to their so called ‘survival’. the four salesmen depicted in glengarry glen ross put their faith in the american dream and as they struggle to push each other away, through selling more pieces of worthless land, they unconsciously sell themselves to the dream. thus, in selling not only land, but also their souls, they become self-interested individuals who discard all moral consciences. this dehumanized salesmen, as explained by roma is called as a queer, a condition in which a justification of wrong acts are considered as something ordinary. roma: you think you're queer...? i'm going to tell you something: we're all queer. you think that you're a thief? so what? you get befuddled by a middle-class morality...? get shut of it. shut it out. you cheated on your wife...? you did it, live with it. (pause). you fuck little girls, so be it. there's an absolute morality? may be. and then what? if you think there is, then be that thing. bad people go to hell? i don't think so. if you think that, act that way. a hell exists on earth? yes. i won't live in it. that's me. you ever take a dump made you feel you'd just slept for twelve hours...? lingk: did i...? roma: yes. lingk: i don't know (mamet, 1984, 1.3.1-12). what mamet portrays in his play, then, indicates that there are privileged individuals. to put it another words, the capitalist system hypocritically announces that all individuals share the same degree of freedom and have the equal chance to get successful while in fact the holders of capital usually escape the law which is supposed to punish the law-breaker. under such a system, in which there is not such a thing as fixed morality, each individual learns to adopt the kind of morality that is in accordance with his or her interests. as a result, it is not morality that checks the behavior of the individual, but greed and the dictates of business transactions that shape and define morality. while american dream clearly states that it is . . . a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position (adams, 1931, p. 216). somehow, this notion is no longer reflected in glengarry glen ross. this situation tragically reflecting the failures of american society which no longer encourages situation ethics and relativistic morality as stated in american dream. it is inevitable that the myth of the american dream clearly alters the salesmen’s ethic and morals, for they no longer hold the belief that playing fair will save them from getting the steak knives. it is precisely because of their conviction in the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 96–106 105 fairness of unrestricted competition that the salesmen in glengarry glen ross behave unscrupulously and justify it as a mean of marketing skill. glengarry glen ross, eventually, is deemed as a criticism toward the reduced and corrupted american dream for its cynicism is delivered passionately through its characters. the four salesmen, though, try hard to win by cheating, proved that what they have done are merely futile attempts to rebel against system, in this case capitalism, for they have no power against the superstructure elements manifested in the characters namely mitch and murray, the bosses of the real estate agency. conclusion the american dream is an ideology among the infinite ideologies dominating americans’ ways of life. american dream is also an example of a well-constructed notion for it exists from the very beginning of america and yet withered with the passage of time. tough, it aims at the weak point of the human nature that is a dream of better life, the concept of the american dream in david mamet’s glengarry glen ross exposes the ways american dream as an ideology tie itself to americans’ real existence and subvert reality in less suspected ways. in mamet’s glengarry glen ross, american dream tend to offer itself as the reality and despite the fact that one cannot escape the influence of it entirely, american dream is nothing but an the hinders of logical thinking and thereby leads to scheming acts. by such findings, it is safe to say that american dream, as reflected in glengarry glen ross, is a reduced and corrupted ideology. references adams, j. t. (1931). the epic of america. boston: little brown & co. begley, v. (2004). a poetics for thugs. in l. kane (ed.), the art of crime: the plays and films of harold pinter and david mamet. new york: routledge. bigsby, c. (2004). david mamet. in c. bigsby (ed), the cambridge companion to david mamet (pp. 1-41). new york: cambridge university press. bigsby (2004). david mamet: all true stories. in h. bloom (ed), modern critical views: david mamet (pp 163-202). philadelphia: chelsea house publisher. billington, m. (1994). mamet turns to the world of salesmen. in l. j. trudeau (ed.), drama criticism, vol. 4 (pp. 229-230). detroit: gale. brucher, r. (2000). pernicious nostalgia in glengarry glen ross. in l. kane (ed.), david mamet’s glengarry glen ross: text and performance (pp. 211225). new york: garland publishing inc,. budianta, m. (2006). budaya, sejarah, dan pasar: new historicism dalam perkembangan kritik sastra. jakarta: himpunan sarjana-kesusastraan indonesia dan yayasan obor. dorff, l. (2000). things (ex) change: the value of money in david mamet‟s glengarry glen ross. in l. kane (ed.), david mamet’s glengarry glen ross: text and performance (pp. 195209). new york: garland publishing inc. geertz, c. (1973). the interpretation of cultures: selected essays. new york: basic books. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 96–106 106 hayes, c. d. (1998). beyond the american dream: lifelong learning and the search for meaning in a postmodern world. wasilla, ak: autodidactic press. hayman, r. (1994). following the lead. in l. j. trudeau (ed.), drama criticism, vol. 4 (pp. 328-329). detroit: gale. jefferson, t. (1776, july 04). the declaration of independence 4th july 1776. retrieved may 01, 2019, from national humanities center: americainclass.org kimbal, k. (2004). gradation of criminality in the plays of david mamet. in l. kane (ed.), the art of crime: the plays and films of harold pinter and david mamet (pp. 95-103). new york: routledge. klemm, d.e. (1983). the hermeneutical theory of paul ricoeur. london: associated university presses. mamet, d. (1983). glengarry glen ross.new york: grove press. mamet, d. (1984). glengarry glen ross: a play. new york, usa: grove press. marx, k & f. engels. (1985). the communist manifesto. chicago: pluto press. nightingale, b. (1994). is mamet the bard of modern immorality? in l. j. trudeau (ed.), drama criticism, vol. 4, (pp. 331-333). detroit: gale. piette, a. (2004). glengarry glen ross. in c. bigsby (ed), the cambridge companion to david mamet (p. 74). cambridge: cambridge university press. roudane, m. (2004). betrayal and friendship: david mamet‟s american buffalo. in c. bigsby (ed.), the cambridge companion to david mamet (pp. 57-73). cambridge: cambridge university press. roudane, m. (1994). public issues, private tensions: david mamet’s glengarry glen ross. in l. j. trudeau (ed), drama criticism, vol. 4 (pp. 334338). detroit: gale. stafford, t. j. (2000). visions of a promised land: david mamet‟s glengarry glen ross. in l. kane (ed.), david mamet’s glengarry glen ross: text and performance (pp. 185-194). new york: garland publishing inc. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 137 postcolonial ecocriticism in hunger by elise blackwell lestari manggong universitas padjadjaran lestari.manggong@unpad.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030201 received 27 october 2019; accepted 11 february 2020 abstract hunger, a novella by a contemporary american novelist, elise blackwell, centres in the story of a russian botanist, nikolai vavilov, during the leningrad siege in 1941. vavilov protects his collection of seeds at the research institute of plant industry in leningrad against all odds, to be preserved for research for future use. in the recounting moments during the siege, the narrative provides parallelism between leningrad and the ancient city of babylon. in postcolonial writing, this can be perceived as a form of nostalgic projection of the past (walder, 2011). such a parallelism triggers a postcolonial narrative analysis on the pairing of the two as affinity, focusing on the significance of the comparison between the two cities (between the apocalyptic present and the glorious past). the contribution of this parallelism will be discussed to understand the novella as a narrative mode of ecocriticism, with regards to the idea of prioritizing seeds over human lives, which also acts as the steering issue stirring the plot. by mainly referring to garrard (2004) and huggan and tiffin (2010) on ecocriticism and postcolonial ecocriticism, this essay in general aims to investigate how the novella contributes new perspectives on the intertwining between postcolonial studies and ecocriticism. keyword: elise blackwell, postcolonial ecocriticism, nostalgic projection, postcolonial studies, ecocriticism introduction earning its recognition as los angeles times’ “best book of 2003” and sidney morning herald’s “best read of the year”, hunger (2003), a novella by a contemporary american novelist, elise blackwell, is described as “a private story about a man wrestling with his own morality” (eliseblackwell.com/hunger). but this essay will show more than that, as the morality faced by an anonymous narrator who refers to a russian botanist, nikolai vavilov, is framed within narrative traces of what walder (2011) terms as postcolonial nostalgia. not much has been discussed in the academic realm about this novella, other than in a very general sense it has been said to “[explore] various types of appetite, juxtaposing images of plenty and pleasure with images of scarcity, always in a pared-down but mailto:lestari.manggong@unpad.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 138 stylised prose, the effectiveness of which varies” (mccloskey, 2003). the juxtaposition of images of plenty and images of scarcity foregrounds the juxtaposition of something more substantial. one main argument that this essay proposes is that hunger presents the juxtaposition of leningrad during the leningrad siege in 1941, with the ancient city of babylon as a narrative technique of parallelism to show a form of nostalgic projection of the past. in postcolonial studies, such projection is indicative to “a historicizing of the present” (walder, 2011, p.163). and as such, this essay will show how attempts of “historicizing of the present” through the presentation of leningrad and the ancient city of babylon as an affinity between the apocalyptic present and the glorious past is presented. in general, this essay aims to investigate how the novella contributes new perspectives on the intertwining between postcolonial studies and ecocriticism. also, the discussion will explain the impact of our historically poor relationships with the natural world that changes our perspective on our current understandings of nature. systematically, this essay will first of all provide historical information on the leningrad siege to give a general idea on how devastating the situation was during the siege and how it impacted the people living there. it will also show textual evidences in the novella that describe similar situation during the siege. afterwards, on narrative level, this essay will enter into the discussion by showing how the presentation of the steering issue of prioritizing seeds over human lives with the comparison between leningrad with the ancient city of babylon work as an attempt to historicize the present. lastly, this essay will provide a bird’s eye view on how such presentation of story contributes to new perspectives on our current understandings of nature. method the method applied in this essay is by paying attention to the parallelism between leningrad and ancient babylon which contributes to understanding the novella as a narrative mode of ecocriticism, particularly through narratives which tell an idea of prioritizing seeds over human lives, which also act as the steering issue stirring the plot. with this in mind, the analysis conducted in this essay falls within the field of postcolonial ecocriticism, as it discusses how the concept of postcolonial nostalgia and the attempt of historicizing the present are built through plot development whose main issue is on the preservation of seeds, conducted as an anticipation for future ecological disasters. as such, in the discussion, this essay will therefore refer mainly to garrard (2004) and huggan and tiffin (2010) on ecocriticism and postcolonial ecocriticism, and walder (2011) on postcolonial nostalgia. one argument proposed in this essay is that the novella presents narrative mode of ecocriticism associated with ecophobia (estok, 2013). findings and discussion the leningrad siege as told in history and hunger outside is a fountain where visitors toss pennies and rubles into icy water. some leave roses and carnations, which instantly freeze. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 139 how long ago was it? she asks. i can tell her how long ago but can’t explain bread as stone or children turned to ice and bone (longenecker, 2013, p.14). the siege of leningrad occurred from the summer of 1941 to the summer of 1944, which totals into 900 days and is thus known in world history as the 900day siege (forczyk, 2009; glantz, 2001). leningrad was sieged by the german and finnish armies during world war ii, and it was known as “one of the most horrific events in world history”, taking the lives of “somewhere between 1.6 and 2 million soviet citizens” (bidlack, 2005, p.1). known today as the city of st. petersburg, before the siege, “leningrad was the capital of russian creative life” (salisbury, 1985, p.8) as ballet and performances and classical music concerts were held every saturday. in his enticing narration on the siege, salisbury describes how grim the situation was to the citizens of leningrad towards the end of spring in 1941, as they felt a gripping terror of the approach of the german army. in spring of 1941, there were military evidences that indicated that adolf hitler was preparing to attack the soviet union. during this time, some had already fled to finland to avoid the speculated siege. in practice, during the siege, the german troop movement had been carried out in three stages: 1.) about thirty divisions were sent to east prussia and poland in the fall of 1940; 2.) heavy troop movements began on may 25, sending in about one hundred military formations each twenty-four hours; and 3.) the movement of troops from the interior was to be completed in the second half of july (salisbury, 1989, pp.89-90). the people of leningrad realized that war had started. a few minutes after the war was announced, queues, especially in the food stores, began to grow, and at the state savings banks lines formed as depositors wanted their money. canned goods were massively purchased, along with other necessities such as butter, sugar, lard, flour, groats, sausage, matches, and salt. to this reaction, salisbury noted: “in twenty years of soviet power leningraders had learned by bitter experience what to expect in time of crisis” (1989, p.146). once the nazis firmly grasped the town, all of the rail connections between leningrad and the remainder of russia were severed and all the highways were cut (salisbury, 1989, p.335). this leaves the leningraders trapped in their own town. since the roads were cut, the citizens of leningrad had to make do of anything they can have their hands on to survive. for instance, they drew water from a hole in an ice-clad street, as pictured below: figure 1. leningrad citizens drawing water from a hole in an ice-clad street (salisbury, 1989, p.378) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 140 and ate whatever they have to survive. they went to nearby countrysides to look for cabbage or potatoes or beets, but found very little. the only non-rationed products sometimes available were coffee and chicory. more people started to fall because of hunger. one evidence of this heart breaking condition was recorded by yelena skryabina, a diarist, in her diary: “what do you think, young man, that this is a first-aid station?” she said sourly. “hunger is a terrible condition. your old man has collapsed from hunger. and i might collapse any day myself—i’m getting more and more swollen” (salisbury, p.473). in july 1941, leningrad introduced a ration-card system for the procurement of foodstuffs and manufactured goods (bidlack, 2005). in october, bread ration is reduced for the third time, based on category, to either 400 or 200 grams per day for most people (bidlack, 2005). as food became scarce, non-workers and children, as of october 1941, received only one-third of a loaf of poor-quality bread a day. roughly, for a month they got one pound of meat, a pound and a half of cereals or macaroni, three-quarters of a pound of sunflower-seed oil or butter and three pounds of pastry or confectionery. in addition, they had to survive on a total of five and a quarter pounds of food a month, which is a little more than a pound a week. fish or canned goods were substituted for meat. salisbury notes that “[t]he deaths which occurred in late september and october, surprising and shocking to the leningraders who knew of them, occurred among people subjected to this radically reduced diet and who had no personal food reserves to fall back on (1989, p.474). in november, bread ration was reduced to 300 and 150 grams per day, and it was further reduced to 250 and 125 grams per day (bidlack, 2005). in reaction to this, a cut in military rations was immediately instituted. yet this did not have much effect. starting november 1941, the leningraders had to survive on breads containing 25 per cent “edible” cellulose. in hunger, it is described that in the days of food rarity, the people of leningrad eat “a bread made of five parts stale rye flour and one part each of salt, cake, cellulose, soy flour, hack dust, and bran” (blackwell, 2008, p.39). people were mobilized to collect “edible” pine and fir bark. what was worst, each region of the city was ordered to produce two to two-and-a-half tons of “edible” sawdust per day (salisbury, p.500). in hunger, this condition is described vividly and elaborately as follows: all manner of animals—dogs and cats, sparrows and crows, rats and mice— and then their excrement were eaten. soups were made from tulip bulbs stolen from the soil of the botanical gardens, pine needles, nettles, rotten cabbage, lichen-covered stones, cattle-horn buttons torn from once-fine coats. children were fed hair oil, petroleum jelly, glue (blackwell, 2008, p.40). the leningraders were forced to cling on to life with whatever they can get their hands on. yet starvation continues to occur despite an increase in the bread ration (350 gr, 200 gr, and 400 gr for the rear army) in december 1941. in january 1942, there was only a two-day supply of flour in reserve, causing the inhabitants to receive nothing but a bread ration. the first convalescent hospital (statsionar) for the treatment of starvation was opened in january 1942. it got worse; in the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 141 same month, the last working hydroelectric power station closed, causing the city to be left without running water, heat, or electricity. in late january of 1942, 96,694 deaths were reported to the register office (zags). the second increase in the food ration was instituted in february 1952, with only 500 gr of bread for factory workers, engineers, and technicians, 400 gr for office workers, and 300 gr for children and dependents. in winter of 1943, a new crime emerged: people started murdering people for food; “they stole, connived, and killed” (blackwell, 2008, p.40). there was cannibalism in leningrad. reports of the trade in human flesh can be seen in the published official histories. in the words of vavilov in hunger, this condition is described as follows: “they peddled their flesh. they peddled the flesh of the children needing to be fed” (blackwell, 2008, p.40). crimes-for-food became part of leningrad’s history. it was not until the beginning of spring of 1944 that a military operation was undertaken. the objective was to end the blockade of leningrad. with operation code iskra (the name of the first social democratic newspaper, the one which lenin edited before the break between the mensheviks and the bolsheviks), leningrad was finally liberated. yet, the history of the siege remains. figure 2. piskarevsky cemetary (salisbury, 1989, p.395) after the devastation, piskarevsky cemetery was built as common graves of over one million victims of the leningrad siege, also as a monument to remind the people of the world about the horrific and devastating tragedy, as poetically conveyed in the epigraph provided at the beginning of this section. using the leningrad siege as its background, hunger pictures the devastation hunger causes to the life of nikolai vavilov and the lives of other characters within his circle. although vavilov’s name is not explicitly mentioned in the narratives, blackwell implies at the beginning of her novella, before the story takes its start, that the main character in the story is the biologist nikolai vavilov. as a biologist, vavilov is torn between two choices: preserving the seeds he and his colleagues have been collecting for research and future use or using the seeds to be planted, harvested, and consumed to survive starvation caused by the siege. the next two sections will first of all deal with parts in the novella where vavilov’s and his team’s concern over the seeds is displayed. the section afterwards will discuss the parallelism between ancient babylon and leningrad and elaborate several ideas on how such parallelism can be used to see leningrad by putting it into ancient babylon context. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 142 seeds of life, city of death the many thousands of specimens stored at the research institute of plant industry where vavilov and his fellow researchers work include several hundred tubers; “small and large. smooth and warty. white, brown, yellow, purple, and blue” (blackwell, 2008, p.8). the sacrifice and struggle they have to face are to a certain extent, heroic, as they “held [their] packs and [their] ground—all to save a few specimens of rare apple. [they] survived the ridicule and bullets of bandits who overtook [them] when [they] were collecting sorghum in eritrea, and [they] outsmiled hostiles up and down the orinoco (blackwell, 2008, p.15). in the island of ometepe, vavilov and his team collect what they could of the coffee, sesame, and strange fruits that grew in its fertile volcanic soil, in the humidity of southern louisiana they collect a variety of rice with nutty flavorflavour that can “give warmth and pleasure” (blackwell, 2008, pp.54 & 71). at the institute, new ways are invented in agricultural engineering. seed dormancy and germination can be manipulated in many ways “to shorten or lengthen the vegetative periods of cereals” (blackwell, 2008, p.79). to vavilov and his team, it is imperative that they protect the seeds, and the decision is made “all at once but by something like attrition” (blackwell, 2008, p.9). they decide not to eat from the collections and that they will protect them at all cost (blackwell, 2008, p.11). the idea of sacrificing themselves in order to protect the seeds is an act of prioritizing what could save future agricultural advancement over human lives. despite the fact they have agreed upon, there is a time when vavilov sneaks into the collection and retrieves “just a few kennels of a few kinds, taking nothing too rare, taking the last of no variety, rearranging the remainder to hide [his] weakness” (blackwell, 2008, p.59). and later, he finds himself ashamed of what he has done. in real life, the idea of storing seeds for future use has been practiced by the nordic gene bank (now nordgen), who had established a back-up seed storage facility in an abandoned coal mine outside longyearbyen. following the finalization of international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (itpgrfa) in 2001, the treaty calls for establishing a multilateral system for plant genetic resources that includes global rules for access to and benefit sharing of those resources (https://www.seedvault.no/about/history/). this enables the world to have a global security storage facility in svalbard, norway, which was opened in february 2008, to house duplicates of seed conserved in gene banks all over the world. the freezing climactic nature of svalbard global seed vault helps the preservation of the seeds, as can be seen below: figure 3. the entrance of the svalbard vault in norway (https://www.seedvault.no/) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 143 the seed vault is carved into solid rock with storage area located more than 100 meters inside the mountain, and under layers of rock that range between 40 and 60 meters thick. inside, the seeds are cooled to minus 18˚c. the svalbard vault is a real evidence that human kind is preparing the worst that may come upon us in the future. as the world has been historically prone to wars and conflicts, it is imperative that the ecology of the world should be cared for as early as possible. in hunger, the collecting and storing of seeds indicates not only efforts to advance agricultural engineering, but also a precaution on apocalyptical world in the future. in relation to this, in blackwell’s defence, hunger is “to comment on what does and does not change about human life with changing leaders and gods—and on the tragedies of mighty civilizations” (blackwell, 2008, p.134). published in the time of iraq war—an armed conflict by a united states-led coalition to overthrow saddam hussein government—hunger also provides a critical view on the world at war and its impact on civilization. it highlights a tragedy not only experienced by the people of leningrad, but also the people of the world. in this sense, the tragedy in the city of leningrad is not sui generis, as nowadays war, conflict, and famine—big and small in scale—has become international headline news. with regard to tragedy and terror, estok (2013) postulates that: terror and tragedy obviously have much in common: both attract and repel, ... both exploit our aversion toward unpredictability (an aversion that is at the core of ecophobia), both stimulate our distaste for violence against our own agency, and both present unequivocal notions of right and wrong. they both also assert assumptions about positions, about what and where we are in relation to other things and concepts (2013, p.2). in this context, in hunger, men’s aversion toward unpredictability due to the german siege is depicted for instance through alena’s unwillingness to stay alive; she gives up eating, letting her physical condition to continue to drop. vavilov expresses his distaste for violence by grimly describing how the few survivors of leningrad turn into murderers for food. through his narration, vavilov also shows his notions of right or wrong by contemplating about his affair with iskra. as a biologist, vavilov is questioning his authority and his place at the institute and in alena’s life, which can be perceived as a manifestation of his assumptions about his positions and where he is in relation to other things around him. tragedy can potentially trigger a certain phobia. in the case of hunger, there is a certain phobia of losing the seeds by consuming them even though it risks the lives of vavilov and his circle. the act of collecting the seeds and preserving them is in itself a manifestation of phobia; a phobia on the possibility that the seeds will extinct and have to be genetically engineered in the future. as this is highly relevant to nature and the ecology of the world, such a phobia can be called ecophobia. ecophobia, as mentioned in the citation, is defined as “an irrational fear (sometimes, of course, leading to a contempt or hatred) of the agency (real or imagined) of nature” (estok, 2013a, p.74 in estok, 2013b, p.2). blackwell recounts that the one thing that triggered her to write hunger is due to her accidental encounter with vavilov’s story in a publication of the seeds savers exchange. seeds savers exchange happens to be a non-profit organisation that ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 144 “conserves and promotes america's culturally diverse but endangered garden and food crop heritage for future generations by collecting, growing, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants” (https://www.seedsavers.org/mission). as such, this organization shares similar cause with the svalbard global seeds vault. hand in hand, people are collecting and storing endangered crops for future generations. this may come as a form of anticipation, instead of phobia. either way, the idea of being precautious underlines this very concept. since its first initiation in the 1990s, ecocriticism has been known as a form of literary criticism more informed scientifically by ecology, environmental biology, and geology (balaev, 2012; buell, 2011; fromm, 2012; glotfelty, 1996; heise, 2013; marshall, 2005; oppermann, 2011; waage, 2013). as a mode of analysis, ecocriticism can help to comprehend the rise of ecophobia, as “ecocriticism also reflects a striking feature of the modern crisis of the natural, its challenge to the way human knowledge is organized” (clark, 2011, p.8). closely related to environmentally oriented developments in philosophy and political theory, like feminism and marxism, ecocriticism acts as a political mode of analysis. it means that there is always a sense of urgency in it and that it involves a larger, global issue, thus “[e]cocritics generally tie their cultural analyses explicitly to a ‘green’ moral and political agenda” (garrard, 2004, p.3). in relevance to this, clark (2011) states that: for an environmental critic, every account of a natural, semi-natural or urban landscape must represent an implicit re-engagement with what ‘nature’ means or could mean, with the complex power and inheritance of this term and with its various implicit projections what of human identity is in relation to the nonhuman, with ideas of the wild, of nature as refuge or nature as resource, nature as the space of the outcast, of sin and perversity, nature as a space of metamorphosis or redemption. ecocriticism usually reads literary and environmental texts with these competing cultural conceptions of nature to the fore (clark, 2011, p.6). in this context, in hunger, leningrad is presented as the site where negotiations between human identity and nature as refuge and resource take place. it can also be perceived as the space of sin and perversity, particularly through vavilov’s reflection on his past engagements with other women. since what vavilov and his team do in hunger (protecting the seeds and refraining from consuming them) represents a global concern, it can then be perceived that this is the steering issue of the novella. the plot develops its way from present-day new york to past-time leningrad and back to present-day new york as it is stirred by this issue. within its course, the plot presents series of juxtapositions between leningrad and the ancient city of babylon. historicizing the present: putting leningrad into ancient babylon context plot wise, the story starts in present time vavilov’s new york apartment, years after the siege. the plot then moves to vavilov’s reminiscence of his bitter experience during the leningrad siege. “faced with his own mortality” (anderson, 2003), vavilov reminiscences his nostalgic memories on his deceased wife, alena. alena, as revealed towards the end of the novella, dies of starvation during the siege. vavilov’s memory on his experience during the siege starts on the 40 days into the 900 days siege, when the collection of seeds stored at the institute are moved to an experimental station in estonia and are cared for by leppik, the great director’s colleague. before the seeds are moved, lysenko, the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 145 great director, has already called the institute babylon, because it has to be put to an end, saying that “babylon must crumble”, and referring it to “dust” (blackwell, 2008, p.23). this naming progresses in the plot into series of association with the ancient city of babylon. vavilov, being on the opposite side of lysenko, thinks of the naming as a compliment. to vavilov, the ancient baylonians are impressive in terms of their breakthroughs in agricultural science. he shares that “[l]ike the members of our expeditions, the babylonians travelled widely to collect medicinal herbs and unusual fruits” and that they “planted world’s first botanical garden” (blackwell, 2008, p.25). vavilov is also impressed with the fact that in ancient babylonia, barley had more value over silver, and that it was the centre of the babylonians’ diet, which “united wealth and weight, [and] joined prosperity and health” (blackwell, 2008, p.27). in the narratives after this, the mentioning of babylon or ancient babylon surfaces over time, placed in juxtaposition with: 1.) vavilov’s memory on his affair with iskra, 2.) the lion statue over the catherine canal, 3.) the stone slabs which are put as foundation cellars of the hanging gardens, 4.) leningrad’s celebration, 5.) leningrad in general, and 6.) the death of albertine’s parents. when vavilov reminisces about his affair with iskra, he talks about sexual fealty, which he learns is prized by the babylonians. he says: “contrary to the imaginative indulgences of herodotus, the babylonians prized sexual fealty. infidelities were punished harshly, but there was room for forgiveness. though an adulterous wife caught in the act was actually bound to her lover and drowned in the euphrates, her husband could grant her pardon” (blackwell, 2008, p.70). by saying this, vavilov is thinking about his own situation, wondering if he could get away with it the same way an infidel wife is forgiven by the husband in ancient babylonian time. another juxtaposition surfaces after vavilov sees the lion statue over the catherine canal. vavilov states: in 1776, south of baghdad, peasants found the unfurnished figure of a lion amid the ruins of what was once babylon’s northern palace. this lion stands hard, trampling the hapless man who lies beneath his paws. unlike the seated lions that gaze so elegantly at the catherine canal, the babylonian statue was made by someone whose gods were intimately, if cruelly, involved with human fate and the lots of individual men (blackwell, 2008, p.73). it can be seen that to vavilov, unlike the lion statue presiding “without interest” over the catherine canal, the babylonian statue bears more meaning. the lions at the catherine canal, in a sense, are lacking purpose. they are standing there giving no impact to the passers-by, including him. another instance where ancient babylon is juxtaposed is when vavilov remembers about alena’s most vulnerable point in time of her descending health. vavilov talks about the stone slabs that are piled as the foundation of the hanging gardens in ancient babylon. the stone slabs are laid by slaves who are homesick, not knowing whether or not they will be able to see their wives again. at this point, the narrative highlights vavilov’s mental decline, as paralleled with alena’s physical decline due to starvation. in a different part of the novella, ancient babylonian tradition is mentioned by vavilov after a narrative describing him ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 146 seeing a woman smoking a cigarette. “the availability of tobacco signaled better times to come” (blackwell, 2008, p.102) vavilov thinks. this can be perceived as vavilov’s optimistic view on leningrad’s fate in the near future. after this, he talks about the babylonians new year’s celebration in spring time known as akitu; “it was believed that the gods ended each festival by letting human fortunes for the coming year” (blackwell, 2008, p.103). this event is juxtaposed with leningrad’s very own anniversary of the october revolution. his new take on the banners from the gorky park celebration that says: he who does not laugh, does not eat into he who does not eat, does not laugh indicates that during the siege, eating causes joy. in other words, eating is the epicentre of everything else, as eating becomes the rarest activity that people do in those difficult times. the next parallelism is seen when vavilov juxtaposes the siege of leningrad with the siege of babylon. he states: “[the assyrians’] long and bloody struggles with the egyptians led to a siege of [babylon] that lasted almost precisely as long as the siege of leningrad would, so many years later” (blackwell, 2008, p.105). at this point of the narration, it is becoming clear why babylon is significant in the story. babylon has similar historical experience with leningrad, thus making the two reciprocal. the last juxtaposition in the narrative is triggered by the death of albertine’s parents in which vavilov narrates: “when they spoke of it, and they spoke of it seldom, the babylonians described the place of the dead as a place where dust is nourishment, clay is food. convinced that their sins would be punished in this world, this life—whether by men or by gods—they had little use for hell” (blackwell, 2008, p.108). alena tries to console albertine by saying that she will see her parents again, to which albertine answers: “if anywhere, not here” (blackwell, 2008, p.108). here (leningrad) is opposed to elsewhere, to the place of the dead, which in vavilov’s defence referring to the ancient babylonians’ tradition, is where sins are abolished. in other words, in this context, leningrad is a place where sins are not abolished. in a sense, albertine implies that she sees leningrad as hell on earth. the name babylon, which according to lysenko is interchangeable with “dust”, signifies an idea that the institute should exist no more. yet, towards the end of the novella, the “dust”, brought forth by vavilov in his words of consolation to albertine, signifies an element that nourishes, that gives life, which is a complete opposite of what the meaning is conveyed at the beginning. this can be seen as a narrative technique that shows that the story reaches its full circle; what is brought up at the beginning is mentioned again at the end to show how the two complete one grand idea of the story. since its first mentioning by lysenko, the ancient babylon becomes a trope that provides contrasts with leningrad. the contrasts are present in order to help the narrative work its way in understanding one from the other; vavilov’s narration tries to make sense of what leningrad is during the siege compared with the ancient city of babylon during its glorious time. and this is simultaneously done while vavilov is reminiscing his past with alena, which also has to do with his attempt on trying to understand his mortal being that must one day come to an end. in order to understand the situation in leningrad, the narrative shows its contrasts to the ancient city of babylon. immediately we can see this as narrative pattern that helps the readers interpret what leningrad is through vavilov’s ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 147 perception. the juxtaposition of the two underlines a contrast between the apocalyptic present and the glorious past. in postcolonial writing, this can be perceived as a form of nostalgic projection of the past, as proposed by walder (2011). walder postulates that “[n]ostalgia begins in desire, and may well end in truth. it can, and often does, serve as a key to the multiple pasts that make us who and what we are, for better or worse” (2011, p.3). in this context, in a smaller scale, vavilov’s nostalgic memory of alena brings him a form of “truth” in the end; a truth that enables him to understand his situation in the world after the siege. also, in this context, in a bigger scale, the nostalgic memory of alena in leningrad gives surface to a narrative construct “that [reaches] back, and forward” (walder, 2011, p.3) which is symptomatic to postcolonial nostalgia. walder further states that: like all forms of nostalgia, postcolonial nostalgias have both positive and negative aspects: usually the latter is fore grounded, as the source of an insecure idealism or sentimentality, casting a beneficent glow over past suffering and anxiety; but there is also a positive side, which admits the past into the present in a fragmentary, nuanced, and elusive way, allowing a potential for self-reflexivity or irony appropriate for former colonial or diasporic subjects trying to understand the networks of power relations within which they are caught in the modern world, and beyond which it often seems impossible to move (walder, 2011, p.16). in this context, the juxtaposition between leningrad and the ancient babylon in hunger can be perceived as a form of admitting the past into the present to allow self-reflexivity or irony. vavilov in this case is the diasporic subject who is trying to understand such networks of power relations within which he is trapped, causing him to become immobile or in a state of paralysis one might say. vavilov’s self-reflexivity is an attempt of historicizing his present that leads to a more substantial matter: an attempt of historicizing the present leningrad. by paralleling what vavilov sees, remembers, and experiences, the narrative is putting leningrad into ancient babylon context. leningrad can be more critically understood by looking at it from the context of the history and tradition of ancient babylon. it may well be called a longing; a longing for making leningrad more meaningful. in this sense, the glorious ancient babylon acts as a trope to the apocalyptic leningrad. at this point, the intertwining between postcolonialism and ecocriticism forms a mode of analysis termed as postcolonial criticism, which was also once called green postcolonialism. green postcolonialism, as defined by huggan and tiffin (2007, p.10), “brings out a truism that clearly applies to, but is not always clearly stated in, the different strands of both postcolonialism and ecocriticism: no social justice without environmental justice; and without social justice for all ecological beings no justice at all”. postcolonial criticism, on the other hand, “is that form of criticism which appreciates the enduring noninstrumentality of environmental writing, as well as gauging its continuing usefulness in mobilizing individual and collective support” (huggan and tiffin, 2010, p.33). elise blackwell’s hunger, in this sense, contributes to new perspectives on our current understandings of nature in a way that it showcases ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 148 the tragedy impinged by series of devastation and starvation ironically paired with the plentifulness of seeds of life. conclusion from the discussion, it can be concluded that leningrad and ancient babylon juxtaposition can be understood as a form of admitting the past into the present to allow self-reflexivity or irony. vavilov’s self-reflexivity, in this sense, is an attempt of historicizing his present, leading to an attempt of historicising the present leningrad. parallelism on what vavilov sees, remembers, and experiences in his self-reflexivity puts leningrad into ancient babylon context. all in all, it can be said that the amalgamation of historicizing the present through the longing for a utopic leningrad with crisis of nature as its background suggests a scene of interplay between the element of the natural within history and the historical aspects of various concepts of nature. references anderson, h. (2003). no pepper spray? try lines from larkin. the guardian. retrieved on june 19, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/aug/31/fiction.features2 balaev, m & cheryll, g. (2012). the formation of a field: ecocriticism in america—an interview with cheryll glotfelty. modern language association, 127(3), 607-616. bidlack, r. (2005). foreword: historical background to the siege of leningrad. in cynthia simmons & nina perlina, writing the siege of leningrad. u.s.a: university of pittsburgh press. blackwell, e. (2008). hunger. u.s.a.: unbridled books. buell, l. (2011). ecocriticism: some emerging trends. qui parle, 19(2), 87-115. clark, t. (2011). the cambridge introduction to literature and the environment. cambridge: cambridge university press. estok, s.c. 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(2013). globality, difference, and the international turn in ecocriticism. modern language association, 128(3), 636-643. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 137-149 149 huggan, g., & helen, t. (2007). green postcolonialism. interventions: international journal of postcolonial studies, 9(1), 1-11. doi:10.1080/13698010601173783 huggan, g., & helen, t. (2010). postcolonial ecocriticism. london & new york: routledge. hunger. (2003). retrieved on june 19, 2019, from https://eliseblackwell.com/hunger longenecker, g. (2013). the siege of leningrad. atlanta review, 19(2), 14. marshall, ian. (2005). new connections in ecocriticism. interdisciplinary literary studies, 7(1), 1-4. mcclosky, m. (2003). food for thought in the midst of famine. the irish times. retrieved on 19 june 2019, from https://www.irishtimes.com/news/food-forthought-in-the-midst-of-famine-1.379215 oppermann, s. (2011). ecocriticism’s theoretical discontent. mosaic, 44(2), 153169. salisbury, h.e. (1985). the 900 days: the siege of leningrad. u.s.a.: da capo press. seed savers exchange. (2019). retrieved on june 19, 2019, from https://www.seedsavers.org/mission svalbard global seed vault. (2008). retrieved on june 19, 2019, from https://www.seedvault.no/ waage, f., balaev, m., & fromm, h. (2013). ecocriticism’s past and future. modern language association, 128(3), 778-781. walder, d. (2011). postcolonial nostalgias: writing, representation, and memory. u.s.a: routledge. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 84-95 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 84 aladdin as an immoral ethicist in aladdin and the magic lamp jan gresil s. kahambing and anne dominique duque leyte normal university, philippines vince_jb7@hotmail.com, anneduque123@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.2019.030108 received 8 june 2019; revised 20 august 2019; accepted 26 august 2019 abstract this study delves into the tale aladdin and the magic lamp as the excerpt of the middle eastern folk tales collection one thousand and one nights rather than the popular disney version. it problematizes the figure of aladdin and rebrands him as an immoral ethicist as opposed to the disney hero who seeks strength within himself and the other text versions of him as a “changed” man. this problematizing essentially entails a critique of the westernized moral figure and its basic ‘universal lesson’ in the text to argue his being immoral. to do this, the methodology of the paper follows from a philosophical reading that subjectivizes the protagonist into the question of ethics. specifically, it takes from žižek’s elaboration of the nietzschean version of an immoral ethics that remains consistent with the fidelity to one’s desire. such žižekian standpoint differs from said’s orientalist reading and antagonizes jung’s archetypal critical reading in literature. the novelty of the paper shows how the plot critiques the aladdin figure as an archetype and reveals aladdin’s immoral ethics, which is founded on strength and constant activity but presupposing the voluntary knowledge and cleverness of his existential choice. to back this, the study finds three distinct features, namely: 1) disregard to authority, 2) love beyond good and evil, and 3) negative will to power. keywords: aladdin, immoral ethics, nietzsche, žižek introduction with the recent remake of the film aladdin (lin, eirich, & ritchie, 2019), it is becoming more crucial to revisit its content in terms of the tale’s universal lesson. to do this, however, elturki and shaman (2013) point out that “aladdin's disney is not recommended because it is extremely westernized, and it does not preserve the essence of the cultural features of arabic folktales” (p. 132). the story of aladdin and the wonderful lamp can be contextualized as part of the collection of the arabic folktale one thousand and one nights popularly known in english as the arabian nights in its first english edition in 1706 (rahayu, abdullah, & udasmoro, 2015). the one thousand and one nights book allegedly originated from a popular story of a king by the name of shahryar who, due to his past experience of being betrayed by her former wife’s infidelity, marries a new wife every night only to execute her. knowing this dismal fate, scheherazade, the new married queen, decides to tell exciting stories to the king in order to postpone her death. whenever she is done telling a story, she begins ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 84–95 85 with another one and this makes the king curious about the new conclusion. this resulted in her stalling her death, lasting for 1001 nights. it was believed that the stories told by scheherazade vary from love stories, tragedies, comedies, and poems, all of which depict different places, events, and magicians (erturki & shaman, 2013, p. 116). among the collection of stories, poems and so on, in the 1001 nights, the famous story of aladdin and the magic lamp was added in the eighteenth century (spielvogel, 2009). from scheherazade’s task of entertainment, one sees the importance of aladdin and the stories in thousand and one nights in their contribution of “amusement and delight of every succeeding generation” (weber, 1812, as cited by caracciolo, 1988). there are many versions, adaptations, and translations of the famous arabic folklore, aladdin and the wonderful lamp. sabir badal khan (2004) discussed the balochi versions from the two narrators swali and jangyan in relation to the themes and motifs of the arabian nights. his study pointed out that the oral versions of the narrators retained the basic plot and structure but when it comes to the details, each varies accordingly from the written source. as such, “the balochi variants evidently derive from the text included in the arabian nights. as they constitute orally learned and transmitted versions, the narrators do not intend to produce verbatim renderings of their source text but have both added and omitted details” (khan, 2004, p. 218). the analysis of khan is similar to a study cited by kapchan (1996) stating that “the stories told in the moroccan marketplace today may well come from an arabic translation of galland’s mille et une nuits [one thousand and one nights]… which itself may enter the written tradition when collected and documented.” basing then from antoine galland’s version, whose aladdin text according to his diary can be traced from an added story told to him by a certain hannah diyab, the balochi oral narrators have developed the source text (arabian nights) independently by drawing creative motifs and having some embellishments to suit the text to their local narrative traditions. elturki and shaman (2013) critically analyzed the western version of aladdin and the wonderful lamp from its arabic versions. based on the themes that have emerged, they found out that, in comparison to the arabic version of aladdin and the wonderful lamp, the disney variety is considered very americanized in terms of characters, appearances, names, and events: “through looking at the settings, the characters, and the events as well as the cultural characteristics presented in the books, we found that most of the english versions were not faithful to the arabic version” (elturki & shaman, 2013, p. 115). it was further elaborated that arabic culture was misrepresented in terms of attire and personality for they were far-off from the arabic version as well as the general cultural characteristics of the arabic folktale. rahayu et al. (2015) also analyzed the arabian night’s version of aladdin and the disney adaptation. it was found that the movie was adapted from the arabian night’s version by changing many important parts, from the setting of the place, name of the characters, characterization, and the plot which builds a different discourse from the original text. disney has successfully omitted the islamic messages and values that exist in the tales of aladdin in arabian nights. that is to say, disney completely removed the islamic language, messages as well as islamic values and changed them into ‘american values’ such as freedom and the imaginary formula “happily forever after” which supports the initial claim of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 84–95 86 elturki and shaman (2013) that “the disney version of aladdin and the wonderful lamp is very americanized” (p. 117). it was also stressed that the change in discourse presented the idea of arab barbarism through the practice of stereotyping such as labelling the arab people as barbaric, bad, silly, and wicked; hence depicting a dangerous and negative image (rahayu et al., 2015, p. 24). one of the most common differences noted in the analysis of the arabian night’s version of aladdin and disney’s adaptation is the characterization especially of the main character, aladdin. rahayu (2016) pointed out that “disney’s aladdin constructs the identity that is completely different from the folktale of aladdin.” aladdin’s identity in the folktale is embedded in the cultural traditions of muslims in the 10th-century chinese cultural setting, while the constructed identification found in disney’s animated film is set within an arabic background but with the american values of freedom and heroism. nope (2016) analyzed how disney reconstructed the traditional men roles through aladdin’s character. aladdin in disney is “constructed as the hero who has light skin color and american look with the design of his figure is after a popular and handsome hollywood actor in 1990s, tom cruise” (rahayu et al., 2015, p. 29). the issue of masculinity also factors in: tyson (2006) mentioned that men are traditionally cast as ‘rational, strong, protective, and decisive’ but somehow, disney’s description of aladdin’s character contradicts the ideal “traditional man” and depicts it as a new male which is defined by braught (2010) as “a strong male protagonist with hard-bodied, alpha male qualities as well as to advance a sensitive, romantic side.” this conception proved to be an answer to the second wave of feminist movements which influence middle-class intellectual males to be more caring, sensitive and share domestic responsibility (beynon, 2002), a kind of “campaign” of “the new face of masculinity… as an image of men who are more coveted by women” (nope, 2016, p. 42). a quick glance of the introduction part of some versions show, moreover, that aladdin is ‘poor’, ‘lazy’, and a ‘trouble maker’ (pullman, 2005; kerven, 1998; eastman, 1996) but in the end shows “change,” a metanoia that is supposed to be translated as the basic ‘universal lesson’ of the tale. while these recent studies picture aladdin as a figure who is bound within the panoply of societal and cultural values, they picture nonetheless an agent who struggles to fit altogether a moral character by later on submitting to the norms of his cult and finding a traditional conception of power within oneself. in summing up the sparse texts reviewed above, it can be seen how even with the other text versions, aladdin is still thought as an archetypal hero who succeeds to tell a morale of the story. in the light of such background, this study problematizes this caricature of aladdin as this individual who distances himself with external power and manages to find the power within him. this can be based on the elements that do not add up, especially in the text version, where his attitude shows otherwise. against such a picture, this problematizing offers a critique that essentially portrays aladdin as an immoral ethicist. however, the manner of critique in this paper does not conform to well-defined critical standpoints in literature (e.g. feminist, marxist, psychoanalyst, etc.). what it follows instead is the uncanny style which žižek uses as literary criticism and theory. in everything you always wanted to know about literature but were afraid to ask žižek, sbriglia (2017) explains how žižek works as a critic from a ‘post-theory era’ or as part of the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 84–95 87 ‘theorists without theory’ together with judith butler, giorgio agamben, and alain badiou. following from nicholas birns, sbriglia states that “whereas the 1970s saw the yale school of deconstruction grow out of the work of jacques derrida, and the 1980s saw the new historicism grow out of the work of michel foucault, from the 1990s onward theory” remains “broken up” (p. 3). if there is a similitude that this critique likens itself, it is the antagonism of carl jung’s description of the archetypal hero. accordingly, the archetype is “a figure…that repeats itself in the course of history wherever creative fantasy is fully manifested” (jung as cited by doble, 2011, p. 62). notable examples are jesus christ and clark kent whose exemplarity resounds. quite the anti-thesis of the archetypal hero, the manner of reading here reflects žižek’s understanding of an immoral hero. and yet even if the paper leans towards žižek’s manner of literary criticism, his position again dismisses any kind of structuring that makes his theory solid as a theory. in which case, this critical stand also differs from edward said’s explication of orientalism which views the east – including arab culture – within the “eccentricities of oriental life, with its odd calendars, its exotic spatial configurations, its hopelessly strange languages, its seemingly perverse morality” (said, 2003, p. 166). albeit it sets the backdrop in an arabic setting as a way of illustrating the text, the paper merely focuses on the hero, aladdin, by presenting him as a unique archetype of a hero that can be framed within an immoral ethicist standpoint. what remains new in this paper, therefore, is not only a critique of aladdin as an archetypal figure but also a new introduction of aladdin as a unique archetype with distinct immoral ethicist features. the following section expounds more on immoral ethics as the theoretical framework based from nietzsche and žižek’s archetypes. literature review immoral ethics, nietzsche, and žižek’s archetypes nietzsche, žižek says, is the philosopher of immoral ethics par excellence. the masterpiece with which this can be gleaned from lies in nietzsche’s title genealogie der moral, not der ethik, where ethics deals precisely with the consistency to one’s fidelity of desire (žižek, 2009). such an ethics is fundamentally opposed to the concept of morality. morality deals, on the contrary, with one’s relation with the ‘other’, which is to say that if one’s choice is consistent in its self-reference and in disregard to the ‘other,’ then it strictly veers towards the direction of its opposite – immorality. this ethical immorality (in its commutation) means that the existential choice that surrounds one’s life-world is already void of a divine guarantor (nietzsche, 1974): namely, that god is dead, its objective moral standing and the conventions upon which such an idea is hinged in the instrumentalities of cultural constructs. immoral ethics, in this sense, abandons the idea of an authority, which in the case of the christian ideal is a ‘celestial dictator who would wish punishment for his creation’ (varghese & idiculla, 2014, p. 51) and caters for a new freedom where one’s choices are left to one’s own – a vow of the self (kahambing, 2014). žižek’s first archetype of this immortal ethics, or ethical immorality, is mozart’s don giovanni. he recalls the life of don giovanni in mozart’s last act where the young and promiscuous hero is confronted with a choice. he is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 84–95 88 mozart’s arrogant figure who is “utterly immoral” (kitcher & schacht, 2006, p. 176). with all his wrongdoings, he was asked before his death if he would show remorse and ask forgiveness. the choice befalls him, an existential one, where redemption is at stake. if he remains adamant, however, he will suffer eternal damnation. the ethical heroic act of don giovanni here is the insistence of his choice not to renounce what he did despite the crucial offer. but in no way did he persist with the rationale of wealth or pleasure. as žižek says: the only explanation is his utmost fidelity to the dissolute life he has chosen. this is a clear case of immoral ethics. don giovanni’s life is undoubtedly immoral. however, as his fidelity to himself demonstrates, he was immoral not for pleasure or profit but out of principle: acting the way he did as part of a fundamental existential choice. (žižek, 2009) taking a feminine example from opera again, žižek’s second archetype is george bizet’s carmen. carmen also succeeds in living an immoral life: she ruins the lives of men, she destroys families and so on (steen, 2003). but this is also a case of immoral ethics: “truly ethical, faithful to her chosen path to the end even if this means certain death” (žižek, 2009). it is no wonder that nietzsche becomes a great admirer of carmen. nietzsche says that he became a better person in engaging with bizet’s works (nietzsche, 2008). says nietzsche: “as a matter of fact, each time i heard carmen it seemed to me that i was more of a philosopher, a better philosopher than at other times” (nietzsche, 2008, p. 19). the third and perfect archetype of this ethics for žižek is stalin. žižek recounts how stalin, before his death, wrote at the back of lenin’s materialism and empiriocriticism found in his bedroom the following notes: “‘first, weakness. second, idleness. third, stupidity. these are the only things that can be called vices. everything else in the absence of the aforementioned is undoubtedly virtue…’ that’s i think immoral ethics at its purest” (žižek, n.d.). the heroic figure of an immoral ethicist in this regard shuns inactivity and considers such vapid disposition of idleness as both a weakness and is unwise. the direct opposite then of this figure is someone who considers himself weak against circumstances, who is not clever enough to critically assess situations and remains static. in short, an unethical morality, as opposed to immoral ethics, is the invalid commutation that presents its figure of a weak individual who is full of, in nietzsche’s terms, ressentiment. method this paper rereads aladdin and the magic lamp in the context of immoral ethics. the study first relies on the transedition books version of the story retold and illustrated by martin (1994), since in its retelling, important features are uncovered, as well as depicted with crucial openings. for better backing, however, the paper proceeds to cross-check other sources such as that of burton (2009; 2000) and lang (2016) whose structure and image finds similitude to martin’s. burton retains the old english language used in the translation, making it closer to the original reading in galland. lang’s version also presents an uncanny structure, however different to martin (but the same with burton) in terms of added side stories such as aladdin’s father at the beginning and the brother of the magician at the end. this is to follow lechner (2007) who advised ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 84–95 89 that ‘no single book should be relied on as the sole source of information about any country or culture,’ (p. 1), while at the same time not overlapping with the study of elturki & shaman (2013) who already contrasted the other different versions albeit without burton and lang’s. the focus is then shifted towards the readings on the sources which were not found in previous studies. within such a backdrop, it puts the protagonist, aladdin, in question, specifically his existential choice. through žižek’s critical standpoint, following from the theoretical construct above, the paper extracts the features that make him an immoral ethicist and how these coalesce into a unique archetypal figure. findings and discussion from stalin’s three vices, as presented by žižek, one can surmise that any other acts qualify as virtuous ethical acts as long as they are not part of the three. further, one can but highlight the important good note: “nb! if a man is 1) strong (spiritually), 2) active, 3) clever (or capable), then he is good, regardless of any other 'vices'! 1) plus 3) make 2) (stalin, 1994; rayfield, 2004, as cited by žižek, n.d.; žižek, 2009).” following from such equation: “strength of self plus cleverness/capability equals activity,” the protagonist, aladdin, is subjectivized as an agent that embodies an immoral ethical framework of action. the features of aladdin’s immoral ethics that this study finds are the following: disregard to authority, love beyond good and evil, and negative will to power. disregard to authority aladdin’s immoral ethics is founded on his consistent existential choice: he wanted to have power but without responsibility. the fundamental drive that shows the whole time is the fidelity to this desire, an existential consistency that proves to be the general motif of the narrative. with his dispositional choice, aladdin reveals his immorality by neglecting the figures of authority subjecting him to the societal and cultural status quo: he disregards the figures of the ‘other’ and prefers his desire. this can be shown in three major instances: his disregard to the authority of his father and mother, and his mistrust to the magician himself. in burton’s aladdin; or, the wonderful lamp (2000), aladdin refuses to learn the craft of his father. he prefers to expend his days playing. when aladdin reached the age of ten, his father thought of bringing him to the shop to teach him a trade that would be his profession so he could provide for himself in the future: “but, as aladdin was a scapegrace and a ne'er−do−well and wont to play at all times with the gutter boys of the quarter, he would not sit in the shop for a single day … such was his case− counsel and castigation were of no avail, nor would he obey either parent in aught or learn any trade” (burton, 2000, p. 190). this refusal and consequent insistence of his desire were maintained even until his poor father got sick and died. in lang’s aladdin and the wonderful lamp (2016), aladdin’s disregard for the authority of his father is the very cause of his death: “this so grieved the father that he died” (p. 1). in martin’s version, aladdin already lost his father and the choice of enjoyment is propagated even more without regard to his mother. his mother often asks him to “work to earn” a living and the response is a zealous mockery: “but aladdin laughed [...] ‘i’d rather enjoy myself!’ (martin, p. 273).” there were many occasions that aladdin values more of his decisions driven by his desire and neglected his mother’s requests without considering the authority she holds as his ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 84–95 90 mother. lang narrated that after the death of his poor father, his mother continued to persuade him to secure a profession “…yet, in spite of his mother’s tears and prayers, aladdin did not mend his ways” (2016, p. 1; italics mine). he continued with his actions. during the first appearance of the lamp genie before his mother, she (his mother) immediately commanded him to throw/ sell the lamp and the ring for they should not “interact” with the works of the devil but aladdin refused and at once acknowledged the things he could do as a virtuous agent of immoral ethics: “‘no,’ said aladdin, ‘since chance hath made us aware of its virtues, we will use it, and the ring likewise, which i shall always wear on my finger’ (lang, p. 3). during the time when aladdin wanted to court the princess and ask for her hand, he commanded his mother to do his bidding: "through whom shall i ask it, o my mother, when thou art present? and who is there fonder and more faithful to me than thyself? so my design is that thou thyself shalt proffer this my petition" (burton, p. 204). in fact, the manner that aladdin treats his mother is often this entitled plea of attending to his desires: “i be thy son and thou truly love me, that thou grant me this favor. otherwise, thou wilt destroy me, and present death hovereth over my head except i win my will of heart's dearling" (burton, p. 204). in this sense, aladdin’s rhetoric is always crafted as a wish to secure his own happiness. he remains a spoiled lad who insists on his desire: “and now, o my mother, thou hast no excuse, so compose thy thoughts and arise. take thou this bowl, and away with it to the palace” (burton, p. 205). ali and tehseem’s (2016) analysis, moreover, examined the anti-romantic feature of aladdin’s relationship to his mother: “he let her do all the hard work.” a final instance that shows his consistency can be shown in his reply to the magician. in burton and lang’s versions, this magician presented himself as aladdin’s uncle, brother to his deceased father, who directed him a way to become rich: “he [the magician] said to the boy, ‘would you like to become rich?’ ‘of course!’ said aladdin. ‘but one has to work to earn money, and i prefer to play.’ (martin, p. 274). with some persuasive words that catered to aladdin’s desire, he “trusted the magician and went with him” as if his master (martin, p. 274). however, when he was about to hand over the lamp, he showed signs of cleverness that catered to his mistrust to the magician’s authority: “aladdin saw the man’s eyes light up with such greed that he did not trust him” (martin, p. 280) – a clear disregard to the master who showed him a way to achieve his desires. it must be noted, most importantly, that this breaking away from authority relies on the consistency of aladdin’s existential choice in such a way that the alterations of his attitude can only happen if they would always reflect his desire. when he acts on his choice, he fervently shows signs of the strength of will and cleverness. he was not stupid and idle: along the lines of his pursuits, he learns “the art of distinguishing glass from diamond” (martin, p. 285). his disregard to authority in order to follow his desire is shown quite earnestly in his disobedience to the command of the sultan to go back to their homes and continued to watch the princess when she is about to take a bath (burton, 2000, p. 213). love beyond good and evil one of nietzsche’s aphorisms highlights another crucial factor in the immoral ethicist framework – love. someone who is in love does not necessarily conform to a moral constitution: “whatever is done out of love takes place beyond good and evil” (nietzsche, 2002, p. 70). in this sense, love bypasses being a moral ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 84–95 91 sentiment and breaks away from norms. this directly connects aladdin’s disregard to the mandate of the sultan despite the harsh societal prohibition that anyone who does not retire to one’s home will be met or punished by death. when aladdin cleverly peeked to see the princess who is about to take a bath, that is, “when the princess lifted up her veil the young man saw the most beautiful face he had ever seen. the next second he had fallen in love with her!” (martin, p. 287). as the narration showed, aladdin experienced “love at first sight”, “stuck by her [the princess’] great beauty” and “fell in love with her on the spot.” her name in martin’s version is badroulboudour the eldest daughter of the sultan and a princess of high rank (p. 286). when aladdin saw her, “his strength was struck down from the moment […] and his thoughts were distraught. his gaze was dazed, the love of her got hold of the whole of his heart” (burton, p. 203). it has to be known in this regard that this love has a deep connection to his choice and the paradox of its desire will always point back to it, that is, aladdin does everything out of badroulboudour because she is his love. consequently, aladdin’s love in the story traverses precedent norms: his personal desire grows stronger when he immediately professed that he wants to marry the princess. this desire is supported with proving a lavish dowry stemming from a love that would do anything. as aladdin says: “i would do a great deal more than that for the princess” (lang, p. 5). doing everything out of love, bestowing every demand with his persistent strength of will and knowledge, he finally got the approval of both the sultan and the princess: “the sultan welcomed him. he was not disappointed with the look of his future son-in-law and neither was badroulboudour. she looked at aladdin from behind some screens and fell immediately in love with him.” (martin, p. 296). what makes this love essentially immoral is precisely its transgressing element – that it does everything for its sake – seen when aladdin commits murder, i.e. when he begins to kill out of love. in this sense, love truly functions as that which goes beyond good and evil. when the magician was able to find out of aladdin’s sudden rise to royalty and was able to successfully snatch the lamp to transport the kingdom to his region, the resolution of the narrative portrays aladdin and the princess as callously amenable to killing him. “‘at the moment the magician is not here,’ she said. ‘as soon as he comes back, you must hide. tonight i will put poison in his drink that the servant has brought for me. after that, it will be up to you to find us a way home again’” (martin, p. 306). after the execution of this murder, aladdin “cried out with relief. the magician lay dead on the floor and the magic lamp stood next to him!” (martin, p. 309). and this is expressed with no feeling of remorse whatsoever: “‘now we are saved!’ cried aladdin” and having rubbed the lamp and wished for the genie, said “‘we want to return to our beautiful country!’ cried the happy young man” (martin, p. 309). this was aladdin’s happiness, but contrary to virtue ethics which deems happiness as a product of good habits, the utmost quality of human flourishing or excellence that figures the ultimate end of man, the heroic ethical act was to return to their beautiful country. and this was done in an immoral sense: out of the death of his former master, or the killing of the other. this was, however, not the end: in burton and lang’s version, aladdin killed another person after this. in what may have been the clearest or explicit portrayal of murder, aladdin slain the magician’s brother who pretended to be a holy ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 84–95 92 woman: “when the magician came near, aladdin, seizing his dagger, pierced him to the heart” (lang, 2016, p. 10), or in burton’s words, he “seized him with a forceful grip and, wrenching the dagger from his grasp, plunged it deep into his heart” (2000, p. 233). the princess showed initial disapproval of this: “‘what have you done?’ cried the princess. ‘you have killed the holy woman!’ (lang, p. 10)” but upon knowing that it was the magician’s brother, the shock and condemnation suddenly dissipated. aladdin’s love then is a clear case of immoral ethics, which can be capped perfectly through the words of aladdin’s mother when she was talking to the sultan: “she then told him of her son’s violent love for the princess” (lang, 2016, p. 3; italics mine). what does this violent love constitute? is this not the same shakespearean adage that says: ‘these violent delights have violent ends?’ such violent love is shown once more in the extra portions found in lang and burton’s version. during the time of courting, the sultan granted the vizier’s wish to withhold the acceptance of marriage for three months. and this is where aladdin fitted the virtues of an immoral ethicist quite seamlessly: showing signs of strength of will, he “waited patiently for three months” (lang, p. 3), and when the sultan broke his promise “for nearly three months” by letting the son of the grand vizier marry the princess, showed signs of cleverness/capacity by wishing that he creepily replace the vizier’s son in bed at night while the latter is put “outside in the cold” until daybreak. completely satisfied with this wish, aladdin “lay down beside her and slept soundly” while the princess “was too frightened to speak, and passed the most miserable night of her life” (lang, p. 4, italics mine). this was to the discouragement of the vizier’s son who one day confessed about everything and asked for a separation, that is, that he would “rather die than go through another such fearful night” (lang, p. 4). negative will to power it is difficult to imagine how this figure passes as something moral, and yet a final feature that adds to his immorality is aladdin’s will to power. it is important to note that in nietzsche’s early conceptions before thus spoke zarathustra, the will to power can be taken both positively and negatively. as a negative drive, the will to power is “the negative motive which would make us avoid something”, while as a positive drive, it is “the positive motive which would make us strive for something” (kaufmann, 1974, p. 190). upon delving into the text, a close reading suggests that the whole backdrop of the story becomes immoral in the sense that aladdin was, following from his disregard to authority and love beyond good and evil, operating on a negative will to power: aladdin’s whole motive was simply to avoid becoming subsumed into the whole normativity of values and cultural constructs of his life-world. this is best accompanied by the power of the two genies in the ring and the lamp. there was no limitation of this power and this boosts the desire of aladdin. his will is subsumed into this state of potency that he can now avoid the working class fate of toiling for riches: throughout the narrative, aladdin has “found a way to earn their living without getting tired!” (martin, 1994, p. 285). all the things that aladdin did, even in fact the positive ones that would explain his improvements in a manner that is reflective of a positive drive, instead support his case of ‘negative will to power.’ this was his recurrent existential choice, retained in the end by the immoral features. the immoral ethicist features ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 84–95 93 add up in his character: strength of will plus cleverness equals activity. and he fought for this constant instigation to activity to avoid his father and mother’s fate. in ali and tehseem (2016), one of the features of aladdin’s character is “a leader and fighter” through the following keywords found in the narrative: “overcome with anguish”, “i command you”, “made a plan”, “hid himself behind some curtains”, “snatched the lamp from the magician’s bosom”, “ascended the throne.” against virtue ethics, which is character-based in its activity, the activity found in aladdin stems from his choice, backed by the recesses of power – and the story could not have proceeded to such linearity had it not been for the power that he possesses. in contrast then to the moral configurations that portray power as a ‘power within’, aladdin’s negative will to power proves that the story would not go on if not for external power. the loss of a guarantor itself, the void of authority and responsibility, replete with the desire to avoid something fills aladdin’s lack of positive agency. in a clever way of filling in this void, “he would await his father's leaving it for some purpose, such as to meet a creditor, when he would run off at once and fare forth to the gardens with the other scapegraces and low companions, his fellows” (burton, 2000, p. 190). the changes that accompany this negativity are but mere cover-ups to hide the fundamental drive of the plot: aladdin is simply a boy who grew up, acquired accidental power, fell in love, murdered, and strangely enough, lived with it – all in avoidance to the normal course of his situation in life. conclusion following stalin’s three vices of weakness, idleness, and stupidity, aladdin’s case shows virtues that can no way be classified as vices. he is a boy who grew up to be a celebrated man and did his work in strength of will, activity, and cleverness. however, his fidelity to his desire from the start is reflective of an immoral ethicist: he shows disregard to authority or the ‘other’, he loved beyond conventions, and his actions point to an original avoidance that was sustained until the end of the narrative. these are supported by the text versions of the story, which are laden with crucial openings and points for discussion apart from the simplified and westernzied version of the film. so, disregard to the other, love beyond good and evil, and negative will to power – with such three features, this study finds through the texts, that in aladdin and the magic lamp, the hero is not a moral character but an immoral one, ready to pay the price for his existential choice. references ali, i., & tehseem, t. 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(2009). why todestrieb (death drive) is a philosophical concept. ici berlin lecture project “tension/spannung.” ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 150-163 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 150 arboreal poetics in howard nemerov’s “the thought of trees” and luis h. francia’s “lessons of a tree” henrikus joko yulianto state university of semarang henriungaran@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030202 received 21 november 2019; accepted 11 february 2020 abstract this paper discusses arboreal poetics in two contemporary poems “the thought of trees” by howard nemerov, an american poet and “lessons of a tree” by luis h. francia, a filipino one. the objectives of this research are first to identify how nemerov and francia’s vegetal poetics conveying ecological views; second, how their vegetal poetics evokes one’s ecological awareness to conserve biodiversity and to consume material goods sufficiently. these behaviors help to reduce the exacerbation of the climate change phenomenon.this research used qualitative methods, in which the data were words and taken from the two poems and from several sources on trees, climate change, ecopoetry as a kind of criticism belonging to environmental humanities. the result shows that both poems anthropomorphize trees as indispensable interconnected and coexistent with any life forms and the physical environment. this further impacts on human’s growing ecological conscience not to objectify but to conserve vegetation in particular and other natural resources in general through his sufficient consumption of the material goods for one’s living necessities. keyword: arboreal poetics, ecopoetry, environmental humanities, ecological conscience introduction a biotic life is an ecological one. this consists of an interdependent relation among any life forms (leopold, p. 171-189; wilson, p. 11-17; tudge, p. 374375). this ecological fact should make humans aware of the need for caring rather than objectifying non-human beings since they have a pivotal role in the ecosystem. in this millennium, anthropocentric culture tends to orientate toward extravagant use of material goods. one clear example is the use of plastic and fossil fuel-based products (leonard, 2011). plastic trash as non-biodegradable materials will not only endanger any life forms (weiss, p. 43-46), but also produce carbon dioxide and other toxics to the atmosphere. the density of the toxics exacerbates the air quality as “local warming”and this synergizes with biodiversity depletion (wilson, p. 11-17; leonard, 2011). one objective of this research is to examine how two contemporary poems howard nemerov’s “the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 150-163 151 thought of trees” and luis h. francia’s “lessons of a tree” convey an ecological vision of this biotic interconnectedness. another objective is to decipher how the arboreal poetics of the two poems evoke one’s ecological conscience in the recent anthropocentrism and material engrossment. the implication of this conscience is that humans would cherish any life forms and consume material goods sufficiently to prevent worsening environmental problems including the recent issue of climate change that is exacerbated by deforestation and overconsumption of goods (gorte & sheikh, 2010; wilson, p. 105). in first-world countries, environmental concern has become a tradition. in the 1800s, the united states had transcendental writers such as ralph waldo emerson and henry david thoreau who glorified mother nature in their writings (coupe, p. 23-25; buell, p. 97-120). in the uk in the same era, several romantic poets such as william blake, william wordsworth, and samuel taylor coleridge likewise expressed their esteem for nature (coupe, p. 16-22). in the 1920s, a science called ‘anthroposophy’ anthropomorphized mother nature as a living spirit (steiner, 2008, p. 88-98). in the 1930s, an american environmentalist, aldo leopold promulgated the idea of biotic community and ecological conservation (meine, p. 171-189). in this millennial era, this field is named environmental humanities, which aims to raise public’s awareness of environmental issues especially those related to the depletion of biodiversity and climate change (kern, p. 258-281; bennett, p. 296-317). i propose two problems in this research: (1) what ecological views do the poems convey through the arboreal poetics of trees as a persona?; (2) how do these arboreal poetics in the poems evoke individual ecological awareness to conserve biodiversity and to consume material goods sufficiently in order to reduce the phenomenon of global warming? in discussing these problems, analyses refer to several ecological concepts, buddhist ecological notions, ecopoetry and environmental humanities in general. research method the source of data in this research is the two poems, howard nemerov’s “the thought of trees” and luis h. francia’s “lessons of a tree”. this research is a descriptive qualitative one by focusing on words (imageries) in the poems as the major data. since this research especially deals with ecological views of the poems, the analysis, therefore, refers to ecological knowledge and views given by some ecologists and ecocritics. the discussion, for instance, contextualizes these poems with ecopoetry as one genre of environmental humanities or ecocriticism (bryson, 2005; bate in siewers, p. 108; felstiner, 2009; glotfelty, p. xv-xxxvii; rueckert, p. 105-123; howarth, p. 69-91; kern, p. 258-281; slovic, p. 160-162; hass, p. xli-lxv). the ecological principles in poetry especially employ the notion of biodiversity as the organic qualities of the terrestrial life (hass, p. lx; wilson, p. 19-27; 1988; leopold, p. 171-189). besides, the analysis also briefly investigates some books on global warming and climate change to get a more solid background about the related topic (pittock, p. 2; drake, p. 1-6; gorte & sheikh, 2010; ehrlich & ehrlich, p. 88-89). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 150-163 152 findings and discussion in one chapter about gary snyder’s ecopoems, an ecocritic john elder discusses snyder’s poetics of place by calling it “rootedness in a chosen spot” and “principles of groundedness”. this landscape poetry embodies “the interchange of past and presents through that spot’s own cycle of renewing surrender and inheritance”. then he argues that “a poem’s form” must conform to “its terrain”, while a poet must find “the rooted relation with nature” and “the larger world” (1985, p. 40). then, in one of his chapters, ian davidson discusses poetics of place in space, in which most contemporary poems “links time and space through the horizontal plane, the reading surface of the poem, with its sequence of overlapping links”. for instance, the word ‘food’ becomes “a slice through the poem” that has a connection with other words “related to food” and “ideas related to food” (2007, p. 86). the two poems “the thought of trees” by howard nemerov and “lessons of a tree” by luis h. francia embody this “rootedness in a chosen spot” and a sense of place through the image ‘tree’ that serves as an analogy with human’s spiritual and social growth. arboreal poetics as ecological views in howard nemerov’s “the thought of trees” and luis h. francia’s “lessons of a tree” nemerov’s poem is a prose poem, while francia’s is a semi-lyric. in view of the stanzaic pattern, the first poem contains four stanzas in the form of a paragraph. in the first stanza, the poet analogizes trees with human world- it is a common fancy that trees are somehow conscious and stand as the silent or whispering witnesses of the ways in which we bustle through the world. but it is a truth of poetical imagination that the trees are guardians and sponsoring godfathers of a great part of a thought. not merely that various traditions have looked on trees as sacred figures of the cosmos, as the source of moral distinctions, as bearing all golden things, the apples, the bough, the fleece; but also that trees, more than we generally allow, have formed our view of the creation and nature of things, and, ambiguously responsible for these, the mind’s image of its own process. this we are told by metaphors: a family tree, the root of the matter, a trunkline, a branch of the subject, and so on. (nemerov, p. 494-495) in this first part, the poet eulogizes trees not merely as discrete natural organisms but more especially as human animate comrades in which their organic and germinating qualities in their quiet growth are embodied within human’s mind – “but it is a truth of poetical imagination that the trees are guardians and sponsoring godfathers of a great part of thought”. trees are not inanimate objects but a human medium of discerning any external phenomena in the natural world – “trees have formed our view of the creation and nature of things, and, ambiguously responsible for these, the mind’s image of its own process.” this ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 150-163 153 means that trees have ecological values not merely their merits to other living beings in the natural ecosystem, but also their analogy with human social aspects – “this we are told by metaphors: a family tree, the root of the matter, a trunkline, a branch of the subject, and so on.” the naming of parts of trees in the various aspects of human social life indicates the rudimentary values of trees as natural entities. in the second part, the poet further depicts trees qualities in the interconnection between their physical parts and human’s social and spiritual dimensions— trees appear as the formative image behind much thought brought to the critical point of paradox— where order in variety we see, and where, though all things differ, all agree, as pope politely says of windsor forest. that trees, the largest of living things, are initially contained in tiny seeds, is already a spectacularly visible legend of the mysteries of generation and death. the tree, rooted in earth and flowering in heaven, intimates obscure and powerful reflexive propositions about the two realms; that root and top strangely mirror one another deepens and complicates the human analogy. the relation of single trunk and manifold branches forms the pattern for meditation on the one and the many, cause and effect, generality and particulars; while the movement in three stages, from many roots through one trunk to many branches, is supremely the image of historical process. the tree’s relation with its leaves translates the paradigm into temporal terms, speaking of individual, generation, race, of identity continuous in change, of mortal endurance threaded through mortal evanescence, of times and a time. (nemerov, p. 495) in this second part, the poet further describes arboreal ecology, which refers to interdependent relation between one part and another – “that trees, the largest of living things, are initially contained in tiny seeds, is already a spectacularly visible legend of the mysteries of generation and death.” the fact that trees as living organisms with large sizes are actually derived from seeds as small objects with different forms exemplifies this trees’ ecological quality the interconnection between one life form and another. the growing process of the trees itself also embodies ecological aspects, in which the seeds sprout collections of cells and further germinate into their various parts. the seeds sprout because of the roots, and the roots burst forth because of their interdependent upon soil, water, oxygen, and various nutrients in the soil (turner, p. 46-48) – “the relation of single trunk and manifold branches forms the pattern for meditation on the one and the many, cause and effect, generality and particulars; while the movement in three stages, from many roots through one trunk to many branches, is supremely the image of historical process.” the words ‘image of historical process’ indicate long temporal periods in embodying ecological qualities the interconnection between ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 150-163 154 the seeds and other elements including soil, nutrients, water, air, and sunlight. the last line similarly reveals another ecological aspect of the interconnection between trees and leaves, in which the latter can only spring up from the former. the leaves should also exist as parts of other parts of an entity called trees. people call this entity trees since they consist of their parts including roots, trunk, branches, and leaves. “the tree’s relation with its leaves translates the paradigm into temporal terms, speaking of individual, generation, race, of identity continuous in change, of mortal endurance threaded through mortal evanescence, of times and a time.” this line also poses an analogy between the qualities of trees and leaves and human life. this interconnection between trees and leaves tends to be temporary since the leaves will fall off under certain circumstances, for instance in autumn and winter time. the fallen leaves then are analogous with transient qualities of human material phenomena. similar to leaves that turn colors from green to crimson, red, yellow and finally fall off in autumn, human’s worldly affairs also last momentarily. in the third part, the poet equates trees with human’s life; each part of the trees represents every aspect of human’s quality— trees imagine life, and our imaginations follow as they may. the growth of a tree, its synchronous living and dying, from soft shoot to implacably hard (still growing) wood; the vast liquid transactions of capillarity within the solid form; the hard bark which nevertheless, as in the elm, reminds of water in its twisting flow; the enduring image of fluid life recorded in the rivery grain of boards (a mystical saying:---“split the stick and there is jesus”); the generalized simplicity composed of multitudinous complexity, generalized symmetry from the chaotic scrawl of upper branches; the simultaneity of freedom and order, richness and elegance, chance and destiny---these are some of the imaginings of the trees, which out of the earth and the air have dreamed so much of the human mind. (nemerov, p. 495) in this part, the poet depicts this tree ecology by comparing the trees with other natural elements as the interconnection between the trees with the elements – “the hard bark which nevertheless, as in the elm, reminds of water in its twisting flow; the enduring image of fluid life recorded in the rivery grain of boards”. he also reveals this aspect through one’s recognition of the inherent values of the trees; the ways the human views identify several qualities in the trees that human mind should also embody – “(a mystical saying:---“split the stick and there is jesus”); the generalized symmetry from the chaotic scrawl of upper branches; the simultaneity of freedom and order, richness and elegance, chance and destiny--these are some of the imaginings of the trees, which out of the earth and the air have dreamed so much of the human mind.” the image ‘jesus’ in the trees suggests a metaphor for ‘sap’ as the essential substance of trees as ‘spirit’ of humans. jesus, in this case, is the holy spirit that all christian adherents believe in as their religious faith. this human’s discernment of the trees qualities and his ways of analogizing them with various qualities that humans should possess ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 150-163 155 indicate one’s “ecological thought” (morton, 2010). simply put, the “ecological thought” means “the thinking of interconnectedness. it is a thought about ecology; it is also a thinking that is ecological. this thought is a practice and a process of becoming fully aware of how humans are connected with other nonhuman beings” (ibid., p. 7). the ways the poet views and equates the trees with human’s mind epitomize an ecological thought about coexistence between human and nonhuman beings. the poet’s view of the trees as humans signifies another ecological thought, which substantiates human concern about the interconnectedness rather than his merely respect for mother nature (ibid., p. 8; 2007, 24). in the fourth part as the last stanza, the poet further portrays this trees’ ecological quality through their analogy with humans. trees have no longer lived apart but personas which humans have modelled on— as architectural forms reflect their material origins, the first columns having been trees, so also with the mind. and so perhaps with its conclusions? “i shall be like that tree,” swift said to edward young, “i shall die first at the top.” since the eighteenth century, anyhow, when cathedrals began to remind people of forests and forests of cathedrals, it has come to seem sometimes that the mind acts in a drama staged with so high a regard for realism that the trees on the scene are carpentered at considerable cost out of real wood. still, dryads and dendrones, the trees are within us, having their quiet irrefutable say about what we are and may become; how they are one of the shapes of our protean nature, melville in a single line expresses best— the hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel ---and it is the founding tenet of poetical imagination that such images are inexhaustibly speaking, they call to compelling, strange analogies all thought that flowers in its fact. (nemerov, p. 496) in this part, the poet exalts trees as having provided humans with intellectual nourishment. he imagines that human’s aspiring mind should emulate the germinating trees – “i shall be like that tree,” swift said to edward young, “i shall die first at the top.” this notion also unveils one’s ecological thought since humans realize the importance of trees and the interconnected principles of the trees with other life forms. yet, this part also envisions anthropogenic logging activities that have taken place since long time ago and might have wreaked havoc on the environment – “since the eighteenth century, anyhow, when cathedrals began to remind people of forests and forests of cathedrals, it has come to seem sometimes that the mind acts in a drama staged with so high a regard for realism that the trees on the scene are carpentered at considerable cost out of real wood.” this exemplifies how history of human logging has lasted since the eighteenth ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 150-163 156 century (see buell, p. 97-119; pease, p. 148-171) and perpetuated to contemporary times through poems of gary snyder, a.r. ammons (elder, p. 185-206; snyder, 1978). yet, once again the poet emphasizes this reverence for trees as the living spirit and aesthetic source for humans in their coexistence with the trees and other nonhuman beings – “still, dryads and dendrones, the trees are within us, having their quiet irrefutable say about what we are and may become; how they are one of the shapes of our protean nature; it is the founding tenet of poetical imagination that such images are inexhaustibly speaking, they call to compelling, strange analogies all thought that flowers in its fact.” in francia’s poem “lessons of a tree”, the poet begins by quoting carlos bulosan’s words that eulogize trees— …….i ascribed a mystical power to the tree, and in this urgent need to live, i worshipped it like a pagan. then he begins his first stanza by a question to trees— how will i worship you, tree? i will not count the ways. rather, let my praise be water for your days, let my hymn and song be recompense for all the wrongs once perpetrated against you by a boy, who cut branches to fashion slingshots, who carved into your bark initials a young heart once thought forever dear. (francia, 98) the poet expresses this ecological aspect through the interconnection between him and the tree that shows his esteem for the tree’s merits. this aspect also includes the tree’s interdependence on the water as a basic element for any living organisms to survive – “rather, let my praise be water for your days,” in which he uses a metaphor ‘praise’ for ‘water’. then in the last lines, he depicts one boy’s deed toward the tree that symbolically suggests human’s disturbance to it for some purposes– “who cut branches to fashion slingshots, who carved into your bark initials a young heart once thought forever dear.” in the second stanza, the poet further describes an ecological facet of the tree’s interdependence on ‘earth’ or ‘soil’ and ‘wind’ or ‘air’ to sprout and grow big— how shall i repay you for your forbearance, of my helter-skelter clambering up your crown, for your shade, for the green that attracts the cooling wind, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 150-163 157 hospitable even to those who would deny you your place on this earth, this earth to which you are not so much rooted as it is rooted to you. unrooted it falls, crumbles, is blown away. (francia, p. 98) the words “your forbearance, of my helter-skelter clambering up your crown,” suggest the tree’s ‘reserved’ and ‘submissive’ qualities to human’s deeds over it. this implies an ecological disruption, an anthropocentric dominance over trees as co-existent organisms. the last line “this earth to which you are not so much rooted as it is rooted to you” unveils the tree’s interdependence on the earth or soil to grow and survive (tudge, p. 252-254). at the same time, the line metaphorically suggests one’s ecological thought as he compares human with the tree “that is not so much rooted to the earth” while “the earth is rooted to the tree”. this implies an ecological phenomenon how humans, in general, are not rooted in the earth or ‘mother nature’ that means ‘human’s indifference or even disturbance to’ the physical environment. meanwhile, he points out that the mother nature nourishes humans both physically and spiritually. his depiction of the tree’s root asserts the root’s indispensability for any aspect of human’s life since the root is the foothold of any living existence. unless there is a root, everything crumbles and falls apart. in the next three, four, and five stanzas, the poet delineates another ecological view of trees— once upon a time, the blood of a gentle galilean sanctified your wood. his death on your bough was for the good. once upon a time a man beneath you sat the whole night. you had his back. the next morning gautama was the buddha. you are a boat, abode, ark of life. (francia 99) the third and fourth stanzas feature a historical account of jesus christ who was crucified on the wooden cross and of siddhartha gautama or the buddha who sat under the bodhi tree (fig tree) for meditation and got spiritual enlightenment (mann, p. 71-73, 142). the metaphor in the fifth stanza emphasizes the tree’s merits for human’s necessity. this line also reiterates a biblical account of noah who built a wooden big boat (nelson, 2009). in the sixth stanza as the last one, like in nemerov’s poem, francia uses an analogy to compare himself as a poet and the life energy and spirit he needs with trees as a “spiritual teacher” that nourish and shelter human and nonhuman animals on earth— ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 150-163 158 from you, tree, i learn. where i root myself will be in words, for thus will they free me. may they be as you, a haven for men and women to gather and lean their weariness on, on this poem, this apple, this earth, this tree. (francia, p. 99) the poet’s willingness to learn from the tree and his way of imitating the tree’s rooting in the earth (in metaphor ‘words’) exemplifies one’s ecological thought of the interconnection between the trees and any other life forms. arboreal poetics as an entreaty to biodiversity conservation and sufficient consumption of material goods to combat climate change nemerov and francia’s poems both describe trees as the essential organisms in the natural ecosystem. their poetics of vegetation evokes one’s ecological awareness or what morton calls ecological thought in discerning trees as being coexistent with other forms of life. he calls this interconnectedness of human and nonhuman beings “mesh” and one’s ecological thought certainly is aware of this mesh of the natural phenomena (2010, p. 28).8 the way nemerov and francia eulogize and personify trees substantiates one’s ecological thought since this suggests an insight into the interconnectedness between human and nonhuman beings. when francia relatively “objectifies” trees as he distances them as ‘other’ from his consciousness, nemerov interiorizes trees as parts of human consciousness or mind – “the trees are guardians and sponsoring godfathers of a great part of thought” and “trees appear as the formative image behind much thought brought to the critical point of paradox” (nemerov, p. 494-495). even the title of the poem “the thought of trees” clearly epitomizes the living persona of the trees rather than being as inanimate objects. as a revelation of ecological awareness and thought, one possible interpretation of the poet’s crediting trees to human mind is that human way of thinking needs to emulate the flourishing and unwavering qualities of the trees. in the fourth stanza, the poet again asserts this tree and human spiritual amalgamation by embodying them in his consciousness, in which the spirit of the trees will guide humans to walk on a right path – “the trees are within us, having their quiet irrefutable say about what we are and may become; how they are one of the shapes of our protean nature,” (ibid., p. 496). in a milder tone, francia rhapsodizes the qualities of the tree as suggesting grounded and resilient aspects that humans need to emulate in their life— from you, tree, i learn. where i root myself will be in words, for thus will they free me. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 150-163 159 may they be as you, a haven for men and women to gather and lean their weariness on, on this poem, this apple, this earth, this tree. (francia, p. 99) the parts of the tree especially the root that goes deep down into the earth characterize it as a living organism with a solid lineage. this is why ‘roots’ become an image and an entity that any form of human’s social aspect also needs to have. trees and their organic metabolism signify their “countless values” and their natural language (mann, p. 177) from which humans emulate and embody their ecological thought. the trees’ coexistence with other life forms is a social network. these forms are what aldo leopold called “biotic community” or gary snyder named “the commons” (meine, p.172-173; snyder, p. 33). in terms of ecology, there is an interconnection between forest clearing (deforestation) and climate change (see gorte & sheikh, 2010). a forest functions as “carbon sinks” (storing more carbon than they release). furthermore, trees have roles to “absorb co2 and convert carbon into leaves, stems, and roots, while releasing oxygen” (ibid., p. 1). the activity of deforestation emits more or less “5.9 gtco2 (gigatons or billion metric tons of co2) annually, or about 17% of all annual anthropogenic ghg emissions” (ibid., p. 1). deforestation itself means to remove tree cover because of human activities including “farming or ranching” and “conversion of natural forests to plantations” (ibid., p. 3; wilson, p. 60). deforestation can have impacts on “carbon fluxes in the soil, vegetation, and atmosphere”. for instance, logging activity will “lead to carbon storage if trees are converted to wood products” so that “deforested areas will be restored” (gorte & sheikh, p. 3). forest clearing may have impacts on reducing habitat, any native predator or herbivore species, carbon capture, and introducing pollutants that further “degrade pure aquatic habitats” (wilson, p. 60). several causes of this depletioncome from anthropogenic activities that scientists called hippo, namely “habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution, population growth, and overhunting (for animals) (wilson, p. 57-58). the overpopulation, for instance, increases human consumption and extraction of material goods. consequently, this overconsumption of goods would increase “ecological footprint” that further contribute to climate change and biodiversity depletion (ibid., p. 58; leonard, p. 152-153). in a word, these ecological impacts clearly make humans aware of the trees’ pivotal roles in sustaining the natural biodiversity. trees embody earthly and heavenly qualities. as earthly organisms, the trees solidify the soil from any environmental disasters, such as floods, landslide, and rockslide. as heavenly beings, the trees nourish any other life forms, produce oxygen for other living organisms, and sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. the interconnection between the tree and the soil and other parts of the tree analogizes human interconnectedness with each other fellow, the tree, other nonhuman beings, with the physical environment as social beings that coexist and share the planetary life (meine, p. 172-175; snyder, p. 27-51). one’s ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 150-163 160 awareness of the tree’s roles and the impacts of forest clearing on biodiversity and climate as the stanza describes should accordingly encourage him/her not to objectify trees and other life forms. this ecological conscience and “enlightened self-interest” (meine, p. 175) or ecological thought should enlighten each individual in living with other beings in the natural environment. this has an implication that humans should consume material goods properly rather than extravagantly so that their activities do not cause detrimental effects on other life forms and the natural environment (see leonard, p. 180-181). this conscience may also consider religious teachings such as those of buddhism and christianity that encourage one to practice rightful ways of consuming material things for one’s necessity (kaza, p. 39-61; koizumi, p. 133-145). the interconnected parts that make the entity of the trees and their analogous qualities with human traits mean that trees are not discrete but coexistent companions with humans. buddhist adherents esteem trees as another embodiment of human selfhood – “i know that in our previous life we were trees, and even in this life we continue to be trees. without trees, we cannot have people, therefore trees and people inter-are. we are trees, and air, bushes and clouds. if trees cannot survive, humankind is not going to survive either” (hanh, 218). even more so, in india there is a ritual to hug trees “hug-the-tree” movement that illustrates people’s awareness of the values of the trees for their earthly life and the physical environment (ibid., p. 218). in view of environmental humanities or literary ecology, these two poems with the subject of trees convey what an ecocritic calls “the energy pathways that sustain life” (rueckert, p. 108). what the poems reveal about the trees arousespositive energy in contrast with the emission of carbon dioxide produced by non-degradable plastic trash, non-renewable fossil fuels, land clearing and forest burning. the law of ecology or the interconnectedness between human and the trees, between the roots and five basic natural elements and other parts of the trees, serves as a model for “energy flow, community building, ecosystems” (ibid., p. 110) or biotic community (meine, p. 173) or the commons or sangha (1990, p. 33; 1999, p. 105). arboreal poetics in these two poems then substantiates the “language of trees” (gagliano, et. al., 2017, p. xvii-xx) that evoke one’s knowledge about the tree’s ecological merits. conclusion in this technologized life, mother nature has become a virtual one. humans as the earth inhabitants having more authority over other non-human creatures play a great role in denaturalizing the biotic life. unrelenting market demands for material goods often trigger each individual to behave rampantly in socially fulfilling his needs for the goods. humans now need to realize that every act one does with his environment would bring impacts on other life forms. even more so, when one desires to always maximize his pursuit of material goods beyond one’s needs, this act would impact on damaging the ecological system. consequently, this exploitation wreaks havoc on the physical environment and escalates the climate change. nemerov and francia’s vegetal poetics evokes one’s awareness to care about the planetary life through cherishing trees as the natural nourishers. the symmetry that the poets portrays between themselves and the trees evokes one’s willingness to learn from the trees in the ways they as well as human mind ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 150-163 161 always grow and germinate new lives and respectful consciousness. in this material world when consumerist demands and anthropocentric euphoria keep burgeoning every single day, it is always rudimentary for anyone to wisely “think and act like trees.”this thinking and acting like trees means to always be aware of consuming material goods properly rather than extravagantly and of cherishing the ecological coexistence. references bennett, m. 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(2016). half-earth: our planet’s fight for life. new york: liveright publishing corporation. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 251-263 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 251 charting the stages of environmental history: ecological reading of james michener’s hawai’i *kristiawan indriyanto1 ruly indra darmawan2 and tan michael chandra3 1universitas prima indonesia, 2universitas negeri semarang, and 3universitas kristen krida wacana kristiawanindriyanto@unprimdn.ac.id1, rulyindra@email.unnes.ac.id2 and michael.chandra@ukrida.ac.id *correspondence: kristiawanindriyanto@unprimdn.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5774 received 24 january 2023; accepted 1 march 2023 abstract this study analyzes james michener’s hawai’i to underline how the environment was changed, altered and transformed over time based on differing paradigms of conceptualizing nature and environment. it primarily focuses on how the native hawai’ians, american settlers and chinese immigrants have contrasting ways of perceiving the more-than-human world. the stages of environmental history, as underlined by worster and cronon argue how the differing paradigm is intertwined within the cultural contexts and socio-historical circumstances of a particular ethnicity in hawai’i. their paradigm manifested through social reproduction resulting from the mode of production, either instrumentalising or respecting the land. moreover, race, social status and gender also problematize how the environment is conceptualized. from the perspective of environmental history, the environment is positioned as dynamic and changing, contrary to a prior depiction of nature as passive and static. the finding suggests that environmental perspectives in the novel hawai’i can provide an avenue to reinterpreting human and non-human relationships by considering humanity as part of the natural world. keywords: anthropocentrism, environmental history, hawai’ian literature introduction the term anthropocene, introduced by the nobel laureate in 2002, paul crutzen recognizes the advent of an epoch defined by the recognition of a globalscale impact of humanity on the natural environment. this term contemplates that human activity has become a global ecological force in its own right, or other world humanity has such a profound impact in altering the more-than-human world. as stated by riordan (2007, p. 326), anthropocene is a new geological epoch in which humanity emerges as a globally transformative species. riordan’s statement foregrounds the underlying scientific, technological and material progress as a driving factor behind the irrevocable transformation of the environment. in the anthropocene era, it is necessary to provide environmental ethics as a parameter to regulate human and non-human relationships. environmental ethics can be defined mailto:kristiawanindriyanto@unprimdn.ac.id1 mailto:rulyindra@email.unnes.ac.id2 mailto:kristiawanindriyanto@unprimdn.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5774 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, march 2023, pp. 251-263 252 as a systematic account of the moral relations between human beings and their natural environment. this concept argues how non-human entities should also be considered in the line with their ethical norms and considerations, previously a unique characteristic of humans (desjardins, 2013, p. 17). within a wider framework, the possibility for a more ethically oriented paradigm calls upon the refiguration of a stereotypical conception of the human as an active agent and nature as a passive, unchanging subject. the introduction of anthropocene as a terminology does not negate how humans have interacted with their environment even on a limited scale. although the pivotal date for the rapid-scale transformation of human and non-human relationships can be traced to the scientific and industrial revolution from the 18th century onwards, humanity has been interacting with non-humans since time immemorial. from this timeframe of interaction, humanity is positioned as an ecological agent, both affecting and affected by the more-than-human world. dürbeck et al conceptualize how “human choices are determined by specific cultural and material circumstances and their agency is nevertheless always part of larger cultural and material flows, exchanges, and interactions” (2015, p. 119). this perspective is founded upon the realization of a wide range of agencies, or agencies beyond the human and the resulting awareness that humanity should be construed ‘ecologically’, as co-participant within active ecological systems. the broadening of agency to incorporate the non-human, commonly misconstrued as a passive agent challenges the nature/culture dichotomy bias of western thinking based on the supremacy of human agency (adams, 2003, p. 17). the prior exposition argues that the environment has always had a place in history although the environment, or nature, remains prone to be instrumentalized as an automata devoid of meaning for the benefit of the civilized (western) human. western paradigm, derived from the philosophy of bacon, descartes and galilei abide upon a dualistic concept of reality, with humans as active and dynamic factors whereas nature is considered a passive and unchanging entity (heith, 2022, p. 13). as nature was excluded from the human sphere, the natural world is objectified into a definable and controllable object of scientific fascination. the primacy of humans in western thinking is the defining factor of the present state of environmental crisis and the necessity of reconceptualizing this paradigm (oppermann, 2007; plumwood, 2003; spencer, 2010). reinterpreting nature’s position within the dominant human/anthropocentric history can be seen as an avenue for finding a more ecologically sustainable environmental outlook. the following passage posits worster’s idea of positioning nature as an active agent with an undeniable impact in shaping human history. “the natural environment is not really passive but is rather a powerful determining force throughout history. nature is an active, decisive factor, a subject in history influencing available options and shaping development path” (1984, p. 5) worster’s statement foregrounds the core premises of environmental history, an interdisciplinary study of humanity’s interaction with the more-than-human world over time. environmental history emphasizes the role of non-human factors in history, as a recognition that human beings are positioned as one component of the natural environment. in short, environmental history can be stated as an attempt to analyze the interaction between humans and nature either in the past, present ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, march 2023, pp. 251-263 253 period, or contemplating the future. besides focusing on the framework of disciplines that primarily examine the natural world, the focus of environmental historians is contemplating the sociocultural construction of several terminologies. one example is problematizing terms such as “nature” and “environment”, diverse concepts across societal and cultural contexts. people's actions, how they cultivate the environment, adapt toward changing seasonal cycles and manage the natural resources have long shaped the perception of the non-human. as freyfogle emphasized, a culture writes its name on land, from the ways they use nature, for all to see (2001, p. 8). in humanities in general and literary studies in particular, the dominant outlook of environmentalism mainly discusses anglo-american environmental writing based on the tradition of emerson, thoreau, john muir and aldo leopold. this movement romanticizes the idea of wilderness, an idealized pure nature outside of human influence. garrard argues how “wilderness has an almost sacramental value: it holds out the promise of a renewed, authentic relation of humanity and the earth, a post-christian covenant, found in a space of purity, founded in an attitude of reverence and humility” (2004, p. 59). the prominence of the anglo-american outlook results from the settler experience of colonizing the new world and its resulting consequences on the natural environment. the pristine and pure nature or wilderness becomes a pivotal role in shaping american national consciousness, as “nature has long been reckoned a crucial ingredient of the american national ego. ever since the american literary canon began to crystalize, american literature has been considered preoccupied with country and wilderness as setting, theme and value in contradistinction to society and the urban, notwithstanding the sociological facts of urbanization and industrialization” (buell, 1995, p. 33). the concept of wilderness is often associated with the sublime and the frontier has been imagined as a sacred realm without any human influences. feldman and hsu consider this paradigm as a dangerous fiction and misconception which hinders humanity to recognize what an ethical and sustainable human place in nature should be (2007, p. 201). by focusing only on picturesque landscapes and sublime sights to be preserved, nature closer to our perspective tends to be overlooked and undervalued. similarly, worster (1993, p. 3) criticizes the perspective of modern environmentalists that echoes the wilderness trope as a benevolent moral order existing outside human culture. this presupposition, deriving from the angloamerican bias of wilderness tends to perceive nature with an a/anti-historical bias as if nature remains unchanged from the hundreds of years since earlier settlers’ arrival. on the contrary, nature always changes and humans have intensively contributed toward these changes, either in beneficial or harmful ways. it has been established that anglo-american discourse of the environment, as the basis of modern environmentalism remains rooted within a binarism of human/non-human. on the contrary, the perspective of environmental history that seeks to erasure this human/non-human demarcation viewed wilderness as a cultural construct. heise (2006) identifies that wilderness’ connotation with the sublime and the sacred, started in the nineteenth century corresponded with the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, march 2023, pp. 251-263 254 displacement of indigenous people inhabiting areas designated for the creation of national park. feder, in support of heise’s argumentation, expounds how “the idea of wilderness has long functioned as a guiding metaphor for ecological thought; yet in recent years, many critics have challenged wilderness as a metaphor or model, and rightly so, on the grounds that it has served to “erase” human presences from the landscape in the service of economic exploitation (as in the american west), and continues to reinforce a conception of nature as static and separate from humanity.” (2010, p. 5). the novel hawai’i (1959) by james michener provides an avenue to contextualise an environmentally oriented approach in perceiving the shifting perspective of human/non-human interaction within the boundaries of ethnical and cultural diversity among various inhabitants of the hawai’ian archipelago. the novel hawai’i contextualizes the historicity of the titular isles under the backdrop of various civilizations that settles on its shores. the book begins with a vivid description of how these islands were formed due to volcanic activity and how various groups of settlers began inhabiting the hawai’ian archipelago. among such diverse ethnicities are the polynesian/tahitian seafarers as the first settlers in hawai’i, white anglo-saxon missionaries and eventual businessmen and capitalists, and also asian people from china, japan, and korea brought as labourers in the newly established sugar plantation and industry. the timeline of the novel which ranges thousands of years contextualizes how human and nonhuman relationships undergo changes over time due to differing socio-cultural aspects of perceiving the environment among a diverse groups of settlers in hawai’i. this study mainly emphasizes the resulting conflicts among three ethnicities represented in the novel, the native hawai’ians (kanaka maoli), white settlers (haole) and people of asian descent. prior studies on the topic of environmental history in general, hawai’ian literature and the novel hawai’i, in particular, have been addressed by several scholars. bourlet and lorin contextualize the production of pulaar literature in senegal which addresses territorial dispossession and the simultaneous processes of migration (2018, p. 522). their finding addresses the engagement of literary resilience which preserves the geographical imagination of the pulaar people within their dispossession from their ancestral home. different from their study, this paper focuses more on the transformation of hawai’i’s ecological thought based upon the differing paradigm held by each ethnicity represented in the novel. another study by indriyanto articulates the manifestation of colonial ideology in the form of an anthropocentric outlook on michener’s hawai’i (2020, p. 53). his finding problematizes the contrasting ideologies between the hawai’ian indigene and the white settlers. compared to a prior reading of hawai’i, this study problematizes the existence of another ethnicity, the chinese immigrants which hold a similar anthropocentric view that instrumentalizes nature. this discussion of previous studies positions the novelty of this paper among other research. method several scholars have articulated the basic premises of environmental history, most notably worster and cronon. in his article, “doing environmental history”, worster (1989) observes that environmental history functions on three levels: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, march 2023, pp. 251-263 255 nature by itself, human socioeconomic and intellectual realms, and their interaction and adaption with the natural environment. the first facet aims at understanding nature itself in the past, especially how nature was organized and functioned. it primarily focuses on the history of nature’s ecosystem and tries to reconstruct the natural environment in the past. on his second level of environmental history, worster catalyzes how environmental changes are perceived in relation to the historical modes of production. this facet expounds on the interaction between social conditions, the economy and the environment. lastly, worster focuses on analyzing the environment purely from a human perspective, regarding the mental and intellectual history of human attitude in perceiving the environment. a society’s dialogue with nature can be observed through its myths, ethics, religions, ideologies, perceptions and scientific doctrine. as later proposed by cronon in his critique of worster’s three levels of environmental history, worster’s model tends to focus only on the material aspects and perceive human culture within a homogeneous framework. in cronon’s (1990, p. 1124) idea, understanding a mode of production is inseparable from the cultural contexts in which the mode is embedded, and the mode of social reproduction resulting from the mode of production. cronon calls for the expanded model of social reproduction, regarding how families, societies, religions, and ideologies reproduce themselves from one generation to another, especially concerning environmental ethics and values. hence, historical causation between materialist and idealist forces is inseparable when dealing with environmentally focused history. furthermore, the emphasis on a holistic analysis, in which nature and humanity are oriented as a whole to trace how interconnection develops discourages us “from looking as much as we should at conflict and differences within group of people” (cronon, 1990, p.1128). a holistic approach in dealing with human relationships with the morethan-human world has the tendency to neglect conflicts and differences within groups of people differentiated through gender, race, or ethnicity. in short, cronon expands upon worster’s idea of environmental history by emphasizing the socialcultural context concerning nature as a cultural construct. nature might be perceived differently among different ethnic groups especially considering the role of gender, class, race, and power in problematizing human and more-than-human relationships. the study is a qualitative literary study which provides the data in the form of quotations taken from the novel hawai’i by james michener. a qualitative study is intended “to explore and understand individuals/groups ascribe to a social or human problem” (creswell & poth, 1998, p. 97). the analysis is presented through underlying quotations from the text which explores the issue of environmental thought, primarily from the hawai’ian indigene, white settlers and chinese immigrants. the focus of the analysis is to underline how the representation of different ethnicities each have its paradigm in contextualising human and nonhuman relationships. secondary data in the form of academic articles, essays, journals or books are provided to better contextualize how each ethnicity in the novel hawai’i comprehends the position of humanity within a wider natural world. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, march 2023, pp. 251-263 256 findings and discussion the novel hawai’i, written by james michener in 1959, the year when hawai’i was officially integrated into the 50th state of the united states chronicles the historicity of hawai’ian isles from the volcanic creation of the islands until 1954, a few years before hawai’i was granted statehood. as this saga spans centuries and even millennia, it was the environment that remains a constant presence in the novels, while others ethnicities rise and fall within the turbulent state of hawai’i as a political entity. the presence of the environment is dynamic instead of static, as it is irrevocably altered by years of landscape transformation conducted by diverse ethnic groups. the novel chronicles the development of hawai’i from a geographically isolated island in the middle of the pacific ocean into a burgeoning u.s. state sustained by the tourism and sugar industry. at the beginning of the novel, a prologue depicting the evolution of the hawai’ians islands, hawai’i is portrayed as a timeless paradise with all the necessities to sustain future civilizations and only waiting for someone to discover and tame this edenic paradise. the narration foregrounds how “valleys and sweet plains, waterfalls and rivers, glades where lovers would have walked and confluences where towns could have been built, the lovely island had all these accouterments, these alluring invitations to civilization. but no man ever saw them, and the tempting glades entertained no lovers, for the island had risen to its beauty long, long before the age of man; and at the moment of its greatest perfection it began to die” (michener, 1959, p. 13). it can be argued that representing the non-human through literature is problematic, “although humans can “speak a word for nature…self-evidently nohuman can speak as the environment, as nature, as a nonhuman animal” (buell, 2005, p. 7). hence, the representation of nature, either in literature or other fictional works is inseparable from an anthropocentric bias, in which our perspective towards the environment is projected in how the environment is represented. hawai’ian isles, in the perspective of the unnamed narrator of hawai’i, is instrumentalized only for its potential use for future human settlers, to quote the text “alluring invitations to civilization.” this passage problematizes that nature has no meaning or inherent value by itself until humanity cultivates and transforms the non-human environment. the anthropocentric outlook in perceiving nature is further emphasized in how the narrator invites potential colonizers to invade the untamed hawai’ian isles with food and courage and determination: “how beautiful these islands were! how shot through with harmony and peace! if paradise consists solely of beauty, then these islands were the fairest paradise that men ever invaded, for the land and sea were beautiful, and the climate was congenial. and so these beautiful, inhospitable islands waited for some breed of men to invade them with food and courage and determination” (mitchener, 1959, p. 19-20) contrasting worldviews concerning human and non-human relationships as represented through different ethnic groups problematizes how the environment is perceived in the novel hawai’i. these differing paradigms contextualize that the concept of nature and environment is perceived differently through differing sociocultural backgrounds. furthermore, in line with cronon’s assertion, race, class and gender role also plays a central role in shaping a worldview regulating human ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, march 2023, pp. 251-263 257 position in the wider ecology as a whole. the conflicts mainly arise among three ethnic groups, the polynesian settlers and their descendant; the indigenous people of hawai’i (kanaka maoli), white (haole) missionaries and later capitalist plantation owners and businessmen. lastly, for people of asian descent, mainly chinese in which hawai’i provides an avenue for themselves to advance their social status. kanaka maoli, following the tradition upheld by their predecessors, the polynesians conceptualize a sense of deep reverence and respect toward nature under the epistemology of aloha aina. the love and respect toward the environment derive from a shared familial bond in which both the indigenous people and the land around them are both descendent of the parentage of papa (earth mother) and wakea (sky father). as articulated by inglis, “kanaka maoli are connected to the land and each other through the parentage of wakea -from whom all hawai’ian genealogies stem as the ancestors of the hawai’ian people” (2013, p. 13). this cosmology collectively recognizes the non-human entities as fellow beings in which the land/aina has a higher position due to their seniority as the elder siblings. in polynesian society, upheld from the highest chief (ali’i) into the lowest class (maka’ainana), land should be respected and taken care of, as they already provide all the necessities for sustaining living. this is exemplified by an excerpt in which a high chieftain of the early polynesian settlers, tupuna disregards his high social status and offers his humility for the land around them: “at the head of the nervous column marched tupuna, and whenever he came to a large rock, he begged the god of that rock to let him pass. when he came to a grove of trees he cried, ‘god of the trees, we come in friendship” (michener, 1959, p. 118). this mutual dependency of human and non-human is founded upon the belief that all entities in the world, either living or inanimate possesses energy in the form of spiritual power (mana). meyer argues that “in western terms, it might be described as power, or an essence of god and godliness. mana is part of the spiritual world, but felt in the material world” (2003, p. 124). this concept, derived from polynesian cosmology provides an avenue to understand matter beyond human comprehension of the natural world such as natural phenomena and disasters. by acknowledging that each material aspect, either biotic or abiotic contains its agency in the form of mana, this paradigm challenges western epistemology which instrumentalizes as an object to be exploited by a rational human. furthermore, the concept of mana established a hierarchal society in which some people, such as high chiefs, learned persons (kahuna) or talented persons have a greater abundance of mana than others. similarly, places such as volcanoes, waterfalls, craters, or stone formations are believed to possess mana in larger quantities. through the naming of places, kanaka maoli acknowledges the living world around them, and cultural practices are interwoven within these place names. kay-trask explores how ”in hawai’ian culture, nature was not objectified but personified” (1993, p. 18). the novel hawai’i situates one personification of nature through the figuration of pele, the volcano goddess whose eruption threatens the city of lahaina in maui. to prevent the eruption from happening, the high chiefess noelani tries to appease pele’s wrath by appealing for her mercy and clemency. these passages underline that the kanaka maoli acknowledges the sovereignty of the volcano and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, march 2023, pp. 251-263 258 not the other way around, as humans are powerless under the agency of natural forces and phenomena. furthermore, noelani’s proclamation that she was “a daughter of pele” echoes how nature is personified as a female deity, the depiction that challenges stereotypical gender roles constraining the non-human as objectivized female body (moore, araica, & ruíz, 2008). the personification of peel is narrated as follows, “she was a daughter of pele, one in whose family the very being of the goddess had resided, and now, returning to the suzerainty of the fire goddess, noelani planted her feet before the on-surging lava and decided that here she would stand and if need be, die. holding the sacred rock of pele aloft, she cried, "pele! great goddess! you are destroying the town of those who love you! i pray you to halt!" (michener, 1959, p. 408) hawai’ians’ respect toward nature as their familial members based upon the belief of shared lineage is contrasted with western epistemology, articulated through the portrayal of american missionaries and capitalist plantation owners. the arrival of westerners since the discovery of hawai’ian islands by james cook in the late 18th century problematizes the reductionist view of nature based on the western paradigm. this anthropocentric view aligns with colonial discourse which contextualizes the hawai’ians’ reverence toward the more-than-human world as a sign of their backwardness and anathema with christian teaching. this “complex of signs and practice that organize social existence and social reproduction” (ashcroft, griffiths, & tiffin, 2013, p. 50) is founded upon binary opposition that legitimizes western superiority in which control of the natural world is one key element in their tenets. the arrival of american missionaries, as articulated by the depiction of abner hale is intended to solidify the western outlook upon the seemingly backward and pagan kanaka maoli, as is seen in the following excerpt. “abner closes his eyes, raised his head toward the grass roof, and cried in the voice that ezekiel must have used when addressing the jewish elders: ‘the islands of hawai’i will live under these laws, for they are the will of the lord god jehovah” (michener, 1959, p. 333). western anthropocentric discourse considers hawai’ians’ ancestral tradition as pagan and superstitious irrationality not based on scientific observation. hale forces the hawai’ians to remove their place of worship, in the form of a small temple (heiau) built from stone to honour their ancestors. in hawai’ians’ epistemology, people who have died did not ascend to heaven as is believed in judeo-christian tradition but they remained in the mortal realm in a different form, as spirit animals (aumakua), might be manifested in a shark, owl, or bird, selected plants or even rocks (barrow, 1999). hence in hawai’ians’ perspective, taking care of their environment affirms their acknowledgement that their spiritual ancestors remain in their surroundings (mcgregor, 2007, p. 14). the arrival of western powers problematizes this paradigm by offering a contrasting view of nature. . it is narrated in the novel as follows “we shall have to remove the stone platform. in this world there is room either for god or for heathen idols. there is no room for both” (michener, 1959, p. 260). within the dominant western outlook which instrumentalized nature, the hawai’ian landscape was transformed into a capitalist-driven industry. in line with what oppermann coins as ecological imperialism (2007), a large tract of hawai’ian ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, march 2023, pp. 251-263 259 soil is altered to support the growing sugar industry. as stated by haley, the existence of the sugar industry fundamentally altered both the hawai’ian ecology and its population demographic (2016, p. 90). one pivotal event in hawai’ian history, the mahele (land divide) from 1848-1851 enables the acquisition of land to lay the foundation of the sugar economy, an act which ensured the dominant haole economic and political powers. it was stated that although in 1856 only 209 of 15.514 land claims were held by foreigners, by 1886 two-thirds of all governmentallocated land was owned by the whites (kent, 1983). the portrayal of hoxworth hale, a sugar plantation owner descendant of the early missionaries dramatizes capitalist ethos in the desire to transform the untamed landscape into economic capital. his perspective contextualizes the transformation of the arid and barren landscape around the island of o’ahu into watered land suitable for sugar plantation, as seen in the preceding passage; “when he had control of six thousand acres of barren soil, he hired two hundred men and many teams of mules and with his own money launched the venture that was to transform his part of o’ahu from a desert into a lush, succulent sugar plantation (michener, 1959, p. 544). the capitalistic paradigm originated from the desire to conquer and cultivate non-human entities and is intended to maximize the profit from one’s business through the exploitation of both the landscape and the labour force needed to sustain the industry. this paradigm creates a stark demarcation between rational western people who considered themselves outside the domain of nature, and passive and objectified nature, ripe for plunder and conquest. the indigenous people were considered to forfeit their legitimate claim of ownership of their land possession due to their inability to develop and maximize their property. this results in joint oppression between the indigenous people and the land they inhabited, as estok puts it, “the ideology of capitalism and capitalist ideas of acquisition and plunder, profit and growth, and exploitation and control are obviously integral to the joint colonialist exploitations of people and land” (estok, 2013, p. 228). the growing sugarcane industry created the necessity for a cheap source of labour forces, a driving force behind the immigration of asians to the hawai’ian archipelago. the first sugar plantation was established in 1835, and within two decades asian labourers, mainly from japan, china, korea and the philippines became the primary labour force. among these ethnicities, it was the chinese emigrated to hawai’i and the mainland united states in large numbers, around 46.000 between 1852 and 1899 alone (okamura, 2008). although subjected to discrimination within a racialized hawai’ian socio-economic sphere dominated by whites chinese immigrants in hawai’i generally fared better compared to their counterparts in the u.s. while around 30 % of the chinese immigrant returned home after finishing their plantation labour contract, the majority were able to urbanize in cities such as honolulu and having business and residential endeavour (nordyke and lee 1989). tsin’s story echoes the socio-historical upward mobility of the chinese community in hawai’i as they managed to establish themselves in downtown honolulu, the area later known as chinatown. later in the 20th century, as war broke up in the pacific, tsin managed to expand her business by acquiring property ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, march 2023, pp. 251-263 260 abandoned by the haoles as they escaped to the mainland after the bombing of pearl harbor. the preceding passages further illustrates the intertwined nature between land ownership and the social mobility of chinese immigrant in hawai’i, “land," nyuk tsin replied with the terrible tenacity of a hakka peasant who had never known enough land. "as the frightened haoles ran away, we must buy all the land they leave behind" (michener, 1959, p.875). the contrasting environmental perspective among three ethnic groups in hawai’i can be broadly differentiated into an anthropocentric and biocentric view of the more-than-human world, particularly concerning how land is perceived. hawai’ian concept of land or aina, the literal translation is ‘that which feed’ conjures a sense of birthplace and homeland in which their relationship to the land derives from familial ties. on the contrary, settlers and immigrants to hawai’ian isles are primarily motivated by the potential values of the untamed hawai’ian landscape to advance their social or economic status. ho’omanawanui criticizes what he considers to be the ‘settlers' ideology’ of white americans and asian immigrants to view hawai’i “as a commodified resource, not as an ancestor, a picturesque setting for people-centred stories” (2008, 122). in other words, the nonhuman world remains a backdrop or setting for the struggle of settlers coming to the hawai’ian isles in the foreground. the whites perspective of the environment can be read as an apparatus of western colonial discourse which correspondents with the exploitation of the colonized periphery for the benefit of the civilized colonizer, while asian-american success story in hawai’i is founded upon the acquisition of commodified land as property. these differences in representing the environmental perspectives occur because both ethnic groups are operating from different cultural paradigms, language bases and socio-historical circumstances. while the domination of these aforementioned ethnic groups derived from their exploitation and acquisition of commodified land, the struggle of hawai’ian indigenous people as an ethnic group directly correlates with their absence of agency and sovereignty over their homeland. as kay-trask puts it, “the issues before hawaiians are those of indigenous land. cultural rights, and survival as a people. in contrast, the issues before "locals" have merely to do with finding a comfortable fit in hawai'i that guarantees a rising income, upward mobility. and the general accoutrements of a middle-class "american" way of life. above all, "locals" don't want any reminder of their daily benefit from the subjugation of hawaiians. for them. history begins with their arrival in hawai'i and culminates with the endless retelling of their allegedly welldeserved rise to power. simply said, "locals" want to be "americans” (2000, p. 20) an environmentally oriented analysis of james michener’s hawai’i contextualizes the environment as dynamic forces, not just a static setting or backdrop for human conflicts, struggles and dramas. the historicity of the development of the human and non-human relationship is problematized through various factors such as socio-cultural filters, race, gender, and class which affected how a given culture interacts with the environment and vice versa. the novel dramatizes the shifting perspective from an ecologically sustainable perspective of the indigenous people into an instrumentalized outlook of land as a commodity through the settlers’ arrival. in line with worster and cronon’s idea of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, march 2023, pp. 251-263 261 environmental history, the analysis of socioeconomic factors and intellectual and imaginative facets contextualizes the contrasting idea of the human-non-human relationship between the hawai’ian natives and western and asian settlers. within settler/native binarism of contrasting environmental outlook, both the hawai’ian landscape and the indigenous people were subjected toward domination under a paradigm and ideology that seeks to conquer and exploit nature for the benefit of civilized humans. conclusion this study analyses james michener’s hawai’i to underline how the environment was changed, altered and transformed and the ensuing changes in how people perceived their natural world over time. by focusing on the different environmental perspectives among diverse cultures and ethnicities that inhabited the hawai’ian archipelago, this paper posits how each group contextualizes their differing interpretations of the term ‘nature’ and ‘environment’. in line with cronon and worster’s stages of environmental history, this study contemplates that these differences are intertwined with cultural contexts and socio-historical circumstances of a given culture, in how they interact with the environment. furthermore, the questions of race, social class and gender helped to shape an understanding of the natural world. it further reveals the role of humans as an ecological agent with their agency to shape the environment, for better or for worse. this emphasis on human agency should be considered not as placing humanity outside the sphere of nature that seeks to conquer and exploit it, but instead within the domain of the natural world, to challenge 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(1993). the wealth of nature: environmental history and the ecological imagination. new york: oxford university press. http://repositorio.unan.edu.ni/2986/1/5624.pdf http://hdl.handle.net/10524/318 https://doi.org/10.1177/009430610903800126 https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/huefd/issue/41204/504949 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781849770927-9 https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790903490843 https://doi.org/10.2307/3639376 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139173599.014 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 139 envisaging code-mixing and code-switching in english conversation among thai students: breaching the motives from sociolinguistic perspectives * ikrar genidal riadil 1 and nattakan dilts 2 1,2prince of songkla university, thailand ikrargenidal21@gmail.com1 and nattakan.c@phuket.psu.ac.th2 *correspondence: ikrargenidal21@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.5216 received 30 september 2022; 26 october 2022 abstract people always communicate to make relationships with others. some way they do this is to make the other understand what the speaker means. therefore, the speaker uses code-mixing and code-switching to make the listener understand. the purpose of code-mixing and code-switching is to make the utterance more communicative, and more friendly to show the master can speak more than two languages. in this research, the subject is students from the english department at tidar university in indonesia and the international business china program faculty of international studies at prince of songkla university in thailand. this research used a descriptive qualitative method in which the researchers describe the form, the types, and the reason for code-mixing and code-switching in an educational conversation by students from the english department tidar university in indonesia and international business china program faculty of international studies prince of songkla university in thailand. all of the students in daily life use code-mixing and code-switching to communicate with others or their lecturers because they are from the english department and international program where all of the lectures are taught in english. the types of code mixing such as insertion, alternation, and congruent lexicalization based on singh and sachan (2017), while types of codeswitching are intra-sentential, inter-sentential, and tag switching based on ansar (2017). the researchers also found some factors related to hudson (1980) such as social factors, cultural factors, and individual factors. in a nutshell, as stated from the data analysis, numerous code-mixing and code-switching used by these students in their daily life, it helps them to understand and simplify communication. keywords: code-mixing, code-switching, conversations, english language introduction language is closely related to how people communicate with each other (riadil, 2020). therefore, we are also bound to other people or society when we learn a language. language and society cannot be separated in communication. the study of language and society is sociolinguistic. sociolinguistics is, to some degree, linguistics in which the latter refers to language study as the framework without mailto:ikrargenidal21@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.5216 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 140 regard to the social context in which hudson (1980) is studied, taught, or even used. according to sukarno (2018), sociolinguistics studies the relationship between language and social contexts for communication. related to wardhaugh (2006), sociolinguistics is the study of the coherence between language and society to understand the structure of language and the language function of communication. to make a message understood when communicating with a person, the speaker usually uses two or more languages to give the message. according to weinreich in grey (2017), if the speaker wants to communicate with a person who uses alternative contact, the speaker will use two or more languages to understand the listener. for example, the immigrant's introduction of a new language to a resident population. sometimes, they introduce second-language lexical items in conversation and mix them with their own or first language. it is now easier to find people who use two or more languages efficiently. it is called bilingualism or multilingualism when people can speak two or more languages. according to rahardi (2001), bilingualism is a phenomenon where the speaker or person can speak and use two or more languages to communicate. therefore, a person who can use two languages to communicate is called bilingual. the two kinds of bilingualism are code-mixing and code-switching. instead of code-mixing and code-switching, the study of language usage in cultural or social contexts has become an interesting phenomenon because it is part of the development process and uses multiple (bilingual) languages or a combination of (multi-lingual) languages. in general, bilingualism uses code-mixing or codeswitching: first, the speaker makes the listener more understand to use the target language, and second, the bilingual speaker has other goals in communication. sociolinguistics sociolinguistics is a field of macro linguistics in linguistic study. sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and society, a branch of both linguistics and sociology. sometimes it is called the sociology of language. there are definitions of sociolinguistic from many sources: wardhaugh (2006) says, sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating the relationships between language and society with the goal being a better understanding of the structure of language and how languages function in communication; the equivalent goal in the sociology of language is trying to discover how social structure can be better understood through the study of language. it shows that sociolinguistics investigates how social structure influences the way people communicate and how language functions in society. further on holmes (2001) defines that “sociolinguists study the relationship between language and society. they are interested in explaining why we speak differently in different social contexts, and they are concerned with identifying the social functions of language and the ways it is used to convey social meaning.” sociolinguistics is concerned with the relationship between language and the context in which it is used. so, there is a concern about explaining and identifying language changes that are spoken. on the other hand, wardhaugh and fuller (2015) state that “sociolinguistics is the study of our everyday lives-how language works in our casual conversations and the media we are exposed to, and the presence of societal norms, policies, and laws which address language.” it means ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 141 sociolinguistics is not a study of facts but the study of ideas about how a member of a particular society may influence the terms with our language use. code-mixing code mixing is where the speaker mixes the language he or she uses with two languages for communication. the purpose of code-mixing is to make the utterances more communicative and friendly and show that he or she can use two or more languages (sukarno, 2018; sutrismi, 2014). code mixing uses elements from one language through a particular speech to create another. dewi (2021) states that code-mixing occurs when speakers slip elements of other languages while using specific languages. on the other hand, the code-mixing concept is stated by muysken (2000). he described code mixing as the behavior of two languages in an expression when lexical elements in the two languages are joined into one language structure used in the speech. singh and sachan (2017) said that the types of code mixing are: insertion approaching that depart from the notion of insertion new to constraint in term of the structural properties of some base or matrix structures. here the process of code-mixing is conceived as something borrowing. the lexical (word) of other languages into one language. example: eh, liburan enak nih hiking ke gunung. (eh, it is a nice vacation hiking to the mountains) the word hiking is from english and is inserted in between bahasa indonesia sentences. alternation approaches departing from alternation view the constraint on mixing in terms of capability or equivalence of the language involved at the switch point. a lexical term (word) or one language phrase is preceded by a lexical term (word) or another language phrase. example: coba besok aku ngeupload foto nya di facebook ya! (i'll try to upload the photo on facebook, yeah!) aku tidak bisa datang ke acara ulang tahun kamu besok, because i feel sick (i can't come to your birthday tomorrow, because i feel sick) here, english language phrases are followed by indonesian language phrases. congruent lexicalization the notion of congruent lexicalization underlies the study of style shifting and dialect/standard variation rather than bilingual language. lexical terms (phrases) can be inserted randomly in any language of "a" and "b". example: hey, how are you? i’m sam, senang bertemu anda. nice to meet you. (hey, how are you? i'm sam, nice to meet you) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 142 the words of english in the indonesian language phrase randomly. code-switching code-switching is the bilingual speaker switching between two languages back and forth in the same sentence (sukarno, 2018). code-switching is a phenomenon of switching language from one language to another in bilingual or multilingual communities (wardhaugh,1986; wardhaugh, 2006; yuliana et al., 2015). code-switching also is defined as an interchange between two or more languages in a speaker's speech or conversation. some people may use codeswitching unknowingly as the outcome of their skills in using more than one language, while others may use code-switching to repeat what has been said before. there are ten reasons why people use code-switching in their conversations. those reasons are talking about a particular topic, quoting somebody else, being emphatic about something, interjection, repetition, intention to clarify something, expressing group identity, softening and straightening request or command, real lexical needs, and the last is to exclude other people. while the types of code-switching: inter-sentential this type of code-switching occurs between a clause or a sentence boundary, where each clause or sentence uses indonesian or another use english. for example, a bilingual speaker said: example: “dia cantik tapi tidak baik. i don’t like her” (she is beautiful but she is not a good person. i don’t like her). intra-sentential this kind of code-switching which a single discourse between two languages. for example, bilingual speakers: example: “saya pikir she has pretty face though, tapi kelakuannya very bad attitude” (i think she has a pretty face though, but her behavior has a very bad attitude). tag-switching this type of code-switching where a tag phrase or a word both from one language to another language, like the bilingual speaker said: example: “dia cantik, but no good, right?” (she is beautiful but no good, right?). the above are explanations of code-switching with concrete theory. this study is adapted from one previous research from riadil (2021) entitled “investigating efl learners’ “indonglish” usage by english department students: a qualitative study” which talks mostly about code-mixing used by the two different student levels in the english department of tidar university. the similarity between this study and the previous study is analyzing the same variables which analyzes the code-mixing. nevertheless, this study will analyze deeper about ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 143 code-mixing and code-switching and also the reasons from students in two different universities, different cultural backgrounds, and different countries. the novelty of this study is the researchers are not investigating code-mixing, they researcher also investigating code-mixing. in addition, the researchers observed the reason for the code-mixing and code-switching usage by indonesian and thailand students. the researcher conducts this research about code-mixing and code-switching because the researcher is interested to continue the study of previous research in sociolinguistics, especially in the introduction and the reasons for code-mixing and code-switching. this research includes the form or introduction of code-mixing and code-switching, the reason bilingual speakers use code-mixing and code-switching, and the types of code-mixing and code-switching in an educational conversation by the students of the english department tidar university, indonesia, and international business china, prince of songkla university, thailand. in this research, the researchers provided two research questions, those are; 1. what types of code-mixing and code-switching are used by indonesian and thailand students? 2. what are the reasons for using code-mixing and code-switching? method this research involved a qualitative descriptive study that produces descriptive data in the form of words written that were taken by a script’s speech. as stated in dörnyei (2007) qualitative data usually involves recorded spoken data (for example, interview data) that is transcribed to textual form as well as written (field) notes and documents of various sorts. type this research was a descriptive qualitative method because the writer described the linguistic form, the reason, and the types of code-mixing and code-switching used by students from the english department, tidar university in indonesia, and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand. descriptive qualitative was used in this research to identify linguistics, the reasons, and the types of code-mixing and codeswitching in an educational conversation used by the english department, tidar university in indonesia, and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand. descriptive research could be dealt with as proving what livings, already existing and lived are by being described and explained (alacapinar, 2016). the subject of this research was the students of the english department, at tidar university in indonesia and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand, where they were being taught in english the class. the data of this research was the educational conversation with each other in the campus area. in collecting data, the researchers used interviews and observation. the interview contained three questions for the students adapted from hudson (1980). it was divided to be three terms, those are social factors, cultural factors, and individual factors: 1. do you use two or more languages in your daily life? 2. when are you using two or more languages in your communication with others? 3. why are you using those methods in daily conversations? the observation contained about looking for the data having code-mixing and code-switching in educational conversations used by the english department, tidar ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 144 university in indonesia and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand selected by the researchers. findings and discussion findings the form of code-mixing and code-switching the researcher analyzes the form of code-mixing and code-switching by ansar (2017). this research found that code-mixing and code-switching in educational conversations are specially taken in the campus area used by the students of the english department, tidar university in indonesia and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand. table 1. the total of code-mixing and code-switching used by indonesian students utterances code-mixing code-switching student 1: hai, kamu udah submit tugas uts article untuk mata kuliah maam lilia belum? 2 student 2: hmmm, not yet nih. i’m still downloading some of the articles as my references. ini materinya ada yang not free but we need to pay. padahal selasa besok harus di submit. 2 2 student 1: what? ndak selasa minggu depan to? 1 student 2: ngawur, selasa besok. makanya aku buat dateline hari ini harus selesai buat paper nya karena dateline udah mepet banget. 3 student 2: tugasnya softcopy aja, right? 1 1 student 1: iya, i guess. 2 student 2: yes, dua-duanya. ini aku lagi browsing artikelnya kok gak ada ya? it is so difficult to find articles that related to my research topics sumpah deh, wah lowbat juga laptopku. 4 1 student 1 : loh salahmu, kamu sambil main games sih. 1 student 2: engga kok. ini aku masih cari materi dan references journal tapi belum dapet. 2 student 1: santai aja, coba aku searching di google. biasanya cepat ketemunya. anyway, carinya keywords nya apa? 4 student 2: up to you lah yang penting ada hubungannya dengan tema paper aku. 4 student 1: i see. lah ini banyak hasil searchingnya. yang penting materi dah ada semula. nggak usah panik keep calm aja hahaha. 5 student 2: lah iya. good good. ini bagus artikelnya, tolong di save dan send ke whatsapp ku ya. thanks ya bro. 7 student 1: eh anyway, makan yuk, udah lunch belom? 2 student 2: nope, come on, let’s eat together then. aku lagi mau makan yang spicy gitu nih 1 1 student 1: i think, mie ayam enak deh 2 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 145 student 2: yes, mie ayam enak tuh, good idea! 3 student 1: yowes, okay let’s go there then 1 student 2: udah agak mendung, do you bring an umbrella? 2 student 1: oh iya nih kayaknya mau raining, aku bawa umbrella kok 2 student 2: rapopo, that’s okay, tidak jauh juga dari kampus kan tempatnya 2 student 1: okay, yuk jalan 1 student 2: alright dude, yuk 2 total 53 8 from table 1, the researchers found some code-mixing and code-switching used by students from english department, at tidar university in indonesia. the table stated that code-mixing is the most term that they used in their conversations which showed that there are fifty-three code-mixing. additionally, these indonesian students used around eight times in code-switching in their conversations. then, all of the expressions from the above, the results are all expressions in an educational conversation especially taken in the campus area has code-mixing and code-switching. however, these indonesian students mixed their expressions using two or more languages like indonesia-english, english-indonesia, or indonesialocal (javanese)-english. table 2. the total of code-mixing and code-switching used by thailand students utterances code-mixing code-switching student 1: hii, สวสัด ีคะ่ 1 student 2: hallo too, สวสัด ีคะ่ 2 student 1: ดงันัน้, at high school what are you studying about? 1 student 2: english and chinese นะ 3 student 1: oh, but you are more like พูดจีนเกง่กว่า? 1 student 2: ใช,่ ใช.่ i prefer like chinese, because i think chinese conversation is very easy than english, right? 1 student 1: ดงันัน้, how long have you been studying chinese? 1 student 2: หา้ years, yeah.. 2 student 1: so, like since you’re หก in elementary school, ใช่ไหม? 1 student 2: no.. มอ สอง in junior high school. 1 1 student 1: มอ สอง? oh okay 2 student 2: but, at that time, i dont like it because it's really hard, อา่นไมอ่อกอา่, ดูตวัจีนไมรู่เ้รื่อง. i don’t understand the chinese characters. when i see uh when i watch movie, it's chinese movie or series i like, so i practice my chinese. and now i speak chinese เออ่ดีกว่าภาษาองักฤษอะ่คะ่. 3 student 1: oh ใช ่uh-huh 1 student 2: yeah, ใช ่ 1 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 146 student 1: แต ่now you’re studying international business? 1 student 2: yes คะ่ 1 student 1: so, เขายงัเป็นโฟกสัภาษาจีนอยู่ปะ? 1 student 2: yeah, จะแนวไปทีภ่าษาองักฤษมากกว่า 1 student 1: oh but i think, เเตก่็มีพอภาษาจีนอยู่ 4 student 2: yes, yes, ใช่ๆยงเรียนจีนอยู่. 2 student 1: เเลว้เราแบบ เเล้วเรา พอทีน้ี่มนั, they focus about english more than chinese? so yeah, now in this major 2 student 2: คะ่. so, now we … 3 student 1: but, เเลว้ท าไง เกรียดไหมทีน้ี่? 1 student 2: yes, very serious. but, i want to practice my english ก็คือใหม้นัหนกัขึสุ้ด พยายามฟงัเพลงหรือดูหนงัใหม้นัเยอะขึน้ประมาณน้ีคะ่ ก็คืออาจจะใชว้ิธีเกีย่วกบัการดูซีรี่ย์เอาประมาณนัน้แบบภาษาจีน เอ. 1 1 student 1: oh, okay คะ่. in your here studying, a lot of english would be better 2 1 student 2: yes นะ… hahaha 1 student 1: okay, ฉนัตอ้งไปเดอะมอลล์แลว้ ยินดีทีไ่ดค้ยุกบัคุณ. 谢谢你的谈话. 1 1 student 2: okay คะ่, 也谢谢你, สวสัดี คะ่ 1 1 total 34 16 from table 2, the researchers found some code-mixing and code-switching used by students from international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand. the table stated that code-mixing is the most term that they used in their conversations which showed that there are thirty-four code-mixing, which means thailand students less using code-mixing rather than indonesian students. additionally, these thailand students used around sixteen times in code-switching in their conversations, which means thailand students more using code-switching rather than indonesian students. then, all of the expressions from the above, the results are all expressions in an educational conversation especially taken in the campus area has code-mixing and code-switching. however, these thailand students mixed their expressions using two or more languages like thailandenglish, english-thailand, or indonesian-chinese-english. the types of code-mixing and code-switching the researchers analyzed code-mixing by singh and sachan (2017) and codeswitching by hoffman (1991). table 3. the types of code-mixing and code-switching used by indonesian students utterances code-mixing by singh & sachan (2017) code-switching by hoffman (1991) student 1: hai, kamu udah submit tugas uts article untuk mata kuliah maam lilia belum? insertion ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 147 student 2: hmmm, not yet nih. i’m still downloading some of the articles as my references. ini materinya ada yang not free but we need to pay. padahal selasa besok harus disubmit. insertion and alternation intersentential and intrasentential student 1: what? ndak selasa minggu depan to? insertion student 2: ngawur, selasa besok. makanya aku buat dateline hari ini harus selesai buat paper nya karena dateline udah mepet banget. insertion student 2: tugasnya softcopy aja, right? insertion tagswitching student 1: iya, i guess. insertion student 2: yes, dua-duanya. ini aku lagi browsing artikelnya kok gak ada ya? it is so difficult to find articles that related to my research topics sumpah deh, wah lowbat juga laptopku. insertion and alternation intrasentential student 1 : loh salahmu, kamu sambil main games sih. insertion student 2: engga kok. ini aku masih cari materi dan references journal tapi belum dapet. insertion student 1: santai aja, coba aku searching di google. biasanya cepat ketemunya. anyway, carinya keywords nya apa? insertion and alternation student 2: up to you lah yang penting ada hubungannya dengan tema paper aku. insertion student 1: i see. lah ini banyak hasil searchingnya. yang penting materi dah ada semula. nggak usah panik keep calm aja hahaha. insertion and alternation student 2: lah iya. good good. ini bagus artikelnya, tolong di save dan send ke whatsappku ya. thanks ya bro. insertion and alternation student 1: eh anyway, makan yuk, udah lunch belom? insertion and alternation student 2: nope, come on, let’s eat together then. aku lagi mau makan yang spicy gitu nih insertion intersentential student 1: i think, mie ayam enak deh insertion student 2: yes, mie ayam enak tuh, good idea! insertion student 1: yowes, okay let’s go there then intersentential student 2: udah agak mendung, do you bring an umbrella? intersentential and tag switching student 1: oh iya nih kayaknya mau raining, aku bawa umbrella kok insertion student 2: rapopo, that’s okay, tidak jauh juga dari kampus kan tempatnya congruent lexicalization student 1: okay, yuk jalan insertion student 2: alright dude, yuk insertion from table 3, the researcher found some types of code-mixing by singh and sachan (2017) and code-switching by hoffman (1991). from the types of code ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 148 mixing by singh and sachan (2017), the students from english department, at tidar university in indonesia more effectively used insertion type followed by alternation and congruent lexicalization from code-mixing, because they inserted one-word item from english into indonesia phrase. however, they also used congruent lexicalization, they used three languages english, javanese, and indonesian, then they inserted one word from english and one word from javanese into an indonesian phrase or sentence. while code-switching by hoffman (1991), the researchers found some types of code-switching in the english department, at tidar university in indonesia. the indonesian students more using inter-sentential types followed by the intra-sentential and tag-switching types of code-switching takes about four times used it. table 4. the types of code-mixing and code-switching used by thailand students utterances code-mixing by singh & sachan (2017) code-switching by hoffman (1991) student 1: hii, สวสัด ีคะ่ insertion student 2: hallo too, สวสัด ีคะ่ insertion student 1: ดงันัน้, at high school what are you studying about? student 2: english and chinese นะ insertion student 1: oh, but you are more like พูดจีนเกง่กว่า? inter-sentential student 2: ใช,่ ใช.่ i prefer like chinese. because i think chinese conversation is very easy than english, right? inter-sentential student 1: ดงันัน้, how long have you been studying chinese? tag switching student 2: หา้ years, yeah.. insertion student 1: so, like since you’re หก in elementary school, ใช่ไหม? intra-sentential student 2: no... มอ สอง in junior high school. insertion intra-sentential student 1: มอ สอง? oh okay insertion student 2: but, at that time, i dont like it because it's really hard, อา่นไมอ่อกอา่, ดูตวัจีนไมรู่เ้รื่อง. i don’t understand the chinese characters. when i see uh when i watch movie, it's chinese movie or series i like, so i practice my chinese. and now i speak chinese เออ่ดีกว่าภาษาองักฤษอะ่คะ่. inter-sentential and intrasentential student 1: oh ใช ่uh-huh insertion student 2: yeah, ใช ่ insertion student 1: แต ่now you’re studying international business? insertion intra-sentential student 2: yes คะ่ insertion student 1: so, เขายงัเป็นโฟกสัภาษาจีนอยู่ปะ? insertion student 2: yeah, จะแนวไปทีภ่าษาองักฤษมากกว่า insertion ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 149 student 1: oh but i think, เเตก่็มีพอภาษาจีนอยู ่ insertion and alternation student 2: yes, yes, ใช่ๆยงเรียนจีนอยู่. insertion student 1: เเลว้เราแบบ เเล้วเรา พอทีน้ี่มนั, they focus about english more than chinese? so yeah, now in this major inter-sentential and tag switching student 2: คะ่. so, now we … insertion student 1: but, เเลว้ท าไง เกรียดไหมทีน้ี่? alternation student 2: yes, very serious. but, i want to practice my english ก็คือใหม้นัหนกัขึสุ้ด พยายามฟงัเพลงหรือดูหนงัใหม้นัเยอะขึน้ประมาณ น้ีคะ่ ก็คืออาจจะใชว้ิธีเกีย่วกบัการดูซีรี่ย์เอาประมาณนัน้ แบบภาษาจีนเอ. alternation intra-sentential student 1: oh, okay คะ่. in your here studying, a lot of english would be better insertion inter-sentential student 2: yes นะ… hahaha congruent lexicalization student 1: okay, ฉนัตอ้งไปเดอะมอลล์แลว้ ยินดีทีไ่ดค้ยุกบัคุณ. 谢谢你的谈话. congruent lexicalization inter-sentential student 2: okay คะ่, 也谢谢你, สวสัดี คะ่ congruent lexicalization inter-sentential from table 4, the researchers found some types of code-mixing by singh and sachan (2017) and code-switching by hoffman (1991). from the types of codemixing by singh and sachan (2017), the students from international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand more effectively used insertion type followed by alternation and congruent lexicalization from code-mixing, because they inserted one-word item from english into thailand phrase. however, they also used congruent lexicalization, they used three languages english, thailand, and chinese, then they inserted one word from english and one word from thailand into a chinese phrase or sentence. while code-switching by hoffman (1991), the researchers found some types of code-switching by international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand. the thailand students more using intersentential types followed by the intra-sentential and tag-switching types of codeswitching takes about four times used it. it is quite similar to indonesian students but thailand students tend to use more code-switching than indonesian tend to use more code-mixing. the reason for using code-mixing and code-switching people have some reason to use code-mixing and code-switching in their utterances. numerous factors motivate people there to communicate with others to use code-mixing and code-switching. one of the reasons most people nowadays master two or more languages, especially teenagers. the subject of this research is students english department, at tidar university in indonesia and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand, and all of them are teenagers. the researchers knew that people seldom use one language in their daily conversation, the researchers frequently found people mix and switch their ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 150 language because of some factors. such as communicating with other people who come from different backgrounds, cultures, and languages. therefore, when people master more than one language they tend to mix and switch their languages as communication tools. the researchers here described the causes or motives motivating people in their utterances using code-mixing and code-switching. the researchers analyzing the reason or motivation of students english department, tidar university in indonesia and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand used an interview technique consist four questions for them. after giving the questionnaire to the students, the researchers analyzed that then into three variables factors using code-mixing and code-switching by hudson (1980). they are a social factor, cultural factor, and individual factor. table 5. reasons indonesian and thailand students use code-mixing and code-switching reasons social factor culture factor individual factor feel comfortable ✓ to respect another speaker ✓ because it is mandatory as a course or program ✓ so that there is no emptiness during the discussion ✓ adapting to the context of the conversation ✓ because sometimes i do not know the term in the other language ✓ because the situation urges me to use it ✓ to simplify communication ✓ to clarify in detail what i'm talking about ✓ due to a specific interest ✓ because i'm learning a foreign language ✓ because more enjoy and relax ✓ i use it whenever lecturers around me ✓ because i feel cool when i mix the languages ✓ the result from table 5 above are the results of students' reasons for using code-mixing and code-switching because of individual factors like they feel enjoy, comfort, studying to more know grammar, forget words from other languages. often people change the code in their utterances because they do not find the right word to express or they simply want to be judged as educated people by others. in addition, english is an exceedingly common language nowadays. however, when teenagers use foreign languages in their conversations today, it is no longer unusual. while the researchers also found another factor, which is the social factor with which they communicate with their friends. sometimes people used code-mixing and code-switching for social factors because they think that is an informal situation, so feel enjoy communicating. the life of students is just from the magelang or javanese area and thailand students are just from phuket or the south side of thailand, so the researchers cannot find cultural factors in this research. in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 151 a nutshell, culture does not influence them to use code-mixing and code-switching terms. discussions the findings of insertion that was found in an educational conversation used by the english department, tidar university in indonesia and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand were similar to the result of the research conducted by pambudhi (2012). indonesian or thailand words or phrases were inserted in the english sentences. it is in line with muysken (2000) who told that when a single constituent in form of a word or phrase is mixed, insertion is a plausible option. however, the findings of alternation found in an educational conversation used by the english department, tidar university in indonesia, and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand in this research are similar to the result of the research conducted by pambudhi (2012). indonesian or thailand structure was mixed with english utterances. it is regarding the theory stated by muysken (2000) which told that the words in english are mixed with indonesian words, but both of them have their structure in a sentence or utterance. meanwhile, congruent lexicalization sentences produced by the english department, tidar university in indonesia, and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand were similar to the result of the research conducted by pambudhi (2012). for indonesian students, phrases and clauses in bahasa indonesia were mixed with english and javanese utterance and for thailand students, phrases and clauses in thailand language were mixed with english and chinese utterance. it is in line with the theory stated by muysken (2000) which told that words in english are mixed with words in bahasa indonesia or other languages, but both of them have their structure in a sentence/utterance. the findings of inter-sentential found in an educational conversation used by the english department, tidar university in indonesia and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand were similar to the result of the research conducted by wibowo et al (2017). indonesian or thailand words or phrases were inserted in the english sentences. it is in line with poplack in romaine (2012) who told that inter sentential switching, involves a significant amount of syntactic complexity and conformity to the rules of both languages; therefore, speakers performing this kind of switching are usually fairly proficient in the participating languages. however, the findings of intra-sentential found in an educational conversation used by the english department, tidar university in indonesia and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand in this research are similar to the result of the research conducted by wibowo et al (2017). indonesian or thailand structure was mixed with english utterances. it is regarding the theory stated by hoffman (1991) which told that a sentence in english is mixed with indonesian or other languages sentences, but both of them have their structure in a sentence or utterance. poplack in romaine (2012) stated also intra sentential switching refers to the switching that occurs inside the same clause or sentence which then contains elements of both languages. meanwhile, tag-switching term sentences produced by the english department, tidar university in indonesia, and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand were similar to the result of the research ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 152 conducted by wibowo et al (2017). for indonesian students, phrases and clauses in bahasa indonesia were mixed with english and javanese utterance and for thailand students, phrases and clauses in thailand language were mixed with english utterances. it is in line with the theory stated by poplack in romaine (2012) which told that tag switching, is simply the insertion of a tag in one language in an utterance that is entirely in the other language, e.g. you know, i \mean, right inserted with question tag “?”. the next discussion is about indonesian and thailand students’ reasons for using code-mixing and code-switching in conversations. based on the interviews done by the researchers, it was found that there were fourteen reasons why the english department, tidar university in indonesia and international business china, prince of songkla university in thailand students used code-mixing and code-switching. first, the first reason was feeling comfortable using those terms in a conversation, it means the students, especially teenagers, are comfortable using two or more languages at the same time by using code-mixing and code-switching techniques. second, they tend to respect another speaker, which means when they use these terms in communicating with people, it respects another speaker to be able to understand easier. third, it is because mandatory as a course or program. indeed, in the english department at tidar university, english is a mandatory and main language used in the class. in addition, for international business china, since it is an international program, the students are required to speak english, since the students in the class are having different backgrounds which means some of them to come from other countries. fourth, they said using these terms to help to prevent emptiness in a conversation, it means it is a good way to have communicative competence. fifth, they tend to adapt to the context of the conversation. sixth, it is because they do not know the term or meaning in other languages so they use this technique to make a conversation smooth. seventh, it is because the situation urges them to use it. eighth, they use it to simplify communication, which means by using code-mixing and code-switching, they can create a good conversation and prevent communication breakdowns. ninth, to clarify in detail what they are talking about, means to make another speaker understand properly. tenth, due to a specific interest. eleventh, it is because they are learning a foreign language, that’s why they mix and switch from l1 to l2 or even l3. twelfth, it is because they enjoy and relax using code-mixing and code-switching when they speak. next, they use it whenever lecturers are around them. last, they use code-mixing and codeswitching because they feel cool when they mix the languages, it is one of the individual factors that influence them. based on the results, the indonesian and thailand students’ reasons are mostly related to social factors and individual factors. conclusion at the end of the result, the writer jumped to conclusion that indonesian students were more likely to use code-mixing than code-switching, and also indonesian students were likely to use insertion and alternation types of codemixing and inter-sentential types of code-switching. while thailand students were likely to use code-switching rather than code-mixing but they still use plenty of code-mixing, however, thailand students used mode code-switching rather than indonesian students. in addition, thailand students were also likely to use insertion ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 139-154 153 types of code-mixing and balance in using inter-sentential and intra-sentential types of code-switching. indonesian and thailand students seem frequently use code-mixing and codeswitching utterances when they communicate with other people. the greatest reason for the 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(2015). code mixing and code switching of indonesian celebrities: a comparative study. jurnal lingua cultura, 9(1), 47-54. https://doi.org/10.21512/lc.v9i1.761 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118332382.ch18 https://doi.org/10.26483/ijarcs.v8i3.3108 https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v7i3.9816 https://ejournal.nusamandiri.ac.id/index.php/progressive/article/view/538 https://doi.org/10.21512/lc.v9i1.761 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 1-13 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 1 a philosophical analysis of compatibilism from the indigenous notion of kahimtang arian g. acampado visayas state university-tolossa campus, philippines correspondence: arian.acampado@vsu.edu.ph doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v5i1.3423 received 28 may 2021; accepted 23 september 2021 abstract the freedom-determinism debate is one of the important current discussions. its scope covers philosophy to theology, psychology, and even the neurosciences and genetics. though there are already attempts to reconcile the freedom-determinism perspective, a definite answer to it remains unclear. this research attempts to contribute an input offered by an indigenous understanding of the two perspectives. using the hermeneutic phenomenology on the visayan people in the philippines, this paper attempts to contextualize and understand the debate from their perspective. as such freedom and determinism are put into the context of kahimtang. the discussion is divided in two parts. the first part discusses three themes or nuances of kahimtang: 1) kahimtang as hatag sa ginoo (god-given), 2) the notion of kahimtang as latid sa kinabuhi (path in life), and 3) the concept of kahimtang as baruganan sa pagkatawo (state of being-human). the second part discusses the determinism and freedom found in the themes of the previous part and argues on a framework of compatibilism in kahimtang. the study concludes that life for the visayan is an interplay of freedom and determinism. keywords: compatibilism, freedom, determinism, kahimtang, indigenous philosophy introduction the paradox of freedom has been a perennial question in philosophy since ancient times (mills, 2013). the question of freedom and its re-evaluation with its antithesis – determinism – affects various disciplines such as psychology and theology, and even in the neurosciences (sartorio, 2015; lavazza, 2016) and genetics (willoughby, et.al. 2019). the debate is still in place (austin, 2014) with different entry-points (müller, & placek, 2018). people claim to have freedom because they regard themselves as autonomous in performing their actions. the idea of free will has extended importance in morality and politics as well (baumeister, 2014) since it is the nucleus of human agency, decision-making, and responsibility (list, 2014). free will implies that human beings are pro-active agents capable of improvement (feldman, 2018). ordinary experience, however, informs that humans are always determined in their actions (campbell, et.al., 2004), seemingly caught up in a vicious cycle. negating determinism seems ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 1-13 2 difficult on the argument of human experience where one’s choices, decisions, values, and judgments are influenced if not shaped and constrained by social exigencies. while some debates focus on the problem of structure in finding comptabilities (pleasants, 2019), this paper looks at local and indigenous understanding of the tension between free will and determinism as it may shed light on this matter. there were several attempts made to synthesize freedom and determinism, but the issue persists. several articles tried to reconcile these two conflicting ideas. list (2014) claims that determinism and free will need not conflict and argues that there is a need to distinguish between physical and agential possibility. he suggests that to make the two ideas compatible, it is important to consider that free will is a higher-level phenomenon and not at the level of fundamental physics. similarly, mills (2013) argued on the compatibility of free will and determinism by stating that determinism (psychic determinism) is an expression of freedom, the freedom of unconscious expression. furthermore, jütten (2012) argues that freedom is always conditioned by our embodiment. freedom is always affected by our situations and conditions. this idea is somewhat supported by pauen (2008) who claims that if freedom is translated into “self-determination,” then it is compatible with determinism. freedom simply becomes selfdetermination by personal preferences. though some claim that selfdetermination (authorship) calls for autonomy and the absence of pure chance (rinofner-kreidl, 2008), still freedom is freedom despite limits and these limits should not cancel out the whole thing. from the discussions above, it is evident that the debate on free will and determinism can be entered through an attempt at reconciliation, that is, through compatibilism. compatibilists take it that ‘there is no conflict between determinism and free will’ (sarkissian, et. al., 2010). this paper joins this debate using the indigenous or visayan concept of kahimtang, the generic term that means one’s state of living. the visayan, henceforth, is understood as the collective indigenous term to represent the participants of the study who reside in the visayas, one of the three main group of islands in the philippines. the research gap is that the visayan idea on the debate is not yet known. hence, this research is an attempt to expound this local understanding for this debate. the researcher presents the idea of the visayan understanding of kahimtang to show how this concept has the potential to reconcile the differences between the two. this attempt hopes to provide insight using an indigenous input, one that is rooted in the lived experiences of the people. scholars have recently worked on consulting indigenous knowledge to explain some concepts such as freedom (molabola, et.al, 2020), identity (kahambing, 2018; 2019), and peace (fernandez & villaluz, 2017). this paper attempts to show that in the mind of the visayan, there is no conflict between the two ideas. rather, if combined, they can form a holistic perspective of human experience and the human person themselves. freedom and determinism find their niche in ethical discussions. freedom is said to be the foundation of our moral actions. without which, there can be no morality. it is necessary to have a unified idea of the two seemingly contradictory ideas to save morality from those who want to discredit it. this paper can be an important contribution to the discussions. furthermore, this paper can also be used in the localized discussion of ethics, psychology, and theology since these ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 1-13 3 disciplines are affected by this debate. this paper can also be a material in teaching ethics to filipino young men and women who desire to understand the good and bad from a filipino perspective. freedom holds a strong foundation in ethics, so a filipino take on it makes the topic familiar and interesting to the students. method the visayas is a group of islands located at the mid-point of the philippines, sometimes scholarly labeled as ‘central philippines’ (see for example, kahambing & demeterio, 2018). in terms of custom, it is important to firstly disambiguate that the indigenous ways of visayan aboriginal groups have a very different story compared to the indigenous tribes in northern luzon (who were migrants from china) or the (southern) migrant groups of mindanao (who share malaysian and indonesian features or lineage due to proximate sea-trading activities). visayan indigenous tribes have ‘little and no contact with outside groups over many centuries’ (hogan & singh, 2018, p. 3) but the notable tradition that was carried over by the locals, among others, was that of christian religion. it is noteworthy to distinguish that the visayan here does not pertain to the members of the aboriginal tribes but the locals of the group of islands who inhabit customary ways of life that are indigenous to the area. specifically, the research locale is situated in the island of leyte who understand the term. ilonggospeaking visayans in other islands also speak of kahimtang but the understanding still correlates to the semantic substance despite geographical variance. as limitation, the term kahimtang is delve into within two of the major languages used by the visayan which are cebuano and waray-waray (samar-leyte language). cebuano is the most spoken language used in the visayas while waray-waray is spoken in most parts of samar and leyte. according to inocian et. al. (2020), the philippine languages are a cluster of austronesian languages. the visayas is also known to be the cradle of christianity in the philippines. the people are heavily influenced and dominated by the roman catholic religion. reflective of the religious tradition, visayas is known for its five most famous festivals, sinulog, ati-atihan, maskara, dinagyang, and pintados. these festivals are christianized religious practices of the visayan. since cebuano speaking places are scattered all over the visayan region (and extensively in other parts of the country as well), the cebuano respondents were purposively chosen from the native place of the researcher in st. bernard, southern leyte. while the waraywaray respondents were chosen from the town of palo. the researcher used hermeneutic phenomenology as a framework in this study. in a hermeneutic phenomenological framework, assumptions about the participants are bracketed. their tie to catholicism and its possible conception to the catholic interpretation of predestination are set aside to give way, rather than prod or lead them to a pre-arranged theme, for their own ideas to emerge. it is important that though they have similar ideas with existing arguments, their positions are not informed and thus not biased by academic terms. to help the researcher gather the data needed, he used a key informant interview (kii) format. kii can be done either by phone or face-to-face interview (acampado & fernandez 2019). for this research, face-to-face interview (before the pandemic) is deemed necessary for the researcher to see an embodiment of the facial ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 1-13 4 expressions and body languages of the respondents. further, purposive sampling was used. therefore, the researcher preferred to interview those people above 50 years old on the reflexive assumption of their rich experiences in life. six cebuano people were interviewed and four in the waray-speaking region. the ten key informants form the collective term visayan. consent and permissions were secured and asked before the interview for the face-to-face discussion and for possible publication. after the data was gathered, the researcher proceeded with a philosophical analysis of what transpired during the interviews. findings and discussion the visayan nuances of kahimtang kahimtang is a common term in cebuano and waray-waray. generally, it means one’s condition or situation in life. the researcher interviewed both cebuano and waray people to interpret the nuances of this term in relation to freedom and determinism. in the process of interviewing people, whom the researcher considered to have rich experiences in life about their notion of kahimtang, three nuances or themes emerged that are constant in their testimonies. these nuances on kahimtang are: hatag sa dios (god-given), latid o plano sa kinabuhi (fate in life), and baruganan o estado sa pagkatawo (state of beinghuman). 1. hatag sa ginoo (god-given) the visayan believed that their kahimtang is something given by a divine entity. hatag sa ginoo (god-given) is one of the ideas that are common to both cebuano and waray. the terms involved are ginoo (lord), grasya (grace), and sagrado (sacred). the visayan used the term ginoo to express their belief in a higher being. it is the term used to name the higher being who is the source and giver of everything, including the kalibutan (world), tawo (human), and kahimtang. the visayan used the term grasya to show their appreciation of kahimtang as a blessing to them. it refers to their acceptance, contentment, and association with their loved ones that give worth to their situation. the visayan used the term sagrado to express their recognition for kahimtang as a sacred thing that came from god. it connotes their strong aspiration to uphold the sanctity of their situation, which is manifested in how they value their work to provide for their needs. it also describes their journey of surpassing hardships to have a better life. kahimtang is hatag sa ginoo. for the visayan, there is no greater phrase to describe it but as something coming from a divine entity. it is an acknowledgment that everything a person has is by no means something caused merely by themselves. 2. latid o kapalaran sa kinabuhi (path in life) another idea that the researcher discovered about kahimtang is latid sa kinabuhi (path in life). the theme is expressed respectively by the cebuanos and the waray using the terms kapalaran or latid (path), linya (line), paningkamot (hard work), pangandoy (dream), and kinabuhi (life). the waray people used the term kapalaran to describe kahimtang as their fate in life. it signifies their belief that their situation is predetermined by fate. for ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 1-13 5 them, the kind of life they live is not based on their choice but is fated and such fate is solely dependent on god. the cebuano people use the term latid to describe their kahimtang as a “blueprint” or something that is pre-made. they believe that their kahimtang is already planned by god and that they were put to the world to live by god’s providence. the visayan used the term linya to describe kahimtang as a line or path. while kahimtang initially connotes fate or blueprint, as a line or path, it nonetheless gives them a sense of direction as a guide to take the right way to improve their quality of life. the visayan used the term kinabuhi to deeply refer to kahimtang as life. it is not just an extrinsic factor that influences their lives but is the very lives they are living. that is, kahimtang is life itself. this expresses their firm conviction on the relationship between life and kahimtang. for them, one cannot exist without the other. their kahimtang tells the quality of their lives while their life gives essence to their kahimtang. the visayan used the term paningkamot to express their belief that perseverance is the key to improve their kahimtang. though it is already given and planned by god, they still have the freedom to improve what is given to them. paningkamot becomes the context of freedom for the visayan. the cebuano people use the term pangandoy to describe their aspirations for a better kahimtang in life. for them, without dreams, one will not strive to change their kahimtang. since kahimtang is something made and given by god, the human has just to accept it and make the most out of it. kahimtang is what they call latid sa kinabuhi. latid is a line that delineates an area or boundary. it is a plan of god for humans that they have to follow. furthermore, kahimtang is something one has and never asked for. it is a path to take, a mission to survive and accomplish, and life itself. it is in kahimtang that one becomes conscious of his purpose and mission in life. “nadawat na laman kay unsaon man ug wa gajud ta. ang man ug mangawat ta aron manaa ta, di ato nang dawaton ng atong kakabos kay mao ra man nay imong linya (what can i do if i will not accept it. i cannot steal just to have something. i just have to accept that i am poor because this is my path),” says one respondent when asked on accepting kahimtang. kahimtang is something that is not asked. according to another respondent, “naa na gajod na nga, usa ka natawo ning kalibutana, daan ng gilatid sa ginoo nga anha ka mabutang ug mao nay imong dalan nga subayon. sa imong gipuy-an nga gitagana na daan, anha jud ka mopujo dinha (it is there before you were born. god had already planned where will you will be and what path you shall take).” kahimtang is following the plan of god for each person. god has already planned everything including the place that one lives, the time that a person is born, and as well as the time of one’s death, and what a person shall become. this is said in the same words by yet another respondent, “kay duna may latid na ang dios nga mao ni imong linya. diha kang dapita, dinhi ka (because there is a plan of god for your place. it is either here or there).” and she said further that as long as people are here on earth they have to live with it (“samtang naa sa kalibutan, dawaton nalang”). so the only thing that humans must do is to accept one’s kahimtang. kahimtang is a plan (latid) and is always connected to life. there is no kahimtang when there is no life. furthermore, it requires not just any kind of life but a conscious kind of life. kahimtang is only proper to people who are conscious of their existence. in the words of one respondent, “mao ng pagtan-aw naho sa kahimtang sa kalibutan nag-agad sa sitwasyon sa tawo, lihok sa tawo, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 1-13 6 pangandoy sa tawo kay naa naman tanan (this is the reason why kahimtang is construed as dependent on the situation, actions, and dreams of the person, because everything has been provided).” the phrase “kahimtang sa kalibutan” does not refer to the kahimtang of the world in itself because the world has no kahimtang. rather, it refers to the kahimtang of the human person who is conscious of the world. by saying that phrase, he means kahimtang sa tawo nga naa sa kalibutan (kahimtang of the person in the world). kahimtang then is proper to humans since humans are conscious beings who think about themselves. superficially, then believing in the latid (plan) makes one think that there is no room for freedom because god has already planned everything. however, the cebuanos consider freedom as basic to the human person because in life, they can opt to choose their work and pursue their dreams. 3. baruganan o estado sa tawo (state of being-human) the last theme or nuance that the researcher discovered from the responses made by the respondents is estado sa tawo (state of being-human). this concept is supported by the connected terms used by the respondents during the interview. the terms are panindugan or baruganan (standing), riko or adunahan (rich), kabutang (placement), trabaho (work), pobre (poor), and igo-igo (enough). the waray used the term panindugan to describe kahimtang as their current standing in life. their kahimtang depends on their job where they gain income and the place where they live. the waray used the term riko to express the most desirable kahimtang in life. for them, being rich is the best kahimtang. if they are hardworking and if they are blessed by god, they will become rich and sustain their needs and wants in life. the waray used the term kabutang to express kahimtang as their status and situation in life. what they are currently experiencing speaks their kahimtang. the visayan used the term trabaho to signify the relationship of their work to kahimtang. the kind of work that they have determines the quality of their kahimtang. a better job will bear a better kahimtang. the visayan used the term pobre to express their current status in life. this shows their kahimtang of being poor. they describe themselves as poor because they do not have money to provide for their daily needs. the visayan used the term igo-igo to show a sustainable kahimtang. igo-igo means that they just have enough (not much, not less) means to cater to their needs. they have enough money to buy their basic needs but not their wants. the cebuano people describe kahimtang as aduhanan or rich. just like the waray people, they also believe that being rich is the best kahimtang that they can have in life. the cebuano people likewise describe kahimtang as baruganan or their status in life. their current standing (what they do and where they are) in life also expresses their kahimtang. kahimtang for the visayan caters to a very wide scope. as discussed, it is being conceived by the visayan as hatag sa ginoo, latid sa pagkatawo, and baruganan sa kinabuhi. that is why in a deeper sense it is the essence of a human person. in the words of a respondent, “kahimtang is pagka-sija (being itself).” kahimtang being described as hatag sa ginoo springs from the belief that everything is given by god. latid sa pagkatawo is the belief of the visayan that everything has been ordered before a person is born. god has given everything to humans, even though they did not ask for it from god. people realize that in being ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 1-13 7 human, there is a specific path for them. man becomes conscious of it. that is why kahimtang is proper to a human person and not to things because it is only the humans who are conscious of their kahimtang. they are conscious of their baruganan sa kinabuhi. baruganan sa kinabuhi is the visayan belief that every human person has a specific place in this world. baruganan is also something proper only to a living person. towards compatibilism: freedom and determinism in kahimtang 1. the deterministic perspective of kahimtang determinism is the philosophical belief that all human actions are determined by previous causes. there are several kinds of determinism such as logical determinism, theological determinism, psychological determinism, and physical determinism (lucas, 2011). logical determinism is also known as fatalism. it is the belief that the future is already determined by the past. psychological determinism is the belief that human actions have bearings in previous experiences. this is supported by the behaviorists and the psychoanalysts. theological determinism is the belief that the human has been determined already by the all-knowing god. physical determinism is the belief that all physical events are but products of the laws of physics such as the law of motion and gravity. in addition to those mentioned, there is also biological determinism, biodeterminism, or genetic determinism (jamieson & radick, 2017) which holds that human actions are products of genetic compositions. the visayan understanding of kahimtang is partly deterministic. the belief that kahimtang is something given by god is deterministic. it is a kind of theological determinism. god is a being responsible for determining the kahimtang of humans. the fact that no human person has ever chosen his/her kahimtang, in the beginning, means that the human was not free at all. their belief that kahimtang is grasya sa ginoo connotes a deep understanding that kahimtang depends on the mercy of god. grasya (grace) is something unmerited. this “unmeritness” that is attached to the idea of kahimtang contextualizes the notion that kahimtang connotes a deterministic belief of the visayan. when a person receives something which is unmerited, that person has no right to demand such. people can only demand what is due to them like a worker demanding a salary from the one who asked them to do the work. the act of demanding is essential for a person who earned something. demanding is also important in the concept of justice or giving what is due for a person. the belief that kahimtang is “hatag sa ginoo” excludes the concept of justice. the parable of jesus (matthew 20: 116), for instance, about the vineyard owner hiring workers from the by-standers in the market at 9 am, 10 am, 12 pm, 3 pm, and 4 pm, and paying them with the same amount speaks more of the generosity of god, rather than the justice of god. god is just when it gives us our kahimtang. this is often called grace. but no cebuano respondent would question the unjust differences of kahimtang. this is because everyone knows in his/her heart that kahimtang is something unmerited. if a person perceives someone’s kahimtang is better than theirs, they should not complain. when a person questions the goodness of their kahimtang during difficult times, that is because of the experience they are particularly going through and not the totality of kahimtang that they are in. rather, since this kahimtang given, it must be accepted. this idea of kahimtang as being hatag sa ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 1-13 8 ginoo is already an idea of determinism and is expounded in the next idea of kahimtang, which is latid sa kinabuhi. the concept of latid sa kinabuhi (path in life) elaborates more on the deterministic perspective of the visayan. this idea of kahimtang is very close to the previous idea, which is the believe that god as the giver of kahimtang. god would not just choose a human’s kahimtang but also the kahimtang that god has chosen is a blueprint already of that person’s life. this deterministic perspective of life is not just limited to the givens of life but covers the whole existence of a human person. god has already determined life. the visayan would call it kapalaran. kapalaran as the course of life is sometimes believed to be written in the palm (palad) of one’s hand and this is practiced in the different parts of the world known as chiromancy (de metz, 2010). it is common knowledge for the filipinos that there are a lot of practices in the philippines on palm reading. this is tied to the belief that everything has been written by god, so that one just has to look and unveil the future written on the palm of one’s hands. moreover, the phrase “gulong ng palad” or the wheel of one’s palm, literally, can mean the ‘wheel of fate’ or the ‘wheel of fortune’ where there is a roller coaster of fortunate and unfortunate events. other practices related to the idea of latid sa kinabuhi is card reading. the point is that filipinos have a strong sense of deterministic belief. this deterministic belief does not spare the visayan to think that their kahimtang has been carefully planned from the start. the concept estado sa pagkatawo (state of being-human) also contains the deterministic idea of the visayan. they believed that estado sa pagkatawo is given. it is part of the plan of god for humans. being-human is the actuality of the individual human person. kahimtang has been mostly and commonly identified with financial status, though it is actually the condition, situation, and context where a human being fulfils his being a person. these conditions are being rich or poor, famous or unpopular, a parent or a child, a friend or a foe, etc. this perception was formed because of the partly misconceived idea that money makes kahimtang better. visayan people have this notion that the best kahimtang is the adunahan (rich) and the worst kahimtang is to live in extreme poverty (kakabus). in connection with their deterministic belief, they have the idea that their estado sa kinabuhi, such as being poor or rich is something determined by god or the being-above. the phrase “if only i could choose my kahimtang” resonates with all of the respondents’ beliefs. it is a wish for a better kahimtang but is untenable at the moment, so that there is a little exasperation experienced for the kahimtang they are in. no one in this world has the right or even the privilege to choose their kahimtang in the first instance of their life. the existentialist jean-paul sartre in his book being and nothingness explains that the human’s essence is his existence. this is phrased as the existentialist “existence precedes essence.” this means that there is no essence willed by any divine entity before the existence of the human. there is no essence before existence. however, this is contradicted by the visayan idea that the human fulfils his humanity in a certain way as planned by the divine. no one can escape this fact. no one chose to be poor. no one chose to be marginalized. no one chose to be disabled. no one chose their own family. things are all determined yet, as we will discuss next, there is still freedom. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 1-13 9 2. the notion of freedom in kahimtang the response to determinism can be through thinking about whether determinism really matters or not (vihvelin, 2013). there are several notions of freedom. foner (1998) classified freedom into five, namely, political freedom, civil liberties, christian ideal, personal freedom, and economic freedom. political freedom is the freedom of the people to participate in politics. civil liberty is the right of the people to air grievances against the authority. the christian ideal is the christian perspective of freedom that fulfils nature. personal freedom is the ability to make choices without coercion. in addition, economic freedom is the freedom of an individual for economic autonomy. the visayan’s notion of freedom in their kahimtang is a combination of these kinds of freedom. the entry point on the discussion of freedom in kahimtang resides in its temporality: is kahimtang temporary or permanent? the visayan would not answer that it is permanent. they perceive kahimtang as something temporary, which is to say that a human holds the ability to change their kahimtang. the human has the freedom to make their kahimtang better (or worse). freedom lies in the ability and capability of the human to redirect one’s kahimtang. although, it is important to bear in mind that there are a priori conditions that either capacitates or incapacitates a person living their kahimtang, these a priori conditions merely lay out the rules and environs of one’s condition. it is necessary then to make use of the givens in life for the betterment of kahimtang. to emancipate this freedom, time and space are part of the givens in the temporality of kahimtang. space, from the notion of kahimtang, is understood by the visayan as lugar nga pinuy-anan (home) and lugar nga gi-trabahoan (place of work) (acampado & fernandez, 2019). in the mind of the visayan, space is in itself a kind of kahimtang. lugar nga pinuy-anan tells the kahimtang of a person. a rich person lives in a grandiose house while a poor person lives in a house made of recycled materials. lugar nga gi-trabaho-an also tells the kahimtang of a person. an airconditioned office is a better kahimtang than an office filled with the steam of a hot day. the prior inability to choose one’s places of upbringing and life become a priori conditions. however, these places are also opportunities to exercise freedom. one’s family for example is an avenue for the practice of freedom. there is no way to choose these conditions before existence. however, these are places that become spaces which either capacitate or incapacitate a person and further become the possibilities to exercise the direction of oneself as an autonomous act. time in the context of kahimtang, on the other hand, speaks of contingency (dili permanente) and relativeness to work (depende sa panginabuhi). though time is so much beyond the control of a human person as enshrined in the idea of dili permanente and can end at any moment that is least expected, time is an avenue too to exercise freedom. human beings manipulate time in a certain way and in the visayan idea of depende sa panginabuhi. to manipulate time, the human makes use of it. it is within the freedom of the human to decide on what to do with his time. this manipulation of time, however, is usually done in the context of work. depending on the work of a person, they are appropriate times that are advantageous to the subject. though the idea of kahimtang contains an idea of freedom, it is not total freedom. it is a kind of freedom that points out to be a freedom that is conditioned ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 1-13 10 by the specific situations or circumstances a person is in (jütten, 2012). this freedom is similarly a claim that we are not unconditionally free but only conditionally free. human beings have the inseparable unity between the moment of autonomy and the moment of determinism, of freedom and nature, and individual and social existence (huhn, 2006, 61). this perspective of freedom is different from that of sartre’s (2007) dictum that “man is condemned to be free.” for kahimtang, man is only free contingently, but free nonetheless. 3. the visayan brand of compatibilism in kahimtang compatibilism is an attempt to synthesize the debate between freedom and determinism. compatibilism is distinguished into classical and contemporary. classical compatibilism argues that determinism does not mean that the agent has no alternative ways to do otherwise, while contemporary compatibilism argues that determinism is only a guide to one’s actions (mckenna, 2012). here, it can be argued that the visayan compatibilism is species of contemporary compatibilism. based on the discussions about freedom and determinism in kahimtang, it is safe to assume that the visayan are compatibilists: their position is neither pure determinism nor pure freedom. it is clear for them that humans have both the givens in life expressed most especially in their belief that kahimtang is latid sa kinabuhi (path in life) and hatag sa ginoo (god-given) but also the freedom to change their kahimtang into something better. considering a family, no one desires the kind of family a person is born into. a person, when born, is blind to the possible family that he is becoming a part of. that person is not aware of their possible father, mother, and even brothers and sisters if there are. they are helpless in this a priori condition of being human. likewise, it is beyond the knowledge of the newly-born the geographical space (lugar) they are in. that child cannot foresee and choose the kind of place they will be living, whether it is on the mountainous part of town or the seaside area, a city or a town, an island, or in the mainland. it is the same also with time. the person cannot decide the year, the month, day, second, and era or period of history to be born (and death). these helpless a priori conditions are hatag sa ginoo. moreover, all these helpless a priori conditions are essential in the formation of a person or the fulfillment of being human. this also constitutes the life being planned already (latid sa kinabuhi). this is not seen as dismal and oppressive. for the visayan, it is rather easy to accept all these helpless a priori conditions because there is the motivation to strive to be better. it is worthwhile to do something that will augment and improve their kahimtang. this is the part where a person, from the perspective of the visayan, recognizes their freedom. they are entitled to make use of their freedom to change their kahimtang. the idea of the visayan speaks of the necessity to use freedom. a person must use one’s freedom for the better; otherwise they suffer the consequence of having a very difficult situation. the assertion is that time can change kahimtang. one must grab every chance that comes with time. though, in the end, no one can go beyond one’s latid sa kinabuhi. freedom in ‘the plan’ means the line of life which forms its path is somewhat of a trajectory that must be about the struggle for progress, whether it is economic progress or moral progress. for example, francis drake’s prayer about the believer’s hope for disturbance (“disturb me, oh lord”) pertains to the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 1-13 11 positivity of one’s struggles for progress in freedom (kahambing, 2018). this forms the reply to a purely deterministic universe, which cannot account for moral progress. freedom and determinism are necessary concepts to understand the existential experience of kahimtang. the negation of one constitutes the negation of an essential part of their lived experience. a person needs to hold this perspective to grasp the complexities of human experience, especially in their respective kahimtang. this world, therefore, is an interplay of the helpless a priori conditions and the capacity to liberally determine in a certain way our individual life. with semblances to arguments of moral responsibility (vincent, et.al, 2011), the visayan believes that there is a place for panigkamot (hard work) in one’s latid (path in life). these kinds of understanding about the mutual necessity of freedom and determinism fall more on the contemporary discussions of compatibilism – open to the workings of both fate and free will. conclusion the long quest to understanding freedom and determinism is not yet a case closed. any idea that can contribute to the clarification of the two seemingly contradictory terms is still helpful. this research explored the visayan idea of merging freedom and determinism into one concept of kahimtang and attempted to contribute to its debate. in the idea of kahimtang, the visayan claims that there is no necessary contradiction between freedom and determinism. both concepts are necessary to understand kahimtang. the negation of any of the two beliefs would undermine the existential experience of the visayan. kahimtang is an intricate idea to the human person given that no human being has without it. moreover, the idea of being-human in kahimtang connotes an interdependent relationship between the two. there is no human without kahimtang and there is no kahimtang without human beings. kahimtang as an essential condition of being-human is perceived to be both deterministic and free. with the complexity of human kahimtang, it is not impossible to merge the two seemingly contradictory ideas. kahimtang is understood to be a deterministic belief in a sense of it being latid sa kinabuhi and hatag sa ginoo. in addition, it is known to be in favor of the theory of freedom when it claims that there is a certain autonomy of humans to determine to make better or be contented with their kahimtang. it is then argued that the visayan people lean to the side of contemporary compatibilism rather than classical one. the visayan people are not thinking of the “otherwise” but making the conditions better. and this inherent positivity of trudging the path of becoming better as a form of moral responsibility and moral progress, believing on the 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(2019). free will, determinism, and intuitive judgments about the heritability of behavior. behavior genetics, 49(2), 136-153. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 214 newspaper "kompas" in indonesian political constellation (1960-1980) apri damai sagita krissandi sanata dharma university apridamai@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010207 received 22 november 2017; revised 30 december 2017; accepted 1 february 2018 abstract this study aims to describe the situation experienced by kompas newspaper in the context of indonesian politics from 1960 to 1980. this method of this research is a qualitative descriptive study describing an event with a historical approach. the method used is critical discourse analysis by reviewing the editorial from kompas newspaper from 1960 to 1980. from the research result, it was found that malari incident (fifteenth of january 1974) was the starting point of kompas during the new order era. kompas is considered an idealist newspaper, kompas which expresses people's conscience and aspirations, boldly and critically exercises social control. the pre-malari kompas is a free, independent and articulate newspaper. on the contrary, post-malari kompas is a less idealist newspaper, which tends to represent the interests of the rulers, government or even the state which never exercise social control critically, decisively, and courageously. the post-malari kompas is a newspaper that is not free or at least a newspaper that has a very limited independence. keywords: kompas, newspapers, malari, the new order introduction kompas was first published on june 28, 1965, in jakarta. the founders of kompas are pk. ojong, jacob oetama and several other journalists of former digest magazine workers. before occupying the office at the printing pt. kinta, the editorial crew and kompas journalists do journalistic activities at jacob oetama’s home. the emergence of kompas was not separated from the political constellation of that time, where sukarno was incessantly implementing the politics of guided democracy. one of soekarno's policies at the time was the party's monopoly in the socio-political life of the community, including in the world of the press. by presidential regulation no 6 of 1964, the press is required to indulge in one political party. the cold war between the communists and the army also encouraged the birth of kompas. recognizing the dangers of the communists, lt. gen. ahmad yani as the minister of the army commander expressed his idea to frans seda as minister of plantation to issue a bold newspaper against the communists. frans ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 215 seda then contacted i.j kasimo from (parkindo) and two managers of the essence of p.k ojong and jacob oetama. at first, the newspaper was published and named bentara rakyat. but on the political grounds that the word "people" had been manipulated by the communist movement and as if it were a communist term, it was named kompas. according to soekarno, the name bentara rakyat means the guard of the people, but it was felt less clear to explain the vision and mission of the pioneers. the word "kompas" stated more clearly the purpose of the direction as a pointer. bentara rakyat then enshrined as the name of the foundation that shaded kompas. the board of bentara rakjat foundation is i.j. kasimo (chairman), frans seda (vice chairman), f.c. palaunsuka (author i), jakob oetama (author ii), and auwjong peng koen (treasurer). when pro-communism was popular, kompas was born and went against the mainstream. in addition, kompas is accused as a mouthpiece of catholics (which gave rise to kompas's ridicule as an abbreviation of the father's command). on 28 june 1965, the first print of kompas was published. after the first three days, the actual kompas circulating. the first issue of kompas consists of 11 foreign news and 7 domestic news. the introductory edition at the bottom right also includes a tagline: "let's start tying the heart today with mang usil". the editorial that is the attitude of the newspaper has not been raised by kompas, but on page two there is a writing about the birth of kompas, which became known as kompas's header. on page two there is also some news both inside and outside the country, some freelance articles. while the new sports news gets a very small share on page four. the ads only numbered six and occupied less than half a page. at the end of the period of guided democracy and the emergence of the new order, kompas was directed to become independent and general. this decision is based on the consideration that the public vision of the newspaper should be open. such vision and attitudes are considered in accordance with the function of the indonesian press, namely to develop mutual understanding in a fattening society. with this openness is expected kompas able to grow rapidly. when the events of september 30, 1965, the kompas managers were forced to take decisions at the most crucial moment. the new coup d'etat issued a provision, every published newspaper must declare loyalty to the coup attempt. pk ojong tells jacob oetama that if kompas declares loyalty is a foolish act. if the kompas is about to close at any time, it will have the same effect on their publication. this choice was proved to be true because the efforts of the pki (communist party of indonesia) failed miserably. on october 1, 1965, the regional warling authority (peperada) issued an instruction to close all newspapers to calm the social and political situation. only two media that are published are yudha news of armed forces and antara. this instruction is also intended to allow pepelrada time to verify which papers are pro and contra against the pki and the 30 september movement. finally on october 6, 1965, all the newspapers that never declared loyalty to the effort may come back. this is a blessing in disguise for kompas. in the midst of the information vacuum, people do not have much choice to buy newspapers, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 216 causing the kompas to increase in the circulation significantly and reach 23,268 copies. the hegemonic theory is important in this analysis because the hegemonic theory helps to uncover the constellation of power presented in the kompas editorial. through hegemonic theory the researcher analyse the forms of hegemony, the cause of hegemony, and the impact of state hegemony.ideology in its broadest sense is a conception of a world that implicitly manifests itself in art, law, economic activity, and in individual and collective life. the function of ideology is the preserver of the unity of the whole social bloc, as a cement and a unifying tool between the truly opposing social forces. in practice, this ideology is defined by intellectuals in the task of carrying out formal and intellectual reforms. the task is not in the empty space. the nature of the ideological struggle is not entirely from the beginning. the struggle is the process of transforming some elements to be rearranged and combined in different ways with a new core or principal principle. the ideological system cannot be made once so as a type of intellectual construction undertaken by political party leaders. it must be confronted and gradually built through political and economic struggles and its character will depend on the relationships of the various forces that existed during the time when it was built. according to simon, gramsci uses the term equivalent to ideology of culture, philosophy, worldview, or moral and intellectual reform. ideology is included in the superstructure. furthermore, in gramsci's view there are four stages of ideology: elements of consciousness, material elements, elements of identity solidarity, and elements of freedom. the element of consciousness implies that the ideology of giving matter is human to move and gain awareness of their position in the economic, political, social, and struggle to become a hegemonic class. the starting point of the element of consciousness is the common sense of a person who is uncritical and unconscious to the world. common sense comes from various sources and past events that make society accept custom, power, injustice, and oppression as a natural thing, the product of natural law, the will of god, and can not change. common sense is where the dominant ideology is built, the place of resistance and ideological opposition. the material element, at the ideological stage will be tangible. the existence of ideological material material is seen in various practical activities and incarnate in the whole way of collective life of society. ideology is not just an idea in the clouds, but it has its material existence in many practical human activities. human practical activities include the way of life of societies, institutions and social practice organizations, namely political parties, trade unions, others in civil society, state apparatus, commercial enterprises, or financial institutions. the element of solidarity identity is ideology which is successfully accommodates the interests of various subaltern classes. ideology has been able to bind as the foundation of social unity, different social groups in one container. because embracing the various social groups, in the unification of new ideologies, does not have to remove all the different ideological systems but instead transforms the ideologies that defend and rearrange some of the most formidable elements. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 217 an element of freedom is the highest stage that can be achieved by an ideology. at this stage one becomes aware that his or her corporate interest, in the present and future development, overcomes the corporate boundaries of a purely economic class, but reaches into another subordinate group. with this awareness (in common sense) society is directed in an attempt to give a great opportunity in this process because human beings are subject or facts that change history. according to gramsci, ideology is more than just an idea system. he distinguishes between the arbitrary systems proposed by certain intellectuals and philosophers, and the historical organic ideologies, the ideologies which are necessary under certain social conditions: "as long as ideology is historically necessary, it has a psychological validity: "ideology" governs human beings and provides a place for humans to move, gain awareness of their positions, their struggles, and so on. " from the above argument, the researcher attempts to analyze kompas's editorial between 1966 and 1980 using gramsci's hegemony theory. method this research uses a qualitative approach. while the method used is content analysis or content analysis. the author also uses critical discourse analysis methods. the critical discourse analysis hereinafter referred to as cda is used to express the relationship of science and power. in addition cda can be used to criticize. cda is also used to describe something, translate, analyze, and criticize the social life that is reflected in text and speech. cda deals with the study and analysis of texts or speeches to denote a discursive source of power, power, inequality, injustice, and prejudice. the researcher analyzed the 15 editorials of kompas newspaper, between 1966 and 1974. the editorial of the sample is as follows: 1) kompas, january 7, 1966 entitled scarcity of goods and rising price of basic substances; 2) kompas, may 5, 1967 entitled criticism not perongrong; 3) kompas, 27 may 1967 entitled eliminating misunderstanding corruption; 4) kompas, 7 april 1970 entitled interference in the pni ?; 5) kompas, march 22, 1971 entitled sequence of the candidates; 6) kompas, march 30, 1971 entitled political structure of renewal; 7) kompas, january 11, 1974 entitled hope reasonable government only; 8) kompas, january 22, 1974 entitled integrity of national leaders; 9) kompas, january 26, 1974 entitled description puspen hankam; 10) kompas, january 15, 1974 entitled president's appeal; 11) kompas, april 29, 1974 entitled control by the press; 12) kompas, january 15, 1974 entitled appeal do not strike; 13) kompas, august 20, 1974 entitled president soeharto on illegal drawing; 14) kompas, november 16, 1974 entitled law and power; and 15) kompas, december 20, 1974 entitled development of psychology. the data collection techniques are consisted of six steps: (1) browse through and read over and over the editorial, (2) look for the hegemonic facts contained in the editorial, (3) find the source of the literature of the historical document, or the news of the malari event (malapetaka 15 january), (4) find the ideologies in the editorial, (5) analyze the ideologies in the editorial using critical discourse analysis method, and (6) write down the results of research. the data analysis procedure used in this study is based on the critical discourse analysis model of norman fairclough. the study procedure was modified into six steps: critical ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 218 creative reading of the data source, the identification of data is hegemony in the editorial, the presentation of the data has been identified, the interpretation of meaning, the inference of meaning, and the presentation of processing results. findings and discussion kompas ideology: from populism to bureaucratism (1966-1980) at the beginning of the reign, the new order had inherited a hypereconomic crisis that reached an alarming peak. therefore, the new order rulers undertook a massive and drastic stabilization effort and economic rehabilitation. this program, on the one hand, succeeded in reducing hyper-inflation, but on the other hand, generated a new crisis in society. for the press, this loss is felt when subsidies on the price of newsprint are removed. this situation is exacerbated by the increase in production costs and printing costs (agassi in abar, 1995, p.47). an illustration of the circumstances experienced by the newspaper at that time in the crisis situation was written by p.k. ojong in kompas daily, november 3, 1966, which contains about the cessation of government subsidy to the price of newsprint and the rising cost of production and printing resulted in daily price increase kompas. p.k. ojong would like to thank the customers of kompas daily who can understand the phenomenon. nevertheless, in the early period of the rise of the new order, the ruler viewed and treated the non-anti-communist press as his partner of power. publication efforts by exploiting all the brutality, brutality and fraud of the pki against its political opponents, especially the generals or high-ranking officers. likewise, press publications or press releases concerning sukarno's beliefs, such as subandrio, omar dhani, and jusuf muda dalam, by exposing all their political and economic crimes (abar, 1995, p.65). in contrast, the non-anti-communist press also acquired a struggling partner against one of its main enemies, the pki. therefore, in the first years of the new order revival, the press gave a positive reception for the army's particular political movement and the military in general. this can be seen from the postpress epithets for them, for example, kompas gives the military nickname as the savior (abar, 1995, p.67). after the pki and the guided democracy regime collapsed, perceptions, attitudes and the treatment of new order rulers against the press began to change. this is mainly due to two critical factors that are mutually supportive. first, the power of the new order grew stronger and bigger after the guided democracy regime collapsed. no more obstacles or political opponents of the army or abri in general or paved the way of his power, except in himself (crouch in abar, 1995, p.68) secondly, since 1966, the indonesian press began to be critical of the new order's power, primarily aimed at the phenomenon of corruption within the bureaucracy of the new order state, which began to grow and multiply. even some daily, directly or indirectly, accused some officers close to president soeharto of corruption. the two factors above made the new order regime more cautious of the press and began to take anti-press actions, such as appeals or warnings to keep the press more compromise in criticizing the ruler. in addition, the ruler also began to do self-introspection as a positive reaction from the criticism of the press against him. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 219 in 1966, along with the rise of student movements and protests, populism and press-like stance began to be apparent, as he responded to public grievances over the severe economic crisis in early 1966, in particular, the problem of scarcity of goods and rising prices of goods and the rise basic necessities, kompas including the press which is critical of the government: ... neither do we, especially those folk leaders know whether what today is living among the people. so it is appropriate to take the steps of wisdom. things that worry about the crowd now is certainly about the rise in prices of basic needs. it's a real fact and we feel it ourselves. the price increase was partly due to government action in the form of formal tariff increases in some areas and prices of some goods. of course, the intention of the government to do such a drastic action is, in order to alleviate the life of all of us. if now the increase is expected to be temporary in terms of this transition. however, in fact, the follow-up actions of the implementation of presidential decree no. 22 that, make people become restless .... (kompas, january 7, 1966). in addition to the critical, can be seen from the example above titles, the element of courage in complaining in kompas complaints and demands to the government hard. the critical attitude of the indonesian press intensified in 1967. this critical attitude of the press was manifested, especially in two respects, firstly criticizing and criticizing the increasingly phenomenal graft activity in the state bureaucracy, both expressing critical and creative support for the newly emerging new order government. the criticism of the press against corruption among the officials of this state, made president soeharto go awry. on the one hand, he wants to meet the demands of the people to eradicate corruption firmly in order to maintain the authority of his government. meanwhile, on the other hand, by eradicating such corruption means his government has dared to "cut himself," in the sense that suharto will crack down on those around him (abar, 1995, p.90). but among the top officials of the state emerged a negative reaction to the press criticisms that were considered outspoken, unscrupulous and disrespectful, so they were said to have undermined the legitimate government. in relation to that came back the reaction from the press, especially kompas. criticism not hurt ... as a democratic institution, the function of the press is no different from other democratic institutions that are: to bring the voice of the people, to exercise control, criticism, and correction on any form of violence so that power is always beneficial for the implementation of the welfare of the community. we want to affirm again, the purpose of such a function of the press is positive. to keep the power from being abused. in order for that power to reach the right target, namely to realize the welfare of the people. then it is clear that by its very nature, the control, criticism, and correction of the form of power is not to undermine the holder of power, but to help that power remain authoritative because it is carried out to achieve the right objective ... (kompas, may 5, 1967). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 220 eliminating misunderstanding corruption ... misunderstandings increasingly arise when some abris will be targeted against this corruption eradication effort. intentionally we emphasize the word wrong in this case. because of both sides then there is a dark power that takes generalization tactics. the goal of eradicating corruption is not military or civilian. the general goal is corruptors. these corruptors are found in civilian groups as well as in the military. the eradicated is not a class or force, which is eradicated corrupt elements of any party without generalization attitude. why is it that abri is targeted? above the suede in arguing that it is not true at all. not abri, but some people in it .... (kompas, 27 may 1967) the press criticism of the new order government with regard to the increasing corruption in the state bureaucracy and the demand that the government is more indifferent and serious in combating and prosecuting its perpetrators indiscriminately did not diminish the press sympathy of the newly created new order government. the press still provides support. however, the support is, of course, critical and creative. the development of the critical attitude of the press from year to year increasingly shows improvement. this attitude is manifested in various demands, criticisms, criticisms, and praise to various parties, especially to the government, to the various social, economic and political issues that occur. these demands, criticisms, and criticisms are presented boldly, firmly, to the point, and without hesitation. however, in 1969, the conducive atmosphere between the press and the rulers had begun to crack. this is indicated by the start of the "anti-press" movement by the new order government. a number of regulations began to emerge and some of the press was brought to justice for allegedly insulting government officials or legitimate governmental powers. however, this did not diminish the critical attitude of the press to the various social, economic and political events of the day. even the main elements of the country's political power, namely the military, in 1969 received considerable attention and criticism from the press, especially kompas. after that, corruption issues began to spread again and many critical actions were done by students and responded by the press. therefore, in 1970 president soeharto established a commission 4 whose function was to eradicate corruption. the indonesian press in 1970 was also partly concerned with criticizing the political actions of the new order government which had intervened in the internal affairs of various socio-political organizations of society. for example, government intervention against party parties such as pni (partai nasional indonesia), parmusi, persahi, idi, and pwi. as written kompas as follows. interference in the pni? ... interference from outside, let alone from rulers, into party autonomy, temporarily seems to benefit the ruler. but it actually harms him. he will create intrigue within the party. the ambitious, irresponsible people get the channel. they will not hesitate to credit their own colleagues in front of the authorities. is it such ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 221 a healthy party? the healthy political life that will itself be influenced by unnatural party intrigues ... (kompas, 7 april 1970) the attention of the indonesian press in 1971 was largely focused on electoral issues, from preparation, implementation to the issue of socio-political implications of elections. kompas also included the most vocal on the issue of the election. the election that took place in july was the first election and organized by the new order government. therefore, this election is very important for the new order government to seek popular support and to gain or to strengthen the political legitimacy of its power. it is in this context that the new order government is very concerned to win the socio-political organization that represents its political aspirations and the interests of its power. the enormous ambition of winning elections for its socio-political organization made the new order government use all means, including forced and intimidation. excesses cannot be avoided. for the press, the "catastrophe" that struck before the 1971 election was due to some restrictions on the giving and commenting of the press, especially in the quiet week, on certain political issues. even kopkamtib (command of operations restoring security and order) threatened to close the newspaper that had violated the calm week terms set by the election institute (lpu). this kopkamtib threat really proved to be a reality with the prohibition of two newspapers of the capital, duta masyarakat and kami daily, for one day on july 3, to coincide with election day. both of these newspapers are banned for violating electoral provisions set by the government. in the political conditions ahead of the hot election, along with some regulations on the press, the critical attitude that has developed since 1966 has been maintained by the indonesian press. kompas is one of the dailies that has a critical attitude to the phenomenon of the election. candidate sequence ... if the divisions of the parties by the electorate are regarded as the inability of parties to fight for their aspirations, namely the improvement of fate, as its leaders seize their own seats (for example), perhaps the electorate then seeks other alternatives. in this case, the golkar party, for example, may then be another alternative. but if voters perceive the breakup among the parties is what makes it, the voters can behave in two ways: being indifferent or even being fanatical towards their party ... (kompas, march 22, 1971). renewal of political structure ... we do not question, people agree or not with golkar. objectively, however, it must be acknowledged that golkar contains concrete political reform. objections that we hear may not even be about the purpose but about the ways. the ways are thought to be accompanied by excesses that can become a system and therefore endanger the renewal business itself. what are people's objections to the process of reforming the political structure through golkar? miscellaneous, as far as we can catch. first on the ways that are considered too bulldozer style, too less elegant, contains the elements of coercion. there are other concerns. soldiers to play a role in golkar, too dominant ... (kompas, march 30, 1971). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 222 the year 1973 was a hot year, a year of concern, where demands on the need for equitable distribution and concern for social justice were increasingly voiced, and so did the development strategies, aid and foreign capital (especially capital from japan), as well as corruption and state deviation. meanwhile, the reaction to the demands of society, including the press, was becoming increasingly negative, repressive and harsh from the new order government. the public demand for equitable development and social justice voiced the press critically and courageously. similarly, criticism and criticism of the development strategy, aid, and foreign capital, indigenous and non-indigenous, as well as corruption and misappropriation of state money, are expressed in a critical and bold way. this shows that the press at that time was not affected by the negative, repressive and harsh reaction of the new order government. the climax is the occurrence of malari events. one of the aftermaths of the malapetaka january 15 (malari) 1974, was the banning of 12 indonesian press, a major disaster for the indonesian press during the new order government, as well as the rise of the bureaucratic and rhetorical-normative nature of the indonesian press. it is in this context that the malari event becomes a demarcation boundary between the populist press and the elite-bureaucratic press, and between the critical press and the rhetorical-normative press. in the days leading up to the malari incident, the indonesian press is still critical. for example, in the headers derived by the following kompas daily: hope the government is fair ... the suggestion to live according to social reasoning would not have been possible without the efforts to combat corruption. and corruption is easy, because of its disheveled acuteness, as well as the depletion of social consciousness. the rules to limit the entry of luxury goods would be useless if the lamas were still going on. especially if the official voices to stem all sorts of luxuries is just to 'calm' and 'cool down' the current public turmoil. ... it was put forward to simply remind the government to remain natural in its efforts to fight against its current luxury. no need to overacting! .... (kompas, january 11, 1974). a few days after the malari incident, especially after a number of newspapers in banned, the populism and critical attitude of the press began to fade. the further drawn in advance of the malari event, the more obvious the process of fading populism and the critical attitude of the press will be, and the more obvious the process of eliciting-bureaucratic and rhetorical-normative will be enhanced. the press shows more support and approval of any policy made by the state and prefers to cite the political rhetoric of high-ranking state officials to be underlined, affirmed and strengthened. there has never been any criticism, criticism or protest from the press against the policies made by the state or against the rhetoric and political actions of high officials of the state deemed incompatible with the will and aspirations of the people. in other words, the post-malari indonesia press is an affirmative press (abar, 1995, p.153). kompas does not include banned newspapers. therefore, the critical attitude that was initially shown by kompas began to fade and even became elasticallybureaucratic and rhetorical-normative. the result of tjipta lesmana's research on ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 223 daily kompas concludes that malari event is a "milestone" for the change of orientation of kompas daily editorial. prior to malari, kompas was still idealistic and "voicing the conscience of the people" and exercising social control critically and courageously. according to tjipta lesmana, his function as a bulldog (watchdog) changed drastically into a "spokesman" or interpreter of a government official statement (abar, 1995, p.3). this can be seen from kompas's editorial after the malari incident. integrity of national leadership ... to the pwi central board, for two and a half hours on monday, president soeharto declared his judgment on the progress of the situation. he also blurted out his allegations, rumors and press coverage concerning the president's family. particularly related to tien soeharto's mother relationship with various companies, such as astra, pt sahit, bogasari and batik keris ... we who listen directly to the president's statement, draw conclusions, the information is honest, what it is. in place, we all believe in the integrity of national leadership. the integrity of national pinpinan is important, now there is no doubt, even the traces, but surely, the president will continue to clear up the presidential environment and eradicate the misconduct that society hopes ... (kompas, january 22, 1974). description puspen hankam ... in connection with the occurrence of arrests, brig. gen. sumrahadi, head of the hankam information center provided the press release. the information according to our judgment is correct and relieves the public. described, the detentions were aimed at those suspected of being activists of the 15th and 16th january events as well as the perpetrators of arson and bombing. it is hoped that people should not be restless because the detentions aim to educate them, especially the younger generation to be responsible for the actions they take to explore the background of the event. but furthermore, as confirmed by the spokesman hankam, the principle of law is still implemented. the certainty of law is still enforced. therefore, the public need not be restless ... (kompas, january 26, 1974) president's invitation ... so it is no exaggeration what the president, repelita ii affirmed that the first year we will soon enter into a development that is characteristic and aimed at populism, which has to mean for every person and the whole society, which calls for the responsibility of every person and all of the society. and the light will also be more enjoyed by everyone and the whole community .... (kompas, january 15, 1974). control by press ... when accepting the head of the national news agency antara, secretary of state secretary soedharmono sh explained that the government expects social control from the press, because it also helps the government in carrying out its duties, especially in the field of development at that time. affirmed, should not the public opinion, the government does not want to be criticized. the government expects the existence of constructive and fact-based criticisms. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 224 he added that incitement, slander and untrue news will only lead to chaos and this situation hampers the development of our society ... (kompas, april 29, 1974). exclamation do not crash ... on thursday 13 june, major general g.h. mantik as laksus pangkopkamtibda jaya issued an appeal. the contents call for the attention of the workers so that they do not strike. the strike will be held accountable. before the call came out, the all-indonesia workers' federation issued a statement of its contents warning the workers who acted wildly ... understandably, if the security responsible person issues an appeal to the workers not to engage in illicit acts, such as strikes. if workers are prohibited from striking, it does not mean that their interests are neglected or should not be fought. the opposite should be, since striking and illegal acts are forbidden, so that their interests are fulfilled as far as possible, in order that the prohibited steps, need not be taken .... (kompas, january 15, 1974) president soeharto on illegal drawing ... for the duty of serving the community, civil servants receive no direct service rewards from the communities they serve. the obligation to provide remuneration from the public served, if any, shall be provided to the state in the form of taxes, user charges, fees and so forth, which constitutes the acceptance of the state. thus the assertion of president soeharto is poured in the last pages of his freshness in front of the siding of the house of representatives last august 15. we are very relieved to hear president soeharto's words. moreover, this effort accompanied the order to stop all kinds of illegal and illegal charges under any pretext. and that every government agency makes a plan and takes concrete action to dismiss the situation ... (kompas, august 20, 1974) law and power ... between, november 12, the general attorney general ali said sh attended the ceremony of the handover of the chief prosecutor of south sulawesi. among them, the attorney general shows the difference between law and power. he said law enforcement is not the same as the enforcement of power, because the main target of law enforcement is justice, while the main target of power is submission. the attorney general's affirmation we consider important .... (kompas, november 16, 1974) development of psychology ... on sunday 15 december, president soeharto inaugurated the palagan ambarawa monument. in his address, the president explained that the construction of monuments is part of development. that is psychological development. we are then reminded of the principle of development formulated in the gbhn, is the principle of balance ... the road of development will be easier if only material prosperity becomes the only guideline. not cultivated as well as welfare. therefore, the development that only wants to achieve prosperity, no need to question the way. because it holds to the principle of balance, then it must also consider the way we build. on the contrary, only questioning the way, also not hit. we can remove in place without producing concrete improvements for the life of the masses .... (kompas, december 20, 1974). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 225 from some of the above editorials and research, the press in general and the kompas in particular, it can be said that the malari incident was the "water limit" or the starting point of press performance during the new order period. the premalari press is an idealist press, a press that voices conscience and people's aspirations, a bold and critical press exercises social control. the pre-malari press is a free, independent and articulate press. in contrast, the post-malari press is a press that is not or less idealistic, tends to "represent" the interests of the ruler, government or state and rarely even never exercise social control critically, decisively and courageously. the post-malari press is a non-free press or at least a press with very limited independence. the post-malari press performance in the 80s to the present has yet to show any fundamental change. the press still tends to be a government release. in this sphere, kompas participated intervened by the malari incident. the threat of banning is one of kompas starting points in its ideological change. kompas which originally ideology humans and be critical to government performance as if silenced, changed drastically become elite-bureaucratic. the voice of ordinary folk used to decorate the kompas daily turned into a bureaucratic elite voice containing government policies. ironically, the policy does not necessarily support the people, it can be possible as the legitimacy of power alone. kompas is like a tiger that loses its fangs. kompas continues to survive with the changed drastic ideology. relation of kompas with state discussions about the press cannot be separated from the interests behind the press, especially the importance of the information submitted. in the development of the latest press, there are at least two major interests behind the press, namely economic interests, and power interests, which make up the content of the press, the information presented, and the meaning it offers. between these two interests, there is a more fundamental importance that is neglected, namely the public interest. the press that should serve as a public space, caused by the above interests, just ignores the public interest itself. the strength of economic interests and political power is what really makes the press cannot be neutral, honest, fair, objective and open. as a result, the information presented by the press has raised the issue of serious objectivity of knowledge in the press itself. economic interests and political power will determine whether the information conveyed by a press contains false truths and truths; conveys objectivity or subjectivity; neutral or aligned; presenting facts or twisting facts; describe reality or simulate reality (piliang, 2005, p.214). the public and society, in general, are among the two main interests of the press, which make them a silent majority, who have no power in establishing and deciding information in their own public sphere. on the one hand, when the public sphere is dominated by information politics, which makes information as a political force, the press is transformed into an extension of the ruling power by controlling the public sphere, such as the new order press after the malari incident of 1974. on the other hand, when it is controlled by the economy political information, information into a tool of interest to seek profits as much as possible by exploiting the public, as a basic principle of capitalism (piliang, 2005, p.214). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 226 it is not surprising that the indonesian historian and politician benedict r. o'g anderson of cornell university, who writes quality books on nationalism and southeast asia, among others java in a time of revolution: occupation and resistance 1944-1946 and imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, saw the critical role of kompas. anderson calls kompas a very new order newspaper (new order's newspaper excellence). kompas is very compromised with president soeharto's regime. the pressure of the soeharto government was very effective in kompas, resulting in a careful style of writing. that is the strategy of kompas to get around the hegemonic power of the new order, in order to survive, as well as to save thousands of employees who become dependents. however, it is perfectly legitimate if benedict anderson interpreted that strategy was a sign of the kompas' submission to the new order's power. newspapers as an institution have advantages, as well as weaknesses. weaknesses that can easily be captured when compared to the advantages and weaknesses of people with an institution. people tend to be freer, more clever, fresher, more adept. institutions cannot be separated from the bureaucracy, tend to be slow, tend to be a lot of considerations and obstacles, tends not too agile capture actuality and catch it as well (oetama, 2001, p.197). in the new order government, the press was always confronted with a licensing mechanism, siupp, a press publishing business license. the mechanism is actually one of the state's efforts to hegemonize the press. the following three reasons can explain it: the dependence on licensing, the right to grant the license is the state, and the dominance of the state. the state appears as the only one capable of giving the right to the press business. if the state’s will is not obeyed, the country is the one holding the decision to revoke the press publishing business license. therefore, the press is politically powerless and also meaningless in terms of capital. conclusion in public relations with the state, the press is in a position between the two. the press does not belong entirely to society, but it also does not belong entirely to the state, so the press acts as mediation. the only area that cannot be managed by the state directly is the press (print media). none of the newspapers published and managed by the state are successful journalistically and economicallyfinancially. according to piliang (2005, p.366), the existence of the press is exactly in the middle, both as a place and as an interest, then the press becomes important for both. the position of the press is considered harmful to the state. when in a major political change, the press is capable of impacting the country almost unexpectedly. that's when the press becomes powerful and has power. such a press position has several functions. the first function, the press increases the imagination of those in charge of power, enhances the imagination that if not controlled, then the press will be used by others to criticize its power. the second function, the press increases the imagination of the non-powerful, the imagination of the person represented by the press. the third function is to increase the imagination of the press itself, that he is the representative of the people, the representatives of the little people, and so on. increased imagination in such complexity, is indeed the dynamics of the press work. that is, on the one hand, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 214-227 227 the press is facing a very large kind of power that is essentially incapable of being opposed by the press itself. on the other hand, the press feels the power to urge or force the power to follow his voice. reference abar, a.z. (1995). 1996-1974: kisah pers indonesia. yogyakarta: lkis. bourchier, d. (2007). pancasila versi orde baru. yogyakarta: aditya media. budiman, a. (1995). kebudayaan materialisme, egoisme, dan persaingan (mep) serta cara menangkalnya. dalam suryana, a.s (ed), demokrasi dan budaya mep (materialisme, egoisme, dan persaingan). jakarta: bina reka pariwara. hanazaki, y. (1998). pers terjebak. jakarta: institut studi arus informasi herianto, a. (1998). masihkah politik jadi panglima? politik kesusastraan indonesia mutakhir. jakarta: lp3s. liddle, r.w. (1992). partisipasi dan partai politik. jakarta: pt temprint. luwarso, l. (1998). wajah media massa kita. in sutrisno,e (ed), reformasi media massa. jakarta: aliansi jurnalis indonesia. oetama, j. (2001). pers indonesia. jakarta: gramedia pustaka utama. piliang, y.a. (2005). transpolitik: dinamika politik di dalam era virtualitas. yogyakarta: jalasutra. pujiharto & dewojati, c. (2001). ideologi cerpen-cerpen koran di yogyakarta (research report of research institute of gadjah mada univeristy). sudjatmiko, b. (2000). represi melalui media massa pada masa soeharto. in dedy, n & hidayat (eds), pers dalam revolusi mei runtuhnya sebuah hegemoni. jakarta: pt. gramedia pustaka utama. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 14-29 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 14 the ambivalence of life is strange in portraying its female characters ridanti oktavanya and yasmine anabel panjaitan universitas indonesia ridanti.oktavanya@ui.ac.id and yasmine.anabel@ui.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.030102 received 30 july 2019; revised 6 august 2019; accepted 20 august 2019 abstract nowadays, there has been a new trend in the video game industry to unleash the stereotypical female characters as a response to the increasing criticism toward gender equality in the video game industry. life is strange is one example of video games that challenges typical female characters who are usually described as powerless and objectified. however, such a progression has not amended the problematic female representation completely within its narrative. by using the concept of hegemonic masculinity, this paper discusses the ambivalences in life is strange in challenging stereotypical female representations. the result of the analysis shows that although life is strange successfully subverts the female physical representation through its design, the narrative still perpetuates hegemonic masculinity by means of sacrificial heroine and lesbianism eroticization. keywords: female representation, hegemonic masculinity, lesbianism eroticization, sacrificial heroine, video game industry introduction the video game industry is known for its androcentrism. its characters and players are male-dominated, which affects how the narrative and the visual graphic are designed. dyer-witheford and depeuter's 2009 study (as cited in cote, 2016) states that masculinity beliefs have dominated video games as they are "rooted in the masculine milieu of the military industrial complex" (cote, 2016, p. 9). women in the video game industry are often portrayed as the damsel in distress, and the object of sexuality to attract male players in the video game industry. in contrast, men are portrayed as the hero, and they can utilize his agency to empower the community. nevertheless, the video game industry does not only lead to negative impacts on the female players but also on the male players (fox, gilbert, & tang, 2018). fox, gilbert, & tang (2018) state that it reinforces toxic masculinity, which is evident in "sexist and misogynistic comments, preoccupation with sex and genitalia, homophobia and gay bashing, and sexual callousness." (p. 4066). however, nowadays, there has been a new mailto:ridanti.oktavanya@ui.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 15 trend in the video game industry to redefine stereotypical female characters (lynch, tompkins, van driel, & fritz, 2016; rajkowska, 2014). life is strange is a part of this new trend. it depicts the first female lead character differently compared to the other standard video games (elena, 2016). the game does not sexualize its female characters; the first lead female character is portrayed as a heroine instead. life is strange revolves around the story of two major female characters, maxine caulfield or max, who is depicted as a shy and introvert girl, and chloe price or chloe, who is depicted as a queer and freespirited person. they should investigate the root causes of several issues which is related to bullying, sexual assault, and violence against her women counterparts in her town, the arcadia bay, by the help of max's power to rewind time. since the game employs choice-driven gameplay, the game claims that the choices have its consequences for the past, present, and future story. even so, the game is predestined to end without the involvement of the player's choices that they have had chosen before. the game eventually serves two communal choices which are caused by max’s power that in consequence generates catastrophe in the town. max should choose to sacrifice either the arcadia bay or chloe. it is a tough choice for max since chloe is considered as her best friend, even assumed to be her girlfriend depending on how the players play the game. at the beginning of the story, max and chloe who have been apart for years coincidentally reunite because max has saved chloe from the gun discharged by nathan prescott, a male character portrayed as a bully and misogynist. max’s heroic action also activates her power to rewind time. after they have reunited and can work together to investigate the problems occurring in the town, there are many things that threaten chloe's life which max should overcome by rewinding the time. however, unknown to her, the more she operates her power to rewind time, the worse the storm is becoming. in the game, this catastrophe is intertwined with the chaos theory in which a small change can alter a substantial difference condition to the future universe (boeing, 2016). although the story ends in tragedy, life is strange received an overwhelmingly positive reception from their players both female and male, as shown on steam, video game distributor platform (“life is strange”, 2015). the page also shows the popularity of the game as one of the best adventure episodic video games with is several awards, the best storyline by british academy games award, the games for impact by the game award, and many more. if we look at the community discussion on the life is strange page on steam, most of the players are interested both in the design and the narrative which bring new progress to the video game industry in depicting the female characters. in term of the design, the game is seen significantly subvert the typical "sexy" female physical representation by presenting diverse body types to portray the female characters (pewter, 2015). the narrative is perceived to advocate new forms of affection intimacy (seller, 2016), which depends on how we play the game. in other words, the players can choose whom max is sexually attracted to, chloe or warren, max’s male counterparts. despite the positive female physical portrayal and the positive receptions, the narrative of life is strange remains a flaw. a previous research study has stated that although life is strange advocates several feminist values, the female character sidekick, chloe, is depicted "as a sacrifice for the greater good and the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 16 continuation of the community.” (butt & dunne, 2017, p. 1). choe’s fate in the narrative unmasks the sexist attitude where a woman’s free-spirited personality can be harmful, and eliminating this spirit is necessary for the greater good community. besides, max as the female heroine character is possibly trapped into a sacrificial heroine characterization. the trait is evident in a catastrophic output after the heroine utilizes her power (crosby, 2004). furthermore, related to the implied lesbian narrative in the game, max and chloe’s queer identities are suspected of being eroticized. louderback and whitley’s 1997 study (as cited in puhl, 2010, p. 9) suggest that men perceive lesbianism as acceptable since men see it, two females being together, as erotic. also, research which sees the prejudiced attitude against gay men and lesbians finds that men tend to eroticize lesbian and have a negative attitude against gay men more than women (thomas & yost, 2011). louderback and whitley (1997) explain that one of the reasons for such an attitude is related to the traditional gender belief system which expects men to hold stereotypical masculinity: being heterosexual and as a sexual subject. therefore, lesbianism narrative does not only perpetuate women as a sexual object but also indicates homophobic to maintain heteronormativity as the default ideology in the video game industry. due to the presumed inconsistency of the game in portraying female characters, this paper will examine whether the video game tends to maintain traditional gender roles or to advocate equality. also, although many scholars have discussed the controversy of the video game industry in gender studies framework, studies that examine how video games challenge female character stereotypes through the design and the narrative remain scarce. a previous work by butt & dunne (2017) only focuses its analyses about life is strange on the sidekick character, chloe, by analyzing the trolley problem in the utilitarianism framework to reveal its game ideology about gender role in the video game industry. this paper discusses the ambivalence of the game in challenging gender issues. to examine the ambivalence, the textual analysis that is combined with the concept of hegemonic masculinity for the narrative and male gaze for visual design will be chosen as the theoretical framework. theoretical framework in this paper, the game is considered as a text and textual analysis is used to examine the game’s ideology about gender. according to carr (2009, p. 1), "textual analysis of games involves thinking about how meaning emerges during play." it can be said that the ideology produced by the game life is strange is materialized when the game is practiced, actualized, or played. the meaningmaking using textual analysis in this paper is intended to examine the ideology in the framework of hegemonic masculinity. connell (1995) argues that hegemonic masculinity is a practice “which guarantees the dominant position of men and the subordination of women,” (p. 77). connell (1995) also argues that women are perceived as sexual objects for men and this perception validates men's masculinity. men compete for each other for this (donaldson, 1993), which dangerously can create a harmful gender paradigm that can stimulate homophobia and perpetuate women as merely an object. therefore, based on that constructed gender role conceptualization, male domination which overlaps with heteronormativity and homophobia is the fundamental issue of hegemonic ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 17 masculinity. this gender issue is manifested in the narrative of life is strange. male domination in the game is reflected by the conception of a female sacrificial heroine and lesbianism eroticization which reflects the heteronormativity and homophobia. masculinity is also manifested into male gaze (gonzalez, 2014). male gaze is an act of seeing women as the object of sexual desire by men and not as the subject. male gaze was firstly introduced by laura mulvey (1989) in her article “visual pleasure and narrative cinema.”. she argues that cinema offers many possible aesthetic pleasures such as scopophilia. according to mulvey (1989), scopophilia is the act of objecting and controlling people trough gaze, which can give the subject a sexual pleasure. like classic hollywood cinema, the video games industry has its male gaze as a prominent issue (hoffswell, 2011). it often sexualizes female characters through the certain camera angle which focuses only on the certain parts of the female characters’ body and “the male character is not looked at or objectified in the same manner” (gonzales, 2014, p. 9). method this paper would examine the design and the narrative of the game which would be combined with the concept male gaze for the visual design and hegemonic masculinity for the narrative. for the design, the paper would examine the portrayal of female physical character by analyzing several aspects of design graphic that include the design of clothes, body type, gesture and how the camera took a shot towards the female characters. the result of the analysis would be related to the game’s stance on the portrayal of female physical representation in the video game industry. in terms of narrative, the paper would examine the portrayal of female characters by examining max’s power, max’s attitude toward the power, max and chloe’s relationship, and the problematic ending of the story. the result of the examination would reveal the game’s attitude toward hegemonic masculinity. findings and discussion part 1: visual design of life is strange since male players dominate the video game industry, many video games create a visual design which is presumed to be appealing for the heterosexual male players. it is intended so that they can be immersed in the game-play, which simultaneously generates profit for the video games (hoffswell, 2011). hoffswell (2011) also states that the video games industry designs its female characters in a sexualized way and thus demonstrates the male gaze. for example, female characters are designed with an unattainable body type mostly in the shape of a narrow waist, big breast, and buttock (jansz & martis, 2007; cote, 2016). different from that standard visual design, the visual design of life is strange fairly portrays its female characters which significantly minimizes male gaze, by the aspects of its logic plausibility. according to wu (2012), logic plausibility in the video game "refers to whether the visual design of the object fits with its function described in the story" (p.106). logic plausibility in life is strange visual design is evident in several characters designs, manifested in their clothes, body types, and gestures. the way the camera takes a shot, such as the camera angle, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 18 and cut-scene, also significantly contribute to defining the logic plausibility of the game design. first, clothes design in life is strange is driven by story and setting. throughout the episodes of life is strange, the clothes of the characters are designed for its practical utilities. the female characters in life is strange are dressed in clothes that indicate their social status and the climate of the location instead of being dressed in inappropriate clothing for its storyline. most of the characters wear clothes which indicate them as a student, teacher, mother, and security who live in a cold town below 10° celsius. for instance, the main character max, an 18-year-old photography student, wears jeans, sneakers, a tshirt, and sometimes a jacket which show her identity as a student who lives in a cold-weather town. similarly, the moment when max and chloe wear bikini is driven by setting and story requirements. different from most the video games which reveal female's private body for the purpose of attracting the presumed straight male players–indicated by its unparalleled story and setting (cote, 2016 )– chloe and max are designed to wear a bikini since they are about to swim in a swimming pool in the blackwell academy pool. additionally, aside from the social status and climate of the location, the mechanic of the game also helps to minimize male gaze which comes from the clothes design. the stereotypically sexy clothes (cleavage-revealing clothes) which are worn by dana, another female character in the game, does not become a channel to serve heterosexual male players' voyeuristic pleasure since there is no zoom in or zoom out mechanics which can explore her breast in favor of the male gaze. second, unlike most of the stereotypical female characters in the video game industry, which are portrayed with the emphasis on the buttock and breast, the female characters in life is strange are featured in a variety of realistic body shape as a result of its genre as a realism video game. one of the examples is presented by max, who inevitably becomes the object of the players' stare since the game is told from her perspective. max is shown to have a skinny body, with a small breast, and buttock that is covered with her sling bag. that portrayal also indicates that max as the first female lead character departs from the "laraphenomenon" which is a term that is referenced to a strong heroine, yet sexualized protagonist female lead character named lara croft from tomb raider (jansz and martis, 2007). just like max, other characters who also represent diverse body types are alyssa and dana. unlike most of the video games whose fat female characters are depicted as a joke or a psychopath such as in fat princess and dead sliding, alyssa is neither presented as a joke nor evil just because of her full-figured body. on the contrary, she appears as a protagonist student who has a good relationship with max and even helps max to gather information for max's investigation. she is humanized despite all the portrayals of fat female characters in the video game industry. on the other hand, dana, who is portrayed as a conventionally attractive, gender-conforming and her attire leaves her cleavage shown, is not exaggeratedly designed as the stereotypically sexy girl in the video game industry. her body type is considered as an attainable body compared to the standard default body type in the video game industry which is “portrayed with an emphasis on their buttocks and large breasts” (cote, 2016). another aspect of life is strange which significantly redefines harmful stereotypical female character representation in the video game industry is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 19 gestures. gestures play a significant role to communicate the state of feeling and emotion of the gameplay. it also conveys the game intention: does it try to engage the players in the atmosphere of the game? or does it simply to entertain and attract certain players? the gestures in life is strange that are presented by the female characters demonstrate their emotional state rather than to attract male gaze. for example, in episode 3: chaos theory, instead of presenting sexual gesture which is considered as a form of male gaze (sarkeesan, 2016), victoria, an antagonist, and flirtatious female character, seduced toward mr. jefferson, a male lecturer, verbally: "just imagine if you pick my photo though. we would have spent time together. that could be.. fun, don't you think?" it indicates the game tries to depict female sexuality in another way which suggests that sexuality can be expressed in many forms; it does not have to sexualize the female character which creates male gaze. sexualization for female characters in a video game according to sarkeesan (2016) is an intention to design, frame, and dress the female characters to be sexually appealing for the presumed male characters, whereas sexuality exists within every individual and can be expressed in many kinds of form. therefore, the game presents victoria’s sexual desire by the way that is humanizing rather than sexualizing. an equally important aspect in the video game life is strange which does not only challenge harmful stereotypical female physical representation but also minimizes male gaze exist in the cut-scene and camera angle. in episode 3: chaos theory, when max and chloe are at blackwell academy swimming pool wearing bikini, the players are positioned as passive spectators who do not have control over max and chloe since they both are presented in a cut-scene, a sequence of video game that is not interactive or does not require the players' intervention. aside from that, the shot of the camera is taken by actively moving the shot from one another, between chloe to max. this moving camera represents the perspective which is taken only from both characters, chloe and max, not the players' perspective. therefore, whenever max or chloe's upper body appears in the frame, it suggests that it is still based on max or chloe's perspective (see figure 1). the only shot that is taken from the front, which can be interpreted as the player's perspective, does not reveal their body since they are still in the pool. (see figure 2) figure 1. max’s upper body from chloe’s perspective as signified by chloe’s silhouette. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 20 figure 2. the front perspective showing max and chloe from the player’s perspective. in addition to cut-scene which limits the exploration of private female body, cut-scene in the scene the end of the world of episode 4 also limits male gaze. the setting of the scene where is located at the blackwell academy pool is exposed through a cut-scene. since that cut-scene functions to picture the party situation, the girls who wear bikini inevitably are shown in the cut-scene. however, they do not become an object of male gaze since the camera only takes a glance shoot. also, the game serves no interactive interaction with the girls who wear bikini, which prevents male gaze. according to wu (2012), interaction is the core of the gameplay experience. it means that if the players immerse in the interaction which placing women as the object of male gaze, it can give them almost a real experience—since the video game is an interactive media—and create the possibility to reinforce negatively the gender dynamic about the relationship of women and her body, and how their body is perceived (sarkeesan, 2016). in life is strange, if there is any interactive interaction, max is designed to interact with the other characters who are not dressed in a bathing suit; thus, the players’ gaze is restricted from exploring the female characters' body. furthermore, a strategy to prevent male gaze is through the placement of max, who is not placed at the center of the frame. during the game-play, she is always put at the right or the left of the frame, which makes the players focus on the environment than on max (see figure 3). she is also positioned in an over-theshoulder camera angle which makes her buttock stays out of the frame (see fig. 3). max's placement and the framing challenge the typical video game design which usually reflects female objectification. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 21 figure 3. max is placed on the left of the screen with her bottom covered by her sling bag minimizing male gaze part 2: the narrative for hegemonic masculinity in life is strange despite the positive aspect of female physical representation, which is portrayed in the visual design, the narrative of the game still employs hegemonic masculinity through the conception of sacrificial heroine and lesbianism eroticization. life is strange is told from the story of the first female leader, max, who is the heroine character in the game. her heroic stance is related to her power to rewind time. however, as the story goes on, max's heroism becomes problematic since it turns out to portray a sacrificial heroine. crosby (2004) asserts that in popular culture, female heroines are set up for not capable of achieving male hero’s ultimate goal: political authority utilized for the community empowerment; the heroines are trapped as the sacrifices instead. crosby (2004, p. 153) states it links to patriarchy which criminalizes the heroine’s power as ‘too strong’ or ‘too tough’ then punishes them by making them to suffer for having moral dilemmas, to become sacrifices, or be fated to have a controversial death ending such as suicides. according to that particular conceptualization, max's heroine characterization in the game life is strange epitomizes sacrificial heroine whose traits are evident in the significance and the output of her power. first, the significance of max's power toward herself and the other characters is almost futile. crosby argues that patriarchal community eventually installs "rubber band effect" (crosby, 2004, p. 155). rubber band effect is an attempt to maintain male domination in the community, which stimulates the "snapping points" for the tough female heroines (crosby, 2004, p. 155). the snapping point pinpoints the significance of female heroine's heroism for the community. to put into perspective, it is like the narrative asking the heroines about the significance of their good deeds: for which community do you fight? if we analyze episode 1 of life is strange, in the bathroom scene, we can see that max saves chloe from the shooting done by nathan with the help of her power to rewind time. taken from this narrative, we can assume that max successfully becomes chloe's savior, preventing chloe from the gunshot discharge. however, max's status as a heroine is merely a pseudo as it is evident in episode 5. in this episode, when the so-called ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 22 communal choice is revealed and that max chooses to sacrifice chloe instead of the arcadia bay, the game gives a hint of the unaltered timeline. it is shown that if max had not saved chloe from the discharge, nathan would have been arrested and interrogated by the police due to the shooting which causes chloe dies. this interrogation generates ripple effects in which all the conflicts that are solved by max throughout the game-play will not emerge since nathan is the culprit of many troubles in the town. therefore, this reverse reality as the effect of sacrificing chloe does not only demonstrate max's futile power but also tears down max's heroic journey throughout the game-play. ultimately, it may affect players' view about heroines in the video game industry which can reinforce to normalize the heroine’s sacrifice. before heroines attain the ultimate "snapping point" as previously mentioned, they are narrated to pass through the three constitutional beliefs about herself and her relation to the community: guilt, denial, and final communal choice (crosby, 2004). in life is strange, max feels guilty by the fact that her power stimulates destruction to the town. max asserts in episode 5 "this is my storm. i caused this.. i caused all of this. i changed fate and destiny so much that.. i actually did alter the course of everything, and all i really created was just death and destruction!". from max's statement, she thinks her heroism is a sin, which is contradictory with most of the narrative of hero characters in popular culture, in which they feel guilty only when they are not heroic enough to save other people. heroines’ guilt about their power inevitably affects them to feel denial about their power; they wish they can extinguish their power and can be like a "normal girl" (crosby, 2004). in life is strange, max's wish to eliminate her power, which is stated by chloe's statement "you were given a power.. you didn't ask for it..", has a meaning that if max were given choices either to have a power or not, she would choose not to have a power because it causes destruction and forces her to sacrifice chloe as its antidote. besides, it reinforces a harmful gender paradigm that female is not capable and never be ready to be a heroine so just "let the men do the heroics" (crosby, 2004. p. 155). the final stage before facing the "snapping point" is the final choice to prioritize either the patriarchal or the feminist society (crosby, 2004). in episode 5, after she has felt guilty and been denial about her power, she faces the communal choice either to sacrifice chloe or the arcadia bay, which appears to be so problematic and difficult to choose. chloe said, "there's so many more people in arcadia bay who should live.. way more than me..". max answers, "chloe, i can't make this choice". (p. 3). chloe’s statement demonstrates that the game maintains the patriarchal status quo. according to butt & dunne (2017), “when women are placed against the greater good, the bias toward utilitarianism in these games palpably underscores sexist attitude” (p. 7). instead of critically evaluating chloe’s representation within the society, the game perpetua tes patriarchal status quo by encouraging the players to choose a greater amount of life rather saving a woman by the doctrine of utilitarianism: to save arcadia bay means saving more people. not only by presenting such moral imperative, the justification that provokes the players to sacrifice chloe rather than the arcadia bay is also manifested in the storyline which forces max to saves chloe for several times, seven times to be precise, during the play-game. chloe even states “maybe you’ve just been delaying my real destiny. look at how many times i’ve ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 23 died or actually died around you. look at what’s happened in arcadia bay ever since you first saved me,” at the end of the episode before max has to choose the communal choice. this storyline and chloe’s statement provoke the players to contemplate that chloe might be meant to die which in turn makes the players submit to maintain the status quo. the final choice also demonstrates that max as a heroine has no agency and the importance of the patriarchal community blurs her heroic. her choice toward the communal choice represents to which female should position herself within a community (crosby, 2004). what makes it is even crueler, max who at first is portrayed as a heroine by doing a good deed, saving chloe from the discharged by nathan, at the end of the story is portrayed as a "monster". she is forced to either let the community to be killed or to kill chloe. regardless of what max chooses, she also must sacrifice her morality and humanity killed due to that communal choice. ultimately, she is burdened by the sin of the nathan, the misogynist man, since she must fix the catastrophe which begins from the moment when nathan shoots chloe. despite the insignificance of max's power, the catastrophe as the output of max's power comes as the other evidence of her sacrificial heroine characterization. it is narrated that max's power to rewind time, causes to alter the timeline. the impact of the altered-timeline ultimately creates a catastrophe. the natural disaster in the game, the tremendous deadly storm, symbolizes what crosby (2004) called as the dystopian. crosby (2004) states that the narrative which presents a heroine must be burdened by the catastrophe that she generates to maintain the patriarchal community. in other words, if a narrative presents a heroine, there is always a destructive consequence followed for this heroine. in life is strange, the news about the catastrophe in the town is published by the independent, a newspaper in the arcadia bay which indicates not only about max’s insignificant power but also her ironic heroine characterization. all the news reports that are published by the independent associate with max's decision (see figure 4). one of the edition reports about two headlines in which the big headline reports about the catastrophe signal, and the small headline reports about kate’s suicidal attempt. the former states "flash snow and freak eclipse: "apocalypse soon"?". this headline is not changeable although the players choose the two choices in a different time. on the contrary, the small headline is changeable depends on max’s choice toward kate’s suicidal attempt: “super heroine saves suicidal blackwell academy school” or “student leaps to public death at blackwell academy". if we look at the context of the narrative, both of the headlines lead to a meaning that whatever max chooses, as long as she possesses power, it still eventually leads to one ending in which "threatens the world with apocalyptic destruction" (crosby, 2004, p. 165). she is indeed independent, is given a right to choose, yet, ironically, she brings a catastrophe. even with sacrificial female heroine characterization for its first lead female character, max, hegemonic masculinity in life is strange is reflected by the eroticized portrayal of the lesbian couple between max and chloe, which eventually conforms to heteronormativity. the erotic value is referenced to the notion that two women engage each other, and the perception that views women as a sexual object (connell, 1995; yost & thomas, 2012). “in this case, it is not lesbianism as homosexuality that is eroticized, but rather, lesbianism as sexual ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 24 interaction between two feminine, gender-conforming women” (puhl, 2010, p. 9). in life is strange, max and chloe are considered as the sexual objects, and their lesbian identity is eroticized. its traits are evident by the inherent heteronormativity narrative that is supported by the players’ responses. figure 4. there is no change in the top headline, while the minor headline is changeable which depends on max’s choices during the game-play the eroticization of lesbianism in life is strange is supported by the players' responses toward three choices which the game gives. it should be noted that all the choices represent sexual orientation and the responses are revealed through the diary mechanics of the video games. in episode 3: chaos theory, max should choose the choice between kissing or not kissing chloe, when both of them are playing a double dare game. it is found out that the responses of the players who choose to kiss chloe reaches up to more than 75%. from this data, we might think that the game gives space for bisexual and lesbians community in a video game, a form of progression in video game industry since in fact, video games are dominated by heterosexual normativity. however, in episode 5: polarized, when max faces to choose either to hug, kiss, or to give other affection to warren, it is revealed that more than 71% of the players choose to kiss warren. it leads to confusion as there is an inconsistency in which the players previously choose to kiss chloe which signifies there is a romantic relationship between max and chloe. it also leads to another confusion about the progress of the game which is first assumed to give a space for the lgbt community. these confusions, however, are associated with lesbianism eroticization, and it is strengthened by the other evidence that is more than 55% of the players choose to sacrifice chloe at the end of the story. the players' responses toward the three choices above strongly prove the eroticization of lesbianism in life is strange. according to donaldson (1993), lesbian and bisexual eroticization conform one of the major elements in hegemonic masculinity which are female as a sexual object and male as the sexual subject (1993). male perceives lesbianism and bisexual as the so-called doublesexy or the notion of two females perform sexual performance together (puhl, 2010; yost & thomas, 2001). in other words, the relationship of lesbianism or ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 25 bisexuality is perceived rather as a sexual performance done by female—as an object of sexual desire—rather than as a romantic relationship. lesbianism eroticization, which is motivated by merely sexual performance in life is strange is demonstrated in several narratives. first, the lesbianism eroticization is revealed in a cut-scene which appears in episode 5. the cut-scene narrates max and chloe are kissing right after max chooses to sacrifice chloe instead of the arcadia bay. it produces two different meaning. first, in a denotative meaning, it is interpreted as a farewell kiss for chloe since she is sacrificed for the sake of the community. nonetheless, in a connotative meaning, it is interpreted as a "reward" for the players for having sacrificed chloe. according to sarkeesan (2015), women come as a reward when the game uses a women’s affection, her body, or her sexuality as a return of the formalized reward mechanism. in other words, a reward in the choice-driven video game is coded into an algorithm or a system which is assumed as the right thing to choose. therefore, whenever the presumed heterosexual players choose the presumed right choice that is served by the game; they submit into the ideology of the game which is a sexist attitude. in life is strange, max and chloe’s kissing scene demonstrates that the game has actively encouraged the presumed straight male players to think of women as objects and prizes. it is also strengthened by the result of two studies that describes lesbianism as appealing and arousing (puhl, 2010; yost & thomas, 2010). this statement also links to philips et al.’s study (2015) which describes that players are more satisfied to be given aesthetic and sensual pleasure as a reward in video games. the sensual pleasure of this reward is evident by the shot of the camera. max and chloe’s kissing scene is taken closely as a close-up tongue-twinning kiss and is positioned in the center of the screen which represents the presumed straight male players’ voyeuristic about lesbian sexuality (see figure 5). it relates to male gaze which mulvey (1989) states that one of the aesthetic pleasure of male gaze is scopophilia, which is defined as a sexual pleasure that is derived from the eroticism or fetishism. therefore, the statistic of the players’ responses shows their homophobia and sexism attitude by choosing to diminish chloe, while previously they choose to create a romantic relationship between max and chloe which eventually reveal lesbianism eroticization. second, the lesbianism eroticization which overlaps with the notion of women as a reward is also evident by the camera angle when max and chloe are kissing (see figure 5). during this kissing scene, the shot is presented ironically. the players can see the massive and devastating storm behind max and chloe (see figure 6). it strongly symbolizes an irony in which while the characters might think they love each other, in fact, their relationship ends with destruction which is driven by choice. it also represents the patriarchal stance that anything other than heterosexual orientation, is considered as the "other" and should be diminished. through this narrative, albeit are not physically sexualized, max and chloe are perceived as sexual objects rather than as a couple who love each other. in other words, they both are sexualized rather than humanized. another narrative which demonstrates lesbian eroticization appears in the prequel life is strange named life is strange: before the storm. in the ending of the episode, there is a foreshadowing in which rachel, as a bisexual girl and has who romantic-relationship with chloe, is killed because she was drugged by the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 26 heterosexual lecturer, mr. jefferson, for the sake of his filthy photography object. this scene indicates that all the bisexual and lesbian characters and loverelationship narratives in life is strange, are torn down by a death ending except max, who albeit still alive, is still burdened by the guilt of "killing" chloe. according to wallen (2005, p. 101), "death is the ultimate result of homoerotic attraction." the death; thus, suggests that it is a form of the proper punishment for homosexuality which is considered as is immoral, off from the stable conforming sexual orientation in the patriarchal community—heterosexuality. figure 5. max and chloe’s kissing scene after max chooses to sacrifice chloe in a close-up camera shot represents the voyeuristic of the presumed heterosexual male players figure 6. max and chloe’s kissing scene with a devastating view symbolizes an irony of their kissing scene conclusion the video game life is strange is still found to submit into patriarchal ideology and is against feminist values. max as a heroine and bisexual girl merely acts as a trope and an inducement for the market expansion in the video game industry, which is the lgbt community, while beneath it all, the game still tries to satiate the presumed heterosexual male players. the game also forces their ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 134–150 27 players into submitting to hegemonic masculinity in a very paradoxical way, in which choices are given but not to the point of achieving liberty. all choices are a path to one destiny—sacrificial heroine—, which only devalues the roles of women within the community. hopefully, the results of this study can contribute to examine the trend of video game industry, mainly how it portrays gender representation. references boeing, g. 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https://scholar.google.co.id/scholar?hl=id&as_sdt=0%2c5&q=the+style+of+video+games+graphics%3a+analyzing+the+functions+of+visual+styles+in+storytelling+and+gameplay+in+video+games+&btng= ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 1 when the earth conquers the heaven: a study of narratology on kana inai abang nguak in the perspective of a. j. greimas sri astuti and yoseph yapi taum stkip persada khatulistiwa, sintang and faculty of letters universitas sanata dharma, yogyakarta sriastuti170515@gmail.com and yoseph1612@yahoo.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010101 received 8 june 2016; revised 4 april 2017; accepted 15 july 2017 abstract kana inai abang nguak is a folk lyric by the society of dayak desa which is spoken in formal ritual language by chanting. the characters in kana are usually related with the life in nirvana and represents the thoughts and world view of dayak society. this paper is meant to discuss one kana entitled inai abang nguak using narratology perspective of a. j. greimas. greimas’s narratology studies gradually reveal surface structure and deep structure of a story. surface structure reveals the context and story sequences. deep structure reveals the syntax structure (actantial and functional scheme) and also semantic structure, which are three semantic axis including desire pursued axis, power axis, and communication axis. the text inai abang nguak consists of seven-sequence(act)-story actantial scheme which centers on inai abang as the subject of the story. the success of earth in conquering the heaven (nirvana) is caused by three factors: 1) although the heaven is blessed with eternal life, the heaven is actually blood-related with this earth; 2) the heaven’s act in capturing earth’s ritual leaders is a heavy violation that has to be fought against by the earth; 3) the power of the earth as one unit (human beings, animals, spirits, and magical powers) to attack the heaven and bring back harmony to the earth. it can be concluded that greimas narratology can be used to understand surface structure, deep structure, and even discursive structure of a folk story. keywords: narratology, physical structure, mental structure, semantic axis, and world view introduction tradition of telling stories in front of the public is the most important form of cultural performance in various parts of the nusantara, including the dayak society in borneo. dayak desa tribe, for example, perform kanuak and kana as a cultural performance whose objective is not merely to entertain but also to give expression of the society’s various dimensions of perspective. kanuak and kana is a form of literature that is sung by the performer in front of an audience. kanuak is a form of story that uses daily language and tells about daily life. the characters mailto:yoseph1612@yahoo.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 2 in kanuak are both human beings and animals. the performer of kanuak does not need any special skill in telling stories. meanwhile, kana is also a form of literature that is spoken in front of people. the difference from kanuak is that kanuak uses a language form that is easier to understand, while kana uses the poetic dayak desa language, a form of distilled language that sounds unique and special. kanuak is a ritual text. in other words, kanak language is a formal-ritual language with archaic features (appell, 2010). the characters in kana are the characters of nirvana. the delivery of this story uses a different style of story-telling compared to other dayak desa oral literature. kana is performed by chanting. kana performance usually takes a very long time; sometimes it takes days, weeks, and even months to finish. according to a source, there has never been a story teller that could finish one title of a story. usually a story teller only finishes half of it. each story in kana is unique and special. each teller can tell a story with various titles. each story appears with many variations. each character can also undergo a very different story line under different titles. every title of the story is inherited from the ancestors. thus, the title and the story are ready to use, while the story teller can tell the story without having to prepare a new story. as explained before, kana is narrated by chanting. every line of one part has to end in the same syllable. a story teller can change the sound by ending the previous sound. for example, the teller does it by changing u assonance to i and so on. at least there are five similar ending sounds in kana, which are ai, i, an, a, ang. teller can choose the ending sound and replace one sound with another sound. the melody used in kana tends to be recitative and repetitive. usually in starting and ending a song, the teller gives a long duration for one speech stream. one sound is prolonged with a unique twisted sound. as what is stated by teeuw (2003, p. 33) and appell (2010), the use of language in an oral literature is usually either more complicated and preserved or it deviates from the language used in a daily basis; the story teller can create an artificial condition and convention. according to entulan, a kana teller, the language used in kana is very soft. besides a soft language, the sound at the end of each sentence has to be the same. in other words, poetic structure is strongly emphasized. this study of kana performance tradition is conducted based on two main arguments. first, to date, kana story telling has never been academically documented or researched. even, it is safe to say that there is no research of kana from any perspective. meanwhile, kana performance is getting less and less done. if this situation is not handled, in a few years ahead this oral cultural tradition would be extinct. second, kana performance tradition has dayak desa’s various local wisdoms and world views which are important and interesting to be revealed academically. oral literature, in any way, is the most honest projection of human desire (carvalho-neto, 2010). most of dayak literature is in the form of oral literature. many of those oral literature repertoires are not yet documented, so that we fail to understand the ancient heritage of our own culture. as far as our data collection stretch, there is very little research about dayak desa society’s oral literature. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 3 the objection of the study is to do a narratological study of folk lyric text inai abang nguak. narratology is a discipline that studies the technique of storytelling since aristoteles to the digital era (kwiat, 2008). the choice of greimas’ narratology as the approach of this study is meant so that the character (actan) in the story can be identified and revealed in a definite manner. the purpose is not only to understand the syntax of the story, but also the semantic meaning of the text within the context of dayak society world view, especially dayak desa society. theory narratology is a branch of structuralism that studies narrative structure and how that structure influences reader’s perception. narratology is an effort to study the nature of a ‘story’ as a concept and as a cultural practice. the etymology of narratology can be retrieved to the word narratio and logos (latin). narratio means story, speech, tale, saga; logos means science. narratology means narrative (text) discourse theory. narratology or narrative (text) discourse theory can be understood as a set of concepts about story and storytelling. narratology develops after linguistic analogy, such as syntax model, just like the relation between subject, predicate, and direct object. algirdas julius greimas (1917 1992) was a linguist and semiotic expert from lithuania and was known for doing research on lithuanian mythology. greimas was a professor at école des hautes études en sciences sociales (ehess) in paris, france. since 1965, he has led a research on linguisticssemiotics in paris, that then became the base for the development of paris school of semiotics. greimas was known as the pioneer of semiotic square in significance theory and the founder of actantial narrative scheme (onodera, 2010). narrative analysis, according to greimas, covered two structure levels, which are (1) physical structure, which is how the story is told (the narrative, especially the story synopsis to focus on the story sequences), and (2) mental structure, which is the immanent level which includes (a) narrative level of the narrative syntactic analysis (actantial scheme and functional scheme), and (b) discourse level, which is the study of semantic power’s three axis (taum, 2011). greimas’ theory about actan was meant to be the base of a universal narrative analysis (teeuw, 1988, p. 293). greimas did not only stop in one type of a single actan function, but also to the formulation of a universal narrative grammar by applying semantic analysis on the sentence structure. greimas proposed three pairs of binary opposition models that include six actans or roles, which is the subject versus object, sender versus receiver, and helper versus opponent. among these three pairs of binary opposition, the opposition pair of subject-object is the most important one. usually, subject is the character as a human, while the object is the various desires that have to be achieved such as freedom, justice, wealth, and many more. a struggle is usually wanted by the power (sender), but if it succeeds, then the character (receiver) takes it as a gift. power could have concrete qualities such as a king and other kinds of rulers. power also can have the nature of being abstract, like the society, fate, and time. the three binary opposition pairs take role as the basic pattern that would always be repeated in every story that shapes narrative grammar. if it is arranged in a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 4 scheme of actan role pattern, the three actan function opposition pair that consist of six actan would be shown in a flow chart as follows (look at figure 1) actan is the smallest narrative unit, in the form of syntax that has a certain function. actan is not identical with actor. actan could be in the form of abstract roles played by a person or a number of people, while actor is a concrete manifestation of an actan. like what is seen in the six actantial patterns above, actan could be in the form of a character, could also be something abstract like love, freedom, and murder. one character could have several actan functions. on the other hand, several characters could share one actan. each actan in a scheme could have a double function. sender can function as a subject or as a receiver. a character could have different actan functions. if there is no actan filled by a function or a character, then the use ø refers to as a zero function in actan. figure 1: greimas’ actantial pattern a study in the discourse level is doing semantic narrative analysis and explains in detail the opposition hierarchy inside the text based on the subject’s searching movement towards the object. the thing to consider is which basic value transformation that is put to risk in the story. finally, the last step is to formulate a semantic meaning that can be seen from the story by focusing the consideration on the three semantic axis: desire pursued, communication, and power axis. theory application kana in dayak ethnic group macrocosmos kana is one kind of oral folklores of dayak society. kana is categorized in the group of folk poetic story and is always performed with chanting. kana can also be categorized in the folk lyric category, which is defined as a lyrical chanting that tells narrative folksongs. kana shares many features with prose. the difference between kana and prose is just that kana uses a poetic language. different places use different names to refer to kana within the dayak ethnic group. the society of dayak u’ud danum refers to it as kelimo. daya suait refers to it as bambay. dayak kubin calls it engkana, and many more. in the oral tradition of dayak desa tribe, kana is a narrative poetry, a long verse spoken by certain people who have the skill to do it. kana is performed in the same manner as performing a song, with recitative and repetitive melody, with dayak desa’s unique way of twisting melody in chanting. figure 1. greimas’ actantial pattern sender object receiver subject helper opponent ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 5 there are three kinds of kana in the tradition of dayak desa society; kana, kana padi, and kana tangi. the most popular kana is kana. kana tells the story of the characters in nirvana. kana padi functions to pray the spirit of paddy plant and express gratitude for the harvest. meanwhile kana tangi is the kind of kana in the form of poetry with accolades to fellow human. kana tangi is not in the form of prose. the contents and characters in this folk poetic story are different according to the place. kana in dayak ketungau society tells the story of the genesis of human being. meanwhile kana in the tradition of dayak desa society, especially in the dedai district, kelam permai district, and kayan hilir district, kana tells the story of heavenly characters and kana to pray for the spirit of the rice plant. in dayak desa tradition of the society in sepauk districk, kana tells the origin of paddy plant, from clearing of the land to the process of cooking rice. according to dayak desa society, once upon a time human beings lived together with the gods and the godly beings in nirvana. juata -the name with which the society of dayak desa refer to as god -and other living beings, live in the same macrocosm universe. the cosmic dimension was divided into three; human and other living beings on earth, the nirvana society, and juata ‘god’. the human beings were divided even further into ethnic groups and sub-ethnic groups. the human beings lived on earth, the nirvana beings went back to nirvana, and juata went to live in heaven. dayak desa society believes that these kana characters once lived in the past. the characters in kana are similar to humans, but have different ability and power. it can be said that kana characters are divine beings. according to dayak desa society, the life in the past is immaculate. just like what is stated above, everyone in the society can live side by side without any problems. there are no rule violations such as adultery, quarrel, selfishness, violation of others’ rights, etc. when human beings violated the rules and the norms of the society, the nirvana beings were separated from human beings and they could not live side by side like before. because of human nature that is full of negativity such as jealousy, envy, rights violation, and many more, human beings could not live with the nirvana beings anymore. according to dayak desa, this is why human could not live with nirvana beings anymore. in the perspective of dayak desa people, the characters in kana are sacred beings. until today, kana is still alive and enjoyed by the society. those who enjoy kana are usually old people. usually the society sing kana in gawai a thanksgiving ritual that is held to express gratitude for an abundant harvest or a new house, or to entertain while doing hard work of farming or weaving. kana has a lot of version. kana exists with various stories. a kana teller can have many different stories. because kana has many different stories, there are so many versions of kana. it is predicted that the kana told by dayak desa alone could comprise to three hundred titles. every kana title opens the possibility for every character to develop into different stories with different titles. for example, bedai, the main character in bedai mantuah asam, married kumang who is not his real jodoh, in indonesian concept is two people who are meant to be together in a marriage. jodoh is not necessarily a pair of soulmate, but often a pair of people who do not really love each other but end up marrying due to various circumstances (often, familial, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 6 social or, in this case, divine interventions). in a kana entitled kumang mali belaki, it is told that bedai and lanai propose for kumang’s hand, but both are rejected because kumang could not marry. kana inai abang nguak has a generic structure that is followed tightly and systematically. one of the most important features in this kana story telling is the significantly dominant use of epithets. epithet is a style of metaphor that is formed based on comparison or analogy (keraf, 2000, p.136). epithets highlight distinct qualities or features from someone or something. as an illustration, take a look at table 1 which is the summary of character epithet in kana inai abang nguak. table 1: summary of character epithets in kana inai abang nguak no names of the characters number of epithets notes 1. keliang 70 commander from batu nantai 2. dabuang 27 keliang’s sister who, along with her parents, is abducted by nirvana beings. later she becomes lanai’s wife 3. bedai 66 one of the three characters who were trusted by the ancestors 4. laja 57 the commander in the aggression to nirvana 5. inai abang 23 vocalisator and story catalyst, a tribal council chief 6. jengkuan 32 commander from balau 7. kumang 24 jengkuan’s sister, keliang’s wife. kumang gives a magical ring and porcupine quill to keliang. her parents are also abducted to nirvana 8. lanai 85 commander from bulai, one of the three characters trusted by the ancestors 9. anak 21 additional character 10. manuak bebari 31 an important character who helps in the battle field number of epithets 436 (source, astuti, et al, 2017) there are 436 epithets shown in table 1. in the research report (astuti, et al, 2017), there are 25 characters who have their own epithets so that the total number of character epithets is much as 494. on the other hand, place setting epithets count to 227 epithets. the use of epithets, besides functioning to explain the characters’ qualities, nature, and gestures, also functions as the expression of praise and appreciation to the characters and places elaborated by the story teller. it can be said that epithet is one of the most distinct features in the use of ritual language in kana. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 7 the synopsis of kana “inai abang nguak” the text studied as the object of the study is the oral text spoken by mr. began (62 years old) from dayak desa tribe. this text is significantly long, consisting of 1077 verses (songs) that were typed in a single space format is 137 pages. both the transcript and the translation is in bahasa indonesia. when approached using narratology point of view, kana “inai abang nguak” has seven sequences of stories that could be considered as scenes. the seven scenes are elaborated as follows. scene 1: the news that keliang’s parents being attacked by nirvana 1. inai abang wants to spread the news that keliang’s parents have been attacked by people from the nirvana. keliang’s parents are abducted by the nirvana people to be sacrificed in a festive ritual (gawai) in the nirvana. 2. to spread the news, inai abang makes her child cry so that she can walk around the village to comfort her child. to comfort her crying child, she sings bejaniah (delivering poetry by chanting). 3. the song tells a long story. it starts from the story of lanai’s house, to the story that inai abang and lanai are once about to marry but their communion faces obstacles: approaching the time of their marriage, there is an old person of the village who has passed away. when it is the time to nemuai (visiting the bride’s or the groom’s house that would not be their future home), they are obstructed by a serpent. according to the tradition, those events are the signs that the marriage is forbidden. 4. inai abang then marries apai abang that is not from dayak ethnic group. hearing the news, lanai is extremely upset. lanai challenges apai abang in a duel of magical ability. apai abang wins the duel, due to the fact that lanai is indeed not inai abang’s jodoh. in the same recital, inai abang also tells the story of all the places she has lived in before settling down in batu nantai. 5. she walks for a whole day long. inai abang walks carrying her child along the village from upstream to downstream. 6. inai abang tells a story that there are three people who are trusted by the ancestors to convey their holy messages. those people are inai abang, lanai, and bedai. the three of them are trusted to guard the jodoh of kana characters. because they were born in the same day, they met the requirements to become the holy messenger. linai’s jodoh is dabuang (keliang’s sister), bedai’s jodoh is kumang tengai, keliang’s jodoh is kumang. inai abang’s jodoh is apai abang. if a person marries with a person who is not their jodoh, they will not be able to produce children, or there would be a big fight that leads to divorce. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 8 7. inai abang has walked for a long time. all of the stories have been told to comfort her child. she has met all of the important people of the village. however her child does not stop crying because inai abang would make the child cry again if the child stops crying. scene 2: the magic of rainbow scarf in gawai 1. batu nantai village is about to do gawai (sacrifice and thanksgiving ritual after the harvest). guests invited from other villages have come, so that the village is flooded with guests of all ages and of all places. 2. inai abang’s child is still crying. thus, inai abang wants to try her magical power. first, she asks tenai, manuak bebari to open its hands, so that inai abang can put her rainbow scarf there. but manuak bebari’s hand cannot lift even just the tip of the scarf. then bedai tells them to just fold the scarf. but before touching it, tunan’s hand has been burned. the scarf is smoldering like embers. no one can lift that scarf, not even the tip of the scarf. then they lift it together, lanai on the right side and jengkuan on the left side. 3. inai abang’s child cannot stop crying, which makes lanai angry. they take the child to bath and to be secretly murdered. they plan is to take the child to the river and drown the child. the child who has just learned to speak begs to be kept alive. “you do not know what my mother’s real intention is. if you are truly brave men, please go to nirvana. fecth dabuang. their houses were raided by the nirvana people, then keliang and dabuang’s parents were abducted to be killed in nirvana. keliang was saved by my mother, and she kept keliang safe in a crock which is tied close to a thread. keliang’s clothes were ripped because of nirvana people’s bullet.” 4. then they go back home with inai abang’s child to meet inai abang. they ask why she keeps this secret. scene 3: laja army is getting ready to attack nirvana 1. then they cut the thread and open the crock where inai abang hides keliang. they fall pity to see keliang. keliang’s face is black, coalstained, and the clothes are ripped apart because of bullet and sharp weapon. 2. then they agree to go to nirvana to save dabuang and the parents. they make laja, a tuak ‘warlord’, to prepare for the war. they tell every person the village to stop their activity and ask for paddy rice and sticky rice for laja’s offering. every child and woman is asked to go into the house and stop from their daily activity, because laja is about to call all the ghosts, spirits, and ancestors to help them in the war with nirvana. every one is invited and they eat to their satisfaction. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 9 3. the people in the place only sense the presence of the ghosts, but they cannot see them, and it makes them scared. all of the ghosts are ready to help laja to go to the war. they go to khayangan. they walk faster than a lightning bolt. they come to a fig tree where they use the hanging roots as their rides to nirvana. they are not lost because they are helped by the ghosts. the roots climbing to nirvana is guarded by a cobra. the roots can shrink and expand. it can shrink to the size as thin as a thread, and it can expand to the size of a hill. they do not rush in their way to nirvana. they build a hut as a shelter overnight within the roots. scene 4: laja’s army is assisted by the mighty keliang 1. keliang who stays in batu nantai is given a magical power by kumang. kumang is a very beautiful woman. because of her magical power, kumang can create things. kumang cleans keliang using the rainbow scarf that changes keliang into a very dashing and handsome man. then, kumang and keliang are wed. they exchange rings. kumang gives him a magical ring that can make keliang bulletproof and cannot be beaten by any other weapon. kumang also gives keliang a porcupine quill that can be any kind of weapon used for war. 2. with a swish of the rainbow scarf, kumang makes the sword case a flying vehicle on which keliang rides to catch up with laja’s army on the leafy fig tree. keliang’s arrival sounds like a thunderstorm. the army thought it is the coming of the enemy and it scares them. all of them take good grips on their weapon, ready for war. then, keliang sits among them. 3. after keliang becomes a part of them, they go up to the nirvana climbing the roots, and being guarded by the king of the bird. keliang opens the nirvana gate lock using the porcupine quill given by kumang. to open the gate to nirvana, keliang stands on lanai’s shoulder, his left side is supported by bedai, his right side by jengkuan, and his back by tenai. the gate to nirvana is very big and heavy, and is guarded by the nirvana society using weapons. the gate opens, and all of them come inside nirvana. after all of them are inside, keliang fixes the door lock, and even makes it firmer than before. scene 5: gawai in nirvana 1. kumang tanan remayan is the most beautiful and powerful young woman in nirvana. that day, she gets a bad feeling. she hears voices but she does not see any one. she only sees a group of semadak ‘forest giant ants’ walking in her front yard. forest chickens and birds play together. this is a sign that something bad is going to happen. then, nirvana people check the gate of the nirvana. they find the gate locked, even tighter than usual. they do not have the slightest feeling that the gate has been opened. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 10 2. people from nirvana do not see any signs that there are intruders in their land. this is because the laja army hide so that the nirvana people cannot see them. keliang makes each of their footsteps look like deer traces and each small hole on the ground made by their spares look like a termite nest. the nirvana people go back to their homes. they conclude that the bad inkling that they feel is because the ghosts are hungry. they immediately make gawai a ‘feast’ as an offering to the ghosts. when the night falls, the men are drunk of palm wine. they dance and have fun. when they are tired, they sleep on the terrace. scene 6: keliang set his parents free 1. when everyone is asleep, keliang go upstairs to the house of nirvana people. he opens every door, and meets kumang tanan remayan’s father and lanai serak tengkelai. lanai serak tenkelai’s father is always awake because if his one eye is shut, his other eye takes turn to open. lanai serak tengkelai’s father tells keliang, “well then let’s go to war tomorrow. actually tomorrow we are planning to kill your parents and jengkuan’s parents as offerings.” keliang says to lanai serak tengkelai’s father that his head would look nice if it is hung on his back like someone who is ngabang (going from other village’s party). 2. after that keliang goes to see kumang’s father, who is his father in law. keliang opens every door, and ends up in kumang tanan remayan’s room. kumang tanan remayan screams, “who dares to intrude to our house, the people of the nirvana?” after she opens her eyes, she sees the handsome keliang. keliang flirts with kumang tanan remayan, and finally kumang tanan remayan tells keliang where kumang and jengkuan’s parents are kept as hostages. kumang tanan remayan says “all of us would die.” keliang says “no, i won’t let anyone kill you. keliang will guard you.” 3. then keliang goes to look for kumang’s parents. he found them leashed in a string of an iron chain. he takes kumang’s parents out and he does a sengkelan ritual, a procession to shoo away bad fortunes using chicken blood. he wants to cancel the nirvana’s people plan to kill them as offerings. jengkuan cries to see her parents being taken away by keliang. scene 7: nirvana is burnt 1. the next day, laja’s army attack the nirvana. lanai attacks in the middle, bedai comes from upstream and jengkuan comes from downstream. the other soldiers are not allowed to attack because they want to prove that the magical power from the three of them is enough to win the war. 2. before they start to attack, lanai takes his time to look for dabuang and dabuang and keliang’s parents. after he finds them, lanai takes them out. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 11 he tucks dabuang in his pocket, while he put the parents in his hands, and the food for the nirvana’s people on the other. all of the food makes the soldiers eat to their satisfaction. 3. then lanai starts to attack the nirvana people. all of them are scared, women and children run amok in their surprise. the men take their weapon to defense, but they lose. nirvana people’s houses are burnt with fire. the study of mental structure according to greimas’ theory, the study of deep structure comprises the actantial scheme (in syntactic level) analysis, functional structure analysis, and semantic axis analysis. actantial scheme according to the study of narrative sequence units as stated above, it can be concluded that the actantial scheme of kana “inai abang nguak” is as follows (see figure 2). from the actan scheme, the function or the position of each actan is as follows (compare zaimar, 1992, p.19; suwondo, 2003, pp.52-54; taum, 2011). the sender is the important message from the ancestors that is trusted in the hands of the three characters, so that they can be the guardians of kana, the culture ruler, and jodoh of dayak society. the three messengers are: inai abang, dabaung, and keliang. the ancestors’ message becomes the sender or the catalyst of the story. the sender gives desire to the subject, which is inai abang, to do anything to achieve or reach the object. the object sought in this narration is to free keliang, jangkuang, and dabuang’s parents. the objects are attacked, abducted, and killed by the people of nirvana. inai abang has to save these people’s lives because they are the closest kin of the dayak tribal council chief. this rescue mission is in accordance to the ancestors’ wants as the sender. the subject in this story is inai abang, the hero actan that is sent to look for and rescue the object. she completes the mission using many ways, including “torturing” her children so that the child keeps crying. inai abang tries to make all of the villagers in batu nantai also work together to rescue the object. there are so many helpers as an actan (something or someone) which or who helps or ease subject or hero’s effort in achieving the object. inai abang’s effort is supported by all of batu nantai people. the helpers are: inai abang’s child, rainbow scarf, laja the tuak ghost warlord, the ancestor spirits, kumang, the magic ring, porcupine quill, sword case, a cobra, and bird king. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 12 sender ancestor’s message to keep three kana characters. three characters: 1) inai abang, 2) lanai, 3) bedai receiver the people of batu nantai who then live in harmony with their kana guardians. object to save the guardians of kana (the message): 1) keliang’s parents; 2) jengkuan’s parents; dan 3) dabuang’s parents who are abducted and about to be killed in nirvana. subject inai abang and people of batu nantai helper inai abang’s child, the rainbow scarf, laja the ghost wispherer, ancestor spirits, kumang, sword case, magical ring, porcupine quill, bird king. opponent nirvana people, kumang tanan remayan figure 2: actantial scheme of kana “inai abang nguak” an opponent is an actan who or which prevents the subject or the hero’s effort in achieving the object. the opponents in this story are the people in nirvana, especially a female character named kumang tanan remayan. receiver is an actan who or which receives object worked on or looked for by the subject. in this story, the people of batu nantai who regain their peaceful life, along with their tribal council chiefs, the guardians of kana after the leaders are freed from their hostage situation in nirvana. functional scheme besides showing the actantial structure, greimas also proposes a solid model of narration as a plot. that model manifests in many actions referred to as functions, hence the name functional structure. functional model also functions to elaborate the subjects’ role in doing the task from the sender in the actan function. functional model is built from many events that are shown in nouns such as departure, marriage, death, murder, etc. the functional model is divided into three parts, which are early stage (1), transformation (2), and final stage (3) (see zaimar: 1991; suwondo, 2003, pp.5455). functional model in the story of kana inai abang nguak is described in the following chart (see table 2). the early stage of the story pictures that situation of batu nantai village that is harmonious and peaceful with its order and tribe council chiefs before an event disturbs the harmony. in the early obstacle state, the nirvana invades the earth, abducted some important people, including keliang, dabuang, and jengkuan’s parents. finding this situation, inai abang makes many efforts to search and rescue the hostages of nirvana. in the effort to rescue the object, there are several obstacles. inai abang starts to test her power with the rainbow scarf. inai abang’s child also helps by revealing the mother’s real intention; which is to gain power in freeing the hostages of nirvana. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 13 table 2: functional structure of kana “inai abang nguak” i ii iii early stage transformation final stage skill testing stage main stage the winning stage batu nantai village lives in harmony because of the tribal council chiefs. abduction of the tribal council chiefs’ parents all powers unify to attack nirvana inai abang and the villagers of desa batunantai’s success in freeing the hostages batu nantai village lives in harmony because of the tribal council chiefs. the supporting powers to attack nirvana is gathered: one of which is led by laja, helped by keliang, completed with magical objects like the rainbow scarf, porcupine quill, a cobra, the bird king, and the sword case. these powers show the subject’s effort in achieving object. in this stage, also occurs the opponent, the nirvana society, especially kumang tanan remayan. the main stage of obstacle consists of the description of the subject’s effort in achieving object. in this main stage, the intruders from the earth succeeds in freeing the hostages and burning the nirvana, and doing the journey back to the earth. the final situation in this narration is the renascence of balance, the situation in batu nantai village has came back to its earlier stage. all of the conflicts have ended. this is how the story ends, when the subject achieves the object. semantic axis: how the earth conquer the heaven how can the earth conquer the heaven? doesn’t the heaven occupy supremacy over the earth? how can this be explained? according to greimas, narratology analysis has to cover the discourse level, which is the study to reveal three semantic axis. with that semantic axis, we can understand better the society’s world view (barthes, 1966). this narratology study does not end only in the narration technology, but also more than that, it has to be able to reveal thoughts, feelings, and the unconscious of the speaker community (flurerink, 2009). in the context of this elaboration, communication axis chart is used as what greimas described in the following scheme (see figure 3) helper receiver object sender subject opponent figure 3: actantial scheme of kana “inai abang nguak” ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 14 desire pursued axis greimas semantic axis focuses on desire pursued which reveals interaction of sender actan in inspiring subjet to search for the object (onodera, 2010). actans that has roles in the desire pursued axis represents the world view of dayak society. according to kaharingan religion, original religion of dayak, cosmos is shaped in two layers on the world, which is: 1) the layer of the world that is occupied by human beings, the descendants of king bunu, and 2) the nirvana layer that is occupied by human beings who are the descendants of king sangen and king sangiang. king bunu, king sangen, and king sangian are siblings, sons of manyamei tunggul garing janjahunan laut and kameloh putak bulau janjulen karangan limut batu kamasan tambun, that hindu kaharingan adherents believe as the first human beings created by ranying hatala langit. the way of living in the two cosmic layers is different. the descendants of king bunu are not eternal and they will die after having produced the ninth descendants. their daily meal is rice and its side dishes. the descendants of king sangen can live forever and like ranying hatala langit they can be full only by menginang (usop, 2016). in kana inai abang nguak, the ancestor of human beings bequeath order and harmony in the tribe customs. in the customs the ancestors present and make sure that their descendant’s order is kept and done. that is the earth law. although in that text the heaven law is not mentioned, the elaboration above helps to explain that the heaven has its own law and life order. interaction between the heaven and the earth, as is viewed by dayak society, is something regular. in their culture, even it is stated that the ancestors of the earthlings and the heaven beings are siblings from the same mother and father. thus, the relation, conflict, and peace between the two siblings are something common, although the heaven beings are eternal and earthlings are mortal. power axis there are two purposes why the subject is fighting to achieve the object; fulfilling the responsibility and order of the ancestor as a tribal council chief who is responsible for enforcing the custom. the responsibility is not subject to bargaining because they work to make sure of the continuation of the life of its descendants on earth. thus, any interference to the custom and the tribal council chief is a serious violation that has to be faced with all of the possessed forces. in the text of kana inai abang nguak, the power of the subject is doubled due to the involvement of laja, a tuak or warlord who prepares the attack to the heaven. all of the earth occupants are asked for support, paddy rice, and sticky rice. laja also shouldered all of the ghosts and ancestor spirits to help in the war. the magical power involved in the offense is the rainbow scarf, magical ring, porcupine quill, and sword case. laja is helped by kumang, cobra, and bird king. the full force from the earth is not balanced by the heaven force who are oblivious to the attack from intangible creatures. communication axis communication between the ancestors (sender) and the descendants (receiver) through the tribal council chiefs (object) is the ideal desire pursued in the text kana inai abang nguak. that ideal desire is then achieved by freeing the object from the hostage situation in the heaven. in a concept believed by dayak ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 15 people, the earth and the heaven (nirvana) is connected by a giant tree (see damayanti, 2017: 8). this text refers to it as ‘fig tree’. the humans climbed to the heaven through the fig tree roots that are guarded by a cobra. in the view of dayak society, and the world society in general, a tree is a symbol not only to the origin of the universe and human beings, but also the philosophy of the society to balance the view between the world above (heaven, spiritual world) and the world below (the earth, material world) (santosa, 2015). the journey to the heaven runs smoothly. the attack from the earth people to the heaven settlers also happen quickly and secretly, because people who come from earth is in the form of spirit and cannot be seen. moreover, the heaven people are partying for gawai because they thought the ghosts are asking for a sacrifice ritual. the unified force of the earth (people, animals, spirits, and magical power) attack the heaven and succeed in conquering it. they free all the hostages, burn the heaven settlement, and finally restore the harmony on earth. conclusion kana inai abang nguak reveals the world view of dayak desa people. this kana is a form of oral tradition from dayak desa people, spoken in the formal ritual language by chanting. it can be said that kana represents and projects the deepest desire of the dayak desa society. a narratology study using the perspective of a.j greimas is used to reveal the physical structure and the mental structure of kana inai abang nguak. in the discourse level, this study reveals the reason why the heaven can be conquered by earth. first, the heaven is not an entity that is very different for the earth. although there is a difference in features between the heaven and the earth, dayak society believes that the earth and the heaven are created and settled by ancestors who are siblings. conflict and peace between kins are common things, not an extraordinary thing. second, the heaven and the earth has their own order and rule that opens the probability for the people to live safely and comfortably. the heaven’s act to capture the earth’s tribal council chief is a serious violation that needs to be avenged by the earth. that is a strong argument for the humans to assemble an attack to the heaven. third, to face provocation from the heaven that attacks the core and source of the humanity life, all of the forces are unified (human, animals, spirits, and magic powers) to attack the heaven, and thus successfully restore harmony on earth. references anonymous. 1988. sastra dan ilmu sastra: pengantar teori sastra. jakarta: pustaka jaya giri mukti pasaka. anonymous.1983 "indonesia antara kelisanan dan keberaksaraan" (two articles) in basis no. xxxvii-11 and xxxviii-12. yogyakarta: andi offset. appell, g. n. (2010). world oral literature project voices of vanishing worlds: the sabah oral literature project. cambridge: cambridge university press. astuti, s., yudita, s., taum, y.y. & baryadi, p. (2017). penuturan kana indai abang nguak: suntingan teks, terjemahan, analisis struktur dan pandangan hidup masyarakat dayak desa. a pekerti (inter-universities collaborative research) grant research report. barthes, r. (1966). an introduction of the structural analysis of narrative. in communications 8. introduction a l'analyse structurale des r&cits. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 1–16 16 damayanti, d. (2017). meratus: nyanyi sunyi di pegunungan borneo. yogyakarta: lamalera. fludernik, m. (2009). an introduction to narratology. (patricia, trans.). toronto: university of toronto. greenfield, h. & fludernik, m. (n.d). new york: routledge. keraf, g. (2000). diksi dan gaya bahasa. jakarta: gramedia pustaka utama. kwiat, j. (2008). from aristotle to gabriel: a summary of the narratology literature for story technologies. retrieved from http://kmi.open.ac.uk/publications/pdf/kmi-08-01.pdf onodera, s. (2010). greimas's actantial model and the cinderella story: the simplest way for the structural analysis of narratives. japan: hirosaki university. paulo, c. n. (1985). concept of folklore. (jacques m.p. wilson, trans.). coral gables, fl: university of miami press. santoso, p. (2015, june). kajian historis komparatif cerita batang garing. paper presented in workshop on research methodology by institute of language development and teaching. suwondo, t. (2003). studi sastra beberapa alternatif. yogyakarta: hanindita. taum, y. y. (2011). studi sastra lisan: sejarah, teori, metode, dan pendekatan disertai contoh penerapannya. yogyakarta: penerbit lamalera. teeuw, a. (1978). sastra baru indonesia. ende: nusa indah. usop, l. s. (2016). pergulatan eliti lokal kaharingan dan hindu kaharingan: representasi relasi kuasa dan identitas. retrieved from http://www.jurnalonlinejpips.com zaimar, o. k. s. (1991). menelusuri makna ziarah karya iwan simatupang. jakarta: intermasa. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 164 migration and the manggaraians’ cultural identity as represented in manggaraian rap songs ans prawati yuliantari universitas katolik indonesia santo paulus ruteng, indonesia tia.yuliantari@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030203 received 5 november 2019; accepted 17 february 2020 abstract manggaraian rap songs have become one of the means to see the phenomenon of migration and the desire of the manggarai people to maintain their cultural identity. therefore, this study aims to find out why manggarai people migrate and how they manage their cultural identity overseas. the concept of “rural idyll” suggested by marc mormont is used to understand the manggaraians’ perspective on their home region, and the concept of identity as defined by stuart hall is used to examine the manggaraians construe their cultural identity. this study is focused on 30 manggaraian rap songs that feature migration and manggaraian cultural identity as the themes of the lyrics. the study has led to the insight that the main reasons that motivate the manggaraians to migrate are their desire to continue their education, find a better livelihood, gain new experiences in distant regions and look for better access and facilities that are unavailable in their home region to achieve their goals. the experience of living among people from many different cultures in distant regions confront them with the need to maintain their cultural identity and contact with their home region. to fulfil this need, they make attempts of revitalizing manggaraian traditional values that they are familiar with throughout their growing-up years in manggarai. keywords: migration, cultural identity, rap, manggarai introduction migration is a geographical mobility that has been caused by economic, social, political and cultural factors. some other reasons why people decide to migrate are infrastructure development, information technology advancement and suggestions from the people in the prospectus migrants’ social environment. migration has been defined as “a movement of people within national boundaries” (gottdiener & budd, 2005, p. 60). this definition refers to what is called internal migration which are undertaken either to move permanently or temporarily, including long-distance commute that is also known as “circular migration” (samers, 2010). some manggaraian migrants from nusa tenggara timur are temporal migrants, and some others are permanent migrants. the majority of them move from rural areas to the nearby urban areas. the rest of them take on longerdistance migration by moving to big cities outside flores such as makassar, mailto:tia.yuliantari@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 165 jakarta, surabaya and yogyakarta. some portrayals of migration by the manggaraians that give some account of why and how it is undertaken can be found in some products of manggaraian popular culture. the most interesting ones are arguably manggaraian rap songs. rap has become a popular musical genre in manggarai since the 2000s (allin, 2012; bell, 2017). like american rap, manggaraian rap features perspectives on and images of various economic, political, social and cultural issues in the society where it originated. thus, manggaraian rap songs specifically present images about the manggaraians in both their home region and foreign regions. many of manggaraian rappers write lyrics that talk about the causes and the effects of migration they have undertaken and manggaraians’ motivations to do so. their lyrics reveal several problems that manggaraian migrants generally encounter in their various endeavors that are mostly related to conficts stemming from cultural identity crisis while living outside their place of origin. based on the migration-related phenomena presented above, the present study seeks to answer the following questions: (1) what reasons that have motivated some manggaraians to migrate? and (2) how do manggaraian migrants perceive their cultural identity? through a critical discussion focusing on the two subjects represented by these research questions, this article attempts to offer an insight about the general motivations behind manggaraian migrants’ decision to move out of their home region and the ways it affects their perception of their cultural identity through a close reading and interpretation of manggaraian rap songs as part of this ethnic group’s popular culture. method manggaraian rappers’ creative exploration of their sociocultural circumstances in producing their music is influenced by their perspective on their origin in the agrarian society of manggarai and on the urban environment they have migrated to. their conception of geographical environments reflects their cultural identity. to have a critical understanding of the manggaraians’ perspective on their place of origin, a concept called “rural idyll” is used as a reference in discussing it. the concept, which was suggested by marc mormont, stands for an image of rural areas as a peaceful, tranquil and simple environment (woods, 2011). the manggaraians’ perception of cultural identity is elucidated through its correspondence with the conception of cultural identity posited by stuart hall (morley, 2019) as follows. “essentially, it is assumed that cultural identity is fxed by birth, part of nature, imprinted through kinship and lineage in the genes, constitutive of our innermost selves. it is impermeable to something as “worldly,” secular, and superfcial as temporarily moving one’s place of residence.” (p. 208) in general, the manggaraians’ migration is motivated by economic, social and cultural circumstances that make it necessary for them to leave their home region and move to various other regions in indonesia. be that as it may, all manggaraian migrants wish to go back to their place of origin no matter how long they have been away from it. this disposition can be seen as an important fact with which the lyrics of manggaraian rap songs that talk about hometown and life in foreign places can be analysed. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 166 this study in this article is focused on 30 manggaraian rap songs which were selected for their themes that present some of the manggaraians’ perspectives on migration and their cultural identity. findings and discussion based on jilis verheijen’s account of the manggaraians (hagul & lana, 1989), there have been sigificant sociocultural changes in manggaraian society’s life since the 1950s, and half of them is essential part of its structure. these changes are associated with the rapid development of infrastructure in rural areas such as improvments in roads and electricity networks during the repelita iv (5-year development plan iv) period under the new order administration in indonesia (webb, 1994). the impacts of improved availability of road access and electricity are, among others, an increase in population mobility and greater access to information from radio and television that has been available for people living in rural areas. this improvement in infrastructure is followed by improvement in the manggaraians’ income from agriculture as a staple of their economy since they are supported by better means of distributing their produce to their consumers, better access to healthcare services which are mostly available in the cities, and easier access to consumptive goods. however, along with the abovementioned impacts, influences from the outside are increasing. income improvement has apparently led to higher consumption of non-necessity items such as electronic appliances and motor vehicles. electronic appliances such as radio and television allow greater access to information, whereas motor vehicles make long-distance mobility easier, which means manggaraians can now reach places that are too far without this kind of transportation. television and radio broadcastings have reached audiences in many parts of manggarai, and they have greatly affected the way manggaraian people think about their land and other lands beyond their territory. on the one hand, exposure to more information from the outside provides manggarai’s inhabitants with a lot of new knowledge that may contain ideas of ways of improving their livelihood such as educational information on agricultural technology, crop and cattle farming methods, land cultivation, seed selection and irrigation. in addition, the medicine for crops and high-quality seeds advertisements made by several agricultural stores in ruteng can help local farmers improve their crop production. information related to health and healthcare can help manggaraian people improve their physical condition as well as learn to live healthier and therefore prevent themselves from catching various diseases. broadcast such as radiogram from one of local radio stations has been a medium that connects manggaraian families to various sources of information which were not available for them in the past because of geographical issue. on the other hand, the mass media also carry particular information that can possibly give them ideas of going to places they have never been before, which means media like tv channels and radio programs have the potential to encourage manggaraian audiences to undertake geographical mobility to various regions through their visual and verbal messages. in short, the availability of modern infrastructure and transportation encourages mobility because they make it much more feasible. this phenomenon has something to do with a particular human tendency called social mobility. in the globalization era, a lot more people are motivated to engage in social mobility. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 167 anthony giddens (2006) describes social mobility as a shift in an individual’s or group’s socioeconomic position. it is classified into two categories: vertical mobility and lateral mobility. vertical mobility refers to one’s upward and downward movements in socioeconomic hierarchy when his/her social and economic status or position is increasing or decreasing respectively in terms of property ownership, annual income, or professional position. lateral mobility is defined as geographical movement across different areas, regions, or countries. motivations for doing the two kinds of mobility are connected to each other. motivations behind an individual’s or a group’s decision to move out of their hometown or homeland are mostly economic. moreover, as pointed out earlier, technology plays crucial role in the development of infrastructure and transportation and therefore contributes greatly to the increasing number of people being able to travel to different geographical territories. discussions of migration and the social issues related to it are always multidimensional since migration’s causes and effects involve multifaceted reality of migrants’ life. nikos papastergiadis (2000), for example, argues that: “migration must be understood in a broad sense. i see it not just as a term referring to the plight of the 'burnt ones', the destitute others who have been displaced from their homelands. it is also a metaphor for the complex forces which are integral to the radical transformations of modenity.” (p. 2). the key idea of papastergiadis’ view quoted above that is relevant to the present study is that migration is the integral part of transformations of modernity. there have been many people migrating from their home region to another region with the hope of experiencing a more modern social environment than the one they were originated in. the most common cause of migration is economic factors such as higher minimum wage standard and greater job opportunity in various sectors in other regions compared to the ones in the migrants’ home regions. another economic factor that has attracted many migrants is better public facilities and entertainment in those regions. other than economic factors, one factor with major contribution to migration is close interpersonal relationship between migrants and prospective migrants that is closely related to migration chain effect (brown, 1991). however, the existing conception of migration chain effect, which puts emphasis on economic factors as the main contributor to a region’s development, wage rate and job opportunity availability, is less relevant as an approach to observe the related phenomena in the third world. the conventional model of mobility in the third world countries is based on migrants’ role in suggesting migration to others by imparting information to their relatives and close friends about how their current place of living is different (and better) from the one in which they were born and grew up. a large number of people have followed their relatives’ or friends’ footsteps in migrating out of their home region. nevertheless, the concept can be taken as a premise to shift the main emphasis on the powerful effect of the interpersonal communication between migrants and their relatives or friends in helping the incoming migrants settle down in the new place and adjust themselves in the new social environment. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 168 manggaraians’ mobility examined in the abovementioned context is closely connected to the important position of extended family in manggaraian kinship (allerton, 2004; erb, 1999). it is to be expected that the manggaraians’ migration destinations are the cities where manggaraian communities exist in relatively large numbers such as makassar, jakarta, malang and yogyakarta. the strong bond between fellow manggaraians is reflected in manggaraian migrants’ feeling of obligation that they have to tell their relatives and friends in manggarai about some promising job opportunities they have found in the city and provide temporary place to stay for the newly arrived manggaraian migrants. for relatives or friends who come to visit them in the city, these migrants generally make some effort to make sure that they are well accommodated and looked after. from the perspective of manggaraian culture, these favors they do are not merely a form of primordial solidarity. their solidarity is an act of valuing the sense of kinship among the manggaraians in their cultural territory that has been preserved through generations. a research conducted by l. a. brown in costa rica revealed that kinship has greater influence than higher wage rate, job opportunity and other economic factors in various degrees from region to region (brown, 1991). urbanization is one of the common kinds of migration in this industrialization era. in louis wirth’s perspective, as quoted by giddens (2006), urbanization is a lot more than the number of population recorded in statistics related to urban demography and the available employment opportunities for city dwellers. it involves urban environment with substantial impacts on human’s social life. city is the controlling center for economic, political and cultural dynamics that has always drawn people in remote areas to its orbit, and, as a result, brings together people of different bakgrounds and spheres of activity in a plural society (p. 898). in other words, the cities, as the center of governmental, social, economic and cultural activities, are a powerful magnet that can make people in its periphery come to experience its hustle and bustle. wirth’s observation here can be taken as a reference to understand the mobility of manggaraians from their villages to the cities in which the main offices of regional governments reside such as ruteng, labuan bajo, borong, as well as other cities outside manggarai’s cultural territory. most of manggaraian migrants in these cities earn a living as small vendors, small retailers, bus conductors, drivers of public transportation and blue collar workers at a store or a market. their motives range from finding a better livelihood to continue their education; and also from finding better public facilities to escaping a conflict with some people in their home village. it can be inferred that the bottom line of the manggaraians’ motives is that they are encouraged to have social mobility by moving to big cities and participate in the modernity of urban life. their perception that rural life is associated with traditionalism, underdevelopment and poverty has made them decide to move to big cities, either temporally or permanently. a work by thomas solomon (2005) on istanbul as a migration destination is one of the studies that reveal the appeal of experiencing modernity as an influential factor in urbanization. solomon describes that many people from the rural areas on the city outskirt want to participate in the transformation process into modernity in istanbul that is supported by the government. another work about the similar phenomenon was written by arun saldana (2002), presents a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 169 portrayal of urban life in bangalore that is characterized by modernity and superfluity; two qualities that have attracted many people outside its territory to move in as their effort to make a better life and, along the way, be part of modern urban life. likewise, cities in western flores, where regional government offices are located, have been attracting people in adjacent areas to visit or move into them to experience life with better availability of public facilities and more advanced infrastructure. those cities also offer more diverse job vacancies than rural areas do, and therefore, they attract more job seekers than rural areas do. nonetheless, urban modernity and higher diversity of job opportunities are not a guarantee of higher wage rate. in fact, most of the migrants that chose to survive in urban areas did so more because of the wide range of facilities those places can offer than the amount of wages they can take from their jobs. furthermore, although cities in manggarai territory are not as big and vibrant as the ones in java, they are still better developed compared to the areas in their neighborhood. tourism development in labuan bajo and municipal development in borong for instance have been a big enough appeal for businessmen who want to expand their businesses or even moved in there. these business people and investors contribute to the increasing number of new settlers and the growth of non-agricultural economic sectors. the growing economy is followed with the growing number of businesses leading to the higher employment rate, particularly for manual workers or domestic workers. this higher employment rate in nonagricutural sector, in turn, encourages population mobility. based on the data from the center bureau of statistics (bps) of kebupaten manggarai, the sub-district or kecamatan with the highest number of immigrants is kecamatan langke rembong in which ruteng, the capital city of manggarai, is located. in 2009, the number reached 2045 (bps kabupaten manggarai, 2009). although the data on the regions where the migrants in the kecamatan come from has not been available, the statistics of its migrants suggests that the majority of people who have moved to langke rembong come from the rural areas in manggarai. the data correspond to the statstics of workers in existing sectors that show increases annually. moreover, the data from economy indicator of kabupaten manggarai show a decrease in workforce in agricultural sector from 34.23% in 2011 to 33.36% in 2013 and an increase in service and industrial sectors from 30.23% to 30.46% (bps kabupaten manggarai, 2014). the data on labor composition indicate that there are more women workers than men workers. this composition can be seen as an indication that the number of men workers who have moved to another sector outside of their villages is increasing (pp. 1214). in terms of cultural environment, urban areas in manggarai are not that different from rural areas in the same territory. the significant different is in the level of physical infrastructure and economic developements. urban modernity supported by the two factors is embodied in items such as cellphones, wellprovided electricity, motorbikes and cars. it is also represented in negative behaviors such as street races, conflicts with security guards, lack of empathy, money-oriented activities, lavish lifestyle and lack of respect for older people or senior relatives. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 170 people migrating from rural areas to ruteng commonly work or seek employment in service and industrial sectors. many of them work as vendors and as manual workers for home industries or small businesses in ruteng. the majority of migrant vendors sell daily needs such as food, foodstuff and fuel. some of them have a stall in a market, and some others are mobile food vendors. some of popular food products they sell are kompiang (one of manggaraian traditional cookie covered with sesame seeds), toasted bread, cilok, and pia. other foods that are commonly peddled, particularly by migrants from java, are bakso (indonesian meatballs) and mie ayam (indonesian chicken noodle). street peddlers usually sell their food by going from house to house, school to school, office to office, store to store, or several other places downtown where many people frequently gather. foodstuffs that are peddled by many street vendors in ruteng are vegetables and fruits. most of these vendors are migrants from rural areas who usually get their goods from their home villages. many of them have some relatives from their villages that supply the foodstuffs to them. indeed, one of the reasons why these people are still regularly connected with their relatives in their home villages is that they have farmland or some productive land plots together to take care and whose produce is harvested for daily consumption and for sale. in that case, to do their business, these vendors engage in circular migration (samers, 2010). they make regular travel between their villages and the city where they sell their goods weekly or more frequent than weekly. their mobility is supported by rural public transport system that runs along various routes and enables them to reach ruteng. clearly, the villages where they come from are within commuting distance of the city. some of them are located in kecamatan ruteng, lelak, and rahong utara, which are less than 20 kilometers from ruteng downtown. these rural areas and ruteng are connected by trans-flores road whose surfaces have been built with asphalt to make it possible for public transportion to run across it all round. other important goods are fish. supplies of fish and fish products are obtained from coastal areas such as labuan bajo and reo. they are brought using containers and transported in pickup trucks that can access remote areas in the region. fishermen sell their catch to several wholesaler or suppliers which mostly madurese people who do their business in coastal areas. the majority of fish vendors in ruteng either buy the fish directly from fishermen or from wholesalers. much like vegetable and fruit vendors, fish vendors sell their goods either by peddling them from place to place or by running a stall in the market. the difference is that fish vendors are not commuters since they don’t have to go to their home villages to get the fish supply. like fish vendors, kerosene and gasoline vendor in ruteng are usually not commuters. most of them are migrants from the neighboring areas of the city. both fuel peddlers on the street and fuel retailers in the market are considered illegal fuel vendors. they make profit from the difference between fuel retail price and fuel price in gas station. upon closer observation, there are several particular reasons why rural people engage in urbanization. the first one is the fact that it is easier to acquire cash from selling goods and services. back in manggaraian home villages, money is not the only means of exchange. barter is even more common medium of exchange in manggaraian rural economy. so, exchanging goods for other goods ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 171 as well as services for other services are common practices in there. they would exchange rice for coffee or corn for example, with an agreed quantity. exchange using cash is commonly practiced when rural manggaraians have to make a commercial deal with people from outside of their villages or when there are occasions where they have to make expenses on money such as make a donation for relatives who need financial support to hold a gathering or party, to seek medical treatment, to buy consumer goods, to purchase agricultural appliances and fertilizers, to pay their children’s tuition, to pay some household levies, or to pay certain taxes. when farmers need to make quick cash, they are compelled to sell their produce at a low price. some of them even succumbed to middlemen who buy their produce in a very low price when they are in emergency for cash. circumstances can go worse when crops price rate in general is dropping or when the farmers’ traditional cultivating method is unable to prevent crop failure. in that case, working in the city becomes a more reasonable option to make an income in cash that they can use for various purposes such as fulfilling their daily necessities, paying bills and many other household needs that cannot be meet by means of barter. the second reason for engaging in urbanization is the perception that they can have better chance of securing a regular income source, particularly monthly income. in fact, many rural manggaraians feel that working in the city offers higher level of certainty than working in their home villages. there are challenges in being a traditional farmer in their village that they do not want to go through such as dependence on growing/planting seasons and the impact of weather condition on crops. dramatic weather change may increase the risk of crop failure, and therefore, the level of harvest unpredictability from season to season is higher. moreover, price fluctuation in agricultural markets in which middlemen take part has frequently made harvest season unprofitable. in some worst periods, they even experience depressing shortfall because the income from the harvest fails to compensate for the production expenses. so, being an unskilled worker or a vendor in the city is seen as an alternative income source with lower risk. it is because wage rate is usually set and peddling or retailing is easier than farming. they will not be burdened by obligation to pay for farm labor and to anticipate the possible crop failure. the third reason is that some manggaraians are simply lack of resources to cultivate their farmlands. hiring agricultural workers and providing means of production can be too costly. it is not to mention that fertilizers and medicine crop prices are on the rise. for these people, leaving farming for wage-paid jobs or peddling in big city is a reasonable decision. some of them who have decided to move to the city permanently bring their whole family to live with them in their new place, while some others leave their family in their village to move into one of their relative’s place in the city. manggaraians who do not bring their family to move to the city work to make money for supporting their family’s daily financial needs or agricultural needs to take care of their farm in their village. the fourth reason is the motivation to have a new or different life experience. most of manggaraian migrants with this impulse are young people. they are commonly tired of living a rural life where they have to work hard on farmland. many of them have decided to leave their villages to work in the city as blue collar workers or ojek (motorcycle taxi) drivers. not only do they want to be able ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 172 to provide for themselves, they also want to enjoy many kinds of entertainment and modern lifestyle that urban life can offer. for them, ompared to the highly time-consuming and laborious work on farmland, wage-paid jobs in the city are more preferable. big cities other than ruteng which have been migration destinations for the manggaraian are outside of flores. many young manggaraians migrate to these cities to pursue higher education. the reason is apparently the inadequate educational support system in flores, particularly in terms of quality and facilities. young manggaraians who migrate for the purpose other than continuing their education work in oil palm plantations in kalimantan and sumatra with the expectation that they will be paid higher than what they used to earn in their villages in manggarai. in manggarai, population mobility in general and urbanization in particular have caused a number of problems for inhabitants of both rural and urban areas. one of the problems is that the significant increase in the number of people migrating from villages to cities is followed by the increase in the workforce supply in urban areas. surplus in labor supply, in turn, affect wage rate. in reality, most of workers coming from rural areas have not been paid according to the prevailing regional minimum wage. in most cases, the amount of wages paid is set based on the kind of job the worker is employed for and the period of his/her employment with the company or organization he/she has been working for. wages are also varied from employer to employer although there is usually an agreed level of minimum wage among employers in the same region. it is not uncommon that employers hire certain individuals on the recommendation of their workers. this reality has something to do with the interpersonal affinity or kinship between migrants in the city and the prospective migrants discussed in the earlier part of discussion about the causes of population mobility (or social mobility) and urbanization (brown, 1991). it is related to the concept of migration chain effect mentioned in the discussion in which migrants inform their relatives or friends in their home villages about urban life and better job opportunities they have enjoyed in the city. moreover, the manggaraians’ preference for moving to the city where their migrant relatives or friends have been in suggests that interpersonal affinity in the forms of kinship and friendship between people in different positions along the migration chain help the incoming migrants adapt to their new place. migration chain that significantly contributes to urbanization in manggarai not only serves as a support system for the prospective migrants, but also for manggaraian migrant workers that have been in the city for some time. manggaraian workers in the cities feel most comfortable in the company of their fellow manggaraians because of their shared habits, sense of solidarity, and primordial camaraderie. the presence of these three factors here is capable of creating a metaphorical home that plays a role as a mental and emotional comfort for manggaraian migrants while being away from home and being among people of various backgrounds. for employers, primordial friendship between their employees can be an advantage because workers with common backgrounds tend to create fewer conflicts than those with diverse backgrounds. these same-background workers can also help them find new recruits whenever necessary. however, the downside ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 173 of employing workers of the same background is that their friendship may become counterproductive to industrial work system. in cases where one of the manggaraian workers resigns, for example, his/her fellow manggaraian workers of the same background will follow suit to prove their solidarity especially when the resigning worker is a person whom they much respect. likewise, when one of them asks for some days off to attend a traditional event in their home village, his/her manggaraian friends may also do the same thing to attend the same event. in some cases, they do not even tell how long they will be off from work. they may or may not go back to work for certain considerations. their time off may end in a resignation when, for example, their friends and relatives ask them to take a different job or work at different company or organization with them. thus, different attitudes towards industrial work system between workers coming from rural areas and employers who are accustomed to urban way of life may create conflict between employers and their employees. another problem that may create conflict between workers and employers is different work ethics between urban people who grew up in an industrial society (most employers) and rural people who grew up in an agricultural society (most employees). the most obvious indication is their difference in work pattern and work pace. the employer may think that rural people are lazy and tardy. indeed, the wish to experience modernity has consequences. georg simmel, as quoted by giddens (2006) suggests a concept called “mental life of the city”. the concept describes the ways the city shapes its inhabitants’ mentality by bombarding their mind with hundreds of images, impressions, sensations and diverse activities. in contrast, rural life is characterized with tranquility and slower life rhythm. in big cities, people are trying to protect themselves from potential criminal impulse in their social environment and distorted images of social reality by keeping their emotional distance with others and focusing only on what matters to survive in urban way of life. giddens observes that this mental life of the city creates detached and lonely individuals (p. 896). according to ferdinand tönnies, urbanization is responsible for the diminishing gemainschaft or communities whose members are brought together by shared traditional values, strong solidarity, reliable interrelationship between friends and between individuals and environment and definite positions in society. urban mentality has transformed gemeinschaft into gesellschaft. gesellschaft refers to communities whose members’ relationship are transitory or instrumental in nature. interpersonal relationship in this kind of community is built upon certain bakground and interests, and therefore, one’s position is valued according to the role he/she plays in society. in the two socilogists’ views, the cities are a place full of strangers (p. 896). it can be inferred that brown, simmel and tönnies’s perspectives on urbanization are interrelated, particularly in providing a framework to explain the reality of manggaraians’ social mobility and their involvement in urbanization. the transition they experence from rural life to urban life causes particular conflicts and challenges. to deal with this issue and to survive urban mental life, they rely on their friendship, solidarity and kinship with people of the same background. the incoming manggaraians migrants adjust themselves to the new place under the guidance of and with the support from their relatives or friends who have migrated to the city before them. being at later point in migration chain, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 174 all they need to do is follow their predecessors’ lead to make their rural-to-urban transition much easier than that experienced by the pioneering migrants. the environment of modernity may also cause the feeling of uprootedness. the manggaraians, who were born and grew up in an agrarian society, are so accustomed to a closely knit community that they need some time and efforts to adjust themselves to the industrial society which values individualism as the most important quality. this sociocultural discrepancy leads to the growing need for maintaining connection with the cultural origin among manggaraian migrants in the cities so as to not lose their cultural identity (yuliantari a. p., 2016); (yuliantari, adi, & ganap, 2015). these mental tendencies are represented in manggaraian rap music as creative part of the manggaraians’ cultural narratives. the lyrics of manggaraian rap songs express the struggle for preserving their cultural identity through criticisms on urban lifestyle such as the way city people dress, their dependence on sopisticated communication devices and social media, and the way boys and girls adopting kinds of attitudes they have learned from the mass media. these forms of criticism can be found in the lyrics of the following songs: “cbl” written by kbr community; “alay” “abg”, “cewe matre” and “cewek pantat bensin murahan” by mc firman; “leng bail umet” by putra and z-lo mbc; and “molas gincu” by ricky radu. manggaraian rappers’ criticisms are also targeted at rural people who prefer foreign cultures to their own culture. criticism on this preference can be found in the lyrics of “wa mai tana” and “ruteng is da city” written by lipooz. the two songs present an image of manggaraians who have lost respect or appreciation for their own tradition. they behave as if they have abandoned their identity as a member of manggaraian culture. in short, the two songs are written to criticize some manggaraians who try to adopt modern lifestyle at the cost of their manggaraian identity. some rappers express their cultural identity by writing songs that suggest images of rural life as compared to urban lifestyle. their portrayals of countryside and rural life correspond to the description and conception of rural areas proposed by d. stead (2002) and c. t. stewart jr. (1958). rural area as a spatial setting is characterized by these features: the majority of its inhabitants are farmers, most part of their lands is cultivated as farmland, its population is relatively small, and public facilities and entertainment in there are relatively limited. manggaraian rap songs that offer images of rural areas as a spatial setting are, among others, “kador neka culas bail” written by vian mahon, “reggae manggarai” by dodi rbc, “enu molas maras” by rifand to’oz, “molas baju wara” and “hip cha cha” by lipooz, “leng bail umet” by ricky mc (singers: putra mbc dan z-lo mbc), and “gaya di enu rimpet” by ricki radu. these rap songs give some perspectives on manggaraians’ social reality and its various aspects. some of them are conflicts among young manggaraians, shift in social and cultural values causing by daily contacts with modern lifestyle mediated by the mass media, and manggaraians’ geographical mobility from their countrysides to many different areas outside manggarai. as argued by marc mormont (woods, 2011), rural area or countryside as an abstract concept is represented in imaginations and interpretations that give certain meanings to a spatial setting, a natural environment and way of life. manggaraian rappers who have been living in the city for some time express their ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 175 abstract ideas of the rurality of manggarai in the lyrics of their songs. their ideas reflect its image as a “rural idyll” by which manggarai is perceived as a peaceful, tranquil and simple place, compared to the hustle and bustle of urban life. some of the songs with this portrayal are “ruteng is da city”, “manggarai kotaku tercinta”, and “ingin kembali ke kota kecilku”. songs with this kind of theme, according to eliot in kruse (2003), are written and rendered “to imagine a different way of living, or at least to minimize the burdens and oppressions of everyday life” (p. 156). thus, the imagination of manggarai as countryside in songs’ lyrics serves as an escape for these rappers from the complexity of urban life. their songs are their way of reonstructing the rural idyll of their home villages and their expression of their longing for its tranquility and for the sense of kinship of its people. in essence, their lyrics suggest the contrasting mentality of urban and rural lives. their village is a peaceful, hospitable and self-sufficient place they will always miss, whereas the city where earn a living is a demanding, tough, merciless and competitive place to work in. manggaraian rap songs that emphasize this contrast are, among others, vian mahon’s “boleng my place” and “ingin kembali ke kota kecilku”, dodi rbc’s “aku retang bao” dan “terbayang reo kota kecil”, boyz of west manggarai’s “tanahku labuan bajo”, and arlan colol’s “manggarai timur”. manggaraian rap songs that focus on the fierce competition in the city and the struggle to survive it are eman tonjo’s “gesar dami anak” dan “lako pala”. the songs’ lyrics picture the tough reality of living in the bic cities in which the available choice for the migrants who came to work in there without particular skills to offer is being a manual worker. unlike urban life that put unskilled workers in hardship, rural life can give them a sense of kinship and contentment. so, what they later found is that although the limited job opportunities in their village have motivated them to move to the city, living in scarcity in there is more rewarding than living in poverty in the city without relatives and close friends to keep them company. the song titled “gesar dami anak” for example, communicates that solidarity and harmony in rural areas are the support system that will always be cherished by manggaraians who live far away from their home villages. amity, peace and solidarity are the tradition and social setting that manggaraian migrants are deprived of during their residency in the cities. the song titled “naring cama ora komodo” written by z-lo mbc and “labuan bajo” by firman mc present another comparison between rural and urban areas in which the writers mention specific names of the regions the y talk about in the lyrics. these are the places that urban people are usually attracted to as destinations for vacation. the idyllic atmosphere of the places helps tourists take a break from the exhausting routine in the city. in “labuan bajo,” mc firman describes that labuan bajo is so great that anyone who visits it would wish to never leave it. the lyrics also describe it as a rural area that can offer urban modernity to enjoy. having been developed as a tourist destination, it has modern facilities such as that in the cities. like “labuan bajo”, “naring cama ora komodo” by z-lo mbc talks about rural area as tourism object, but it also communicates a message that its natural beauty needs to be continuously preserved since it is the main reason that urban people come to visit the area as well as other rural areas. therefore, the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 176 development of modern infrastructure and facilities in those areas, as much as it is important to accommodate tourists, it should be kept in check to prevent any harm on the natural environment. nature preservation is important not only to protect its beauty but also to maintain the traditional values that are attached to it. in traditional perspective, nature is emas mongko or treasure that is vital for people’s welfare in general. manggaraian rap songs that specifically present images of urban areas were written by migrant manggaraian rappers who still live outside their home region. their lyrics represent their concern about how different the values and lifestyle in the city is from those in here they come from. this concern can be found in potas tribe’s “indahnya pagi”, potazz’s “jakarta suruh siapa?”, potazz dan z-lo’s “this is my life”, and lipooz’s “harapan”. their lyrics reveal some conflicts and negosiations the manggaraians have to undergo in their attempt to maintain their cultural identity as manggaraians among a pluralistic society in the city that is full of people from different backgrounds. they feel that urban society is more materialistic and lack of the kinship solidarity of rural society. they have to continuously negotiate and renegotiate with their social environment to not to lose their cultural identity and, at the same time, to survive urban life. throughout their struggle to make a better life in the city as migrants, things such as morning coffee, memory of their parents’ advice, and other things that are valued in manggarai become their anchor whenever they need to stay connected to their origin. lipooz’s “harapan” brings into attention the importance of friends to go through the indifferent nature of urban social life. some manggaraian rap songs highlight the disagreeable sides of urban life such as its materialistic orientation, the hedonistic lifestyle of its people, corruption, moral degradation and indifferent attitude. these negative images are represented in the lyrics of potaazz’s “because of the money” dan “kemanakah merdeka”, dodi rbc’s “perang malapetaka” dan “keadilan”, aldo mbc’s “interesti suara rakyat”, lanooz’s “playboy freestyle”, and selo kapet’s “perempuan malam”. these songs reflect manggaraian rappers’ awareness and concern of how these negative qualities may affect indonesian nation in general and manggaraian society in rural areas in particular. conclusion it should be clear by now from the above discussion that manggaraian rap songs which feature migration as their theme give particular insights into the causes and the effects of manggaraians’ migration and their reasons to move from their villages to various cities. from the closer observation of the reality of this ethnic group and manggaraian rap song, it is apparent that the fundamental cause of manggaraians’ migration is the shift in their worldview and way of life as a result of their transformation from an agrarian society into an industrial society. their reasons to migrate out of their home villages can be summed up by the fact that they feel motivated to be part of modernity. one of important effects of migration and the manggaraians’ increasing contact with people from various sociocultural backgrounds is the occurrence of cultural identity issue. with the growing need for maintaining their connection with the culture where they were born and grew up and prevent themselves from feeling alienated in the city, manggaraian migrants affirm their cultural identity ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 164-177 177 through various material and non-material representations of manggaraian culture. references allerton, c. (2004). the path of marriage: journeys and transformatiion in manggarai, eastern indonesia. bijdragen tot de taal-, landen volkenkunde, 160(2/3), 339-362. allin. (2012). llipooz ciptakan wadah berkarya untuk hip hop ruteng. retrieved on 12 july 2015, from hiphopindo.net: http://hiphopindo.net. bell, a. (2017). lipooz, dari ruteng ke 16 bar ke hip hop sampai tuhan suruh berhenti. retrieved from ranalinoid: https://www.ranalino.id/2017/02/lipooz-dari-ruteng-ke-16-bar-ke-hiphop.html. bps kabupaten manggarai. (2009). manggarai dalam angka 2009. ruteng: pemerintah kabupaten manggarai. bps kabupaten manggarai. (2014). indikator kesejahteraan rakyat kabupaten manggarai 2014. ruteng: pemerintah daerah kabupaten manggarai. brown, l. a. (1991). place, migration, and development in the third world: an alternative view. new york: routledge. erb, m. (1999). the manggaraians: a guide to traditional lifestyles. kuala lumpur: time edition. giddens, a. (2006). sociology. cambridge: polity press. gottdiener, m., & budd, l. (2005). key concepts in urban studies. london: sage publications. hagul, a., & lana, c. d. (1989). manggarai kemarin, hari ini, dan esok. ruteng: dinas p dan k. kruse ii, r. j. (2003). imagining strawberry fields as a place of pilgrimage. area, 35(2), 154-162. morley, d. (2019). stuart hall: identity and diaspora (vol. 2). durham and london: duke university press. saldana, a. (2002). music, space, indentity: geographies of youth culture in bangalore. cultural studies, 16(3). doi: 10.1080/09502380210128289, 337350. samers, m. (2010). migration. london and new york: routledge. solomon, t. (2005). "listening to istanbul": imagining place in turkish rap music. studia musicologica norvegica, 31(1), 46-67. stead, d. (2002). urban-rural relationships in the west of england. built environment, 28(4), 299-310. stewart jr, c. t. (1958). the urban-rural dichotomy: concepts and uses. american journal of sociology, 64(2), 152-158. webb, r. p. (1994). the children of mori kereng: education and strategies in manggarai, flores. philippine quarterly of culture and society, 22(2), 141158. woods, m. (2011). rural. london: routledge. yuliantari, a. p. (2016). molas baju wara: hybridity in manggarai rap music. celt journal, 16(2), 201-216. yuliantari, a. p., adi, i. r., & ganap, v. (2015). ruteng is da city: representasi lokalitas dalam musik rap manggarai. resital, 16(2), 65-74. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 211 apocalyptic narrative schemas in dystopian films thafhan muwaffaq, nurul komar, and rio armandaru universitas al azhar indonesia1,2, universitas indonesia3 thafhan.muwaffaq@uai.ac.id, nurulkomar@hotmail.co.id, and rio.armandaru@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030207 received 14 november 2019; accepted 15 march 2020 abstract this research investigates the way dystopia as film genre is attributed with catastrophe or, what will be regarded here as apocalyptic events. we question the way in which the genre represents state of affairs of humanity in the face of a catastrophe, in catastrophe, and after catastrophe. a narrative analysis is conducted using cognitive semiotics approach, by identifying narrated events, and actions of the protagonist as constituting parts of event. we argue that narrative in dystopian films represent three types of apocalyptic schema (i.e. pre-apocalyptic, apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic). each schema seems to have distinct model of storyline, regardless of the predefined genre of the film (e.g. adventure, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.). despite the distinct schemas, the analyzed films illustrate typical tone of hopefulness wherein humanity prevails over catastrophe and dystopian state of affairs. another typical representation in dystopian films analyzed here is portrayal of collective fear among the protagonist. our study leads to a point that humanity is portrayed as being adaptive to catastrophic situations, therefore it is able somehow to survive. here we offer narrative standard in dystopia genre using the light of cognitive semiotics perspective, which differs to a great degree with theories offered by classical literary studies. keywords: films, genre, dystopia, cognitive semiotics, apocalyptic events schema, introduction extensive etymological explanation regarding the concept of utopia by fatima vieira includes the discussion about dystopia (vieira, 2010). the discussion addresses notions of utopia and dystopia as if entangled into a polarizing dichotomy. among many things, an important insight one can draw is that dystopia can be understood as literary genre referring to “imaginary places that were worse than real places, but also works describing places such as these.” (vieira, 2010). we favor the relativity the word worse implies, though at the same time it leaves uncovered gap. mailto:thafhan.muwaffaq@uai.ac.id mailto:nurulkomar@hotmail.co.id mailto:rio.armandaru@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030207 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 212 dystopia is considered different from the apocalyptic narrative, because the primary target of its narrative is to represent impossibility of ideal society that motivates one to construct state of affairs as such. in this sense, dystopian narrative should not situate the end of the world or the humanity. instead, it should call forth optimism towards humanity and society as a persisting idea. indeed, it is important to distinguish apocalyptic narrative from dystopia. but, supposed an apocalypse in whatever sense is considered a challenge posed to humanity, where the possible outcomesare whether humanity persists or perishes, would then apocalypse have something to do with dystopia? in our view, apocalypse seems tohold something to do with dystopia at certain degree. accounts regarding dystopia often talk about utopia as if they both are inseparable (claeys, 2013; deese, 2011; greene, 2011; klonowska, 2018).while our interest resides with dystopia as a narrative genre, wepinpoint our interest to the elaborative account from claeys that the notion of dystopia has other properties than merely a literary genre. it is but encompassing as well ideology and communal movement, as specifically a portrait of societyliving in fear and under threatening situations. dystopia in some respects may be analogous to what religious narrative propagates as hell. at this point, one can notice how dystopia as an account of place is not entirely the same as doomsday or armageddon. the latter may justify what vieira’s view. however, the religious narrative regarding doomsday and hell is linear. that is to say, supposed the former means the end for every living individual, of who will be anyway continue living in afterlife be it in hell or heaven. vieira does not seem to take that into account; therefore we are siding on claeys’ view. it should be noted as well that the polarization of dystopia-utopia is likely to work in a spectrum, instead of black and white palette. that is to say, the polarization is relative to whose perspective is anchored in viewing a given state of affairs. in other words, one’s dystopia might be utopia of the others and vice versa. our view here echoes claeys explanation about “’identity’ definition of dystopia” (claeys, 2013). here, utopia and dystopia are related somehow in the way they contrast each other. claeys regards three variations of dystopia (e.g. despotism, totalitarianism, and doomsday or armageddon) as corresponding in the way they represent human volition has been undermined thus destabilized by intervening external force, however the form or the figure. he concludes that dystopia in metaphorical statement that it is a trip to hell with no return. thus we add, and in hell we can imagine ourselves tormented and constantly pressured by horrifying and painful torture. however, it seems difficult to accept that dystopia is spatially limitless, considering its interrelation with utopia as a whole spectrum. dystopia as literature genre and its exemplifying works have been studied. for instance (conkan, 2012) evaluates theoretical views regarding dystopia as a genre, and as a representation within stories under sci-fi and fantasy. some typical words such as pessimistic, apocalyptic, repression are embedded issues within humanity ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 213 state of affairs. further, fantasy and sci-fi might narrate dystopian story in disparate ways. the former seems to anchor on “metaphorical evil”, whereas the latter metonymically put into play evil that can be present realistically in society. indeed, dystopia seems to manifest in pessimism, repression, and disaster. in a particularly meticulous study, senior high school students were asked to imagine what would happen to the world and how they would experience it in the future, then they were given a task to write their prediction (nordensvard, 2014). the study found that majority of the students wrote pessimistic prediction, in which there are occurrences and states of affairs such as what has been pointed as situated in dystopian world. these occurrences deviate what is quo in the world at present into a world wherein there is dehumanization, social inequalities, and conflicts that are pertained by competition over depleted resources. another point of interest is that dystopian narrative seems to be associated with hopefulness, despite it is in itself a pessimistic projection of future. typical representation, popular themes, and tropes in dystopian contemporary films have been studied (klonowska, 2018). the study argues two specific films considered as structured by dystopian narrative (i.e. the hunger games and elysium. it is argued that there is a shift within dystopian narrative from focusing on political state of affairs to character-driven focus narrative. klonowska seems to have concern with the essence, the value, the conception of dystopia (and utopia). practically, we do not share such concern. any given shifts in the way certain narrative genre serves the narration may indicate dynamicity of genre, which has to do with produced texts and situations. problematizing dystopia as genre the central issue of our paper is elaborating the standard of dystopian narrative, and the event variables that comprise the narrative (friend, 2012). although the existing literature so far has imported valuable insights regarding dystopia as a genre and a notion in particular, it is seemingly short in laying down the configuration of the narrative (vieira, 2010; claeys, 2013; conkan, 2012; deese, 2011; nordensvard, 2014; klonowska, 2018). our study is interested in looking closely at the way film narrative represents dystopian state of affairs. indeed, not all of the films studied here is under dystopia genre. however, we assume they do not have necessarily be so. dystopia has to do with what we regard here as catastrophe or apocalyptic event, that refers an occurence which pertains great deal of suffer to humanity. by no means we are implying dystopia is a form of apocalyptic narrative, or the catastrophe an apocalypse that ends humanity. rather, in this paper we argue event as such is property of dystopian narrative as a form of precedent, immediate or ongoing present, and potential precedent. this underlying assumption guides our view that film narratives studied are in possession of such features as narrative schema, however they are formally represented in narration. that being said, genres that are typically considered under dystopia category (e.g. sci-fi and fantasy) can nevertheless narrate conception of apocalyptic event or ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 214 catastrophe in relation to representation of dystopia. the representation appears as in variations which claeys calls forth (i.e. despotism, totalitarianism, and apocalypse). dynamic interconnectivity between genre, text, and situations imply the involvement of social context so to bring those three constraints, modifications, responses, and propagations. ostergaard and bundgaard (2015) provide detailed account of genre dynamics as mentioned, as formulating model and parameter one should address in distinguishing certain text genre from others. it is tempting to use their theoretical model of the double feedback loop and the parameter theory of genres here, as we are attempting to study dystopia as particular genre. however, the limited resources and time pose challenges to carry. additionally, the internal features of dystopia as narrative text are not yet clear. in other words, our objective is to necessarily delineate prototypical representation of dystopia in a given narrative text, prior to elaborating its dynamics and parameters. a narrative text can appear as non-fiction or fiction. they are themselves certain genre which has its ontological status, thus indebted speech act principles (i.e. illocutionary act in specific) as searle has put it eloquently (2006). in fiction, the only principle of illocutionary act that is complied by author is the sincerity rule. this implies authors are committed into believing what they are expressing as they write fiction. and, generally the assertion itself conceives a pretended speech act in the sense of not deceiving its receptor but make-believe to the content of the assertions. it is this special status that allows reception of fictional narration excused from the text fidelity (hendersen& clark, 2007; zwaan, 1994). that is to say, unlike fiction, the way we exploit our cognitive resources in grasping fictional text differs from nonfictional one, as we are more attentive to the superficial level (i.e. expression) of the former comparably to the latter. in contrast, our attention delves into seeking the situation level or the content of the latter. fiction is a genre which product can be a form of literary works, film, or anything of the sort. cognitive ability of our species allows creative endowment in producing narrative text, be it fiction or nonfiction. this cognitive ability is a byproduct of long evolutionary process of humankind that at some point incites cognitive revolution (harari, 2014). fictional narrative serves fundamental principle that it transmits information within and across group in large numbers. common myth is most likely fictional, story that tells about ghosts, spirits, and supranatural agents. the conceptions of those entities are made possible by exploitation of domains within our cognitive architecture prompted by imaginary process (sørensen, 2005). these contents should as well be yielded by creative neural processing that involves semantic and episodic memories. at the broadest sense, our species is predisposed to this cognitive ability of producing and receiving narrative, as the ablity itself is an evolutionary by-product. thereby, it makes sense to think business with production of fictional narrative is essentially for the sake of preserving existence of our species. dystopian fictional ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 215 narrative, and presumably nonfictional as well, then represents what the species reflects as ill-suited kind of living condition or “habitat” so to speak. this representation projects what the species wants to anticipate or avoid, therefore will not be materialized, as its upbringing would call forth great risk and reduction to survival. there is something that searle overlooks when he says fiction has no inherent properties, in terms of narrative structure and its comprising language. as a matter of fact, fiction as a genre is constituted by a set of standard (i.e. constituting properties of certain work), contra-standard (i.e. excluded properties that used in certain work), and variables (i.e. differentiating properties within certain class) (friend, 2012). the shifts of narrator perspective are considered standard of fictional narrative, while continuous immediate consciousness contra-standard to non-fictional text, and variables can be exemplified as the extent of details of character description. it should be emphasized that her theoretical framework is not constrained only to fiction, as she illustrates the application of her proposition using music and any other form of arts (see friend, 2012). adapting friend’s proposition then implies that fictional narrative has inherent structure, though may be varying. given that dystopia is a genre under fiction, it should embody as well the narrative structure that standardizes fiction. however, one can assume that dystopia as a certain genre would have theme of its own which makes itself distinct and particular. if dystopian themes are manifested in terms of repressive society situated under totalitarian, despotism, and apocaliptic atmosphere, this study posits a question such as how the themes of the genre of dystopia are represented schematically in the narrative. the framework of semiocognitive text processing film semiotics is aimed to unearth imperceptible system of signification which is embedded on screen, and has underlying assumption that film has language of itself which is similar to what saussure coined as parole (metz, 1991). having said that, film semiotics gives the impression that it concerns the way in which spectators make meaning as they watch film. the problem is that in doing so the approach of film semiotics makes no direct reference to what is going on in the mind of spectators. they are rather considered as passive and that meaning making is autonomous to their mental processing which is renderred by cognition. as what will be elaborated the framework of cognitive semiotics complements what the traditional film semiotics has failed to account. one assumption in cognitive semiotics is that film aesthetic experience is multimodal. in that sense information processing that takes place in mind as endowed cognitive capacity receives more than one sensory information. human brain is wired for that capacity (magliano and zacks, 2011; coegnarts and kravanja, 2015; suchan and bhatt, 2016). semiocognitive text processing assumes filmmakers employ available tools in producing film narrative such as auditorial and visual stimulus (e.g. sound, music, shot, color, etc.) with semiotic intent. spectators then actively process those stimuli so to make meaning (e.g. conceiving diegesis and storyworld). this process that is occuring in the mind of spectators is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 216 the very same process to make sense the reality, and that it has no prerequisite competence as what is propagated by cognitivist under chomskian influence. contextual information provided by certain scene and occuring dialogue are stored in working memory, thereby enabling spectators have mental model of the narrative in its entirety. reflecting on the interrelation between what is on screen and what is in the mind might yield emotional response among many other things. it is arguably the work of human neural equipment as well that renders perception of characters represented on-screen, who are actually a person enacting or enunciating invented persona, to be theorized to have mind of their own. thereby, they are perceived as intentional agents who are able to carry out action, perception, give emotional response, etc. this already echoes what embodied cognition propagates in the way we process text and make meanings out of it, which view is central in the cognitive semiotics standpoint. in film aesthetics, mise-en-scene (i.e. how things appeare on-screen and situate event) and mise-en-shot (i.e. how certain scene is filmed) are two crucial aspects of building film narrative and narration. in our case, we counted shots taken in order to pinpoint what events are represented as scenes. thereby, we put the events into chronological order to locate spatiotemporal positions of the recount and and the unfolding story. we consider the schema conceived by the chronological order with respect to situated state of affairs and events wherein. by schema, we refer to perceived recurring structure (johnson, 2013). the recurring structure is constituted as certain pattern of schema. in itself, it is the mechanism of our event-perception in mind. we consider that the latter is of essential to our study, thus positions cognitive semiotics as the compatible approach. the study places its central issue at human meaning-making process, where neural process is taken into account. meaningmaking process in the way we construe narrative is one of the topics of cognitive semiotics. cognitive semiotics may share similar assumption with traditional semiotics that in a narrative, there is an invented entity called narrator which anchors the perspective and the source of information, as well as furnishes details and consciousness representation (genette, 1983; stanzel, 1986; chafe, 1994; herman, 2007; bundgaard, 2010). however, in case of narrative comprehension traditional film semiotics may not account for inference that is generated by spectators/readers in building situation model from representational meaning (zwaan and magliano, 1995; muwaffaq, 2018). as to film, muwaffaq (2018) has attempted using semiocognitive approach in studying horrifying christchurch massacre video. it is argued the clip represents creational reality of showing off force to spectators, and shaping manhunt schema. further, the study is predicting practical implications of publishing the atrocity in motion picture clip. our study is not yet reaching the question of what kind of cultural information is being transmitted, though, nor spelling out the creative employments of film maker in terms of mise-en-scene and mise-and-shot. the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 217 objective of our study is to find out prototypical representation of dystopian narrative in films, which can be offerred as standard in seeing dystopia as a certain genre. method studying certain genre is a matter of classifying or categorizing. it should be noted then categorization that this study is committing itself into does not necessitate drawing static criterial definition. rather it is seeing attributes that are shared across films, and treating those films that are positioned in fuzzy boundary still as member of the category but less prototypical. by elaborating the shared attributes across films this study then uses descriptive approach, and by discussing the implication to humanities based on the already described attribute this study employs as well functional approach in genre studies (buckland, 2015). in order to carry out the study, we have selected several films, they are annihilation (garland, 2018), the lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring (jackson, 2001), world war z (forster, 2013), the road (hillcoat, 2009), and the hunger games (ross, 2012). our selection takes into consideration that the films are adaptation from, originally, fiction novel. indeed, it would be interesting very much to study the original text since it is fair to assume film has placed itself as a popular kind of art and media worth studying. this pertains film should be studied critically as narrative medium, regardless of whether or not spectators or public merely see it as an entertainment. at the broadest sense, the use of semiocognitive framework in textual processing in great respects is employing the available cognitive facility. however, this needs to be explicated. the process of our anlysis started by noting the down number of shots. noting down shots allowed seeing the way the narrative is established. thereby, we introspectively described situated events based on narration, by accounting underpinning context and actions of characters. described events were ordered chronologically, and patterns recurring from the order were considered schematic. we noticed there were features that constitute events, thus we accounted them by considering their recurrence as event-structuring variables. findings and discussion apocalyptic narrative schemas to begin with, it seems necessary to clarify what it means by the apocalyptic events or catastrophe.we would use the term interchangeably. they refer to an occurrence that urges humanistic individuals either to anticipate as a problemsolving state of affairs otherwise extinct, or to persevere with the hardship of living under threatening immediate environment. this occurence pertains to a situation wherein humanity and humanistic in whatever sense are represented as reduced. we propose dystopian narrative has hhumanistic individuals as the protagonist. they are not necessarily portrayed by human in physiological nature. in fantasy film, for instance the lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring, these individuals appearing in races (e.g. hobbit, dwarf, and elf). however, the formal ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 218 representation does not necessarily take out humanistic properties inherent to the representation. on the contrasting antagonist side there are orcs, goblins, and the likes. they represent what seem to be monstrous, brutal, immoral, and whatever else that represent them less humane or inhumane. the antagonistic characters are not to be considered humanistic individuals, thoughthey might be as human-like as the humanistic ones. trivially, they are represented as able to talk, act, have belief, etc., irrespectively to their physiology. what distinguishes the humanistic ones from the other is the former seems exemplifying humane characters. it is this trait that should allow us to perceive the characters, again however the physiological characteristics, as humanistic individuals. we suspect that this is made possible by the operating mechanism that allows us to have supranatural representation (e.g. ghost, evil spirits, etc.). as to film narrative, its multimodal information helps shaping perception and semantic of these two polarizing characters so to render the aesthetics. the dystopian narrative is attributed with representation of apocalyptic events or catastrophe in ways that can be classified into three types of schemas, namely pre-apocalyptic, apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic schema. narrative is recount of events which devises what spectators find as story (zwaan and magliano, 1995; genette, 1983; stenzel 1986; chafe, 2004; muwaffaq, 2018). in this sense we can assume stories are sequences of events that have been passed. this follows that narrative is anchored at the same spatotemporal point with with the audience. it serves as the source of information regarding the stories, by recounting past events. in doing so, it sets up perspective to the way the story is recounted, and how the story is. in this case the latter is typically reclined without respect to chronological order. such is the standard1of fiction, and this implies films under fiction share similar property (friend, 2012). however, we have cognitive ability to chunk situated actions and their context so to perceive them tied together as particular event. events in a given narrative then, though chronologically scrambled, can be ordered as a linear flow (zacks and magliano, 2011). it is based on the linearity of sequential events in the studied film narrative we classify the types of apocalyptic event schema. pre-apocalyptic narrative schema the pre-apocalyptic schema narrates catastrophe as a representation of occurrence to be anticipated, or a problem to be solved. it urges humanistic individuals as protagonist to respond so to the upcoming apocalyptic event. here, dystopia seems to be a predicted alternative and subsequent antecedent had the protagonist failed her anticipation. in this sense, we perceive the catastrophe as yet to happen and to potentially entail dystopia. its occurrence may be represented on screen as hints in some sort of protagonist’s premonition or antagonist’s threat, in case of the lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring. in annihilation the occurrence of catastrophe is merely predictive statements given by an authoritative character. but, we are allowed to draw inference as the narrative feeds information regarding the actions and events of protagonist along the the narrative. for instance, the protagonist explains the phenomenon that happens in the shimmer. it should be noted that lines of protagonist and other characters are not the only instance we ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 219 can rely on in comprehending the narrative. the film mise-en-shot supplies information by representing alien object that is crashing into the earth, alien material which behaves similarly to pathology, and caption. figure 1 illustrates pre-apocalyptic schema which structures the narrative in annihilation and the lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring. based on the chronological order of the narrative, there seems to be four spatiotemporal position. c represents precedent state of affairs which istypically portrayed by flashbacks.c is positioned with respect to immediate presenta, and the outcome of anticipating the possible catastrophe as antecedent b1.here, the possible catastrophe is marked by x. we consider b is at the same level with c because they situate the narrative as a whole. this implies a is a sort of specified and isolated space and time with respect to the whole scale of the narrative. it is merely a part where the story is centralized, and where the narrative point is anchored. but, it should not be considered representing the whole state of affairs within the narrative. it is this point that spectators follow as the main story, as it takes major part of the narrative. these two interlinking narrative points are proceeding to b. when ordered based on this spatiotemporal points, the narrative of annihilation starts with the coming of extraterrestrial object to the earth. this leads to the emergence of what is regarded by the shimmer, its spread, and deployment of investigations into the area within as countermeasure. this leads to deployment of expedition teamthat enlists a sergeant whosemotivation is self-destructive tendency, andwho knows his wife is unfaithful. the team never survives in the shimmer. however, his alien duplicate returns home as a person who suffers serious affliction. it is at this point the narrative transitions to the immediate present. that is to say, spectators would follow along the expedition of protagonist which somehow annihilates the shimmer. at the end, protagonist is interrogated by authority as she is the only survivor in her team. the narrative consists of the act of recount and the story recounted. spatiotemporal location of the recount and the recounted story are essentially different. however, they can be assumed as designed to overlap, jumbled, or to be in ways that we cannot anticipate insofar the narrative is constructed as a whole. as to annihilation the interrogation of protagonist underpins b1, whereas a is underlying her adventurous expedition, and c her memory and shots of alien object going into earth. interestingly, there is no explicit representation about the catastrophe in annihilation. there is only statement from authoritative character that we can use c b1 a x figure 1. pre-apocalyptic schema in dystopian films ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 220 as basis of inference. as to the representation itself we can draw information from scenes that represent the mission of protagonist. in our inference xis the annihilation of whatever organism exists on earth due to continuous mutation caused by environmental influence of the shimmer, and its replacement with alien and mutants. had this happened, we refuse to believe there would be dystopia. rather evolution that put off humans from selections, thereby humanity perishes. however, the process to the total annihilation would be likely to attain dystopian state of affairs. there is explcit difference between annihilation and lotr in the way the latter represents catastrophee. there are scenes of protagonist premonition if he should fail, though it does not entirely sketch the whole picture. again, by inference we can model the catastrophe and the dystopia entailed. to be specific, the catastrophe would be the return of the one ring to sauron as followed by his domination over middle earth. we can imagine sauron dominating force would conquer the free folk of middle earth. afterwards, humanity as represented by sauron’s counterpart (i.e. humanistic individuals) would be replaced with repressive kind of society, in which nonhumanistic individuals rule. there, we have dystopia in middle earth which is analogous to some respects with representation of repressive society in the hunger games. however, humanistic individuals in lotr prevail and middle earth is saved from threats of mordorunder sauron’scommand. that is the antecedent from protagonist successful quest (i.e. destroying the one ring). humanity is represented by depiction of different races that bear humanistic values (e.g. human, hobbit, elf, dwarf, etc.). fantasy seems to be unique in the way the genre intermingles the variation of races. and the condition that we can make sense the varying races may be humanistic or nonhumanistic is appropriatized by our practice of exploiting domains within cognitive architecture. the narration in the opening, which positions narrative point c has already furnished spectators with formal representation that informs spectators which is humanistic and nonhumanistic. it is fortified as we follow along the journey of protagonist which arcs from him as a common hobbit to become hero of middle earth after destroying the one ring. it should be noted, the journey of protagonist situates narrative spatiotemporal a. and, similarly to annihilation the story is centralized in a. but, the narrative point does not fully represent the whole state of affair of middle earth per se. apocalyptic narrative schema a catastrophe occurs in apocalyptic schema and leads to dystopia, unlike that of pre-apocalyptic schema. however, the occurring catastrophe is resolvable thereby urging humanistic individuals into finding ways to overcome the event (see c b1 a x figure 2. apocalyptic narrative schema ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 221 figure 2). the occurence of catastrophe is represented by x. generally, it may be represented as different kind of occurrence that deviates the quo state of affairs as represented by c. the immediate present which spectators find as unfolding story is similarly to the pre-apocalyptic schema. it is localized part of the whole narrative. the relation between a to the antecedent b1is direct, in a sense it situates action of protagonist in resolving the catastrophe. on the other hand, c and b1are indirect considering the resolution of apocalyptic event would impact the whole narrative, and that the former is background to a. in world war z, c what is represented as news broadcast until protagonist is stuck in a traffic jam. there is not explicit representation of zombie outbreak, except statements from news about the spread of virus and case of strange behaving people. protagonist soon realizes the apocalyse and struggle preserve his life. at this point, spectators are already served with immediate present a. technically, a is over as protagonist reunites with his family. however, his discovery of camouflage situates the antecedent b: the fighting of humans against the infected. spectators experience perceiving representation of the world that they know is shifting into an unprecedented catastrophic world. there, dystopia appears as the collapse of social institution, chaos, etc. similarly, the resolution of catastrophe seems to represent the prevail of humanity. post-apocalyptic narrative schema catastrophe x is a precedent in post-apocalyptic narrative schema respectively to the immediate present a. the narrative may or may not give specific information regarding the apocalyptic even, which has happened at some time prior to a. due to x implied past state of affairs has been shifted due to the occurrence of catastrophe. here, the latter situates narrative space and time c. it is in this schema the representation of dystopia as livable environment seems salient, albeit the environment in itself is ingrained by repressive threats by authoritarian rule or some sorts. spectators would follow the immediate presenta wherein protagonist is struggling under dystopian condition. the struggle leads to the point where he is surviving in the dystopian condition, or able to bring down repression that causes dystopia. the latter is marked by b1, and it represents successful attempt of preserving humanity (see figure 3). the protagonist in the road is able to get by as he finds migrating companion after losing his father. this leaves piece of information that allows us to believe his chance of surviving remains. as to the hunger games we can already sense that there is a brewing resistance against the oppressive state of panem, and eventually protagonist manages to turn down oppressive government. it is those points that we consider the narrative has reached point b1. in the road, dystopia is a representation of place in which society is repressed by environmental and societal threats. however harmful the environment, it is yet bringing an impression of livable place. protagonist, with his humanistic traits taught by his father, survives. other than that, dystopia seems to be reparable. the repairdeviates the place as less and less repressive, or less and less dystopic. there is no explicit explanation on apocalyptic event x in narrative of the road, which is different from the hunger games. for this matter, spectators are able to infer from information supplied by narrative. in contrast, the former has representation of c that is portraying the life of one of the protagonist prior to x while the latter does not. both narratives represent immediate present a wherein, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 222 protagonist is migrating to safer place (the road) and is trying to rebel against authoritarian rule (the hunger games). it should be noted that, as illustrated by figure 4, the event x motivates protagonist to take action proceeds her struggle to reach point b1. similarly, to the previous schemas, a is localized in the sense it only represents protagonists’ whereabouts. at least in the hunger games the winning of rebellion resolves dystopia in global scale. the road does not seem to exemplify the same state of affairs, yet the surviving protagonist implies there is a great possibility that others may share the same experience at the global scale. it is the underlying reason of why c and b1 are at the same level. event-structuring variables in apocalyptic schema in earlier section we have proposed dystopia as a particular genre is characterized by narrative that situates catastrophe or apocalyptic schema which entails humanity under repressive state of affairs. what we mean by schema is generic conceptual representation that is structured by typical or recurring process of events. perception, as result of cognitive process, holds key role in shaping recurring events into schema. this echoes gestalt principle as the operating mechanism of our perception. an event is configured by chunks of action underpinned by contextual situation. we refer those chunks of action and their contextual underpinning as event-structuring variables. a film narrative furnishes spectators with contextual information and action that are situated and perceivable to the eye of spectators. we propose several eventstructuring variables that configure apocalyptic schema in dystopian narrative. concept of threat is one of event variables which stimulate protagonists into reacting. it situates context of the event. by its appearance, threat can be segmented into non-agentive or agentive. the former is represented by natural disaster or whatever it is coming from natural setting. as to agentive, it represents entities at the broadest sense which are not always as necessarily human being. therefore, any organism capable of posing danger or harm to protagonist by carrying out particular action can be considered agentive threat (e.g. zombies, orcs, peacekeeper, cannibal, mutant bear, etc.). in responding to threats, the protagonist carries out certain actions. the actions are represented on screen differently. the way they are represented is analogous across and within a dystopian narrative. that is to say they fundamentally c b1 a x figure 3 post-apocalyptic narrative schema ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 223 serve the same purpose, which typically has anything to do with surviving or preserving humanity. thereby, we argue those actions are conceptualization of acts of survival. it should be noted, though, the purpose of acts of survival is not necessarily exclusive to the protagonist. other characters can as well be targeted as patient of the acts of protagonist, or protagonist can be the beneficiary from acts of others. it is in situation such as the former we consider protagonist action altruistic, while the latter an example of altruism by others. altruistic acts represent actions that are able to preserve existence of herself and her fellow. they are inherently practical implementation of humanistic motive. act of survival is segmented into migration (i.e. protagonist movement from threatening environment to less threatening one), self defense refers to fighting or fleeing threats, and looking for their information under the ongoing catastrophe or apocalyptic event. foraging is referring to looking or gathering resources for survival. affection means altruistic and psychologically comforting acts.finally, seeking help of others is communicating needs to conspecifics or the likes in order to earn support. we pinpoint institutional acts as a structuring-event variable which can be generated by protagonist and the antagonist. this is so because both sides are often narrated as part or agent of larger whole. here, we consider the whole social institution, in whatever kind of forms. at the very least, a group of friends is a representation of social institution, while at broader level it appears as government, alliance of races, etc. sociocognitive signal is an instance of institutional acts. this refers to action, gesture, sign, or linguistic expressions of others that furnish protagonist knowledge by perceiving them.by this instance, the protagonist can sort of learn or gain knowledge about ongoing catastrophe or enclosing threats. there are occasions where sociocognitive signal seems to be transmitted by mass in panic over fearing threats. for an example, in world war z the protagonist is trying to inform himself by processing signals conveyed within panicking mass. typical in apocalyptic narrative protagonist has limited knowledge regarding the catastrophe. protagonist represents part of social institution whose place is the closest to common citizen. take for instance frodo (lotr) is a simple hobbit, gerry (wwz) a full time dad—un investigator retirement, and katniss (the hunger games) a regular townswoman. the protagonists in dystopian films, at least discussed here, are often portrayed as naive. throughout the narrative they are informed by other characters that are part of social institution, which has more authoritative resources and power than the protagonist (e.g. gandalf, thierry, or mitch). the information allows protagonist to be cautious in facing catastrophe and its pertaining threats. thereby, given information from social institution seems relevant to protagonist survival. this bases our reason to consider it as an eventstructuring variable typical in apocalyptic narrative schema, as referred by informing. already mentioned previously protagonist is particularly represented as less authoritative. this leaves asymmetric relation between protagonist with the more authoritative characters, regardless to whether the characters are in the side of protagonist or its counterpart. importantly, the asymmetric relation privileges these characters to exerting force or to issue certain instructions for any interest of the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 224 social institution as a whole. we identify actions as such as event-structuring variable under social institutional acts, namely imposition. a dystopian film has apocalyptic narrative in which protagonist survives despite the threats or the occurrence of a catastrophe. we notice protagonist may have shortcomings as represented on screen in many ways (e.g. death and disloyalty of group members, losing supports, obstructions). we consider the representation of shortcomings as mentioned is a conception of defects. it is another eventstructuring variable under institutional acts, which refers to hindrance entailed by action of others. in many occasion, defects can portray what is resulted from collective fear and can imply the sense of hopefulness in the narrative. institutional acts may be represented by the group preparing plans, conferring on decision, or any sort of cooperative as well as collaborative actions. taken together, they are property of sociocognitive ability as portrayed on screen. in themselves, they are carried out in order to solve problem. we take this as part of institutional acts sub-variation, which referred by collective action. table 1 notes event-structuring variables that are elaborated previously. table 1. event-structuring variables in apocalyptic schema threats acts of survival institutional acts non-agentive migration socio cognitive signal agentive self defense informing foraging imposition affection defects seeking help of others collective acts apocalyptic narrative schemas in dystopia: the significance to humanities we have elaborated how dystopian film narrative is structured by what we regard here as apocalyptic event schema. this schema is configuration of chronological arrangement of the narrative in which catastrophe or apocalyptic events are narrated as potential occurrence, occurring, or has occurred. it has been noted as well the schema has event-structuring variables as its property. granted what has been explained is the case of dystopian narrative as a particular genre under fiction, then it seems we have a grounding to formulate what kind of genre is dystopia. in our view, post-apocalyptic schema serves the prototypical standard of dystopian genre, while apocalyptic and pre-apocalyptic turn them as less prototypical. they, nevertheless, bear familial resemblance to the prototype, thus should be accounted as belonging to the same genre. further, it seems plausible to consider the argued prototype as representation of standard of dystopian genre. it narrates the world has suffered from certain devastating event, which causes expensive cost to humanity. as aftermath, the event generates collective fear of authoritarian rule or socio-environmental threats to the remaining or the existing humanistic individuals, who would then put efforts to alter the world to be less dystopianso to keep on surviving. we also propose here the event-structuring variables as elaborated earlier should be counted within the set of standard of dystopian narrative genre. this variation may appear in different kind of formal representations. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 225 indeed, film narratives studied here are strictly limited, but we predict the same event-structuring variables would be represented on screen and as narrated. in themselves the variables are concept vary in the way they are depicted. but, the way they are depicted as visual information perceivable to spectators is merely a semiotic form. the semiotic form, thanks to neural makeup in processing information, is paired to semiotic meaning. in other words, variation of forms leads to the same mental representation, rendered by the semi cognitive information processing that shapes our perception. interestingly, in our reflection it does not seem to be a problem supposedly we neglect the fact the films studied here differ in their already given genre. this leads us into thinking when dystopia is remarked as genre in prototypical sense; it takes fantasy, sci-fi, action, drama, and any other sort of film types as variables. therefore, wizard, elf, aliens, cannibals, wildfire, earthquake, authoritarian soldiers, mutant, zombies, etc. are but formal representation to conception of threats, in agentive or non agentive, to humanistic individuals. at this point, in many ways dystopia already seems associated with catastrophe that drastically changes environmental condition. catastrophe or apocalyptic events as represented in films, and maybe text of fiction, may or may not specify the causality of its occurrence. to this we argue that spectators or readers can readily, perhaps as easily, dismiss such underspecified causal explanation. this is so because the narrative focuses not on whatever issues relevant to environment that triggers the event, so to the collapse of representation of the world as we know into the world we consider representing dystopia, which spectators might have never conceived in mind. rather, the narrative focuses on humanistic individuals anticipating the apocalyptic events, or attaining their survival under the events and their aftermath. at least, films that are studied here exemplify humanistic individuals prevail, which is often represented triumphantly, epically, and dramatically. this leads to somewhat implicit triumph of humanity against whatever there is antagonizing, repressing, or threatening. it is here we get the sense optimism in dystopian narrative. at least textually speaking, however, the optimism set asides environmental issues to be secondary and peripheral respectively to what becomes the focus and central subject matters: humanity. there are some issues in our study, especially in its methodological sense. that is to say albeit our study is proposing prototype or standard of how dystopian narrative is, qualitatively, future study is nevertheless suggested to pursue whether the prototype is applicable. for that matter, one can study different narrative under the same genre, be it in film or prose.moreover, further study might as well be conducted in direction of quantitative method, specifically by experimental approach. our suggestion sees possibilities of using emotional reaction (i.e. fear) as dependent variable that might be triggered by threats in the studied films. granted the resources, one can experiment on the hypothesis whether or not empathetic response of spectators would be triggered by represented threats. certainly, there are more uncovered gaps that are yet to cover and to discuss. pursuing them would shed more lights regarding dystopian narrative, film aesthetics, and even the relation between mind, meaning-making, and narrative at ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 211-227 226 the broadest sense. however, considering the limitation, it seems very much unlikely we can dispell the gaps in this occasion. conclusion dystopia, either as genre or thinking, has been regarded as criticism towards how human and its doings to the world. instead of impressing the world as a place where every individual can have piece of positive state of affairs, it offers the contrast that the world is not as positive and can be worse. but, the world here does not seem to be necessarily in reference to environment, let alone its issues. and, environmental issues in our understanding are, plainly, pollution, climate change, global warming, etc. they do not seem tackled by dystopian narrative, and if the narrative taps into them, it is but merely a sort of condiment to the dish. however, we refuse to consider the mentioned as deficiency of dystopia as a particular genre in addressing environmental issues. assuming it may help addressing environmental issues is plausible. but, we thought that the genre is not reliable very much for helping to raise the awareness of the real problems. in our view, the genre would reinforce confidence to and in humanity that it is so adaptive despite the apocalypse and the entailing aftermath. references bundgaard, p. f. 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(1995). dimensions of situation model construction in narrative comprehension. journal of experimental psychology: learning, memory, and cognition, 21(2), 386. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 141 the myth of female beauty: study of representation toward post-new order novels written by males lelu dina apristia universitas gadjah mada lelu.dina.a@mail.ugm.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.020204 received 2 february 2019; revised 12 february 2019; accepted 18 february 2019 abstract males representing female beauty without experiencing to be real females in postnew order era become the background of this study. this study is aimed: (1) to identify female beauty in post-new order era represented by male writers, (2) to identify factors forming the representation. to achieve the aims, this study is done by applying stuart hall’s representation theory which is not only about meaning produced through language and knowledge produced through discourse, but also about revealing patriarchal structure containing in discourse. after applying stuart hall’s representation theory, it is found that female beauty in post -new order era is not the same as the one in new order era. male writers represent that beautiful females in post-new order are the ones whose body attracting other people and who struggle for freedom. the representation is formed by male writers in relation with males in post-new order era and in discursive formation in post-new order siding with males to keep masculine domination. keywords: representation, female beauty, freedom, post-new order, male writers, masculine domination introduction literary work is produced in society. that is based on the explanation of bourdieu (1995: 229), “the producer of the value of work of art is not the artist but the field of production as a universe of belief which produces the value of the work of art.” therefore, literary work as part of art contains values that reflect society. literary work containing the reflection of society is bound of space and time as stated by hall (1990: 222), “we all write and speak from a particular place and time, from a history and a culture which is specific. what we say is always ‘in context’, positioned.” writers always work in context. it means that the change of space and time influences writers when they produce literary work. one of the topics in society reflected by writers in their works is beauty. anthony (2008: 90) states, “the cult of beauty [...] is a feminine cult.” ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 142 meanwhile, burns (2007: 3) states that standard of beauty is imposed on females by society. hence, discussion about beauty cannot be separated from females. beautiful means attractive face. attractive itself means form, figure, et cetera that looks good and harmonious (tim penyusun kamus, 2008: 260), so beauty can be stated as a concept about physical of female that is beautiful. females have known the concept since early age as explained by burns (2007: 3): a female newborn and an elderly woman may share the same physical characteristics but only one is considered beautiful by the artificial standard by which society measures beauty. thus, standard of beauty relating with physical is reference for females to interpret themselves as parts of society. if a lot of life aspects of society members both males and females change constantly, then standard of beauty referred by females is not permanent. umberto eco in novita (2010: 8) states that definition of beautiful changes from time to time. to be defined beautiful, females keep adapting to the change of standard of beauty. standard of female beauty in a period of time and space is different with the one in another period of time and space. it means that standard of female beauty in this world varies. burns (2007: 5) explains, “trying to pick just one to represent all of us [women] is just not possible [...] the resulting standard of female beauty would therefore to be a myth.” therefore, contestation of standard of female beauty is unavoidable. female beauty can be contested in literary work, especially novel. novel is narration having been liked by society since childhood, because novel has language which is easy to understand (sumardjo, 1999: 11). remy sylado also known as alif danya munsyi (2012: 176-177) states that novel writers as narrators describe life and enclose their personal thoughts through the characters of their works. in other words, writers can represent their concepts about female beauty explicitly in novels to be understood by society. moreover in indonesia in post-new order era, especially after soeharto released his position as president of the republic of indonesia on may 21, 1998, society is free from repression that has occurred for 32 years (heryanto, 2012: 109; sudirman, 2014: 450). society achieves freedom of expression. it constructs the freedom of novelists in narrating various concepts of female beauty. novelists can emphasize physical female beauty in post-new order era as applied in new order era. to be categorized as beautiful, females must be young and—if it is possible—virgin or single (suherman, 1998: 156). ibrahim (1998: 375) states that being old is unforgivable sin. according to him, females are ‘crazy’ about aerobics, plastic surgery, facial cream, and other physical treatments to stay beautiful. that kind of beauty adds attractiveness of female. on one side, the attractiveness brings in recognition and earning for females. sobary (1998: 26) states that females who are given high honorarium because of their beauty shown in an advertisement symbolize honor for them indeed. but on the other side, commercial star beauty that tempts males brings in harassment (sobary, 1998: 26-27). in connection with harassment, piliang (1998: xv) explains that females whose bodies ‘stripped naked’ through thousand varieties of gesture, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 143 style, appearance, and ‘personality’ construct and naturalize their bodies socially and culturally as fetish objects that mean ‘adored’ objects because they are considered to have the strength of ‘charm’ including certain excitement, desire, love. so, the position of females as objects is resulted by physical female beauty. nevertheless, novelists can also stress non-physical female beauty as expressed by burns (2007: 6) in her book titled soul beautiful, naturally that there is real beauty that is sourced from the soul, so real beauty can be mentioned as soul beauty that shines brighter along with age. soul beauty is not temporary. in other words, it is permanent. whereas, hall (1997: 32) argues: all meanings are produced within history and culture [...] this opens representation to the constant ‘play’ or slippage of meaning, to the constant production of new meanings. there is no permanent meaning or concept, especially about female beauty, in dynamic society. however, burns makes society know about standard of beauty that does not always focus on beautiful physical in young age. the novels chosen as the samples of study are ca-bau-kan: hanya sebuah dosa (1999) written by remy sylado and blakanis (2008) written by arswendo atmowiloto. through ca-bau-kan: hanya sebuah dosa (1999) that contains narration about tinung—very famous ca-bau-kan or prostitute in kali jodo, remy sylado was awarded penghargaan sastra dari komunitas nobel indonesia or literary award from indonesian nobel community in 2011. meanwhile, arswendo atmowiloto was nominated to get kusala sastra khatulistiwa also known as khatulistiwa literary award in prose category in 2008 through blakanis (2008) that contains narration about ai—businessman’s wife that steals the attention of community in kampung blakan. in other words, those novels are chosen because they are both published in post-new order era, successful in society through the award indicating success (ivancevich et al, 2006: 215), containing narration about females related with beauty, and written by awarded and deservedly popular male novelists. as beauty, literature section pursued by remy sylado and arswendo atmowiloto is feminine as explained by suryakusuma (2012: 366) that literature has already more inclined to be feminine. according to her, it gets inspiration from sense, soul and other non-rational elements. hence, it is probably free from masculine ideology that is rational, narrow and always trying to be dominant. however, no matter how feminine literary works produced by remy sylado and arswendo atmowiloto are, sylado and atmowiloto do not experience and do not know beauty that is truly desired by females. they are still males who are clung by masculine ideology. in addition, freedom from the ideology is just probability. therefore, study about female beauty constructed by males in literature section which is feminine in post-new order era is interesting and important to do. based on the explanation above, research problem that arises is males represent female beauty in novels in post-new order era as democracy era. it arises research questions: (1) how is female beauty represented by remy sylado in ca-bau-kan: hanya sebuah dosa and by arswendo atmowiloto in blakanis? ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 144 (2) why do remy sylado and arswendo atmowiloto produce such representation? method this research is the qualitative one. it emphasizes quality over quantity, so method used in it is also qualitative which takes form of document study that is called literary review by nurgiyantoro (2015: 52). qualitative research method consists of data collecting method and data analysis method. coming from document or literature, collected data is descriptive (creswell, 2013: 293; moleong, 2011: 11) in the form of words. more about data collecting method, sudaryanto (2015: 11-12) states that there is data recording, data selecting, and data arranging. so, first step to collect data in this research is recording data from primary data sources which are ca-bau-kan: hanya sebuah dosa written by remy sylado and blakanis written by arswendo atmowiloto and secondary data source in the form of books, journals, research reports, articles and so on. second step is selecting data that is needed. third step is arranging data according to category such as data about beauty representation and data about factors that form the representation. next, the collected data is analyzed to get relation between data (faruk, 2012: 25) according to theory that has already established. theory used in this research is stuart hall’s representation theory providing constructionist approach toward representation. regarding to the approach, first step to do is analyzing data in the form of words as signs representing female beauty in ca-bau-kan: hanya sebuah dosa written by remy sylado and blakanis written by arswendo atmowiloto that can be considered as knowledge of sylado and atmowiloto about female beauty. as explained by fokkema and kunneibsch (1977: 44), “any socalled autonomous interpretation of a literary text that does not take into account its function in the larger socio-cultural context must fail”, second step to do for the success of this research is relating knowledge of sylado and atmowiloto contained in their works with discourse about beauty that occurs post-new order society. for the success of this research too, stuart hall’s representation theory as one of cultural theories that can explain patriarchal domination and oppression structure (hall, 2011: 43) is applied to identify factors that form knowledge of sylado and atmowiloto about female beauty relating with male domination. findings and discussion representation of post-new order female beauty post-new order era is the era expected to be free from authoritarianism of new order regime that broke indonesian morality (ancol, 2004: ix). furthermore, ancol (2004: x-xi) explains that indonesians can directly choose their representatives in parliament or choose their president for the first time. according to him, indonesians are in new stage of democracy to more free economy, culture, and politics. chosen directly by indonesians, government cannot be authoritarian in formulating policy. government policy accomodates aspirations of indonesians regarding to economy, culture, politics and other sectors. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 145 sectors relating with post-new order female beauty are economy and sexuality, because beautiful females have ability in seducing others to buy a product. then, libido economy is formed (piliang, 1998: xv-xvi, xx). since new order era, precisely since repelita iv or fourth five-year development plan from 1984 till 1989 and repelita v or fifth five-year development plan from 1989 till 1994 were set, females have been given the same right, obligation, and opportunity as males (suryakusuma, 2012: 114). according to suryakusuma (2012: 282-284), females come into various development sectors with economic and political reason. female participation in development driven by economical factor has lasted until post-new order era. sigiro (2012:8) states that females are responsible for nurture and household economy at one time. thus, discourse rolling in post-new order era pushes females to be breadwinners as well as males. regarding to libido, indonesians in post-new order era can realize sexual desire in normative or non-normative sexuality that takes various forms as long as they happen in private area and happen between females and males as justified in undang-undang pornografi or pornography law set on october 30, 2008 (suryakusuma, 2012: 415). davies (2018: 59) argues: reaksi-reaksi terhadap pengawasan seksual ini dipandu oleh kepentingankepentingan yang berupaya menciptakan subjek seksual yang beragam, sesuai dan berlawanan. [reactions toward this sexual control are guided by interests that try to create diverse sexual subjects, corresponding and contradictory] if controlled sexuality reaps supporting and opposing government, it means that discourse to be free from new order authoritarianism affects sexuality practiced by post-new order society. in the middle of discursive formation that strives for female emancipation, sylado produces representation that contains female physical qualities through tinung’s character as seen below. ‘lu sih mude, nung,’ kata saodah. ‘pasti banyak yang naksir. kalo pas lu dapet cukong, lu tinggal buka baju, lu antepin dienye nikmatin badan lu, duit bisa segepok. kalo cukong entu nagih, bisa-bisa lu dipiare kayak si atim tuh dijadiin ca-bau-kan. punya rume, perabotan, gelang kalung mas.’ (sylado, 1999: 14) [‘you’re young, nung,’ saodah said. ‘there must be a lot of men having crush on you. if you get a financier, you just put off your clothes, let him enjoy your body, then you’ll get a lot of money. if the financier is hooked on you, you’ll be kept as a mistress as happened to atim. she has house, furniture, gold bracelet and necklace.’ (sylado, 1999: 14)] sylado narrates tinung as soon-to-be young prostitute, so she will be liked by a lot of males. it means tinung will surely raise male sexual desire. sylado’s narration reflects social viewpoint toward old female as stated by winarnita (2018: 376) that old female is not sexually attractive and is not appropriate to represent idealized indonesian female beauty. sexually attractive is important, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 146 especially for females involved in prostitution which is almost in the same age as human civilization dan is hardly destroyed (trisnadi et al, 2004: 4), including prostitution in post-new order society. sexually attractive brings in male who can improve economic condition of prostitutes as expressed by zalduondo (1999: 311), “economic factors play diverse roles in the supply and demand sides of commercial sex.” by referring to the social viewpoint and narrating tinung to be sexually attractive, sylado associates tinung with income and fulfilment of basic needs such food, clothing, and housing from males who pay for her sexual service. beside being narrated young, tinung is narrated by sylado as follows. setelah kencan pertama ini usai, masih ada lagi malam-malam lain, yang kedua, ketiga, kesepuluh, keduapuluh, dan seterusnya. tinung pun menjadi perempuan populer di kali jodo, dijuluki ‘si chixiang’, bahasa kuo-yu artinya ’sangat masyur dan dicari-cari’ [...] pasti itu disebabkan tinung masih muda dan memiliki tubuh yang indah, langsing, elok, berpadan antara dada dan pinggul (sylado, 1999: 16) [after this first date ends, there are still other nights, the second, third, tenth, twentieth, and so on. tinung becomes popular in kali jodo, nicknamed ‘si chixiang’ that means ‘very famous and sought after’ in kuo-yu language [...] that must be because tinung is still young and has beautiful body, slim, nice, fit chest and hips (sylado, 1999: 16)] sylado represents tinung nicknamed ‘si chixiang’ or very well-known and wanted prostitute. in other words, tinung is a prostitute who has been dated a lot of males in the realm of prostitution named kali jodo, because she is young and has beautiful body, slim, nice, fit chest and hips. sylado’s narration refers to females in society who struggle for being slim as stated by ide (2013: 43) that slim female body is indonesian female beauty standard built by society and sustained by industry. slim bodied females attract attention (melliana s., 2016: 11). ditmore (2006: 107) explains, “many clients seek a sex partner in a specific age range, or one whose physical beauty is above average.” in the realm of prostitution, young age and beautiful body bring many clients to females who whores. if sylado’s narration shows that young age and beautiful body add attractiveness of females, so post-new order female beauty is the same as new order female beauty at first glance. however, further search shows that beautiful female through tinung’s character in ca-bau-kan: hanya sebuah dosa written by remy sylado is not nrimo or submissive as females in new order era (sobary, 1998: 27). tinung freeds herself from pressure caused by tan peng liang from gang tamim, bandung—one of males keeping tinung as mistress—and his guards as narrated by sylado below. pelan ia bangkit, dan tetap mengawasi keadaan si centeng, barangkali seperti anak tikus. sebentar lagi ia pasti akan lari tunggang-langgang, mencari selamat. hanya sempat mengambil kain dan kebaya yang dibuntelnya buru-buru dengan sepundi uang, ia kabur meninggalkan rumah. ia tidak lari ke tempat yang sama tadi. bukan sebab kesadarannya ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 147 membuatnya begitu, tapi semata-mata sebab naluri ingin merdeka. ia berlari dikuasai takut, menembusi kebun pisang di belakang rumah, ke arah yang berbatasan dengan belukar (sylado, 1999: 25) [slowly she gets up, and keeps watching condition of guards, maybe like a mouse. soon she’ll surely run headlong, look for safety. just having time to take cloth and kebaya bundled in a hurry with a coffer of money, she runs away from home. she doesn’t run to the same place like she did before. it is not that her consciousness makes her do that, but it is just about her instinct to be free. she runs controlled by fear, gets through banana plantation behind the house, toward area that borders on thickets (sylado, 1999: 25)] sylado’s narration about tinung running away from house of tan peng liang from gang tamim, bandung (next abbreviated tplgtb) driven by her instinct to be free reflects the struggle of indonesian females to defend rights of females who face massive sexual harassment in riot that happened on may 1998 (anggraeni, 2014: x). according to anggraeni (2014: xi-xiii), they did not set back in the middle of threat and mental and physical attack from the party who wanted to deny great tragedy in indonesian history in the beginning of reformation. female right defenders hoped that victims of the tragedy opened up and were brave to take any step to defend their rights. female right defenders also hoped the victims knew that a lot of society members cared and looked for them that established national commission on violence against women (komnas perempuan). through his narration, sylado supports the struggle of female to fight her fear and to achieve her right in the form of freedom. meanwhile, arswendo atmowiloto represents female through ai’s character as follows. dengan sekali melihat, mudah mengingat ai. seluruh tubuhnya sangat putih—betul-betul putih, bersih, mempesona [...] pada usia lima belas, enam belas, sampai hampir tujuh belas tahun, ai dikenal secara luas karena membintangi iklan pemutih kulit, juga beberapa produk kosmetik [...] kakinya panjang–dan semakin panjang karena putih, betisnya jadi semakin indah sejak dinyatakan sebagai yang paling indah. pergelangan kakinya kecil. tangan lelaki dewasa bisa melingkari. ini semua merupakan kombinasi antara fantasi dan kenyataan, bahwa perempuan dengan ciri seperti ini memberikan kenikmatan seksual yang luar biasa, dan mendatangkan rezeki berlimpah. (atmowiloto, 2008: 36-37) menjelang usia tujuh belas tahun, ai menghentikan semua kegiatannya. ai memilih menjadi istri linggar jimaro, anak pengusaha paling menonjol dari kelompok grup bisnis jimaro. sejak itu tak ada kabar beritanya. kini, delapan tahun kemudian, muncul kembali. masih memesona (atmowiloto, 2008: 37-38) [with one look, ai is very easy to remember. all parts of her body are very fair—truly fair, clean, charming [...] at the age of fifteen, sixteen until seventeen, ai is widely known because she stars skin whitening ad, also some cosmetic product ads [...] her legs are long—and longer because of their fairness, her legs have become more beautiful since stated as the most ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 148 beautiful ones. her ankles are small. hands of an adult man can circle. all of them are combination between fantasy and reality, that female whose such characteristics gives fantastic sexual pleasure, and brings in abundant sustenance (atmowiloto, 2008: 36-37)] [by the age of seventeen, ai stops all of her activities. ai chooses to be linggar jimaro’s wife, son of the most prominent businessman from jimaro business group. since then, there has been no news about her. now, eight years later, she comes back. still charming (atmowiloto, 2008: 37-38)] atmowiloto’s narration stresses ai’s fair skin. it reflects female condition in post-new order society as explained by ide (2013: 43) that females who fulfill indonesian female beauty is not only the ones who have slim body, but also fair skin. according to novita (2010: 9), females take varios ways including plastic surgery or changing skin color for the sake of slim body and fair skin. it is no wonder if female beauty becomes part of industry as stated by sadewo (2014: 3) that beautiful is commodity. a number of people pan dollars from it through many sides; cosmetic company, beauty salon up to medical world through plastic surgery. based on the statement, beautiful females in post-new order society are considered as commodity, too. referring to the social condition, atmowiloto narrates ai as commercial star who can sell skin whitening and cosmetic product and as model with the most beautiful legs from the age of fifteen to almost seventeen which represents teenage. teenage is considered as puberty by society. kauma (1999: 7) states that puberty approximately begins from the age of fourteen and ends by the age of seventeen. puberty is considered as early young age (madani, 2003: 237). meanwhile, the age of twenties is considered as young age (kwan and deddy, 2011: 42). if atmowiloto narrates ai as commercial star and model from her young age, then ai as well as tinung in ca-bau-kan: hanya sebuah dosa written by remy sylado is sexually attractive. therefore, ai is narrated by atmowiloto married by linggar jimaro—son of the most prominent businessman from jimaro business group—by the age of seventeen that means ai is not financially deficient in her puberty. ai is also narrated by atmowiloto as a female who still charms community in kampung blakan by the age of twenty-five that means ai is still young and promising sexual pleasure for males. as well as remy sylado’s narration, arswendo atmowiloto’s narration about beautiful female who is young and has fair skin is at first glance the same as females in new order era who were very fond of plastic surgery, facial cream, and other physical treatments to stay young, to have fair skin and to be considered beautiful. however, beautiful female through ai’s character as well as tinung’s character in ca-bau-kan: hanya sebuah dosa written by remy sylado is not submissive like females in new order era narrated by atmowiloto below. ‘… alasan saya ikut ke pertemuan ini, karena merasa ini pertemuan lucu, aneh, menarik…. bisa jadi karena saya mulai bosan dengan yang saya jalani sekarang. kehidupan saya tidak aneh, tidak lucu.’ ‘apakah betul kamu tadi mandi di sungai dengan telanjang? kenapa?’ tidak biasanya suster emak yang memulai bertanya. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 149 ‘ya, betul. saya perlu membersihkan diri…. saya mau mencoba jujur…. semacam persiapan mental.’ (atmowiloto, 2008: 39) sejak itu para peserta baru–sebagian yang lama juga, ikutan berendam di sungai, telanjang, sebelum memakai selimut. adalah ai juga yang meminta bahwa saat-saat berendam di sungai, saat pertemuan, tidak boleh dipotret atau direkam. sejak itu pula, keberadaan warung-warung mulai ditata. dikumpulkan di satu tempat. diprioritaskan penduduk setempat yang mengelola [...] ada satu tempat yang dijadikan tempat parkir [...] juga dibangun masjid yang lumayan besar [...] ada juga salon. termasuk kursuskursus lainnya. suasana menjadi lebih ramai, sekaligus lebih teratur (atmowiloto, 2008: 43) [‘... the reason i join this meeting, because i feel it funny, strange, interesting... maybe i begin to be bored of what i’m going through now. my life is not strange, not funny.’] [‘is it true that you bathed naked in the river? why?’ it is not usual suster emak begins to ask] [‘yes, true. i needed to clean myself... i wanted to be honest... kind of mental preparation.’ (atmowiloto, 2008: 39)] [since then new participants—also some old ones, follow her to soak in the river, naked, before they use blanket. ai is also the one who asks that moments of soaking in the river, moments of meeting, cannot be portrayed or recorded. since then stalls have been arranged. gathered in one area. it is prioritized that local people manage the stalls [...] there is a place used to be a parking lot [...] a pretty big mosque is built, too [...] there is also a beauty salon. including other courses. situation becomes more crowded and more organized at the same time. (atmowiloto, 2008: 43)] through his narration, atmowiloto shows that ai freeds herself from life saturation. her nudity symbolizes freedom of expression carried by post-new order society. in the same society, females participate in various fields. ratna (2010: 406) explains that in many fields females take part as civil servants and private employees. there are many females who occupy important positions in government such as minister, directorate general, even president. since freedom of expression was born, females have had authority over themselves and other people. affected by such social condition, atmowiloto narrates ai’s nudity symbolizing her freedom of expression in term of cleanliness and honesty followed by community in kampung blakan. atmowiloto also narrates ai who encourages the arrangement of stalls, the construction of parking lot, mosque, beauty salon and the provision of courses for the sake of communal wealth in kampung blakan to reflect post-new order female who plays role in private or governmental sector for the sake of social wealth. forming factors of post-new order female beauty representation as explained in research method section, representation is approached in constructionist way. according to stuart hall (1997: 27), constructionists state that representation is relational. it means that representation of post-new order female beauty stressing physical qualities and concerning with freedom is relational. in this research, relation is fixed using one of principles offered by hall ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 150 (1997: 17-18), which is difference or opposition principle. concerning with the statement of connell and messerchmidt (2005: 848), “gender is always relational, and patterns of masculinity are socially defined in contradiction from some model [...] of femininity”, female construction is got in relation with males. similarly, post-new order female beauty construction is got in relation with post-new order males. construction is bound to discourse, too. it is based on the opinion of hall (1997: 44), “meaning and meaningful practice is therefore constructed within discourse.” discourse itself is created to legitimaze the strength of masculine order neutrally (bourdieu, 2001: 9). in other words, post-new order discourse about freedom of expression spread over various fields, especially economy and sexuality regarding to female beauty, basically favors males. females who are responsible for nurture and household economy at one time are the ones whose double role. although double role represents progressive indonesian society, it means double burden for females (suryakusuma, 2012: 114). according to candraningrum (2013: 14), female commitment to the household is eternal. meanwhile, males do not have any commitment to that, so they do not get any burden. with double role, females do not have any capital consisting of qualification, training, and experience as many as males (walby, 2014: 42). hence, job segregation and wage gap cannot be avoided. having higher capital than females, males are constructed to get job concerning with leadership or domination, while females are constructed to get job in the matter of domestication such as helping, typing or serving the leaders (candraningrum, 2013: 9). getting that kind of job, females gain lower wage than males. eventhough females get the same job as males, females’ wages are still lower than the males’ ones. that is caused by males’ role as head of family or bredwinner (suryakusuma, 2012: 284) and by quality of their jobs considered as honored (bourdieu, 2001: 60). thus, males are more superior than females. male superiority is legitimazed by post-new order discourse about sexuality. although applied to society members both males and females, pornography law that contains prohibition against picture, sound, word, movement or display in public area relating with sexual exploitation (suryakusuma, 2012: 415) perpetuates male superiority. it is based on the opinion of gandhi (2011: 3) that most law products are produced by males. meanwhile, hall (2011: 43) states that socio-cultural institution is patriarchal. if pornography law belongs to sociocultural institution (cao, 2011: 41), then pornography law has the same quality as the institution; patriarchal. patriarchal is the quality of system named patriarchy that fixes one of its structures in heterosexuality (walby, 2014: 185). in other words, heterosexuality justified in pornography law (suryakusuma, 2012: 424) preserves oppression against females. thus, post-new order discursive formation constructing female beauty in relation with males sides with males. ca-bau-kan: hanya sebuah dosa written by remy sylado that contains narration about female through tinung’s character dated by a lot of males in kali jodo carries male superiority. that refers to the acts of males involved in prostitution in society as stated by jensen (2013: 75), “men sell women to other men for sex: pimps and johns.” males who act as pimps sell prostitutes to males who act as johns. according to trotter (2011: 92), pimps make efforts to get a lot ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 151 of johns or clients for prostitutes in order to get better financial condition. referring to the acts of pimps and clients in prostitution, sylado (1999: 15) narrates: kali jodo, selama berabad telah menjadi tempat paling hiruk pikuk di jakarta pada malam hari. di sini, sejak dulu terlestari kebiasaan-kebiasaan imigran tionghoa menemukan jodoh, bukan untuk hidup bersama selamalamanya, tapi sekadar berhibur diri sambil menikmati nyanyian-nyanyian klasik tiongkok, dinyanyikan oleh para ca-bau-kan. [kali jodo, for centuries, has been the most frenzied place in jakarta at night. since long time ago, there have been sustainable habits of chinese immigrants to find partners—not for living together forever, but just for selfentertaining while enjoying chinese classical songs, sung by prostitutes] furthermore sylado (1999: 15) narrates, “para ca-bau-kan itu umumnya dikelola oleh tauke-tauke.” that the prostitutes are commonly managed by tauke. according to sylado’s narration, tauke means manager of prostitutes. according to kamus bahasa indonesia or indonesian dictionary, tauke means employer of a company (tim penyusun kamus, 2008: 1460). in other words, tauke symbolizes employer of prostitutes or pimp who handles them in the realm of prostitution. meanwhile, chinese immigrants who entertain themselves with songs sung by prostitutes in kali jodo symbolize clients who look for sexual pleasure in the realm of prositution and who have abilities to improve economic condition of prostitutes. sylado also associates them with cukong that means financier (tim penyusun kamus, 2008: 298). in this case, sylado refers to chinese society who plays vital role in indonesian economy (suryakusuma, 2012: 235). through narration about tauke or pimp who looks for clients or financiers for tinung and about clients or financiers who date tinung until she is nicknamed ‘si chixiang’, sylado shows female dependency on males financially. sylado’s emphasis on the importance of young age and slim body for female who whores through tinung’s character as well as atmowiloto’s emphasis on the importance of young age and fair body for female who becomes commercial star of beauty product through ai’s character shows their alignment with males. that is based on the explanation of bourdieu (2001: 67): continuously under the gaze [...] of others, women are condemned constantly to experience the discrepancy between the real body to which they are bound and the ideal body towards which they endlessly strive. needing the gaze of others to constitute themselves, they are continuously oriented in their practice by the anticipated evaluation of the price that their bodily appearance. continuously females struggle to have ideal body in accordance with the times, so they get gaze of others and get existence. affected by such condition, sylado and atmowiloto narrate females through tinung’s and ai’ character to have ideal bodies. with their ideal bodies—slim and fair body in young age, tinung and ai draw attention of many people symbolizing the gaze of others and then they exist. as stated by udasmoro (2017: 184), “contemporary literary ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 152 works frequently indicate the presence of women through male characters”, the existence of tinung is symbolized by her nickname ‘si chixiang’ that means a prostitute who is very famous and wanted by many clients. meanwhile, the existence of ai is symbolized by her popularity as commercial star of skin whitening and cosmetic product until she is married by linggar jimaro—son of businessman associated with wealth. the existence of tinung and ai constructed by sylado and atmowiloto does not only show female dependency on the gaze of others, especially of males who are sexually attracted to females, but also female position as commodity. tinung is positioned by sylado as commodity of pimp who manages her that refers to the acts of pimps in society as expressed by barry (1995: 218), “pimps earn their livings off the sexual exploitation of women as commodities.” meanwhile, ai is positioned by atmowiloto as commodity in advertising world that refers to the acts of ad production team—dominated by males—as explained by kriyantono (2013: 234) that females are treated to represent product. for instance, car body smoothness in car ad is symbolized by female who wears minimal dress to show her skin smoothness. atmowiloto’s narration shows that young age and fair body of ai is sold in skin whitening and cosmetic product ad. by positioning females as gazed and sold objects, sylado and atmowiloto confirm female subordination in post-new order era society. female subordination is also found in sylado’s narration about tinung who gets out from house of tplgtb and afterward gets into another house of chinese male named tan peng liang from gang pinggir, semarang (next abbreviated tplgps) as seen in sylado’s narration below. di malam harinya, tinung seperti kebanyakan perempuan waktu itu, menganggap buka baju, telanjang bulat dan mengangkang di ranjang, demi kepuasan lelaki adalah fitrah. dia mesti diam, tidak melakukan respon [...] dia biarkan dirinya menjadi seperti sawah atau ladang yang diam melulu jika dipacul, dibajak sebelum ditanami benih. tinung pun hari pertama di gang chaulan ini ibarat patung yang bernyawa, tak lebih. dia tak jadi mitra birahi di sini seakan putus tali sejarahnya dengan kali jodo, di mana orang setempat menjulukinya si chixiang. tapi tan peng liang menyukai keberadaan tinung kini. (sylado, 1999: 83-84) singkat kisah, tinung akhirnya pindah ke rumah gang chaulan bersama anak perempuannya dari tan peng liang asal gang tamim, bandung [...] disini dia merasa seperti suatu mimpi menyenangkan. tan peng liang asal gang pinggir, semarang ini memperlakukannya dengan kelembutan yang hampir tidak masuk akal. semua diperhatikannya (sylado, 1999: 84) [at night, tinung like mostly females at that time, assumes that putting off clothes, being stark-naked, and straddling in the bed, for the sake of male’s satisfaction is natural tendency. she must be silent, not doing any response [...] she lets herself become like a ricefield or lea that is always silent when it is bounced, plowed before it is seed planted. on the first day in gang chaulan, tinung is like a lifeless statue, nothing more. she does not become a sexual partner in here as if she broke her historical bond with kali jodo, where local people nicknamed her si chixiang. but tan peng liang likes her existence by now (sylado, 1999: 83-84)] ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 153 [in short, tinung finally moves in gang chaulan house together with her daughter with tan peng liang from gang tamim, bandung [...] here, she feel like it is a pleasant dream. tan peng liang from gang pinggir, semarang treats her with almost illogical gentleness. everything is noticed by him (sylado, 1999: 84)] sylado’s narration about tinung who puts off clothes, gets stark-naked, straddles in the bed and be silent for the sake of male’s satisfaction symbolizes sex work or prostitution that cannot be eliminated in society as stated by corriveau (2013: 31), “’prostitution’—that is, in our terms, sex work.” being kept by tplgps in gang chaulan house, tinung is constructed by sylado as mistress. in society, mistress is a female whose relation with male without legal marriage (magdalena, 2014: 5). regarding to mistress as part of prostitution, engel (1996: 186) explains: they began to prostitute themselves [...] they wanted to improve their lives. they said things like: ‘it pays better,’ or ‘i wanted to increase my income’, or ‘it’s more advantageous,’ or ‘it’s an easy life’” meanwhile nanette davis in matthews (2008: 36) states, “women become wealthy in prostitution, or acquire riches by seducing a wealthy man.” women are involved in prostitution in order to increase income, ease and welfare of life. referring to the involvement of women in prostitution, sylado gives tinung pleasure, meekness and attention from the tplgps that actually symbolizes superiority or dominance of the tplgps on tinung. through his narration, sylado shows that post-new order female freedom is freedom involving males— not driving them away. meanwhile, atmowiloto supports masculine domination through narration below. ‘apakah betul kamu tadi mandi di sungai dengan telanjang? kenapa?’ tidak biasanya suster emak yang memulai bertanya. ‘ya, betul. saya perlu membersihkan diri…. saya mau mencoba jujur…. semacam persiapan mental [...] saya dengar ki blaka juga suka mandi di sungai.’ (atmowiloto, 2008: 39) aku mengusulkan agar pemimpin tetap ki blaka, karena hampir tak tergantikan (atmowiloto, 2008: 80) [‘is it true that you bathed naked in the river? why?’ it is not usual suster emak begins to ask] [‘yes, true. i needed to clean myself... i wanted to be honest... kind of mental preparation [...] i heard that ki blaka also likes bathing in the river’ (atmowiloto, 2008: 39)] [i suggest that leader is still ki blaka, because it is almost irreplaceable (atmowiloto, 2008: 80)] through narration, atmowiloto shows that ki blaka—not ai—is the one who initiates ritual which is bathing in the river, while ai is the one who develops it by being naked. besides, atmowiloto shows that ki blaka is still chosen directly by community to be leader of kampung blakan though ai has made the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 141-157 154 situation of kampung blakan more crowded and more organized with the arrangement of stalls, the construction of parking lot, mosque, beauty salon and the provision of courses that affect communal wealth in kampung blakan. atmowiloto’s narration relates with post-new order condition in which society for the first time chose their president and vice president directly in president and vice president of the republic of indonesia election in 2004 (sudirman, 2014: 474-475). although appointed as the 5th president of the republic of indonesia in the mpr special session on july 23, 2001 (department of communication and information technology republic of indonesia, 2005: 55-56; sudirman, 2014: 471) and stabilized indonesian macroeconomics (hidayat, 2007: 114), megawati soekarnoputri was considered weak in terms of leadership (jones, 2015: 475). therefore, susilo bambang yudhoyono who looked charismatic and promised change was chosen as the 6th president of indonesia (sudirman, 2014: 475). referring to the condition, atmowiloto produces narration showing that authority of females cannot go beyond the one of males in post-new order era. conclusion based on the explanation above, permanent female beauty is only myth. there is no such female beauty. it is seen from post-new order female beauty represented by male novelists in post-new order discursive formation that is different from new order female beauty. male novelists indeed emphasize physical qualities which attract other people of post-new order era females as found in new order female beauty, yet male novelists construct beautiful females in post-new order era to be free. post-new order female beauty is formed in relation with post-new order males who are sexually attracted to female physical qualities. besides, it is formed in post-new order discursive formation that is basically advantageous to males. thus, male novelists represent beautiful females in post-new order era as the ones who bring sexual pleasure for males and involve males in freedom they want to achieve in order not to threaten masculine domination. references ancol, k. 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(1999). prostitution viewed cross-culturally: toward recontextualizing sex work in aids intervention research. in r. parker and p. aggleton (eds.), culture, society and sexuality. london and new york: routledge taylor and francis group. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 163 ecolinguistic study of conservation news text s in indonesian mass media tommi yuniawan universitas negeri semarang, indonesia tommiyuniawan@mail.unnes.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010203 received 19 september 2017; revised 30 december 2017; accepted 19 february 2018 abstract this study aims to describe the study of ecolinguistics in the conservation news text in indonesian mass media. the study of ecolinguistics examines discourse texts pertaining to the environment. the environmental discourse with all its embodiments (oral text, written text, images and internet) is called green texts. green texts can be found in the consolidated news text in the mass media. this text contains a language expression of conservation events or issues relating to the vision of a conservation-oriented university. the research used descriptive qualitative method. this research data in the form of lingual unit of news fragment of conservation news sourced from mass media of indonesia which is relatively many. methods of data collection are done by referring the method, literature study method, and documentation method. furthermore, the data were analyzed by using the method of comparison and contrast. based on the results of the analysis and discussion, it is concluded that in the conservation news text in indonesian mass media, it is found that ecolexicon in the texts are in the form of (a) base word, (b) derivative words, (c) noun phrases, (d) verbal phrases, and (e) adjective phrases. the results of this study are expected to contribute theoretically and practically to the field of linguistics, language learning, journalism, and public policy. keywords: ecolinguistics, ecolexicon, mass media, indonesia conservation news text introduction discourse is a linguistic unit of the most complete element that is composed of sentences or sentences, both oral and written, which form a harmonious and unified understanding (rustono, 1999, p.21). furthermore, according to suhandang (2004, p.102), news (news) is derived from sanskrit, namely vrit (translated in english: “write”) which means 'there' or 'happened'. rokhman and surahmat (2016, p.243) assert that the reality of news is created from the journalist's understanding of the actual events that occur and are spoken back through oral or written forms. the news of published conservationist universities derives from messages or information that use symbols, relating to interpretations and events, within a broad societal system. this news is assumed to contain mailto:tommiyuniawan@mail.unnes.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 164 information that is reasonably available to the public because the information submitted is factual, actual, accurate, objective, important, and attracts public attention. this is in line with kress’ theory (2010, p.126) which states that the mass media serves as a tool for reporting various categories of events that occur in the community. the text of conservation news in the mass media is a lingual phenomenon. in its form as text, conservation news is not just a linguistic phenomenon (lingual structure), but also as a mind building (cognitive structure) as well as action building (action structure). opinion of the media institution revealed in the news must be influenced or determined by the media institution and its social context. therefore, the study of conservation news texts on the one hand becomes an opportunity to interdisciplinary language study and on the other hand can add to the understanding that news is a complex structure of language, thought, action, and social construction. mass media have properties or characteristics that are able to reach in large and wide publicity and able to give the popularity of what is preached in the mass media. accordingly the conservation texts correspond to the relationship between language and ideology. conservation is one of the important news topics in society. topics on this matter are in the suistanable development goals (sdgs) which are the result of an agreement of more than 190 member states of the united nations (un) applicable 2016-2030 (undp 2015) resuming millennium development goals (mdgs) 2000-2015. in indonesia, the issue of conservation is also a priority development under nawacita's policy outlined in the 2015-2019 national medium-term development plan. conservation becomes an important issue in news media coverage. although conservation news is an important issue, conservation issues are particularly sensitive to indonesian society. this is because it is commonly associated with institutional policies or ideologies. in addition, conservation news texts are related to the relationship between language and the environment. this is consistent with the opinion of fill and mushausler (2001, p.3) states that there are four things that allow the relationship between language and environment, namely: (1) language is free and full of meaning; (2) language created by the world; (3) the world is created by language (the structuralist and post-structuralist view); (4) the language is interconnected with the world (both are arranged and arranged but sometimes also free). the mutual change between environment and language is studied through ecolinguistic studies. ecolinguistic studies examine ecosystems that are part of the human life system (ecology) with the language humans use to communicate in their environment (linguistics). in this case, sapir (in fill & muhlhausler, 2001, p. 14), mentions that there are three forms of environment. first is the physical environment that includes geographic characters such as the topography of a country (either beaches, valleys, highlands or mountains, weather conditions, and the amount of rainfall). second is the economic environment (basic human needs) consisting of fauna, flora, and mineral resources. third is the social environment that surrounds the various forces that exist in society that shape the lives and minds of the people to each other. according to al-gayoni (2012, p.25), environmental changes also affect the use of language speakers. therefore, the focus of this research is on ecolinguistic studies in conservation news texts in indonesian language mass media. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 165 ecolinguistics existed since the 1970s when haugen (1972) proposed a theoretical conceptual framework with a number of linguists, compiled in the ecology of language. according to haugen (in fill & muhlhausler 2001, p.57), language ecology is the study of existing inter-language interactions with the environment. understanding the environment in ecolinguistics leads to the opinion of sapir (in fill & muhlhausler, 2001, p.14), the physical and social environment. the physical environment involves physical geography: the topography of a country (coastal, valley, land, highland, mountain) climate, and intensity of rainfall, the economic basis of human life comprising fauna, flora and mineral resources; while the social environment consists of the various forces of society that make up the minds and lives of every individual among them: religion, ethics, forms of political organization, and art. fill and mushausler (2001, p.11) argue that ecolinguistics is applied linguistics that is cross-cutting (interdisciplinary). furthermore, they (p.51) explain that ecolinguistics as a broader study of its scope in studying syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and hence the need for some innovative new theory to investigate these ideas empirically. according to crystal (2008, pp.161-162), ecolinguistics is a study that reflects the nature of ecology in biological studies, in which the interaction between language and cultural environment is seen as the core: it is also called the language ecology, linguistic ecology and sometimes green linguistics. alexander and stibbe (2010) define ecolinguistics as a study of the impact of language use in survival that bridges relationships between humans, other organisms, and the physical environment that is normatively oriented towards the preservation of sustainable relationships and life. thus, ecolinguistics is closely related to how language serves to mold, nurture, influence or destroy relationships between people, living conditions, and the environment. this is the case with the opinion of stibbe (2010, p.1), ecolinguistics evolved as a result of human ecological development associated with various systems (economic, social, religious, cultural, linguistic, and ecosystem systems) that are interdependent and related to one another. based on the above information, it is concluded that the study of ecolinguistics has parameters, namely interrelationships (language and environment interrelation), environment and haugen's diversity (diversity of language and environment) (in fill & muhlhausler 2001, p.1). haugen (1972) (in mbete, 2009, pp.11-12), states that ecolinguistics has links to ten study spaces, namely: (1) comparative historical linguistics; (2) demographic linguistics; (3) sociolinguistics; (4) dialinguistik; (5) dialectology; (6) philology; (7) prescriptive linguistics; (8) glotopolytics; (9) ethnolinguistics, anthropological linguistics or cultural linguistics (cultural linguistics); and (10) the typology of languages in an environment. in the scope of an ecolinguistic study, living and used languages illustrate, represent, symbolically-verbal representation in the environment, both the social environment and the socio-cultural environment. it implies language changes as the social and environmental changes change, as liebert (2001) (in mbete, 2009, p.7) states that '... language change ... represents ecological changes'. the process of change in the language runs in stages for a long time, unknowingly by its speakers, and is inevitable. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 166 in addition, sapir (in fill & muhlhausler, 2001, p.2) states that within the scope of ecolinguistics, language and environmental relations exist only on the level of the lexicon, not, for example, at the phonological or morphological level of this interrelation exists merely on the level of the vocabulary and notes, for example, on that of phonology or morphology. 'this can be presented in the bang and door dialog model chart (bang & door, 1996, p.47). figure 1: dialogical 3d social practice of bang & door source: (lindo & bundegaard 2000) mbete (2002) conducted research on 'verbal expressions in lio and its functions in preserving the environment'. mbete studies the form, meaning, and function contained in verbal expressions relating to environmental preservation. the findings in the study of mbete are verbal expressions that function in the preservation of the environment consisting of: (1) expressions relating to the universe; (2) phrases relating to land cultivation; (3) expressions pertaining to the preservation of mini-protected forests and water sources; (4) phrases related to coastal and marine conservation; (5) expressions relating to preservation and compatibility; and (6) expressions relating to the relationship between lio's ethnic group. mbete's research has an equation on the focus of form analysis and the meaning of linguistic elements. the difference in the data was taken in the form of verbal expressions in the context of po'o ritual (pest ritual rejection), while this research used data in the form of fragmented texts of indonesian language conservation news in mass media. research that has the same study object with this research was also conducted by al-sharabi et.al. (2011) entitled 'representation of early marriage phenomenon in yemen community: an analysis of critical discourse from the english yemen newspaper'. al-sharabi identified the texts of the newspaper to find out the representation of early marriage in yemen society. al-sharabi uses critical discourse analysis from fairclough and also a multimodal-based critical discourse analysis from kress and van leeuwen. another researcher analyzing the news text is duc duy vo (2013) entitled 'language and ideology in english and vietnamese news text a comparative study'. this study uses critical discourse analysis from fariclough and transitivity systems in linguistic functional systems. a total of 25 english texts and 25 vietnamese texts were analyzed by the analytical tool. in addition, bolted and conch (2014), also analyzed the news text in the newspaper in the network (online). their research entitled refugee exchange transactions in text news in network (online): ideology and representation. news texts are taken from three english-language malaysian ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 167 newspapers: the star, the new straits times (nst), and malaysiakini. this study uses critical discourse analysis from fairclough to know the representation of ideology and context in shaping the discourse. from the above explanation, it can be concluded that the news text can be analyzed with various analytical blades as well as critical discourse analysis and functional system linguistics. this research analyzed conservation news text in mass media with analysis knife in the form of ekolinguistik. then, ecolinguistic research was conducted by kesuma (2015) entitled 'the vulnerability of the ekoagraris leksikon in angkola / mandailing language: ecolinguistic studies'. the study aims to describe the existence of eco-vagrant lexic that is still used by the community in angkola / mandailing and the cultural values and environmental wisdom contained in the eco-vagrant lexicon in the area, especially in sayurmatinggi sub-district. the research is qualitative and quantitative descriptive research. the data used to support the research is taken by interviewing, observation, questionnaire distribution, and utilizing existing literature. the research data are lexicon of verbs, nouns, and adjectives associated with rice field lexicon and cultivation in sayurmatinggi sub-district. the above research has in common with research to be done in terms of the use of ecolinguistic studies and focusing the topic on the lexicon. in kesuma research, data sources were obtained from the angkola / mandailing community and the cultural values and environmental wisdom contained in the eco-tourism lexicon in sayurmatinggi area. the data source in this research is conservation news text in indonesian language mass media. at the level of the lexicon, the dynamics and language changes are influenced by three dimensions (lindo & bundegaard, 2000, pp.10-11), namely: (a) ideological dimension, ie the ideology or adicita of the society eg the ideology of capitalism supported by the market ideology, to environmental resources, such as the emergence of terms and discourses of exploitation, growth, economic gain. so there are efforts to maintain, develop, and cultivate certain species of fish or plants of high economic value and strong; (b) sociological dimension, namely the activity of discourse, dialogue, and social discourse to realize the ideology. in this dimension language is a meaningful social practical form; and (c) the biological dimension, due to the diversity of lake biota (or sea, or land) equally within the ecosystem, and with the vitality of species and life-force that differ from one another; there is a large and strong so dominate and 'eat' the weak and small, there is a small and weak so marginalized and inedible. the biological dimension is verbally recorded in lexicon in the word language of each language so that the entities are signified and understood. language units in the form of words, phrases or units of language expressions containing information about the meaning of the language units that describe the conservation environment are called conservation ekoleksikon. from that theoretical framework, in an ecolinguistic perspective, the language of the environment and the language environment as a metaphorical expression illustrates the comparison of linguistic to the environmental science (ecology) (mbete, 2009, p.8). this implies that ecolinguistic perspectives can be offered as an approach to rescue, protection, empowerment, and preservation of regional languages as a mother tongue for some of the nation's children, as well as indonesian language as a means of developing indonesian culture. nationally, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 168 without prejudice to regional languages, the empowerment, protection and preservation of the indonesian language as the national language and language of the state should take precedence. language is a picture of the reality that exist in the environment. the biological dimension of the environment with the diversity of its interacting entities is the focus and focus of ecological studies. analogously, the biological dimension, in addition to the sociological and ideological dimensions of linguistic phenomena in the dialectic of ekolingustik applied by bang and door (2000), is used in the framework of dissecting the meanings and ecological values of languages, in particular looking at and dissecting the phenomenon of language in an ecolinguistic perspective. diversity, interaction, interrelation, and holistic, becomes an ecolinguistic framework. method this research uses qualitative research approach. the use of this approach is in accordance with the philosophy of positivism which views that science is built empirically. then, abstraction and drawing conclusions are based on the results of the analysis of the empirical facts obtained in the field. the qualitative of this research is related with the research data in the form of quality of lingual unit in conservation news text in indonesian language mass media. this study also uses descriptive approach. this is related to the goal to be achieved in this research, which is to describe the conservation news text in the mass media from the study of ecolinguistics. this research uses ecolinguistic design. fill (2001, p.126) in lindo & bundsgaard (2000) states that ecolinguistics is an umbrella against all approaches of language study in combination with the environment (ecology). for that reason, in ecolinguistics, context is any background knowledge that is assumed shared by a speech community. the context in ecolinguistics includes: (a) ideological dimension, ie the existence of ideology or adicita of society, (b) sociological dimension, namely the activity of discourse, dialogue, and social discourse to realize the ideology. in this dimension language is a meaningful social practical form, and (c) a biological dimension, related to diversity in ecosystems verbally recorded on lexicon in the lingual unit of the universe so that the entities are signified and understood. this research data are in the form of conservation news texts from indonesian mass media. sources of data used, is preaching of conservationoriented universities from www.unnes.ac.id page, suara merdeka newspaper, kompas newspaper from 2010 to 2017. furthermore, identification method used in this sorting activity data. identification means the determination or identification of the data collected in the data corpus. in addition to that method, in data sorting activities are also used classification method. the classification in this study means the classification of data based on similarities and differences in data identity. with this method, the identified data will be classified. then, the data sorting activity is the research stage which is done after the data collection. in this activity will be used criteria as the basis of sorting. there are four methods of data collection conducted in this research that is simak method, literature study method, documentation method and questionnaire method (sudaryanto, 2015, p.13; mahsun 2005, p.133; kesuma 2007, p.43). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 169 furthermore, instrument or research tool used in this research is human instrument (human instrument) or researcher itself. this is in line with moloeng's (2007: 8) assertion that in qualitative research, the key instrument is the reviewer or the researcher himself, so the researcher must be 'validated'. validation done to the researchers, including: understanding of qualitative descriptive research methods, mastery of insight into the field of scientists studied, the readiness of researchers to enter the object of research. qualitative researchers as human instruments function to set the focus of research, selecting informants as data sources, collecting data, assessing data quality, analyzing data, interpreting data, and making conclusions on its findings (sugiyono, 2012, p.306). then the data has been collected analyzed in accordance with the formulation of problems and research objectives by using methods of matching and agih. the method is the method of research that uses the determinants of the language in question. another term of the agih method is the distribusional method. the method of research is the method of research that the means of penentunya is outside, regardless and not become part of the language in question (sudaryanto, 2015, p.13; mahsun, 2005, p.112; kesuma, 2007, p.47). findings and discussion the analysis of conservation news texts in indonesian mass media in ecolinguistic study is not merely to analyze microstructure language only. the analysis of conservation news texts in indonesian language mass media also discusses the issues of language macrostructure such as language style, euphemism, dysphism, personification, metaphor, and others. the text of conservation news in indonesian mass media is constructed for certain purposes and purposes. sometimes the text is used for campaigns or socialization of environmental preservation, imaging, and criticism of individuals who play a role in environmental damage. conservation news texts uploaded or published in the mass media are presented in the following data. news text 1 csr di boyolali, terbentuk empat kelompok tani (csr in boyolali, four farmer communities are established) (wednesday, 30 th of march 2011, source: www.unnes.ac.id) program corporate social responsibility (csr) universitas negeri semarang (unnes) kerja sama dengan pertamina di kabupaten boyolali pada tahun pertama ini berhasil membentuk empat kelompok tani dengan anggota per kelompok 70 80 orang. desa binaan tersebut berada di ketaon, kecamatan banyudono. (p1) margunani, mp ketua tim saat kunjungan rektor unnes, minggu (27/3), di boyolali menyatakan pihaknya menyerahkan bantuan alat berupa satu mesin perajang sampah, tiga set alat pemipil jagung, tiga set alat pembuat tepung jagung, dan 20 set alat pembuat kompos tasakura. http://www.unnes.ac.id/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 170 "selain itu, tiga set tong sampah pemilah sampah organik dan anorganik, alat memasak untuk membuat kue dari jagung (kompor, blender, mixer, open, dan lainnya masing-masing tiga set,” kata margunani. (p2) the corporate social responsibility (csr) program of semarang state university (unnes) in cooperation with pertamina in boyolali regency in the first year was successfully established four farmer groups with members per group of 70 80 people. the target villages are located in ketaon, banyudono sub-district. (p1) margunani, mp team leader during the visit of unnes rector on sunday (27/3), in boyolali stated that his party handed over a tool aid in the form of one garbage chopper machine, three sets of corn shrimp, three sets of cornmeal and 20 sets of compost maker tasakura . 'in addition, three sets of organic and inorganic waste disposal garbage cans, cooking utensils for making cakes from corn (stoves, blenders, mixers, open, and others each three sets,' margunani said. news text ii sby: unnes bagus sekali, ini baru konservasi (sby: unnes is excellent. this is conservation university) (wednesday, 30 th of march 2016, sourcer: webpage www.unnes.ac.id.) inilah komentar presiden ri ke-6 prof dr susilo bambang yudhoyono ketika memasuki auditorium universitas negeri semarang (unnes) kampus sekaran, pada rabu (30/3).“luar biasa! bagus sekali. ini baru konservasi!” katanya yang segera disambut jabat tangan rektor unnes prof dr fathur rokhman mhum. (p1) this is the comment of president of the 6th ri prof. dr. susilo bambang yudhoyono when entering the state university of semarang (unnes) auditorium of sekaran campus, on wednesday (30/3). very good. this is new conservation! 'he said who was immediately greeted by the handshake unnes rector prof. dr. fathur rokhman mhum. (p1) news text iii gandeng pertamina, unnes tanam 200 pohon di kelurahan kandri (collaborating with pertamina, unnes planted 200 trees ar kandri) (monday, 8 th of december 2014, source: suara merdeka) semarang – belum lama ini, universitas negeri semarang (unnes) bekerja sama dengan pertamina dan pemerintah kota semarang menanam pohon di kelurahan kandri, gunungpati, semarang. (p1) http://www.unnes.ac.id/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 171 kegiatan ini merupakan kerja sama universitas negeri semarang melalui lembaga penelitian dan pengabdian kepada masyarakat (lp2m) dengan pertamina dan pemerintah kota semarang dalam progam kemitraan bina lingkungan (pkbl). seperti dilansir dari laman resmi unnes, kegiatan penanaman 200 pohon, yang meliputi jambu krital, durian, dan kelengkeng, ini melibatkan banyak pihak. yakni general manager marketing operasional region iv pertamina, area manager sme dan sr partnership, pemimpin wilayah bank bni, rektor, kepala badan, kepala dinas, camat dan lurah setempat. (p2) adapun maksud dari program ini adalah pembentukan desa eduwisata dan kawasan ekonomi masyarakat dan diharapkan dapat menjadi daerah agrowisata dan juga dapat digunakan siswa sekolah untuk belajar. (p3) kepala dinas pertanian wp. rusdiana mengatakan, potensi seperti ini harus digali terus, dan ini adalah peluang kota semarang untuk memajukan desa wisata, yang akan menjadi desa wisata baru dengan potensi-potensi lokal. (p4) dia mengatakan, daerah mijen dan gunungpati merupakan daerah perkembangan pertanian, baik peternakan maupun pangan, hortikultura, herbal, dan tanaman hias. rencananya, kebun dinas di kandri tersebut adalah satu tempat yang rencana akan dinamai rumah pintar petani yang dapat digunakan untuk tempat berkumpul dan dapat berkontribusi untuk pemerintah kota semarang. (p5) rektor universitas negeri semarang prof dr fathur rokhman mhum mengatakan, potensi daerah seperti mangga, jambu, rambutan, durian perlu dikonservasi. efeknya bisa sebagai penyanggah air dan juga habitat hewan. untuk itu upaya ke depan adalah pemeliharaan dan unnes akan membantu pemasaran. (p6) semarang recently, semarang state university (unnes) in collaboration with pertamina and semarang city government planted trees in kelurahan kandri, gunungpati, semarang. (p1) this activity is a collaboration between semarang state university through institute of research and community service (lp2m) with pertamina and semarang city government in partnership program of community development (pkbl). as quoted from the official website of unnes, the planting activities of 200 trees, which includes guava, durian, and kelengkeng, this involves many parties. namely general manager marketing operations region iv pertamina, area manager sme and sr partnership, the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 172 leader of the bank bni, rector, head of agency, head of department, subdistrict and local lurah. (p2) the purpose of this program is the establishment of eduwisata village and the economic area of the community and is expected to become an agro-tourism area and can also be used by school students to learn. (p3) head of agricultural service wp. rusdiana said this potential should be explored, and this is an opportunity for semarang city to advance the tourist village, which will become a new tourist village with local potentials. (p4) he said the mijen and gunungpati areas are areas of agricultural development, both livestock and food, horticulture, herbs, and ornamental plants. according to the plan, the official gardens in kandri are one place where plans will be named smart farmers' homes that can be used for gathering places and can contribute to semarang city government. (p5) rector of state university of semarang, prof. dr. fathur rokhman mhum said that regional potencies such as mango, jambu, rambutan, durian need to be conserved. the effect can be as a buffer of water and also the habitat of animals. for that future effort is maintenance and unnes will help marketing. (p6) news text iv lingkungan kampus, sehat dengan bersepeda (campus environment, hearlthy with cycling) (tuesday, 4 th of march 2014, source: kompas) memasuki lingkungan kampus universitas negeri semarang di sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, jawa tengah, kesejukan menyergap. rimbun pepohonan menyambut. petugas satpam berjaga di depan gerbang dan mengarahkan sepeda motor atau mobil untuk diparkir sebelum memasuki kawasan kampus. (p1) rektor unnes fathurrahman mengungkapkan, kebijakan berjalan kaki dan bersepeda di kampus merupakan salah satu bagian dari komitmen unnes sebagai universitas konservasi. ”ini menjadi kontribusi kami sebagai lembaga pendidikan untuk ikut mengatasi masalah pemanasan global. upaya konservasi sudah masuk dalam statuta unnes sejak 2010,” ujarnya. (p9) setiap mahasiswa diwajibkan menanam minimal satu pohon. pohon itu menjadi syarat bagi mahasiswa yang akan mengerjakan skripsi. (p10) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 173 entering the campus environment of semarang state university in sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, central java, coolness ambushed. rimbun trees welcome. the security guard guards in front of the gate and directs the motorcycle or car to park before entering the campus. (p1) rector unnes fathurrahman revealed, the policy of walking and cycling on campus is one part of unnes's commitment as a conservation university. 'this is our contribution as an educational institution to help overcome the problem of global warming. conservation efforts have been included in unnes's statute since 2010, 'he said. (p9) each student is required to plant at least one tree. the tree is a requirement for students who will do thesis. (p10). the four news texts above are conservation news texts. this is because the four examples of news texts show that the mass media in this case, namely the page www.unnes.ac.id, suara merdeka, and kompas using linguistic units in the form of news texts about the university conservation as a means of building reader opinion. for that, in the news in the mass media found the text of conservation news. this indicates a link between language and environment. the news text i informs the success of an institution to form a farmer group in boyolali district. in the news, the ecolips are emerging among them, namely compost, organic, inorganic, and trash cans, garbage sorting. then, in the second news text, the subject of conservation-oriented universities is getting stronger. this is demonstrated by the recognition of the 6th president of the republic of indonesia, mr. susilo bambang yudhoyono, who stated 'unbelievable! very good. this is new conservation! '. in fact, there is a message from this news text, so that other universities can follow what has been done by unnes. this shows that conservation-based universities provide a positive. it seems that conservationminded universities will become a trendsetter that will be followed by other universities. this shows the existence of a linguistic expression of euphemism. in the third news text, there is a message to be conveyed that efforts to create an atmosphere of conservation is needed cooperation with other instusi, namely pertamina. this report shows that to imaged and repute conservationbased universities need to involve parties outside the campus. in addition, there is an interesting linggual unit of this news, namely pertamina tandem, unnes plant 200 trees in kandri village. the use of the word choice is usually done to humans or people, for example: 'mother took my sister', 'daddy took my grandmother'. but in the text, the word coupled with the word pertamina. this shows that in the text of conservation news in mass media can be found the existence of linguistic expression in the form of metaphor. furthermore, in the news text iv, there is a message to be conveyed that one of the pillars in the conservation of natural resources and the environment also received special attention. the policy of transporting by bicycle in the campus area becomes a movement conducted at conservation-minded universities. on the other hand, this condition is juxtaposed with several other universities. each ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 174 cycling policy in a college campus environment has its advantages and problems. in addition, lingual units of coolness phrases ambushed, lush trees welcome, as well as sterile from motor vehicles indicate the choice of words that utilize the expression of language in the form of personification. this personification becomes a beauty in packing news about campus healthy environment with cycling, which is a sympathetic invitation to all campus residents. trampe in fill and muhlhausler (2001, pp.238-239) states that environmental discourse or green discourse in mass media usually contains: (1) reification, which is to treat living beings as objects of economic value, related to technology and ideology. for example, living things or resources can be produced, optimized, managed, and used (utilized); (2) to hide the fact, ie the use of euphemism to replace some words or terms that are avoided. for example, relating to death, destruction or destruction, extermination or destruction, and poison; (3) to express hatred or opposition to parties that damage traditional or customary land; and (4) create slogans and elements that convey ideas and ideas used to make the process of environmental and cultural destruction undertaken by a group of people appear to fit and conform with the laws of nature. furthermore, the analysis of all four headings above can be classified into an analysis of ecolexic forms. in conservation news texts, the forms of ecoleksikon are classified into three pillars of conservation, namely (a) pillars of values and pillars, (b) pillars of art and culture, (c) natural and ecological resources consisting of three forms, namely ecoleksikon in the form of (a) words, (b) derivative words, and (c) phrases. the ecolexicon forms of pillars of values and characters the pillars of values and character are the conservation values associated with the embodiment of values, personality traits, and self-development. here is the ecolexico form of the pillars of values and characters found in the conservation news text in indonesian-language mass media. tabel 1: ecolexicons of words ecolexicon categories meaning referent biotic abiotic humanis (humanist) noun people who crave and strive for a better life, based on the principle of humanity. abiotic integritas (integrity) noun quality of nature, or circumstances that show a unified whole so as to have the potential and ability that emit dignity. abiotic inovatif (innovative) adjective introducing something new; is renewal (new creations). abiotic inspiratif (inspiring) adjective something that can give the effect of the spirit and power.. abiotic ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 175 table 2: ecolexicons of derivations table 3: ecolexicons of phrases root afix derivation categories meaning keadilan (justice) ke … + …an keadilan (justice) adjective putting an unobtrusive center in place, in other words put something in place. kejujuran (honesty) ke … + …an kejujuran (honesty) adjective the part of the selfesteem that must be maintained because of high value. kesantunan (politeness) ke … + …an kesantunan (politeness) adjective the part of the selfesteem that must be maintained because of high value. ecolexicon categories core unit meaning referent biotic abiotic pilar konservasi (conservati on pillar) noun phrase pilar (pillar) rules or behaviors established and mutually agreed upon by a society. abiotic prinsip konservasi (conservati on principles) noun phrase prinsip (proncipl e) the basis for forming a good thing is tangible or intangible. abiotic tugu konservasi (conservati on tower) noun phrase tugu (tower) protection, preservation, and sustainable use, like conservation of natural resources, environment, art and culture. abiotic konservasi etika (conservati on ethics) verbal phrase konserva si (conserva tion) large and high poles made of stone, bricks, and so on as a symbol of the state university of semarang insightful conservation abiotik konservasi nilai (conservin g values) verbal phrase konserva si (conserva tion) maintain and preserve the knowledge of what is good and what is bad about moral rights and duties. abiotic ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 176 ecolexicon forms of pillars of art and culture the pillar of art and culture is a conservation value that focuses on the preservation of art and culture, especially the culture of central java, and throughout indonesia in general. here are the ecolexic forms of the pillars of art and culture found in conservation news texts in indonesian-language mass media. tabel 4: ecolexicon of words table 5: ecolexicon of derivations salam konservasi (conservati on greetings) verbal phrase salam (greeting s) maintain and preserve those traits that are important or useful for humanity. abiotic ramah lingkungan (environme ntally friendly) adjective phrase lingkung an (environm ent) safe or not harm the environment. abiotic ecolexicon categories meaning referent biotic abiotic batik (custom) noun the picture fabrics are specially made by wearing the night on the cloth. abiotic langgam (custom) noun the rhythm form of a song or song abiotic seni (art) noun works created with extraordinary expertise abiotic wayang (puppet) noun artificial puppets made of bark sculptures and so on that can be exploited to wear characters in traditional drama performances. abiotic root afixes derivations categories meaning budaya ke … + …an kebudayaan noun the result of human activity and creation (mind) such as belief, art, and custom. pesisir ... + ... an pesisiran nomina knowledge possessed and imbued by the coastal community, whose contents are tools of knowledge model that can selectively be used to understand and interpret the environment at hand, to encourage, and to create the actions it needs. dalang pe... + ...an pedalangan noun anything or knowledge relating to story telling or puppet show ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 177 tabel 6: ecolexicon of phrases ecolexicon forms of pillars of natural sources and environment pillar of natural resources and environment is the value of conservation related to environmental ecosystem balance. here are the ecolexic forms of the pillars of natural and environmental resources found in conservation news texts in indonesian-language mass media. table 7: ecolexicon of words ecolexicon categories core unit meaning referent biotic abiotic arak-arakan budaya noun phrase arakarakan (processio n) convoys of people and so on who walk or move together (parade) that is the rampart of customs abiotic budaya luhur noun phrase budaya (culture) mind, reason, customs of high value and noble abiotic sanggar tari noun phrase sanggar (studio) means, containers for creativity and familiar with traditional dances, from various regions, which are complicated and modified to better master and get to know more closely the traditional dance abiotic tari sekaringrat noun phrase tari (dance) one of unnes innovations in the form of dance that symbolizes conservation in every movement abiotic gending konservasi noun phrase gending instruments or songs expressed by conservationthemed tones. abiotic selasa legen noun phrase selasa (tuesday) day with the market according to javanese custom abiotic ecolexicons categories meaning referent biotic abiotic kompos noun mixed fertilizers consisting of organic materials (such as decaying leaves and straw) and animal waste abiotic ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 178 table 8: ecolexicons of derivations biopori noun absorbent absorption holes, with predetermined specified sizes that are covered with organic waste that serves as a water absorber to the ground and make natural compost. abiotic konservasi noun maintenance and protection of something regularly to prevent damage and destruction by preservation, maintenance, and preservation abiotic durian noun name of one type of tree and its fruit (flora) biotic eduwisata noun tour to deepen or better understand an object to add insight and knowledge abiotic trembesi noun large and fast-growing trees, the crown of leaves resemble umbrellas and widths, widely planted for giving shade, the wood is not very durable, the leaves are used as animal feed, the fruit is thick and fleshy pods; wood ambon; munggur; enterolobium saman biotic asri adjective beautiful and good looking abiotic herbal adjective things related to herbs-plants that leaves, flowers, or roots can be used for food herbs, medicines, or perfume. abiotic organik adjective with regard to substances derived from living things (animals or plants, such as oil and coal) abiotic anorganik adjective with regard to or characterized by the absence of living organisms abiotic root affix derivation categories meaning sejuk ke+ -an kesejukan noun subject (state and so on) which is cool pohon pe + -an pepohonan noun trees; many trees panas pe+ -an pemanasan (global) noun process, manner, act of heating or heating tanam … + an tanaman noun plants that people usually grow; yield of planting; planted ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 179 table 9: ecolexicons of phrase ecolexicon categories core unit meaning referent biotic abiotic rimbun pepohonan noun phrase pepohonan trees biotic pemanasan global noun phrase pemanasan the rising temperatures of earth's atmosphere caused by the increase of pollutant gases such as carbon dioxide abiotic bendungan mini noun phrase bendungan retaining buildings or landfills for irrigation (power plants, etc.) of small size. abiotic nir kertas noun phrase kertas not using or minimizing paper usage abiotic kampus konservasi noun phrase kampus conservation campus is a university that in the implementation of education, research, and community service has a concept that refers to the principles of conservation (protection, preservation, and sustainable use) both conservation of natural resources, environment, art, and culture. abiotic senam konservasi (conservatio n gymnastic) noun phrase senam one of the gymnastics innovations from unnes by using musical accompaniment of gending conservation with a combination of gymnastics movement abiotic kader konservasi (conservatio n cadres) noun phrase kader the expected person will play an important role in the effort to realize the conservation campus abiotic ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 180 wawasan konservasi (horizon of conservation) noun phrase konservasi have a conception or perspective on the maintenance and protection of something regularly to prevent damage and destruction by preservation, preservation, and preservation of the environment abiotic nilai konservasi (conservatio n value) noun phrase konservasi pricing or appraisal (things) that are important or useful for humanity regarding regular maintenance and protection of something to prevent damage and destruction by preservation, preservation, and preservation of the environment abiotic kampus hijau (green campus) noun phrase kampus the movement to realize the area of the main building environment of college becomes more beautiful and comfortable place by doing conservation efforts (tree planting, etc.) abiotic penghijauan kampus (geening the campus) noun phrase kampus processes, ways, actions make the campus environment green by planting trees to keep the air cool and clean. abiotic gerakan menanam (planting movement) frasa verbal planting movement, business, or planting activities as a reforestation / conservation effort movement, business, or planting activities as a reforestation / conservation effort abiotic ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 181 from the above data indicates that regardless of the scope of the pros and cons, agree or disagree over the declared conservation university policy, the issues that need to be noticed that the conservation news text in indonesian mass media is a lingual phenomenon. this is because in the conservation news text there is consololaxic conservation in the form of words and phrases. in addition, there are also styles of language, eufimisme, metofora, and personification. schultz (in fill &muhlhauster 2001, pp.109-110) states that there are three linguistic or linguistic tools that are often used in texts related to the commercialization of the environment. first, the use of neutral words that have the connotation of praise or tend to side with exploitation, but the reality represented by the word is very different. for example, the use of words or terms ecologically sustainable development, fertilizer and human resources. secondly, the tools that are often used, namely the use of euphemism (the mention of objects or something unpleasant to be more polite). for example, the use of the term clearing, harvest, greenhouse effect and global warming. third, rarely used tools but very powerful effects when used, ie the use of peyorative terms or dysphism (mention of a sign or something with a more negative connotation). for example, the use of word or term earthworm food and animal's homes to mention humus. language researchers may indeed choose one of a number of linguistic aspects to examine, in microlinguistic or macro-linguistic umbrellas, theoretical linguistics or pure linguistics or applied linguistics. both are just as important. pure linguistics (mikrolinguistik) is very important to be developed through indepth research for the development of linguistic theory, including indonesian linguistics and indonesian languages as it will in turn sustain the development and development of applied linguistics. according to mbete (2003, p.14), many linguistic, micro and macro, pure and applied issues, monodisciplinary and interdisciplinary, especially under the umbrella of ecolinguistics, are interesting to be identified and developed in research. conclusion ecolinguistics as a paradigm of a relatively new approach is worth developing. this interdisciplinary linguistic umbrella, if developed more empirically, factually, and conceptually, can be a source of inspiration in ramah lingkungan (environment ally friendly) adjective phrase environment safe or non-destructive to the environment abiotic hemat energi (energyefficient) adjective phrase energy be careful in using (and so on), not wasteful, careful about energy abiotic indonesia hijau (green indonesia) adjective phrase indonesia relating to movement, spirit, issues, and so on is aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and global warming in indonesia abiotic ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 163-183 182 identifying the various environmental issues around us, in the effort to dissect mutual relationships between people, humans and nature, as well as about the diversity itself. in conservative news text in indonesian mass media, ecolexicoon is found based on the pillars of values and character, art and culture, natural resources and environment that are affiliated with biotic and abiotic in the form of: (a) the base word, (b) derivative word, (c) noun phrases, verbal phrases, adjective phrases. in conservation news text also found the existence of euphemism, metaphor, personification. the study of ecolinguistics in the conservation news texts in indonesian mass media can provide theoretical and practical benefits, namely: (1) providing description of the analysis of the forms, meanings, types, and functions of lingual units that combine ideological, sociological and biological dimensions; (2) providing instructional materials in the form of news texts, especially conservation news text --green text on conservation --which is one type of text in the basic competencies of the curriculum; (3) providing an interdisciplinary study of inter-disciplinary consolidation texts to strengthen the theory and methods of journalistic and linguistic studies; and (4) providing input to media managers in the reality of news about conservation in the media and for news sources as input when interacting with the media. references al g., & usman, y. 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(2010). pengantar semantik bahasa indonesia. yogyakarta: pustaka pelajar. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 176 examining womanhood: narratives of women’s subjugation and non-survival in five short stories from asia shara rose virgini olaya dionaldo and andrea gomez soluta central mindanao university and silliman university, philippines correspondence: shai@cmu.edu.ph doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i2.3158 received 1 march 2021; accepted 23 march 2021 abstract this paper explored the discourse on womanhood in the asian context by delving into the narratives of women characters in five short stories by three asian writers. specifically, it attempted to determine the images associated with asian women based on the portrayal of the main protagonists in the selected short stories. it then analysed how these images construct womanhood and perpetuate such ideal in the asian mindset. viewed from both feminist and constructionist lenses, findings show that the women protagonists are relegated to their threepronged traditional roles/images: daughter, wife, and mother. these images, in turn, shape how these characters behave and are seen by other characters submissive, self-sacrificing and subjugated. however, despite an unrelentingly difficult life, all the five women still struggle to survive. such act seems inconsistent with the above stereotypical construct of womanhood, though a closer look actually shows a different side to the said construct: strong, steadfast and resilient/survivalist. not all of the protagonists overcome their tragic lives. nonetheless, all five women manage to convey that the concept of womanhood is more complex than how it had been perceived in the past. this complexity is clearly illustrated in the lived realities of many asian women today. keywords: women subjugation, womanhood, asian women narratives introduction despite women’s advancement into the public sphere, there are still many who are marginalized in today’s world brought about by the fact that societal expectations of their responsibilities as women have remained essentially the same throughout the ages (rosaldo, 1974). this grim reality is affirmed by recent studies done on women’s subjugation in specific asian countries. gnanaprakasam (2018) examined the dismal condition and representation of women in indian society as well as their “crumbled voices” as portrayed in the narrative giribala by looking into the women characters' endurance and resistance as they face daily oppression but still struggle hard to survive in their lived realities. gnanaprakasam observed that the indian society is generally complicit in the marginalization of its women, more so in the case of the poor, those who ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 177 belong to minority groups, and those who are regarded as outcast or rebellious women, for all are not allowed any respectable position and identity within its realm. moreover, the long-ignored women's egregious conditions are not considered as an injustice by the indian society; instead these are just part and parcel of their everyday domestic realities except for those who belong to the upper class of society. according to gnanaprakasam (2018), the experiences of [marginalized] women are destructive and have multiple shades of evolution and understanding. these women are those living in the tangential line of living in terms of their gender discrimination, class difference, and [caste] position, especially as a home-grown woman. these types of women are normally unnoticed in civil society. their pains have long been ignored and are not considered as sinful but the usual occurrences of day-to-day life (p.322). another short narrative by mahasweta devi entitled duoloti the bountiful was analyzed by sung-hee yook (2018). yook examined how the tribal women’s bodies become sexualized and commodified within a horrific bonded labor system in india. in particular, her paper illustrated how socio-economic changes and movements affect the lives of those who are in the lowest bracket of the economic system especially the women. the tribals had a distinctive culture and a selfsufficient economic system until they were displaced from and disposed of their forest/lands/homes resulting in the appalling exploitation and subjugation of their women as exemplified by duoloti who is prostituted as a young girl until her body is ravaged by tuberculosis and venereal disease and dies at the age of twentyseven. on another front, the bivariate analysis of soy and sahoo (2016) revealed that two-thirds of the women in india meet their husbands only on their wedding day or on the day of gauna while their multivariate analysis indicated that women marrying outside their caste and blood relations are influenced by socio-economic factors. both findings reflect the plight of many indian girls whose future depends on the decision of the parents or the elder in charge. the asia foundation (2016) in its report on the violence perpetrated against women and children in timor-leste observed that the issue of women unemployment in this young nation could be factored in as contributory to the women’s physical, sexual, emotional, and economic abuse by their intimate partners. many women whose households depend on subsistence agriculture for their livelihood are not paid for their agricultural work extending “the notion of unpaid work for women beyond the domestic duties of housework and child rearing.” such a situation “has important consequences for women’s independence and financial autonomy, particularly in the context of deciding whether or not to leave abusive relationships” (p. 23). belarmino and roberts (2019) presented the voices of women experiencing violence and inequality in japan, which are largely unreported. for instance, despite modern-day advancements in all aspects of life, japanese women are still expected to have children after getting married and to quit work after giving birth. they are also treated differently from men under the law to their enormous disadvantage. furthermore, japanese women are expected to follow the tradition ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 178 of keeping quiet and submitting to the wishes of their partner without questions to preserve togetherness or to protect the man’s pride, which obviously make them vulnerable to subjugation and domestic or other forms of violence. the women’s vulnerability to domestic violence is exacerbated by the fact that it is often normalized and, even, rationalized by the community. a fact sheet on domestic and sexual violence in filipino communities (asian pacific institute on gender-based violence, 2018) revealed that filipino women respondents in hawaii considered men’s partner abuse as an expression of the men’s “anger, stress, and drunken behavior, rather than as ‘abuse’ towards their spouse.” moreover, most of the respondents considered “physical violence to be unacceptable, particularly when injuries resulted. however, they do believe that many times when women are harmed, it was ‘inevitable’ because the women ‘likely misbehaved’ – i.e. lied or were unfaithful” (p. 2). the above cited studies presented different ways of women oppression and victimization in their own society caused by traditional gender role expectations. these studies however did not describe how the women dealt with their daily oppressions, thus, this paper attempted to fill such gap by examining how the women characters tried hard to survive and, in the process, let their voices be heard despite their unrelentingly harsh everyday realities. method employing textual analysis primarily through feminist and constructionist lenses, this paper explored the discourse on womanhood in the asian context, particularly chinese, indian, and filipino, by delving into the narratives of the women characters in genoveva edroza-matute's “ang kwento ni mabuti”, lu hsuon's “the widow” and mahasweta devi's “giribala”, “breast giver”, and “draupadi”. specifically, the paper attempted to determine the images associated with these asian women based on the portrayal of the main protagonist in each of the five selected short stories/narratives and informed mainly by de beauvoir’s answers to the question “what is a woman?” which she posed in her monumental book, the second sex (2011). she posited that the female function – “she is a womb” is not enough to define woman. instead, “she is determined and differentiated in relation to a man, while he is not in relation to her; she is the inessential in front of the essential. he is the subject; he is the absolute. she is the other” (p. 26). moreover, de beauvoir rejected the “eternal feminine” as a woman archetype or a ‘changeless essence whatsoever’ because [o]ne is not born, but rather becomes, woman. no biological, psychic, or economic destiny defines the figure that the human female takes on in society; it is civilization as a whole that elaborates this intermediary product between the male and the eunuch that is called feminine. only the mediation of another can constitute an individual as an other. (p. 330) in other words, de beauvoir’s answer to the ‘woman question’ is someone who is mediated or socialized to become the ‘second sex’ and an other not an autonomous being but rather “the relative being.” the paper then analyzed how these images construct womanhood and perpetuate such ideal in the asian mindset as depicted in the stories guided by ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 179 berger and luckmann’s sociological account of constructed meaning as expressed in the social construction of reality (1966): every individual is born into an objective social structure within which he encounters the significant others who are in charge of his socialization. these significant others are imposed on him. their definitions of his situation are posited for him as objective reality. he is thus born into not only an objective social structure but also an objective social world. the significant others who mediate this world to him modify it in the course of mediating it. they select aspects of it in accordance with their own location in the social structure, and also by virtue of their individual biographically rooted idiosyncrasies (p. 151). de beauvoir’s feminist concepts and berger and luckmann’s constructionist theory underpinned the analysis of the selected short stories to identify women’s images that construct the womanhood ideal persisting in the indian, chinese, and filipino mindsets. findings and discussion images of asian women as embodied in their multifaceted roles in the asian context, a woman’s marketability is still often associated with what she can do or what her husband or her father has. and though she is pronounced as man’s partner, she is generally undervalued within the partnership, which is attributable to her still being principally the nurturer and domestic workhorse in the family despite the fact that for decades now, she has also been a fulltime member of the workforce, even actually becoming the main breadwinner. nnaemeka (1997) negates this undervaluing by stating that a woman is someone regardless [of you] thinking otherwise. textual analysis of the five selected short stories reveal that ‘woman as someone’ can be classified in most, if not all, of these categories: 1) daughter/daughter-in-law; 2) wife; 3) mother; 4) mistress; and 5) rebel indicating the multifaceted and overlapping roles she performs in her daily life and, at the same time, shaping how she and the community perceive her as a woman. being a daughter/daughter-in-law when a girl is born, the first image that would shape her is her being a daughter of her parents, which is a role that has its concomitant duties attached. in mahasweta devi's giribala, the title refers to the main character, known to family and friends as giri, who portrays three roles in the story daughter, wife, and mother – aside from being a family provider. while still young, giri’s marriage was a prime concern of her father like “most of the middle class in modern india who feel that a marriage is to be arranged, heterosexual, and lifelong. it is simply too important to be left to chance" (khandpur, 2017). as a daughter, giri is expected to fulfil her dharma to become a wife as willed by her father so she would be blessed in the afterlife. based on indian tradition, "before a marriage can be officially declared, a multitude of factors are investigated by the parents and trusted parties to ensure compatibility, future prosperity (both in the marriage and in the derivative households), and divine satisfaction. the concept of sanjog is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 180 often supplicated in the context of divine satisfaction. it serves a dual purpose: promotion of predestined marriage and softening of the rejection of an unsuitable partner" (khandpur, 2017, p.5). in the case of giri, when her parents discerned the sinister character of their chosen future son-in-law, they were prepared to stop him from bringing her home but, he sweet-talked them into agreeing to bring giri home with him. thus, giri submissively followed her parents’ wishes like any dutiful daughter whose status as a girl/woman in india practically has no autonomy and decision-making power over any aspect of her life (bloom, wypij, & das gupta, 2001; jejeebhoy & sathar, 2001; mason & smith, 2000; desai, 1994 as cited in soy & sahoo, 2017). the experience of servitude and submission as expected of a daughter or a daughter-in-law is shared by hsiang ling, the main character in the chinese short story, the widow, written by lu hsun and translated to english by wang chichen. at the start of the story, hsiang ling, a 26-year-old widow, was shown looking for a job. she was given a trial period by a family, during which she served them diligently, quietly and even performing a man's job with ease. she was then hired as their servant, and, at the end of the year of her servitude, she was doing all the cleaning, cooking, and slaughtering of livestock. she seemed content with her life despite her hard work, her face showing traces of a smile every now and then. but, one day, she was found out to have left her mother-inlaw's house without permission. the mother-in-law came to forcibly take her back to weichiashan where she would be married off to a huo lao-liu of huochiatsun for the benefit of her dead husband’s family. hsiang ling fought desperately to escape the second marriage but her in-laws physically abused her into submission, with witnesses not daring to intervene claiming the horrendous situation is purely a domestic issue. hsiang ling’s subjugation is seemingly rationalized by her violation of filial piety, a central tenet of confucianism, but is negated by dalton, goldstein-gidoni, lebra, koyama and takahashi’s (in belarmino & roberts, 2019) notion that the more modern portrayal of women as homemakers, who raise children and care for their in-laws, is their having the option of seeking outside work to contribute to the country's economy and structure. in hsiang ling’s case, she was forced to stop working to be married off instead for the economic gains of her greedy mother-inlaw. being a wife a woman in most societies, if not all, is expected to get married and raise a family of her own as soon as she is deemed capable of doing so. in most asian countries, parents are motivated by different factors such as economic stability, continuation of lineage, and political gains to encourage, even push, their daughters to married life. after being a daughter, a woman is thus expected to leave her parents’ home and be with her husband to take on another image, that of being a wife, which almost always relegates her to becoming the inessential other (de beauvoir, 2011). at a young age, giri knew that the valuation of a girl is determined by the bride price given by the groom-to-be to her family, and that as a girl, she could only silently submit to her commodification having no autonomy over her body. likewise, becoming a wife was giri’s exhibition of filial piety ascertaining that ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 181 her father was not made a laughing stock in their place and that he would have a good reward after death because his daughter fulfilled her dharma: "the responsibility that parents felt, to avoid any chance of pre-marital sex, and to avoid the criticism of their community about having an unmarried daughter" (rathor, 2011). the pressure to be married at a young age is caused by the fact that in india, it would be harder to find a suitable older man and the dowry to be paid would be higher if the girl being married off is older jashoda, in the short story “breast giver” by mahasweta devi was also married off at a young age. she was still young and healthy and a new mother when her husband met an accident thus she was forced to become the family provider. though tired from her job, she was still expected to perform her wifely duties such as doing the household chores as well as the bidding of her husband when she came home. it was only when the master's wife talked to her husband that he attempted to help her accomplish some chores. like giri and jashoda, hsiang ling became a wife as well. when she became a widow, her mother-in-law arranged for her second wedding to gain profit to finance hsiang ling’s younger brother-in-law’s wedding and the old woman’s personal needs. as illustrated in the experiences of giribala, jashoda, and hsiang ling, becoming a wife is not a choice for an asian woman to make. she is compelled to become one by her parents or elders at a very young age which makes her miss out on the fun of being young. instead, becoming a wife continues her journey into life-long servitude, submission and self-sacrifice that began when she became a daughter to her parents. being a mother after being a daughter and wife, a woman is then expected to become a mother to fulfil her function as “a womb”. society dictates this order when one is born a girl. in the case of the main women characters in the selected asian stories, three of the five had their lives progress in this prescribed order: giri in “giribala”, jashoda in “breast giver”, and hsing ling in “the widow”. mabuti in “kwento ni mabuti” became a mother but not a wife. giri mothered four girls, with her two elder daughters being sold by their father in the guise of marriage. she did not talk about the incident or the anger and the betrayal she felt towards her husband after her eldest daughter was sold refusing to talk to him at all. but when their second daughter was sold, she finally succumbed to her mother hen instinct and made a decision that shocked the whole community – she left her husband. in the case of jashoda, she biologically mothered 20 children and wet nursed more than 50 children from the household of her mistress who treated her well and provided food for her family in return. wet nursing a succession of babies in the haldar’s household became jashoda’s main source of income for quite some time as this suited the needs of the mistress’s sons and her daughters-in-law, with the latter perceiving that not breastfeeding their babies would prevent their body disfigurement. mabuti, on the other hand, was a single parent to a 6-year-old daughter so she did not technically become a wife, only a lover to a man who is already married to someone else, an act for which she paid a heavy price to her community. working ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 182 as a teacher, she kept much of her private life except for the stories she shared about her little girl revealing her dedication and deep love for her daughter. among the four characters, hsiang ling had the vaguest memory of being a mother and was made fun of by people for it. she had a son with her second husband, but the toddler vanished completely having been eaten by a wolf. this terrifying occurrence finally broke hsiang ling's weakened grasp on reality returning to work as a servant with faltering hands and with a faraway look in her eyes no longer wanting to talk. sadly, no one wanted to listen anyway. becoming a mother continues the self-sacrifice and subjugation of a woman as illustrated by the circumstances of the women characters. giri’s daughters being married off by her husband caused her a lot of pain but she could not hit back at her husband and jashoda had to be perpetually bearing children in order to earn a living wet nursing babies in her employer’s household. mabuti braved the scornful eyes of her community to raise her child from an illicit relationship and hsiang ling was perceived by her community as an unworthy mother for not being able to save her son from a wolf and so scorned for it. being a mistress aside from the common images of being a daughter, wife and mother that are embodied by the women protagonists in the analysed stories, a fourth image – that of being a mistress was shown in the story of mabuti. typically, the word mistress is associated with a kept woman, much like a whore who has no means of supporting herself. as postulated by elson and pearson (in carby, 2018), if a woman loses her job in a world market factory after she has reshaped her life based on a wage income, the only way she may have of surviving is by commodifying her body. mabuti’s life however has not gone such route because she could very well support herself by being a teacher. she just decided to have the baby from her affair with the married doctor making her an atypical mistress. being a rebel a fifth image of a woman is presented in draupadi’s story, which is that of being a rebel. there is a general perception that women of color had been molded by western traditions to be docile, submissive, and patient. consequently, even today, many find it unpleasant when a woman goes against expectations and proves to be steadfast, unafraid, and independent. in the case of draupadi, in the short story with the same title, she was perceived as a threat to peace, a cancer to the society for being a rebel fighting for the rights of her own people. despite being viewed as a threat to the order the militia has created, draupadi was still considered weak for being a woman until she was able to display her extraordinary resilience and courage as a fully committed rebel. as seen in the five selected stories, the common roles played by asian (chinese, indian, and filipino) women in the society are as daughters, wives and mothers. in addition, some become mistresses and even rebels juggling their various roles as if these were a natural extension of a woman’s self. in reality, these roles or images of themselves are constructions that have been imposed on girls by their community (berger & luckman, 1966). while growing up, girls are socialized to believe that their roles in life begins with being a daughter and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 183 progresses to being a wife and then a mother. if a woman breaches such order, then she is frowned upon by society such as in the case of mabuti and draupadi. asian women’s role expectations and consequences the labels attached to girls as they grow older daughter, wife and mother come with attached expectations. as discussed in the preceding chapter the most common expectations for a woman in whatever role she is performing is for her to be submissive and self-sacrificing to keep her family and community happy, which effectively puts her in servitude and subjugation with often dire and tragic consequences. in the asian community, for instance, the existence of domestic abuse receives little or no public acknowledgment. some people would comment on it, some would even rant about it on social media but when exposed in realtime events, oftentimes people shrug their shoulders dismissing it as domestic and personal concerns. under the veil of traditional practices and values as well as apathy, violence in the family and in the community continues to grow, and the women continue to suffer generally in silence. these experiences are mirrored in the different situations the women characters were exposed to as detailed below. giribala, an only daughter, was married off at a young age to a lazy, deceitful, and irresponsible man. although the man’s sinister character was exposed to giri’s parents when he came bearing different gifts, they still decided to let him marry their daughter. even the maid of babu, the man’s employer, was certain of the bleak future giri was facing as a newly arrived bride: what kind of heartless parents would give a young girl to a nogood ganja addict? how can he feed you? he has nothing. gets a pittance taking care of the babu's cattle and doing odd jobs. who knows how he manages to feed himself, doing whatever else he does! if you've been brought up on rice (on which giri was), my dear, you'd be wise enough to go home tomorrow to leave behind the bits of silver that you have on you (devi, p. 4) the 14-year old giri was advised to go home, but she resolved not to do so to keep her own silvers, instead, busying herself with creating mud paste to make do with what her current situation had to offer. through the years of her marriage, giri lived in dismal poverty giving birth to four children in their hovel in close succession. she got herself employed in the babu household with meals as her wage and her children followed in her footsteps as soon as they were capable of working, also being paid with meals instead of money. after the birth of her fourth child, giri took it upon herself to get sterilized and was beaten for her action but stoically endured her punishment to stop the tragedy that happened to her elder daughters. despite being taciturn, she knew what she wanted and acted on it despite the odds. in this sense, her stubbornness makes her resilient and a survivor. seeing her sagging roof, which is an apt metaphor of her life, giri decided to go ask her father’s help in fixing it leaving behind her marriageable eldest daughter. upon her return, she learned that her husband already married off her eldest daughter without telling her as "nobody ever imagined that she could think on her own, let alone act on her thought." giri and her father tried to get the girl ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 184 back but the child could not be found. in the end, the missing girl was philosophically explained away by her father saying "it's as if the girl has sacrificed her life to provide her father with money for a house." although totally devastated, giri kept her peace and grieved silently on her own. despite the time that passed, giri still thought of her missing daughter and even attempted to write her a letter with the help of babu although it was never sent. this attempt however shows giri’s sensitivity and how she thinks outside of the box negating the notion of those around her that she cannot think for herself; that she is a typical village girl. in fact, her silence is a witness to her agonies and her hard work is to silence her longing for her daughter. giri did everything she could to protect her seconddaughter but this would be futile as she ended with the same fate as that of her first born. silently working to feed and clothe her children as well as quietly bearing all the physical pains as well as psychological upheavals brought by her marriage, giri portrays the plight of many women in asia even to this day. another character reflective of the current plight of women in the marginalized sector is jashoda in devi's “breast-giver”. the title of the story is quite suggestive aside from the fact that the image it creates is very strong. a woman is often described based on the size of her breast that even the prestigious ms. universe beauty contest has created an imagined contour of a woman who is considered appealing and attractive. teenagers, even some mature women, are bothered by the issue of breast size to the point of going through some surgical procedures to enhance their beauty, but not a single thought or study in this sense is completely dedicated to the life-giving power of the breast perhaps since it seems a natural and totally domestic affair (nowshin, 2014). jashoda was a young wife and a very healthy breast-feeding mother whose struggles begun dramatically when her husband lost his legs. to feed and clothe her family, she worked as a wet nurse in the house of mrs. haldar for many years. the description of jashoda’s wet nursing in the house of mr. haldar demonstrates the commodification of her body – particularly her womb and her breasts so she could feed her husband and children. in this sense, these parts of a woman’s body are also viewed paradoxically: they are sexualized to objectify and commodify her but, at the same time, honoured for being life vessels. both ways nonetheless expose a woman to abuse particularly those who have no means of fighting back. when the mistress died and jashoda no longer served as the haldar household’s wet nurse, she was faced with what most people fear uselessness. her feeling of uselessness was intensified by the fact that she was later on diagnosed with cancer but neither her husband nor her children, nor her milkchildren were willing to look after her. jashoda’s situation reflects the state of women who are revered when still capable of providing for others, but are disposed of when already deemed useless. fighting one's own battle is a shared experience among the women characters in this study, but none as defiant as draupadi, whose real name is dopdi meyhenfaces, 27 years old and married. she left her family and had long ago gone underground to fight for her people’s rights. she is an unusual everyday indian woman in her empowered state openly going against societal expectations on women of her class: subservient and unthinking. draupadi thus exemplify real ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 185 empowered persons who can make choices even if they were denied this ability (kabeer, 2005). to break her indomitable spirit, draupadi was caught, gang-raped, and made to appear before the military head to be sentenced. shaming through rape, based on the premise that a woman's honor is closely associated with her chastity, is perceived to destroy a woman’s self-image and integrity (simon-kerr, 2008). this practice of questioning a woman's integrity is cultural and has been used by the asian justice system to impeach a woman witness based on her sexual history. for most asians, a woman’s honor and credibility are associated with her sexual virtue (female uprightness being equated to her reputation for sexual purity or chastity) and not her character for truth-telling as truth itself is prescribed differently for women and men (simon-kerr, 2018). thus, the easiest way of destroying draupadi’s influence on her community is to destroy her sexually, all the more painfully through gang rape, especially because she is already a married woman. mabuti, the fifth of the women characters in this study, seemingly lives up to being a mistress as the term can mean ‘a teacher’ as well as ‘a whore’ or ‘a concubine’ (erickson, 2008). mabuti, a teacher, is expected to behave formally and with integrity but she has a secret that if revealed, the community would certainly use to define her as a person; she happens to have a love child with a married man. thus, mabuti embodies both the respectable and the derogatory connotations of being a mistress. interestingly, having an affair outside of marriage has gender ascription: married men who have kept women are viewed mainly positively (being macho and normal) while women who are tagged as mistress are seen purely in a negative light without regard for the circumstances surrounding their being one such as in the case of mabuti. hsiang ling, the woman who was widowed twice and whose son was eaten by a wolf was left to suffer alone in the end. after she lost husband, she was sold by her mother-in-law and after she lost her second husband, she was driven away by her brother-in-law from her husband’s house. psychologically affected by her experiences, hsiang ling was no longer able to perform well as a servant so her employers thought of disposing of her and her services. her case demonstrates how society values those who are perceived to be useful and how it quickly discards those who no longer have marketability and usefulness as experienced by jashoda in “breast giver.” as a last indignity to her tragic life, hsiang ling was perceived as selfish for dying on new year’s eve. the depiction of the women characters in their respective asian societies illuminate the various horrific consequences attached to expectations of their embodied gender roles. although some proved more empowered to choose their roles such as draupadi being a rebel and mabuti being a single parent to a love child, in the end, all the women were made to pay heavily for the gendered choices that were mostly forced upon them but were socialized to internalize that it is an essential part of their being a woman. asian women’s attempts at resilience in their gendered world the concept of resilience has been used to describe and understand the different experiences of persons when dealing with risks and survival especially among the marginalized sectors of society such as the women. van breda (2018) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 186 pointed out various ways in which the concept has been perceived: "resilience as something intrinsic to the individual, while others refer to it in a more holistic sense. some refer to resilience as the competencies or capacities of people, while others refer to it as positive functioning in the face of adversity." the theory on resilience evolved from adversity and how hostile life experiences influence people detrimentally. resilience is defined as "an interactive concept that is concerned with the combination of serious risk experiences and a relatively positive psychological outcome despite those experiences" (rutter in shean, 2015, p.5). in other words, resilience is shown when "some individuals have a relatively good outcome despite having experienced serious stresses or adversities" (rutter, 2013 via shean 2015, p.5). rutter further theorized that individuals possessing protective factors of mental features/operations such as planning, self-control, self-reflection, sense of agency, self-confidence, and determination have more control and success in changing situations in their lives. a woman subjected to the power of men and society, therefore, can still have the will to create a life that is suitable and bearable for her. the five women, giribala, draupadi, jashoda, mabuti, and hsiang ling went through different life situations and events that led them to making bold and critical decisions. unfortunately for these women, their social relationships that are a primal need for protection from emotional and behavioral disturbances, according to rutter, were non-existent. therefore, giri was forced to keep silent about her worries and grief given her community’s gendered beliefs and apathy towards her concern over her daughters; jashoda was disposed of by those expected to protect her as she was no longer useful and marketable for them; hsiang ling suffered a similar fate to jashoda, also being discarded by her employers for no longer proving useful in their household; draupadi, for her part, was cheated and betrayed by a member of the community she thought was protecting her; and mabuti was effectively isolated for going against the norms of her society. though these women were disadvantaged and silenced by the rigid norms and mores of their society, they were all able to experience a turning point which allowed them to disengage from their past and provided them instead with an opportunity for [constructive] change. in the end, giri finally had the strength to leave her husband bringing along her children. her determination and seriousness of purpose was shown in how she "walked down the big road and caught the early morning bus to the town." that morning was not foreseen even in the wildest imagination of anyone in her village. giri’s final act was a way of redeeming herself and also of removing her children away from her husband’s abuse and from those who view women and children as economic commodities meant to provide for their pecuniary needs. draupadi, a woman, who joined the rebels' cause against the tyranny of the oppressors, has long understood her disadvantaged position and powerlessness in the society as well as how her kind is silenced by power and fear. she joined the leftist group after her tribe was denied access to drinking water and the tribe retaliated by killing surja sahu, the local kingpin, and his sons. draupadi's resilience in spite of her misfortunes culminated in her refusal to submit to honor shaming. by doing so, she was able to display her "ability to adapt and restore equilibrium in her life through her determined engagement with the negative life circumstance" (werner-wilson, zimmerman, & whalen in hyland, 2014, p.12). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 187 she refused to howl or act as a helpless victim; instead, she walked unashamed and confident in the strong morning sun towards senanayak in her nakedness and her two mangled breasts. the army was baffled, terrified, and mortified as she confronted them with the truth in a voice that is chilling, sky splitting, and piercing. draupadi, as argued by sinha and vishwavidyalaya (2016), is a "very successful portrayal of what happens to women when they are seen as objects. by presenting her mutilated body as "the object of your search" (p.492) she stressed the materiality of what women are for men; literally a 'target' on which they can exercise their power. in the end, she was able to show her power through her unbreakable spirit as she kept her dignity and refused to be frightened. women are always subjected to defining their vulnerable position no matter whether they are mothers, daughters, or wives. jashoda 's value was high when she was at her most fertile stage. in her dying breath, she was able to ask and question the choices she made. death might have stopped her from bouncing off her lowly state, but as she had recognized even during her pain the callousness of people, her acceptance and regret coupled with her death are as maintained by masten (in jefferis & theron, 2018) "a resilience [that] denotes recovery from trauma without subsequent growth." mabuti's resilience is seen in how lovingly she describes and talks about her six-year-old daughter despite the reality that she is forced to limit her social relationships to keep secret her “transgression against philippine society”. both her profession and her society dictate that she keeps the identity of her child’s father or she loses her job (this story was written before republic act 7836 known as the philippine teachers professionalization act of 1994). at the start, mabuti’s empowerment and resilience were revealed when she still chose to have her child despite being aware that it was cultural taboo to get involved in an illicit relationship. furthermore, she committed to being a support to students who are quietly suffering. this involvement indicates that she had grown better than her old self. jordan (cited in jefferies & theron, 2018) posited that the “genderstereotypical behaviors of women, such as maintaining relationships as nurturers and carers, enable women and girls culturally-aligned positive connections; being mutually-supportive of each other are the keys to their resilience.” he further explained “that women and girls draw strength in positive connections to others and this fosters courage and self-esteem" (p.2). the widow, hsiang ling, is another marginalized woman who tried her best to be resilient but was not given a second chance both by her society and fate as she died abandoned in the end. hsiang ling had experienced a lot of painful and traumatic challenges in her life but she still attempted to bounce back. she was empowered enough to run away from her in-law’s household after her first husband died to escape their abuse and worked hard to feed herself until her mother-in-law forcibly brought her back to their village. she bore the pain of losing her second husband and son quietly as well as the rebuke and the insults of the people around her. her silent endurance and resilience prove how she values herself and her freedom affirming the claim of walsh (1996) that “resilience is residing within the individual, [with the family often dismissed as dysfunctional].” although hsiang ling had demonstrated her resilience amidst all her trials, kabeer (2005) suggested that there must be alternatives the ability to have chosen differently to give disadvantaged people like her a better fighting chance ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 188 to survive. with the closest people turning away from her, it seems that death is thus her last hope of liberation as in the end she could no longer provide for her own needs with her deteriorating physical and mental health. after all, “[p]overty and disempowerment generally go hand in hand, because an inability to meet one's basic needs and the resulting dependence on powerful others to do so rules out the capacity for meaningful choice. this absence of choice is likely to affect … intensifying the effects of poverty (kabeer, 2015, p. 14)." the main characters in the selected stories giribala, jashoda, draupadi, mabuti, and hsiang ling are all asian who were deprived of their voices because of their being women by their respective societies validating simone de beauvoir’s (in devika, 2016) claim "that the history of humanity is a history of systematic attempts to silence the female” (p.37). moreover, the "men had subjugated the women to their will, used them as a means of selfish gratification, to minister to their sexual pleasure, to be instrumental in promoting their comfort; but never desired to elevate the women to the ranks they were created to fill” (grimke in devika 2016). indeed, the women characters were pressured and forced to succumb to the demands of the society and their men, but in the end, they proved resilient and displayed varying degrees of empowerment enduring all the physical, mental, and spiritual pains caused by their subjugation although some of them had to die to be completely liberated from their oppression. asian women being othered for their gendered roles a woman in her role as a mother, daughter, or wife is viewed as a help whose usefulness and value are assessed through the services she can render given that she is not considered an autonomous being (de beauvoir, 2011). nowshin (2014) observed that "their sufferings have long been avoided and were not even considered as 'wrong' but the usual consequences of everyday life. every woman does not belong to the upper class or face the fate of misery, or not every woman has the same tragedy to endure but many of them have similarities. they have similar stories of indifferent pronunciation and different situations." when giri decided to take total control of her life, the "people were so amazed, even stunned … they were left speechless, perplexed by her guts to leave a husband.” the villagers’ reaction echoes people’s essentializing of the prevailing gender inequities in society today as they benefit from [these] existing gender norms, and/or see these inequalities as natural and not open to change (ukaid, 2015). this gender inequity that clearly disadvantages women reinforces the notion that it is inherently divine for a woman to do what she does without questioning the one in authority (kyomuhendo bantebya et al., as cited in marcus & harper, 2014, p. 56). draupadi, the rebel woman, was feared by the army men who are abusing the marginalized group. she was considered very dangerous and must, therefore, be taken into custody, without discounting the possibility that she could be 'countered’, which means she could still be killed even if she had surrendered. her fearsome reputation grew as she rose to power with accounts of how firm and brave she is during encounters with her nemesis. indeed, society can find it troubling and terrifying when a person, especially a woman going against the norm, has learned to stand her ground and to face adversities with dignity as exemplified by draupadi. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 189 jashoda past her prime was totally othered by those she previously served well. she was cast aside by her own family and the hadar children whom she wet nursed while they were babies. as pointed out by kaur (2018), she “has been heartlessly misused by a wide range of people her husband, her kids, her milkchildren as well as by her master. there is nothing wonderful about her motherly figure and it is just a successful ploy to misuse her." susan wadley (in sharma, pandit, pathak, & sharma, 2013) contextualizes jashoda’s plight by observing that “the indian woman is constantly made to adopt contradictory roles – the nurturing roles as daughters, mothers, wives, and as daughters-in-law, and the stereotyped role of a weak and helpless woman. the latter is fostered to ensure complete dependence on the male sex. consequently, the constant movement from strength to passivity leads to enormous stress placing the woman's mental health under constant threat." jashoda was not able to overcome her deteriorating physical health despite her resilience and her desire to be saved from the excruciating pain brought by breast cancer. sadly, there was also no one who offered her even just emotional support while she was in pain. in the case of mabuti, her othering is in the form of her apparent voluntary isolation from society constantly conscious of the fact that she if her secret is revealed, she would be shunned by people around her or worse, she would certainly lose her job given that her “sin” – to have an affair with a married man – is one of the biggest taboos in philippine society. finally, hsiang ling as a broken woman is now othered by her chinese community, viewing her as a nuisance. when she was in her prime and was deemed very useful, she was deeply valued by her employer and praised by people around her for her diligence but when she started having mental lapses, her employer also started treating her as if she were a useless invalid. people consciously made fun of her but she remained stoic through it all, choosing to just "stare vacantly and say nothing.” ungar posited in verma (2015) that 'where there is potential for exposure to significant adversity, resilience is both the capacity of individuals to navigate their way to psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that build and sustain their wellbeing, and their individual and collective capacity to negotiate for these resources to be provided and experienced in culturally meaning ways. these dual processes of navigation and negotiation are important. they emphasize that individuals engage in processes that demonstrate resilience when they take advantage of the opportunities they have and do better when they exercise influence over what those opportunities are and how they are provided.' the five women have experienced significant adversities and all of them have tried to bounce back and establish a meaningful life, but their imagined communities are not supportive and sympathetic seeing them as nothing but another body to provide the whims of those in power, hence, they are forcibly silenced by society’s apathy and inability to lend support. giribala, draupadi, and mabuti continued to be resilient despite the odds. they have learned to take their space in the universe and have fought for it the best way they could. while jashoda and hsiang ling both fought to the last of their breath, they found their peace by revealing the monstrosities of the communities that ought to have supported them. indeed, the five women's values reflect the premise of morton in roddannavar (2016) that "labor is a sexual ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 177-193 190 partition between productive labor (masculine) and reproductive labor (feminine) based on the essential notion of sexual difference. this sexual variance of labor has orthodoxly devalued and ignored the material specificity of women's domestic work, including childbirth and mothering because these forms of work do not directly produce exchange value or money." thus, the sacrifices the women have committed are devalued. conclusion asian womanhood as could be gleaned from the analyzed narratives and stories is a gendered state embodied in the common roles assigned to women anywhere in asia: daughter, mother, and wife. in this context, the oppression of women is often brought about by the expectations of their naturalized self-extension a quiet and submissive daughter, wife or mother whose life revolves around her family and so receives very little to no attention from her community. such oppression is often dismissed as a purely domestic and personal affair so there is no need for community intervention despite obvious signs that women in the community are being subjected to various forms of abuse by their family. thus, a woman who decides to take matters in her own hands by leaving her home, rebelling, questioning 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(october, 1996). the concept of family resilience: crisis and challenge. family process, 35(3), 261-81. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14105872_the_concept_of_family _resilience_crisis_and_ https://asiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 120 the power of truth of parrhesia and parrhesiasist in the poetry collection of arakian ballad maria matildis banda udayana university mbanda574@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.030111 received 19 march 2019; revised 31 june 2019; accepted 27 august 2019 abstract according to “power” of their “truth”, poets have a responsibility in expressing the truth through their works. therefore, the personal relationship between poets and their works is an absolute thing that can be examined from both personal and cultural point of view. this paper analyzes it through the poetry collection of ballada arakian (arakian ballad) (2014) written by yoseph yapi taum (yapi) with the main issue of how are the actual forms of personal relationship between yapi and arakian ballad? this paper was written by using expressive approach to answer the issue. the theory used was the theory of power and truth by emphasizing parrhesia (fearless speech) and parrhesiasist (the one who uses parrhesia) according to m. foucault. the method used was literature review and written interview to the poet. the result shows that the power and the truth owned by yapi in the parrhesia implementation in his poetry collection, arakian ballad, express general themes about humanisms, religious, and reflection based on parrhesia: the poet’s personal relationship and the truth, the risk he faced in conveying the truth, and the poet’s responsibility as the parrhesiasist. keywords: parrhesia, parrhesiasist, expressive approach introduction in poetry writing, the concept of licentia poetica is known, which means the freedom of poets to use words, dictions, and even violate the language structure rules for the sake of the aesthetic purposes of poetry. do poets (and writers in general) also have the freedom to decide and express the meaning of their works? the answer is yes! in fact, it is not only freedom but also responsibility because their authority is the full “power” to convey various realities of life and values of truth offered through their works even though the criteria of truth itself is never be the same. the criteria of truth are determined by connoisseurs of literature that generally connect various conflicts and series of events in literary works with realities of daily life. literary works will deal with various interpretations especially about the truth. the interpretation of truth according to a is not necessarily the same as the interpretation of truth according to b. there are various interpretations of similar literary work. different interpretations indicate ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 121 different point of view about values of truth expressed by poets through their works (banda, 2016:...). responding multiple interpretations about the power of truth in literary works is an interesting thing because it is related to responsibility. according to the “power” the poets have, they are responsible to reveal the truth through their works. focault states the concept of truth with parrhesia (frankness speech) and parrhesiastes or parrhesiasist which means the person who practices parrhesia; the person who speaks the truth or truth teller (banda, 2016:...). the poem of ballada arakian (arakian ballad) from buku satu ballada arakian (book one: arakian ballad), in the poetry collection of arakian ballad, for example, reveals the pride inherited “ama lera wulan ina tana ekan” (lord of heaven and earth in lamaholot language) which has signaled before the murder of oa dona, arakian’s wife, occurred. by the diction of ama lera wulan ina tana ekan, yapi taum expresses a deep understanding and belief about signs of nature and an existence of ancestors through the implementation of parrhesia expressed by the poet who is the parrhesiasist (the one who use parrhesia) in his poems. there are 82 poems distributed through three different books, buku satu balada arakian (book one: arakian ballad), buku dua kota perbatasan (book two: border city), and buku tiga sang pencari lobster (book three: the lobster seeker) in the poetry collections of arakian ballad (taum, 2014). yapi’s parrhesia ability can be identified by how he clearly states the reasons of writing related to his past that is familiar with fairy tales, legends, fables, and myths defined as human endeavors in responding questions about nature as an effort to give the meaning to life. in the poetry creation process, this kind of point of view is one of the important parts of yapi’s personal side who understands local genius as the spirit of modern literature. yapi believes that in the creation of poetry, personal identity and cultural identity are integrated in the poem itself, created by the poet. personal identity, such as preference to diction, metrum, syntax and semantic constructions, language style, theme choices, and message to be conveyed. cultural identity expresses dreams, hopes, goals, values, and local genius (taum, 2014). cultural identity adopts various themes that are the manifestation of cultural values (local genius) as baker explained that an identity is entirely born (exist) based on its cultural representation or acculturation (barker, 2005:170-171). both of these identities are the aspect of parrhesia in which the practical form is in the work written, while the aspect of parrhesiasist is yapi as the poet. the implementation of parrhesia in this case is all the experience and knowledge owned by poets revealed or written through their poems. with courage and freedom, poets convey the truth born within themselves as the parrhesiasist. in a nutshell, the implementation of parrhesia is the poetry collection of arakian ballad and the parrhesiasist is the poet. the implementation of parrhesia in the poetry collection of arakian ballad and its relationship with the poet as the parrhesiasist is interesting to study further with the following problem formulations. first, what are the themes and the meanings of parrhesia implemented in the arakian ballad poetry? second, how is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 122 the relationship between the power of truth of parrhesia and the poet as the parrhesiasist? literature review theory used in this paper is the power of truth theory according to michel foucault, specifically related to parrhesia and parrhesiasist. things related to both theoretical concepts and methods are explained as follows. definition parrhesia is frankness speech. meanwhile, parrhesiastes or parrhesiasist is the one who uses parrhesia; the person who speaks the truth or truth teller (kebung, 1997: banda, 2016:....). the two concepts of this theory stated by foucault are related to issues concerning ethics. parrhesia is a verbal activity in which the speakers express their personal relationship with the truth and they are ready to take the risk because they are realize that telling the truth is a kind of duty to develop and help others (or themselves). in parrhesia, the speakers use their freedom. it means that they prefer frank over persuasive, truth over falsehood or silence, risk of death over live and security, critic over lies, and moral virtues over self-interest and moral apathy (foucault, as cited in kebung, 1997:13). according to focault, there are three main things to consider in the implementation of parrhesia in conveying the truth. first, personal relationship with the truth. second, risks faced in conveying the truth. third, responsibility of parrhesia toward truth, frankness, accepting risks, facing criticism, and moral virtues. therefore, there are three main themes of focault that can be separated each other, namely: 1) truth; 2) power, knowledge, and authority; 3) moral virtues (banda, 2016:...). poets implement parrhesia through their works. therefore, they should have personal relationship with truth; dare to take risks; be responsible for their freedom in telling about the truth through their works. as the parrhesiasist, they have the power of truth expressed through works they write. they have knowledge, power, conviction and authority as the truth teller expressed through their works as the form of parrhesia implementation. poets are the parrhesiasist who represent the truth through their works, involving the relationship of power and knowledge in which the form of power is involved with the production of subjectivity (barker, 2010 153). poets subjectively have knowledge, power, belief, and authority as the truth teller expressed through their works. expressive approach “the power of truth of parrhesia and parrhesiasist in of poetry collection of arakian ballad” underlines the relationship of the poet and his works. this paper used expressive approach emphasizing the poet’s point of view of aesthetic moments in his life: a) moments (obedience, time), when the mentality is in the aesthetic scope of ‘beauty’; b) cognitive (thought) or morality; c) a power in touching situations (based on sensory perception); and d) intellectualism which is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 123 reflected through art works and academic works. these four things are believed to lead us to knowledge or practical follow-up efforts (krieger, 1976:11). in an expressive approach, local genius is one of the poets’ main strengths in character building of their poems from the point of view of setting of place, time, and socio-cultural background. aesthetic moments have huge influence on creative follow-up such as poetry, short stories, novels or other literary works. aesthetic moments are related to the imagination and the strength or creativity of the subject (poet) and his work through mentality processes. in the creation of poetry, mentality processes depend on what yapi calls “a pleasant or unpleasant event of life, that has thrilled the heart, either through deep thought, restless contemplation, wild desire, or peaceful feeling that combines into feeling” (taum, 2015:6). this argument was also stated by yapi previously in which poetry is a combination of the meaning of life that comes from experiences and encounter of humans with themselves, others, the universe, and the god (taum, 2014:2). this perspective is in line with the implementation of parrhesia mentioned before: 1) personal relationship with the truth, 2) risks faced in conveying the truth, 3) responsibility of parrhesia toward truth, frankness, accepting risks, facing criticism, and moral virtues. reading process the poetry collections of arakian ballad (2015) consist of three parts namely: buku satu balada arakian (book one: arakian ballad); page 1-66, buku dua kota perbatasan (book two: border city); page 67-106, and buku tiga sang pencari lobster (book three: the lobster seeker); page 107-149. this poetry collections are studied trough reading process of decontextualization and re-contextualization, determining themes, and comprehension (interpretation) meanings. decontextualization treats texts autonomously to understand the meaning of texts freely through sociological or psychological point of view. meanwhile, re-contextualization is about returning texts to its contexts and open up to it (sumaryono, 1999:108-109). decontextualization process in the poetry collections of arakian ballad occurs when each poem is associated with the implementation of parrhesia interpreted based on the poet’s intention, cultural situations and social conditions of creations (text creations), as well as for whom the text was written (idem, 2019). the comprehension of decontextualization of poems in arakian ballad is the recording of the poet’s memories of aesthetic moments in life; life events that become poetry; in order to give the meaning to life. furthermore, re-contextualization process occurs when placing texts toward the possibility to be widely read. it means that the comprehension done is not an absolute closed comprehension but an opened comprehension to be interpreted to find themes as a series of meanings. decontextualization and re-contextualization reading are carried out simultaneously by using three steps of meaning comprehension according to racoeur, namely: denotative comprehension, reflective comprehension, and connotative comprehension. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 124 the implementation of parrhesia and parrhesiasist in the poetry collection of arakian ballad parrhesia and parrhesiasist were explained specifically by mikhel foucault in his last six lectures in university of california, berkeley, in october until november 1983. the six foucault lectures were edited by joseph pearson in 1985 based on notes made by his auditor (banda, 2016:...). in those lectures, foucault talked about “discourse and truth” as the problematization of parrhesia. the truth is perceived as an activity or an action. for this purpose, sufficient requirements must be prepared to show that we are justified in believing in a preposition (or a sentences or belief, etc.) (kirkham, 2013:38-39). in the main framework of parrhesia, it is explained that the truth is not found in ideas, but it is found in opened implementation toward new problems that stimulate actions and others’ attitude (kebung, 2015: 85; banda, 2016:....) that explain poets’ responsibilities: 1) knowledge and comprehension that explain the harmony between parrhesia and parrhesiasist; 2) moral and spiritual responsibilities that explain personal relationship and works; 3) responsibility for the universe (macro and micro); 4) responsibility for ancestors; and 5) responsibility for god almighty. in the process of creation, writers implement parrhesia through their works, such as poems, short stories, novels, romance, drama, scenarios, and others. the writers’ responsibility and intervention greatly influence the works they create (banda, 2016:....); the reality narrated in literary works is determined by writers’ thought (junus, 1986:8). there are three kinds of relationship among people in the implementation of parrhesia, namely: living together in a community, life of common society, and personal relationship among people (kebung, 1997:31). characters of the relationship are related to 1) relationship with ourselves; 2) relationship with others; 3) relationship with the universe (banda, 2015). these three characters of relationship convince writers (poets) who have the power to convey the truth as the parrhesiasist in the implementation of parrhesia as follows: the implementation of parrhesia in book one: arakian ballad book one: arakian ballad consists of 30 poetry titles which in total reveal the implementation of parrhesia about humanism. the theme of this poetry is directly readable in the title (as the content) of arakian ballad. ballad can be perceived as heroism stories of ordinary people who are also greater than the epic stories of world’s great figures (manneke, 2015:xi). yapi (the poet) describes it through his belief in ancestral power, social justice, and historical memories. 1. ancestral power arakian is willing to face death for the sake of his wife’s dignity, oa dona. this ballad is intended for fabianus tibo who was shot in the poso tragedy several years ago. by the diction “ama lera wulan ina tana ekan” (lord of heaven and earth in lamaholot language), yapi taum expresses his belief in signs of nature, lia wato cave, and the existence of ancestors who thrilled the entire arakian’s soul with the courage to defend the dignity. the first sign, “a flock of crows is crossing the village”, which means that bad news or something bad will happen. a herd of cursed people sent by the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 125 landlord enter the village to grab oa dona’s dignity. she lay dead on the bed beside her husband. “challenging injustice” that was what arakian, oa dona’s husband, done with the belief that the ancestors give him that faith. arakian challenged the herd in front of lia wato cave, the hiding place for killing the whole herd. they snatched and tortured arakian until she is battered and bleeding. however, arakian’s face kept raised. “by puffing out his chest, arakian welcomed a bullet that tore his heart”. in the fragment “this is the celebration of my body and blood – the blood of the new war covenant till the trumpets sound.” the poet explains how arakian returns to his ancestors. the innocent man, who defended his wife’s dignity, was willing to die with blood pouring from his heart. the setting of local genius about ama lera wulan ina tana ekan ensures that one thousand and one of oa dona and one thousand and one of arakian who remain upright rely on the strength of all the contents of nature, the ancestors, and the god almighty. the body may die with the ground, but the spirit of life will rise again and remain forever. 2. social justice the spirit of local genius was also revealed in tidak ada mimpi di negeri ini (there are no dreams in this country) is intended for sondang hutagalung. seonggok tubuh renta (a vulnerable body) is intended for indra azwan, perempuan bermata dendam (woman with vengeful eye), ia membuat tungku di kaki merapi (she makes fireplace in merapi’s foothills), and maut merah di km lambelu (red death in km lambelu) are intended for fasikum, purbalingga. in these five poems, external factors become yapi’s aesthetic moments that cannot be hidden. sondang hutagalung, a young man who died burning himself in..... as a form of protest against various injustices in this country. as the nation that often loses historical memories, who cares for sondang? what does it mean to kill yourself? what for? for whose sake? even there is no place for dreaming in this country? is sondang’s effort important to make this country realize about the ongoing injustice? this poem tries to convey sadness without hope. however, “the tone contained is not entirely grim, because this poem also conveys the power and belief (manneke, 2015:ix) as implied in “...at the horizon, raindrops fall on the ferris wheel-give her a little dream...(p. 3) similar to maut merah di km lambelu (red death in km lambelu) (p. 5253). the tears of a miserable man who hurt by injustice. already fight! already survive! finally give up! but giving up doesn’t mean losing. “the heart of his man beats – the dagger removed, the power of an arrogant is broken down – his spirit is challenging the sky” (p. 53). it takes confidence to make fireplace in merapi’s foothills. it takes faith to keep passionate to survive for indra azwan who keep walking to “the end of the world” for the sake of justice for his child who killed by security force’s motorcycle. similarly, perempuan bermata dendam (woman with vengeful eye) who sobbed in the dark with her six children in her arms. she mourns the loss of his husband, the honor of the family who died because trying to defend injustice. the spirit must exist in order to survive and escape from fear “here, at merapi’s foothills, fire and magma keep heating the restless soul” (p. 41). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 126 3. historical memories book one also presents the poetry with g30s pki story background. ballada mawar putih (white rose ballad) (pp. 10-11), di tepi kali brantas (at the edge of brantas river) (pp. 24-45), ... “just remember, our grandchildren have recorded it” (pp. 25). di persimpangan jalan (at the crossroads) (pp. 36-37). lampu minyak masih menyala (oil lamp is still on) (pp. 56-57). tembang gadis pari (the song of pari girl) (pp. 26-27) intended for umar kayam (he also wrote sri sumarah and bawuk with the g30s pki story background). pram (08), pantai namlea (namlea beach) (09). misery in “don’t go home yet”... and don’t go yet in munir. koloni lepra (leprosy colonies) (pp. 38-39) intended for pramodya ananta toer. the way the poet thinks as the parrhesiasist is read in this book one. the history has moving feeling demanding an answer. in the novel entitled rabet, runtuhnya jerman timur (rabet, the collapse of east germany) (jamkovsky, 2009), for example, it is explained that feeling is “a person” who know the most about tragic history of ben (the protagonist in the novel) who lost his wife gesa, his daughter sophie and his country east germany (banda, 2019:204-205). jamkovsky has deep knowledge and understanding about east germany as well as yapi also conducted in-depth research for his dissertation entitled sastra dan politik representasi tragedi 1965 dalam negara orde baru (literary and political representation of the 1965 tragedy in the new order state) (taum, 2015). in the implementation of parrhesia, the spirit has an explicit life through its presence in jejak langkah (footsteps) and rumah kaca (glass house) is “a ferris wheel that blooms more fragrant through place, space, and time in bumi manusia (human earth), which was born from a shady soul” (pp. 39). things underlying yapi’s religious attitude is in di tepi danau kelimutu (at the edge of kelimutu lake), ratapan di batas kota (lamentations at the outskirt) (pp. 58-61), perjamuan darah (supper of blood) (pp. 62-63) and dismas di puncak kalvari (dismas at the summit of calavary) (pp. 64-65). the poetry that is able to have the whole theme and meaning in the implementation of parrhesia of buku satu ballada arakian (book one: arakian ballad), which is about a belief in ancestors, social justice, and historical memories is the poem of jangan pulang dulu (don’t go home yet) (pp. 16-17). this poem is filled with questions, fear, anxiety, prayer, hope, and tears that never stop dripping from the motherland, homeland, and spilled blood in which in the end, we must be sincere (not surrender) to break up the grandchildren of this country. the implementation of parrhesia in the form of prayer, hope, and local genius about a country that is safe and peaceful, have social justice and before that country’s hope exists; and the courage of the parrhesiasist in jangan pulang dulu (don’t go home yet). anakku, jangan pulang dulu! sudah cukupkah para ibu kehilangan anaknya pertaruhan nyawanya untuk kebenaran negeri ini. biarlah dukaku teronggok dalam relung doa! ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 127 biakah ketakutanku menjadi mazmur pujian! biarlah gelisahku membubung ke langit malam, menjadi persembahan bagi keselamatan jiwamu di bumi dan di akhirat (jangan pulang dulu (don’t go home yet, p. 17)). the series of meanings of humanism themes are in ancestral power, social justice, and historical memories. as the parrhesiasist, yapi succeeds in managing the implementation of parrhesia in this book one. it is not easy to dare to speak the truth intended at the same time to commemorate tibo, et al., sondang hutagalung, fasikum, and indra azwan. although yapi has never been compared to wiji tukul in the implementation of parrhesia, history can always bring together a communal relationship to the substance of humanism voiced, even though no one pretends not to hear. the aspect of parrhesia and parrhesiasist in book two: border city buku dua kota perbatasan (book two: border city) consists of 25 poems which in total reveal the implementation of parrhesia about religiosity. the theme of book two is directly read in the title (as the content) kota perbatasan (border city). border means an imaginary line that separates one region from another. the poet, yapi, as the parrhesiasist, describes it through his belief in meeting and separation, loss and longing, as well as agape (love). 1. meeting and separation in this poetry, the border is divider, the border city is the last meeting area that can no longer be crossed by each other as implied in the following implementation of parrhesia. “on the other side, the boat is waiting for you. although there is a tent at the crossroads waiting patiently, it has meaningless wait, because “when i leave the tent, you will have no time to wave.” manneke explains that the city that becomes the border city is never really clear, therefore, yapi’ emotion is more personal, abstract, controlled (manneke, 2015: xv). this is easy to understand because of the poet’s agreement as a parrhesiasist with himself to build awareness that how wild people’s imagination are, they must have their own limit to stop it. this poetry is reminiscent of a fragment of the song senja di batas kota (twilight in the border city): senja di batas kota selalu teringat padamu saat kita kan berisah entah untuk berapa lama. walau senja telah berganti wajahmu selalu terbayang waktu engkau kulepaskan berdebar hati di dada (twilight in the border city – always remembering you – when we were apart – for some time. even though the twilight has changed – your face is always imagined – when you let go – throbbing in my chest) (the lyrics are popularized by erni djohan in 1970 -1980s). kota perbatasan is a kind of temporary stop to return or to be left behind again. kota perbatasan is a symbol to sincerely let something go or have something or even have nothing. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 128 2. loss and longing is the border city ataili, yapi’s hometown? (pp. 95-95). there is a painting about a village located in a height. lamarera sea beneath, labalekan mountain, large boulders, kesambi branch near the abyss where the placenta of newborn babies are hung. the local genius setting explains a strong foundation of birth, life (including emigration), and the universe. kota perbatasan also covers yogyakarta dalam hujan pertama (yogyakarta in the first rain) (pp. 68), laut parangtritis (paragtritis sea) (p. 69), kaliurang (p. 70), malam pantai karang (karang beach night) (p. 73), senandung anak rantau (emigrants’ humming) (pp. 80-81), sarangan (pp.92-93), canbera (p. 103). in the border city and whenever we are and try to grasp the signs, feel them with the accuracy of the ethical moments that occur due to external and internal touches, leading to the fact that time passes and throughout this life journey, there will always be a limit. until in kutambatkan hatiku (i tethered my heart) (pp. 90-91) as well as kota pebatasan in which how strong the ownership of everything will end up in loss or longing. the boundary between being and nothing can only be left by the deepest sense of the start of journey from ataili to yogyakarta and other imaginary places that make the poetry exist. 3. agape (love) as written in ratapan di batas kota (lamentations at the outskirt) (pp. 5861), perjamuan darah (the supper of blood), dismas di puncak kalvari (dismas at the summit of kalvari) (pp. 64-65) in buku satu ballada arakian and buku dua kota perbatasan also contain connotative words and dictions with symbols explained in ile ape dalam meditasi (ile ape in meditation) (pp. 98-99). there is an internal vibration related to personal aesthetic moments those who have a deep devotion about the virgin mary maria "salve, regina, mater misericordiae vita dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve... o clemens, o pia, o dulcis virgo maria." also, a strong belief in jesus christ in the history of his salvation as a proclaimer of eternal truth. aesthetic moments, about faith that is personal and can be owned together, are expressed in kunamakan puisi, seruling, dan, malam pantai karang (i call them poem, flute and karang beach night) (pp.71-74); kulihat ia bersujud (i saw him lying down) (pp.82), perjalanan malam (night journey) (pp.83), pertanyaan ilalang (thatch’s questions) (pp.84-85), sebuah doa larut malam (a late night prayer) (pp. ) apel di firdaus, kutambatkan perahu (apple in paradise, i tethered the boat (pp.88-91), dan sajak bumi (poetry of earth) (pp.104). the poet’s attitude as the parrhesiasist is read in this book two. religiosity is the imagery language of religion (mangun wijaya, 1984) connected to dogmas and expressions of dogmas. religion as dogma is written by tradition and how the tradition is implemented as religiosity. the poem that can contain the whole implementation of parrhesia in buku dua kota perbatasan about meeting and separation, loss and longing, and agape is menutup musim (closing the season) (pp. 96). this poem is the culmination of humans’ life who do the implementation of parrhesia. the culmination of the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 129 journey is death and final rest “makam yang sunyi begitu rikuh menyambutmu” (the silent tomb so awkwardly welcomes you) a place where everyone will go. love and longing come together and only time gives the limits for those who comes first and next, in the implementation of parrhesia and the responsibility of the parrhesiasist as follows. hari jadi malam, langit pun meredup jalanan berkelok menghilang di balik semak makam yang sunyi begitu rikuh menyambutmu ratapan perpisahan mendirikan bulu roma dua sayapmu terentang antara kangit dan bumi di situ semua kenangan masih tersimpan sepertinya aku masih punya janji denganmu sebelum musim yang terlalu cepat menutup (menutup musim (closing the season), p. 96). the series of meanings of religious themes are in the struggle for life, expression of gratitude, and hometown. as the parrhesiasist, yapi also succeed in managing the implementation of parrhesia in this book two. religion and religious things are things that often “collide” when someone who has religion has not been able to implement his/her religion in a religious life (religiosity). religious attitude is not infrequently polluted by aspects of political interests and goals that disturb communal relationship at the local, national or global. the series of meanings in this book two emphasize the substance of life to the similar ending for everyone! the aspect of parrhesia and parrhesiasist in book three: the lobsters seeker buku tiga sang pencari lobster (book three: the lobsters seeker) consist of 27 poems which in total reveal the implementation of parrhesia about reflection (go back to hometown) which means search and effort to always find spiritual motivation born in family and tradition. the theme of book three is directly read in the title (as the content) sang pencari lobster (the lobster seeker) (pp. 139). the poet, yapi, as the parrhesiasist, describes it through his belief in struggle for life, expressions of gratitude, and hometown. 1. struggle for life why did yapi, as the parrhesiasist, choose this poem as the title of book three? in terms of denotative meaning, this poem tells about getting lobsters after going through the waves and corals challenges. meanwhile, in terms of connotative meaning, this poem emphasize the spirit of struggle to arrive at the final destination of a long journey to go home. “senyum dingin diarahkan pada debur yang membuih lobster dijerat dan ditawarkan ke cukong” (cold smile is directed to sounds of bubbling wave – lobster is snared and offered to the capitalists) (pp. 139), next is income and welfare if it is enough. nothing is achieved so easily, therefore, it is not easy to ignore the way to be successful. the other poems in book three explain yapi as the parrhesiasist literally. this can be read in sajak sepotong bulan (a piece of moon’s poem) (pp. 108 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 130 109) which falls on the porch while the other pieces fall in the starving lion’s den, sajak kerinduan (the rhyme of longing) (pp.116) about bumi tahu betapa rindunya bulan (the earth know how the moon miss), then semesta alam pun berkidung: penyair tergetar menarikkan penanya (even the universe sing a song: the poet thrilled to dance the questioner) (p. 116), sindoro and sumbing (pp. 118119) about the desire that must be fulfilled although the soul is the risk. personal struggle for life also exist in the jejak malam (night trail) yang bakal menghapus jejaknya sendiri sebelum fajar keabadian tiba dengan tergesa (which will erase its own trail – before the dawn of eternity arrives hastily) (pp. 134-135), sajak seikat mawar (the poem of a rose) (pp. 136-137) the shortest poem expressing the rose as a symbol of love, but in this poem, the love is left behind. the poem of makam argolayu (argolayu tomb) (p. 143) which also merely emphasizes longing to go home after such a long adventure. kucing (cat) (p. 143) tearing the full moon. aquarium bulan juli (aquarium of july) intended for sapardi djoko damono (pp. 144-145), and kereta terakhir (the last train) (pp. 144-145), and bougenville (p. 111) which gives faith to survive although have various imperfections. 2. expression of gratitude in this book three: the lobster seekers, represents yapi’s complete aesthetic feeling about expression of gratitude based on his personal experience of faith. similar to ile ape dalam meditasi (ile ape dalam meditasi) (p....), laut bumi dan langit (sea of earth and sky) (p. 117), perjalanan 1 (journey 1), perjalanan 2, (journey 2), and perjalanan 3 (journey 3), lelaki malam (a night man) (pp. 130-131), telah kubangun penjara (the prison that i have built) (p. 137), pesan ibu (mother’s message) (p. 142) are able to move the soul in the similar appreciation of faith and devotion. di tepi danau kelimutu (at the edge of kelimutu lake) 24 (50-51: read the signs revealed by the mystery of kelimutu lake. dari kedalaman perut bumi pesanmu terbaca di permukaan tiga warna dengan tiga langit tangga terakhir menuju-mu (from the deepest part of the earth – your message is read on the surface – three colors with three skies – the last stairway to you). the poet understands well traditional belief, society’s local genius in around kelimutu lake in which they believe that spirits of dead people end their immortality in kelimutu lake. ratapan di batas kota (lamentations at the outskirt) (28: 58 – 61) and perjamuan darah (supper of blood) 29 (62-63): a deep appreciation of the crucifixion tragedy, blood is the symbol of sacrifice. both of these poems are reminiscent of the poem balada penyalipan (crucifixion ballad) by ws rendra. there are religious spiritual things about parrhesia expressed here: 1) his arrival brings good news, joy, and peace; 2) his arrival as a threat to the authorities who are worried about being left behind by their loyal followers; 3) false accusations directed against him who is considered to conduct suspicious rituals; 4) his disappointment to the authorities who do not want his presence; 5) his service in washing the feet; 6) he must suffer....sincerely accept the history of journey for the sake of human safety; and 7) he died in the cross. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 131 the implementation of parrhesia is read in rosary, cross, and the blood that has become an integral part of the spirituality that the poet believes. as the parrhesiasist, the poet knows exactly that “there is no greater sacrifice than the sacrifice of one’s blood and life” to save others. yapi’ adventure as the parrhesiasist in expressing meaning of life related to memories, life process, and serious life choices. more than half of the poems in the poetry collection of arakian ballad present the aspect of “go back to hometown” as parrhesia that is personal, communal, and universal. when it is connected to aesthetic moments revealed by yapi as the parrhesiasist, “go back to hometown” is one of the poems that is successful in conveying adventurers’ intimate memories in their life journey. 3. memories of hometown it’s not only about ordinary memories, but also about memories that give direction to life through important decisions expressed in dia yang pertama (the first one) (pp. 132-133), ritual peraduan (rituals of conflict) (p. 138), and a place that is quite decisive for yapi’s journey as a lecturer, poet, critic, educator, and researcher in kembali ke lembah hokeng (go back to hokeng valley) (p. 141). it is not only me (yapi) who kembali ke lembah hokeng (go back to hokeng valley) but literature is universal. hokeng valley is an oasis for yapi’s adventure. with the similar substance, each people can return to the place, space, and time, whenever and wherever they rediscover the essence of life, new motivations to keep moving further. similarly, lyra who goes away, finding her identity as ina lamalera and arakian who goes deep to his heart to find his identity as lamafa (whale hunter) in suara samudra (the sound of the ocean) (banda, 2017). actually, people as anything will find themselves, in their own journey. the implementation of parrhesia that is believed to the parrhesiasist by the poet is read in this book three. pulang ke kedalaman (go back to hometown) is an attempt to rediscover new motivations in for those who go away from their hometown (especially flores children). parrhesia things about work as the dignity that need to be upheld with gratitude. yapi’s arguments as the parrhesiasist is expressed in the three books in arakian ballad in which become living oasis in sajak kenangan (rhyme of memories) below. kami saling memandang di pelabuhan tua ini jejak masa kanak-kanak terkelupas di tembok dermaga dan bata merah yang dulu karib mengerdip sepasang remaja duduk bersisian memandang elang laut di kejauhan di batas cakrawala senyum sang gadis terabaikan lalu kubawa ke tanah rantau berpuluh-puluh tahun di pelabhan tua ini ada bagian jiwaku yang masih tertinggal tertambat bersama perahu yang tak sempat melaut ombak-ombak kecil dengan semangat mencumbuinya kerinduan masih tersimpan di kota kecil ini ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 132 ketika hidup tinggal hitungan mata uang aku tahu betapa mahalnya kenangan kami saling berpegangan tangan di pelabuhan tua ini ketika kutatap jauh ke kolam matamu kutahu jejak-jejak kita masih tinggal di sana meskipun hari sudah berangsur senja ombak-ombak kecil itu pun masih bergairah aku telah kembali ke sini sebagai orang asing aneh, ruang kusam itu masih tersedia bagiku yogyakarta, july 21, 2013 the series of religious meanings are in the struggle for life, expressions of gratitude and memories of hometown. as the parrhesiasist, yapi is successful in implementing parrhesia in this book three. go back to hometown is similar to digging, discovery, re-enlightenment of new motivations for the future. expressions of gratitude is not just expression of everyone who “go back to” hometown. success or failure of living in different town, go back to hometown is an effort to meet and live the roots for the formation of dignity. “i know exactly how expensive the memories are” the hometown, the way back home, and the feeling of “still having the place” in the hometown. the relationship of the power of truth in the implementation of parrhesia and the poet’s position as the parrhesiasist does yapi have the ability to implement parrhesia? is he responsible as the parrhesiasist? there is an interesting quote chosen by yosep yapi taum (yapi) to strengthen his arguments in his book entitled studi sastra lisan sejarah, teori, metode, dan pendekatan disertai contoh penerapannya (oral literature studies of history, theory, method, and approach with the implementation examples) (2011). the quote is taken from pengantar: pengalaman manusia tentang keindahan (introduction: human experiences about beauty) by mudji sutrisno (1993:13-24) revealing that the process of creating pure art, is basically a recording of humans in experiencing ekstase (a state of unconsciousness) in which they feel they are “outside of everyday life” (taum, 2011:7). this point is expressed in the section sastra lisan sebagai seni dan ilmu (oral literature as art and science). according to yapi, speakers or oral literature are similar to novelists or poets who arrange stories with their complex imagination and special sensitivity (taum, 2011:8). imagination and sensitivity come from understanding of experiences, knowledge, local genius sciences as the sources of literary creation, both oral and written. this is called the implementation of parrhesia based on deep comprehension and duty performance as the parrhesiasist when the parrhesia aspect is realized in the form of arakian ballad poetry intended for fabianus tibo (he is executed in the sara issues in poso, central sulawesi). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 133 yapi’s parrhesia ability can be read by how he clearly states the reason for writing. it is related to his past which is familiar with fairy tales, legends, fables, and myths that are considered as human endeavors to answer questions about nature as the effort to give meanings to life. in the process of creating poetry, that point of view is one of the important parts of yapi’s personal side who understands local genius as the spirit of modern literature. yapi believe that in creating poetry, personal and cultural identity are integrated into the poetry created. personal identity consists of preference to dictions, metrum, syntax and semantic construction, language style, theme choice, and message to be conveyed. while cultural identity expresses dreams, hopes, ideals, values, and local genius (taum, 2014). cultural identity adopts various themes which are manifestations of cultural values (local genius) as explained by barker that the identity is entirely born (exist) based on cultural representation or acculturation (barker, 2005:170-171). both of these identities are the aspect of parrhesia while the aspect of parrhesiasist is yapi as the poet. poets or writers are people who have the authority to convey the truth. therefore, they are responsible to state true things in the implementation of parrhesia through their works. they are the parrhesiasist, if their works are truly responsible in the implementation of parrhesia. important references can be noted from the history of journey and implementation of parrhesia through various literary works published by balai pustaka like siti nurabaya (marah rusli, 1922), new poet like layar terkembang (with sails unfurled) (sutan takdir alisjahbana, 1933), batch of 45 like the poetry collection of deru campur debu (noise mixed with dust) (chairil anwar), batch of 66 like sri sumarah (umar kayam...), as well as batch of 80 like burung-burung manyar (manyar birds) (1995), etc. after conducting in-depth study through interview and literature research with the poet, yapi, it shows that as the parrhesiasist, this entire book is the recording of memories through poetry containing about: 1) heroism and hypocrisy; 2) life and death; and 3) love and betrayal (yapi, 2014:....) which must be received reflectively. the three eulogies are distributed through the implementation of parrhesia. the capacity of the implementation of parrhesia by the poet is furthermore expressed and implied through sajak kenangan (rhyme of memories) (pp. 114115) which becomes the key to all poetries in book one, book two, and book three. kami saling memandang di pelabuhan tua itu...jejak masa kanak-kanak terkelupas di tembok dermaga (we look at each other in that old port... the steps of childhood peeling off the pier wall). this line is the line in the implementation of parrhesia in the form of memories for all children in flores who leave their hometown to study in primary school, junior high school, or senior high school (who do not enrolled in school, the school is far away from the hometown) in flores since the colonial period until the early 1980s. boats moored on the shore and motorboats anchored on the coast or the shore are the main transportations in flores. yapi might take a boat (bero) from his village to lewoleba (a small port in lembata island) or to waibalun (ferry port in larantuka, east flores) and travel to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 134 jogya through busung bui port in maumere. at the end of 1970s, 1980s, and the early 1990s, maritime transport is the favourite transportation for children in flores who go to different cities to study in java, bali, sulawesi island or another island. when air transport is developed in ruteng, labuan bajo, ende, and maumere, traveling by plane is a special choice. however, maritime transport is suitable for students or families who do long journey. this type of transport still becomes the favorite one because the cost is relatively cheap, although there are airports in almost all regencies in flores (lembata, flotim, sikka, ende, ngada, manggarai, dan west manggarai) except nageko and east manggarai. thus, sajak kenangan (rhyme of memories) becomes something deep in the implementation of parrhesia or parrhesiasist when it is related to the port, the pier wall, the eagle, and the horizon abandoned or brought though memories to go to the new city. the port is old and dull, seems like the journey to go to the new city and all of the things left in the hometown except the trace. it’s been a long time being old with the old-time journey. the twilight is not only felt in the port but also in the life journey. everyone who go away from their hometown will go back only as a stranger. “aneh, ruang kusam itu masih tersedia bagiku” (it’s weird, that dull room is still available to me). in this line that kind of memory has its place. it is similar to "ke masa silam yang tidak seorang pun sanggup menggantikannya" (in the past, no one can replace it) (ws rendra). sajak kenangan (rhyme of memories) is yapi’s poem as the parrhesiasist who was born personally and was able to express the hearts of children of flores who go to different city in indonesia or even outside indonesia as parrhesia. therefore, sajak kenangan (rhyme of memories) which is personal becomes universal. longing will find its place when the time goes on in different city. "kita anak-anak rantau yang dilahirkan untuk merantau sepanjang hidup" (we are the children who far away from the hometown were born to migrate throughout life) in surat-surat dari dili (letters from dili) (banda, 2005). conclusion the article entitled “power and truth in the implementation of parrhesia and parrhesiasist of the poetry collection of arakian ballad by yoseph yapi taum” is a relatively new article which is about the writer’s sociology by using expressive approach. the argument is that the implementation of parrhesia is related to deep knowledge and understanding of the poet who has the power to tell the truth as the parrhesiasist. foucault believes that people who implement parrhesia (telling the truth), explain their personal relationship with the truth, take risk in conveying the truth, and has to be responsible as the truth teller (kebung, 1997 melalui banda, 2016: ...). the ability to think makes humans able to develop their knowledge seriously, quickly and steadily which is the secret of their powers (soemantri, 1993: 39) which is also obtained through sources of knowledge, beliefs, and authorities (banda, 2016:...). the power to convey the truth is related to the poet’s personal relationship as the parrhesiasist and the implementation of parrhesia formulated in: humanism, religiosity, and reflection. humanism contained in the poems of book one: arakian ballad expressed through themes: believe in ancestors, social ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 120-136 135 justices, and historical memories. religiosity contained in the poems of book two: the border city expressed through themes: loss and longing; agape (love). reflection theme (go back to hometown) expressed through struggle for life, expressions of gratitude, and memories of hometown. this article also explains that the series of meanings of themes expressed through poems in the poetry collection of arakian ballad are the implementation of parrhesia by the poet, yapi, as the parrhesiasist. therefore, he is responsible to convey true things in the implementation of parrhesia that is realized through his works. he is the parrhesiasist if his work is truly responsible in the implementation of parrhesia. the theory concept of parrhesia and parrhesiasist in literature study with expressive approach still needs to be further developed. references abdullah, i. 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(1994). teori sastra (trans. sapardi djoko damono). jakarta: gramedia ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 186-195 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 186 the lexicon of animal classification in javanese: a cognitive semantic approach danang satria nugraha departement of language and art education, sanata dharma university, indonesia d.s.nugraha@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.020208 received 2 december 2018; revised 8 january 2019; accepted 20 february 2019 abstract this study aims to describe the lexicons of animal classification in javanese. the classification refers to a categorization system based on the semantic aspects of naming constructions. the results of the analysis are presented in the description along with the classification chart. in general, the lexicons in animal classification can be divided into, at least, five classifications, namely classification (a) ingoningonan, (b) alasan, (c) satoan, (d) buron, and (e) pangirid. in accordance with the world view of javanese speakers, there are three wisdom presented in the animal classification, namely (a) ora mateni sakabehe ‘do not kill every living thing’, (b) ora ngrusak sakabehe ‘do not broke anything’, and (c) ora mangan kewan ‘do not eat the specific animals’. for further investigation, the contrastive analysis on lexicon of plant and animal classification in javanese, espcially in farming register, is the interesting research topic in the light of cognitive semantics. keywords: lexicon of animal classification, linguistic constructions, speaker of javanese, cognitive semantics. introduction the diversity of fauna in indonesia was showed by a variety of animal naming lexicons. the same animal, for example chickens, called pitik in javanese, had several variations of naming sub-categories, for example, ras, kampung, and kate. these variations are driven by the understanding of the speakers of javanese in classifying the types of chickens. likewise, for some other animals, speakers of javanese had certain register of lexicons for naming animal species. hypothetically, if the types of animals are increasingly diverse, the lexicons are used to refer to various types. the phenomenon related closely to javanese perspective as a speaker of a language. that is closely related to the concept of the relationship between experience, embodied cognition, and language (evans & melanie, 2006; evans, 2007; croft, & cruse, 2004: geeraerts, 2006). the likely explanation is the experiences of javanese speakers in breeding animals, for example, can be a source of the emergence of naming lexicon. with ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 186-195 187 the intensity of observation, speakers of javanese can identify animal traits. in the next process, the mark is classified in the experience space. the identification and classification process is facilitated by language. language use can invoke frames that summon rich knowledge structures, which serve to call up and fill in background knowledge (evans & melanie, 2006, p.11). the experience of breeding animals, which is then referred to as ingon-ingangan/ingah-ingahan, forms an understanding of the classification of animals that can be nurtured and cannot be maintained. therefore, the kucing "cat" and manuk "bird" can be at the level of classification of ingons, although biologically both animals are in different classes, vertebrates, and aves. thus, it can be seen that the background knowledge of bj speakers in classifying animals may be different from biologists who use physiological elements in classification. in his analysis of plants classification on javanese, suhandano (2000) found that linguistic phenomena also occur in many languages. for example, dogs can be compared to those classified as pets by english speakers, but generally not considered pets by the majority of indonesian speakers. the discussion of the classifications of living things through a linguistic point of view has been carried out by several researchers. there are at least two studies that can be reviewed carefully. first, observations about the classification of plants in javanese (suhandano, 2000). suhandano (2000) collects various linguistic data about plant names in javanese. based on the data and analysis conducted, it was found the fact that speakers of javanese classify plants not merely referring to the physiological principles commonly referred to by biologists. javanese speakers use their cultural background to identify and classify plants. second, research on the classification of plants and animals in aboriginal language in groote eylandt. waddy (1998) tried to explore the language perspective of the people in the groote eylandt region in classifying plants and animals. in general, not much different from the findings of suhandano (2000) who examined javanese speakers, research reported under the title aboriginal point of view classification of plants and animals from a groote eyland implies speakers of aboriginal language use cultural backgrounds to classify animals and plants. specifically, it was mentioned that aboriginal speakers compile a classification system by utilizing noun devices as categories of words commonly used to label objects. based on some remarks on research findings explained in previous paragraph and the conceptual framework of cognitive semantics, this study is conducted. in general, the semantic aspect of language construction that utilized in animal classification can be divided into, at least, five classifications, namely classification (a) ingon-ingonan, (b) alasan, (c) satoan, (d) buron, and (e) pangirid. in accordance with the world view of javanese speakers, there are three wisdom presented in the animal classification, namely (a) ora mateni sakabehe ‘do not kill every living thing’, (b) ora ngrusak sakabehe ‘do not broke anything’, and (c) ora mangan kewan ‘do not meal the specific animals’. further explanation is provided in the discussion. method through cognitive semantics, this research attempts to describe the lexicons of animal classification in javanese. by understanding the way speakers identify and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 186-195 188 classify animals, it is possible to describe: (a) aspects of perceptions about culture, (b) habits of life, and (c) views of the world through a language perspective. thus, this research becomes important because it records the local wisdom of javanese speakers through linguistic phenomena. evans and melanie (2006) reminded “language offers a window into cognitive function, providing insights into the nature, structure and organization of thoughts and ideas.” this study consists of three main stages, namely (1) data collection, (2) data analysis, and (3) interpretation of the results of the analysis. in the first stage, the identity of the research object is determined, namely the classification of animals in javanese. data are collected from the use of javanese in both oral and written form. both techniques were used during interviews in several regions in di yogyakarta, namely sleman and gunung kidul. in the analysis phase, based on referential matching techniques, the data are analyzed and interpreted, as seen in example 1: (1) aku duwe ingon-ingonan kucing ireng mulus. 1st have pets cat black smooth my pets is a smooth-hair black cat. lexicon  ingon-ingonan ‘pets’ construction  {ingon} + {r} + {-an} after identifying the semantic field of the words, the lexicon is classified according to the dominant category. the dominant category is a naming group which is often referred to by respondents. based on the arranged categories, interpretation is done by referring to cognitive semantic theory. next, the results of the analysis are presented. analysis of the naming and linguistic construction of the naming classification meanings is presented in a descriptive presentation accompanied by a classification chart (nesset, 2008; isac & reiss, 2008). descriptive exposure explains each linguistic construction pattern used in naming. the explanation is also accompanied by the rules of naming construction. however, all the previously mentioned methods suffer from some limitations. findings and discussion the lexicon of animals in javanese, in general, is classified by the semantic aspect of language linked with world view of javanese speakers. duranti (1997, p.168) mentioned one (related) assumption is that linguistic forms are shared by a particular group of speaker. it means that there was a linguistic form that used by a speaker of language in their context of convention. based on the analysis, lexicon as the linguistics form was used by javanese in order to classify the variety on animals. in particular, at least, there were five lexicon classifications, namely (1) ingon-ingonan, (2) alasan, (3) satoan, (4) buron, and (5) pangirid. based on the light of cognitive linguistics, there are some semantic features of those classifications as presented on table 1. the lexicon of ingon-ingonan first, the lexicon of ingon-ingonan. the lexicon of ingon-ingonan covers a range of animals name. the lexicon means ‘pet’. there are, at least, three semantic features that identified from the lexicons, namely +useful, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 186-195 189 +productive, and –wild. for example, the word mendha ‘goat’ appeared on data as in (2) as follow. (2) mendhanipun sampun dipun sadhe. his/her goat sell his/her goat has been sold. lexicon  mendha ‘goat’ construction  {mendha} the lexicon ingon-ingonan used as a marker in animal classification in javanese. in sentence (2), the lexicon mendha is a subcategory of ingon-ingonan. if the lexicon is substituted with the lexicon macan, sentence (2) becomes odd because javanese speakers do not place the macan as a pet or ingon-ingonan. the acceptability is based on the understanding of bj speakers about macan who are not pets. semantically, macan lexicons have –useful, -productive, and + wild features. beyond that construction, speakers of javanese believe that the data reflect the value: (a) ora mateni sakabehe ‘do not kill every living thing’ and (b) ora mangan kewan ‘do not meal the specific animals’. table i. lexicons of animal classification in javanese classification aspects semantic features example of lexicons ingon-ingonan + useful + productive wild 1. sapi 2. mendha 3. bebek alasan useful productive + wild 1. macan 2. kidang 3. ulo satoan useful productive + wild + destructive 1. celeng 2. tikus 3. bajing buron + wild + able to use + destructive 1. kancil 2. manuk/peksi 3. celeng pangirid + useful + productive + instrumentative 1. jaran 2. sapi 3. kebo in addition to those result, in her study, kurnia (2013) found the lexicons of animal on javanese proverbs as a part of semantic phenomenon that intepreting as a meaning (a) of nature’s rule, (b) of emphasis, (c) of ilustration, (d) of world view, (e) of warning, and (f) of special explanation. other findings by suhandano (2000) explained that lexicons of plant also presenting the javanese’s thought. in contrast to those two findings, it is very difficult to trace the origin reason of the used of animal and plant as a presentation of javanese world wiew. cognitive semantics is a part of cognitive linguistics (cognitive linguistics). referring to the birth of its scientific branch, cognitive semantics is a development of cognitive understanding (pasaribu, 2013). clearly, kridalaksana (2008, p.127) provides an explanation of cognitivism as theory that always tries to find parallelism between the way the language works and the way the human brain works, and all grammatical concepts are given semantic characteristics. departing from this school of thought, some generative semantics, semantics that ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 186-195 190 develop after the structural period, try to see language constructs as part of a more complex framework, namely a marker of systems of thinking of speakers of language. brown (2008, p.569) affirms this with the statement “on a broad understanding, any approach that views language as residing in the minds of its speakers and a linguistics description as a hypothesis about a speaker's mental state would merit the designation cognitive.” using this paradigm, this study tries to describe the classification of animals carried out by speakers of javanese. the lexicon of alasan second, the lexicon of alasan. the alasan’s lexicon includes several animal names. this lexicon means 'animals that live in the forest'. at least, there are three semantic features of the lexicon, including +wild, –useful, and –productive. this can be illustrated biefly by example (3). (3) nalika ketiga, macan kerep ngangsu ing tlaga. when summer lion aways drink in lake in summer, lion always drinks water in the lake. lexicon  macan ‘lion’ construction  {macan} the lexicon alasan is used as a classification of animal classification in javanese. in (3), the lexicon macan is a subcategory of alasan. if the lexicon is substituted with the lexicon kucing, sentence (3) becomes odd because javanese speakers do not place kucing as a alasan. the acceptability is based on the understanding of bj speakers about macan who are not pets. semantically, macan lexicons have +wild, –useful, and –productive features. kurnia (2013) found a lexicon of animals also used in javanese’s proverb to present several meanings, for example (a) the laws of nature as in ana gula ana semut, (b) hiperbole as in padune kaya welut dilengani, (c) parables as in kaya kucing lan asu, (d) a way of life as in opor-opr beben mentas awake dhewek, (e) prohibition as in cedhak celeng boloten, dan (f) special case as in asu rebutan balung. the first understanding of cognitive semantics is traced through linguistic dictionaries. kridalaksana (2008, p.217) defines cognitive semantics as in a cognitive paradigm that treats meaning as conceptualization. the first definition gives an understanding that the study of meaning in cognitive semantics is not a structural study that places meaning in the position of lexical and grammatical meaning. the meaning is placed as a sign of a broader system of conceptual understanding. evans and melanie (2006) assert that there is a connection between embodied cognition, experience, and language. furthermore, geeraerts and cuykens (2007, p.3) additional explanations as follows. the analysis of the conceptual and experiential basis of linguistics categories is of primary importance within cognitive linguistics: the formal structures of language are studied not as if they were autonomous, but as reflections of general conceptual organization, categorization principles, processing mechanisms, and experiential and environmental influences. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 186-195 191 the main points in the definition are the study of cognitive semantics is not far from the discussion of conceptual networks, categorization principles, the mechanism for processing object naming, and the influence of experience and environment in classifying objects. the discussion involves linguistic constructs, language symbols, as initial markers. thus, indeed, it can be seen that cognitive semantic studies are parts of linguistic studies. cognitive semantics is a theory. in linguistic scientific work, theory can be used to make descriptions, classifications, and explanations of observed language events, as well as to make predictions about language phenomena that can arise (baryadi, 2015, pp.6-7). the lexicon of satoan third, the lexicon of satoan. satoan’s lexicon means ‘harmful animals’. this lexicon includes several animal names. at least there are four semantic features of the lexicon, including +wild, +not useful, +not productive, and +damageable. for example, the word bajing appeared on data as in (4) as follow. (4) wit klapa iki pupus jalaran bajing kang ana ing kene. tree coconut this vanish because squirrel in this area this coconut tree vanished because of the presence of squirrels in this area. lexicon  bajing ‘squirrel’ construction  {bajing} the lexicon satoan is used as a classification of animal in javanese. in (4), the lexicon bajing is a subcategory of alasan. if the lexicon is substituted with the lexicon lele, sentence (4) becomes odd because javanese speakers do not place lele as a satoan. the acceptability is based on the understanding of bj speakers about lele who are not satoan or dangerous animals. semantically, lele lexicon have features of -wild, +useful, and +productive. in connection with the results of this study, suhandano (2000) underlines the linkages between these classification systems and the way in which javanese speakers view the plant world. the classification of plants in javanese, which is referred to as taxa in the study, consists of at least four types, namely (a) uwit 'tree', (b) suket 'grass', (c) jamur 'mushroom', and (d) lumut 'moss'. the four types of classifications are used by javanese speakers in daily life. the lexicon categories used in the four classifications are primary lexemes. primary lexeme is a linguistic construction that is monomorchemic or consists of only one basic morpheme as an attribution of the phrase fill in the uwit generic taxa, for example uwit gedhang 'banana tree', suket gajah 'elephant grass', and jamur damen 'straw mushroom'. these lexemes are representations of generic taxa. meanwhile, in generic taxa, speakers of javanese still keep more specific knowledge. for example, speakers of javanese have specific taxa construction of klapa gading, klapa puyuh, and klapa kopyor on generic taxa uwit klapa ‘coconut tree’. other forms are gedhang kepok 'banana kepok', gedhang raja 'banana plant', gedhang awak 'banana awak', and gedhang ambon 'ambon banana' on generic taxa of uwit gedhang. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 186-195 192 the lexicon of buron fourth, the lexicon of buron. this lexicon used as an identification to the group of animals that can be use for something pheriperal purpose, such as part of decoration or furniture. this can be illustrated biefly by example (5). (5) ana kewan sing anane gawe drusila, arane kancil. animal that disturb that’s mousedeer there is a disturbing animal that is mousedeer. lexicon  kancil ‘mousedeer’ construction  {mousedeer} the lexicon buron is used as a classification of animals in javanese. in (5), the lexicon kancil is a subcategory of buron. if the lexicon is substituted with the lexicon bebek, sentence (5) becomes odd because javanese speakers do not place bebek as a buron. the acceptability is based on the understanding of speakers of javanese about bebek which is not buron or dangerous animals. semantically, bebek lexicon have features of -wild, +useful, and +productive. beyond that construction, speakers of javanese believe that there was the value of (a) ora mateni sakabehe ‘do not kill every living thing’ and (b) ora mangan kewan ‘do not meal the specific animals’. furthermore, the classification in cognitive semantics is different from the area classification and typological classification commonly used by language researchers. the classification of areas classifies languages based on geographical location (kridalaksana, 2008, p.123), while the classification in cognitive semantics does not classify language, but rather it sees language as a sign of the background of the speakers' understanding of various objects in the environment. the typological classification classifies language based on structural characteristics (kridalaksana, 2008, p.124), while the classification in cognitive semantics places structural aspects as certain categorical or strata level markers. carefully, taylor (2008, p.572) states the following. what is the basis for categorization? intuitievely, we might want to say that things get placed in the same category because of their similarity. similarity, however, is a slippery notion. one approach would be to define similarity in terms of the sharing of some common feature(s) or attribute(s). similarity, then, would reduce to a matter of partial identity. feature-based theories of categorization often require that all members of a category share all the relevant features. a corollary of this approach is that categories are well-defined, that is, it is a clear-cut matter whether a given entity does, or does not, belong in the category. it also follows that all members have equal status within the category. in the line of that result, sereno (1991) tried to trace the similarities between language perception systems and biological cell perception systems. in the four analogies between biological and cultural / linguistic evolution, we present a comparison chart of the two systems of perceptions. furthermore, waddy (1998) describes four types of classifications formed by aboriginal speakers, namely biological classification, food classification, totemic classification, and linguistic classification. the four classifications are described as forming context ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 186-195 193 descriptions, so that the presentation of the linguistic classification can be comprehensively understood. these considerations are taken by researchers based on the fact that speakers of the language being studied are unique and tend to be tribes, especially those who do not live in towns or cities. referring to the context and nature of the speech community, it is conveyed that linguistically, there are three levels of plants and animals, namely (a) noun classes, (b) noun classifiers, and (c) noun incorporation. the lexicon of pangirid fifth, the lexicon of pangirid. pangirid’s lexicon means 'animals hunted in the forest'. this lexicon includes several animal names. at least, there are three semantic features of the lexicon, including +useful, +productive, and + instrumentative. those classifications appeared on data as seen in example (6): (6) gerobak sapi lewat ing dalan tajem. cart cow cross in road of tajem a cow cart is crossing in the road of tajem. lexicon  sapi ‘cow’ construction  {sapi} the lexicon pangirid is used as a classification of animals in javanese. in (6), the lexicon sapi is a subcategory of pangirid. if the lexicon is substituted with the lexicon gajah, sentence (6) becomes odd because javanese speakers do not place gajah as a pangirid. the acceptability is based on the understanding of bj speakers about gajah who are not pangirid or dangerous animals. semantically, gajah lexicon have features of +useful, +productive, and + instrumentative. beyond that construction, speakers of javanese believe that there was the value of (a) ora mateni sakabehe ‘do not kill every living thing’, (b) (b) ora ngrusak sakabehe ‘do not broke anything’, and (b) ora mangan kewan ‘do not meal the specific animals’. the construction of linguistics is a symbolic system used to mark two things together. objects are labeled using language units. likewise, language is used to find out the relation between one part and the other part of understanding. in this regard, taylor (2008, p.569) argues as follows. cognitive linguistics signaled a return to the basic saussurean insight that language is a symbolic system, which relates signifiers (that is, language in its preceptible form, whether as sound, marks on paper, or gesture) and sinifieds (that is meaning). therefore, language data that accommodate the object of research, not only must be analyzed structurally. as an example of the word pangirid in javanese, it is not just a construction of polymorphemis. the construction is a fill in other systems, namely the classification system through cognitive semantics which provides knowledge about the nature of the data (baryadi, 2015, p.7). thus, cognitive semantic research is always based on theoretical assumptions about the status of processed language data. linguistic data are studied not only structurally. the process of interpretation should be based on context in order to obtain the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 186-195 194 results of the analysis according to the scope of classification in cognitive semantics. conclusion this study describes the lexicon of animals by javanese speakers. based on the analysis and discussion, it is known that the lexicons are used to mark at least five categories. behind the use of the lexicon, speakers of javanese language keep wisdom that is summarized from the behavior of living side by side with animals. future research can explore the wisdom behind the use of lexicons in other classification systems. it is possible that the lexicon in classifying houses reflect values in javanese wisdom. acknowledgement this research was supported by lembaga penelitian dan pengabdian masyarakat, universitas sanata dharma, on sheme of hibah dosen muda batch 2018. references baryadi, i. p. 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(eds). cognitive linguistics research 40. berlin: mouton de gruyter. geeraerts, d. & cuykens, h. (2007). introduction cognitive lingustics. oxford: oxford university press. isac, d. & reiss, c. (2008). i-language: an introduction to linguistics as cognitive science. oxford: oxford university press. kridalaksana, h. (2008). kamus linguistcis. jakarta: pt gramedia. kurnia, e.d. (2013). penggunaan leksem binatang dalam peribahasa jawa. lingua, 9(i), 8 – 17. retrived from http://journal.unnes.ac.id/nju/index.php/lingua, november 2nd 2018. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 186-195 195 nesset, t. (2008). abstract phonology in a concrete model: cognitive linguistics and the morphology-phonology interface. in geeraerts, d., dirven, r., & taylor, j.r. (eds). cognitive linguistics research 40. berlin: mouton de gruyter. pasaribu, t. a. (2013). a cognitive linguistic analysis of indonesian love metaphors. prosiding seminar internasional studi bahasa dari berbagai perspektif dalam rangka ulang tahun ke-80 prof. dr. soepomo poedjosoedarmo. yogyakarta: program studi s-2 linguistik dan jurusan sastra indonesia fakultas ilmu budaya universitas gadjah mada. sereno, m. i. (1991). four analogies between biological and cultural/linguistic evolution. journal of theoretical biology, 151, 467-507. sharifian, f., rené, d., ning, y., & susanne, n. (eds). (2008). culture, body, and language: conceptualizations of internal body organs across cultures and languages. berlin: mouton de gruyter. suhandano. (2000). klasifikasi folk biologi dalam bahasa jawa: sebuah pengamatan awal. jurnal humaniora, 12(2), 225-230. taylor, j. r. (2008) cognitive linguistics (routledge handbook of linguistics). london: routledge. waddy, j. a. (1998). classification of plants and animal from groote eylandt aboriginal point of view volume i. darwin: australian national university north australia research unit. yamaguchi, m., dennis, t., & benjamin, b. (eds). (2014). the intersection of cognitive linguistics and linguistics anthropology. new york: palgrave macmillan. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 56-62 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 56 making peace among conflicting identities: an autoethnography monica ella harendita english language education study program faculty of teachers training and education, sanata dharma university meharendita@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010106 received 6 june 2016; revised 5 march 2017; accepted 8 july 2017 abstract autoethnography has gained more popularity in qualitative research. putting the researcher’s personal narratives at the centre, authoethnography can present one way to vocalize her voice without diminishing the significance of theories. by connecting lived experiences with the framework, autothnography can serve as a powerful tool in meaning makings. drawn upon my experiences when i was pursuing my master’s in australia, this autoethnography portrays my struggle on identity negotiation as a javanese woman and a student in australia. as i was trying to uncover my experiences and look at them mainly using hall’s (1993, 1997) theories as the framework, i came into a better understanding on my multiple and multilayered identities. negotiating those identities is the key to make peace among them. keywords: identity negotiation, autoethnography, experiences, reflexivity introduction autoethnography is defined as “a reflexive means by which the researcherpractitioner consciously embeds himself or herself in theory and practice” (mcllveen, 2008, p. 13). furthermore, it aims to describe and analyse personal experience so as to understand cultural experience (ellis, adams, & bochner, 2011, p. 273). autoethnography thus can be seen as an approach and a product. it is also referred to as personal narrative and reflexivity. autoethnography is therefore personal, intimate, and transformative in nature. rooted in my experiences when i was a student in australia, this autoethnography serves as my critical interpretation of the experiences i encountered as a javanese cultural member and “an outsider” in australia. i will begin by reviewing how language, identity, and cultural difference are closely connected according to hall (1993, 1997). secondly, using hall’s ideas of representation, i will give some accounts on how a solonese woman has been represented through putri solo, a well-known javanese song. as a javanese, particularly solonese woman, i consider it important to discuss such representation as i have experienced how the song produces meanings in society ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 56-62 57 which become the basis of identifying a solonese woman. thirdly, i will scrutinize how i negotiate my multiple identities as a javanese indonesian and as an international student in australia. lastly, i will provide a brief elaboration on how writing this autoethnography has helped me see language, identity, and cultural difference using a new perspective. theory hall (1997) accounts for how language, culture, and identity are closely interrelated. he defines language in a much broader and distinct sense from the general view of language. he states that language is not simply a matter of linguistic codes. rather, it is any sign or symbol (sound, image, word, etc) which carries meanings. meanings are neither inherited in things or objects nor neutral. to elaborate this, hall (1997, p. 26) provides “the language of traffic lights” as an example. ‘red’, if taken out from any contexts, does not mean anything in itself. however, when ‘red’ is situated in traffic lights, it works as a language which signifies ‘stop’. thus, meanings are constructed by members of a particular culture through the system of representation which works in language. in other words, representation is the key enabling language to work and concepts to be represented through signs. the relationship between signs and concepts is, therefore, arbitrary. hence, culture and meaning are closely related in a sense that cultural members generate and exchange meanings through their social practices and, therefore, they are able to see the world in more or less the same ways. this is what hall (1997) points out as “shared meanings” (p. 1). meanings are also central to culture as they set the rules of social practices. how we consume meanings and give meanings to ourselves will also contribute to our identities. culture, thus, plays an important role for a cultural member to give meanings to himself/herself, which consequently represents his/her identity. on the whole, both language and culture become the media through which meanings are produced and circulated. besides, hall (1997) argues that since language makes it able for meanings to be constructed and transmitted, language serves as “the key repository of cultural values and meanings” (p. 1) as these values and meanings can only be shared through a “common access to language” (p. 1). therefore, meanings are not fixed but keep changing depending on the context, “relational” (p. 27) and “always only partially understood” (p. 4). representation through which meanings are made seems to be two-way communication or “dialogic” (p. 10), which denotes the presence of negotiation. however, it is through power that some parties endeavour to fix meanings. closely attached to meanings, identity is therefore also fluid as well as keeps being negotiated and struggled. in cultural identity and diaspora, hall (1993) challenges the view seeing cultural identity as ‘oneness’ and unchanging. as a poststructuralist, he emphasises that cultural identity is attached to histories and undergoes constant transformation, which strengthens his view of the fluidity of identity. in addition, as difference can signify meanings (hall, 1997), identity is also “forged through the marking of difference” (woodward, 1997, p. 29). members of cultural group can identify themselves as belonging to certain culture or group since they can, in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 56-62 58 the first place, see the difference between them and other culture’s members. in addition, cultural identity is also related to feelings, attachments, and sense of belonging. to put it briefly, language works as a system of representation, through which meanings are constructed and circulated in culture resulting in identity formation. therefore, identity is fluid, not fixed, and multiple. thus, it is essential for cultural members to have an understanding on how the three notions are interrelated as they are inseparable parts of society which become the basis of how society runs their life. theory application indonesia as the world’s largest archipelago country consists of approximately 17,000 islands, hundreds of ethnic groups and local languages, which confirm its multilingual and multicultural nature. java island, as the third largest island in indonesia, is inhabited by 60% of the total population of the country. as a javanese cultural member who was raised in solo, a small city in central java province, i have seen a number of practices through which representation takes place within the culture. one of the aspects closely attached to solo is the representation of putri solo. when i introduced myself as a javanese, particularly solonese, a stereotype usually arose. they would guess and generalise that as a solonese woman, i must be polite and gentle as represented by a quite famous javanese kroncong song titled ‘putri solo’. one of the lyrics can be translated into ‘a solonese lady walks as gently as a hungry tiger does’. another line in the lyrics representing the virtues of putri solo is ‘dasare kepara nyata, pancen pinter alelawa’, which means that it is true that she is fashionable and has good manners. according to hall (1997), cultural meanings “organize and regulate social practices, influence our conduct and consequently have real, practical effects” (p. 3). the song exerts a system of representation through which cultural meanings are generated and circulated within javanese society. based on the circuit of culture (du gay, hall, et al., 1997 in hall, 1997), the representation circulates meanings which are then consumed and contribute to identity formation. for years, the meanings represented through the lyrics have brought javanese people in general to set regulations of what solonese women should do. politeness, gentleness, and good manners are three aspects expected from javanese women. accordingly, the representation serves as a powerful justification to categorize me and solonese women in general as having the same characteristics, resulting in a stereotype about solonese women. besides, not just confined to solonese women, putri solo has also been used to label women, not necessarily from solo, who seem to have the virtues depicted in the lyrics. in short, this representation sets out what is normal and what is not. admittedly, women who do not seem to have the above characteristics will be considered as breaching the norms or as not belonging to the culture. the identity being projected in the song was probably true in the era when the song was created. the image of putri solo in the song seems to portray a typical solonese lady in the reign of mataram kingdom which may become the basis for the song writer to compose such lyrics. the history of solo itself is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 56-62 59 inseparable from mataram kingdom, by which solo was governed before indonesia proclaimed its independence in 1945. however, since “identity is being formed in particular historical circumstances” (woodward, 1997, p. 3), the representation of putri solo is now being contested. in the contemporary world in which the effect of assimilation of national culture as well as globalisation is noteworthy across the country, solonese women’s characteristics seem to be very diverse, and therefore may not fit the description in the lyrics. this phenomenon actually depicts identity as fluid and keeps being transformed (hall, 1997). yet, javanese people paradoxically often come to a conclusion that there has been a “crisis of identity” (woodward, 1997, p. 16) among javanese, particularly solonese, without recognising the changes taking place in society. as a matter of fact, this assumption of identity crisis tends to cling to the view which sees identity as fixed and unchanging. to sum up, the representation of putri solo has enunciated how the signifying practice contributes to the meanings generated and shared in javanese culture. the production, consumption, and regulation of meanings have therefore contributed to the identity formation of solonese women as being polite, gentle, and well-mannered without taking into account some major changes within the culture. x : are you chinese? me : no, i’m indonesian. x : are you chinese indonesian? me : no, i’m a javanese indonesian. the above conversation was a real dialogue that i had with an acquaintance when i was fairly new in melbourne. in a multicultural country like australia, it is somehow a very common practice to ask people, let alone ‘new comers’, where they are from. it will be even more surprising if the person is not really satisfied with the answer they are given as depicted in the dialogue. i understand that “the physical body is one site which might both set the boundaries of who we are and provide the basis of identity” (woodward, 1997, p. 13). yet, it struck me still that the one i spoke to often judged me by my appearance. i admit that among indonesians, particularly javanese indonesians, i might look a little bit different, most likely in terms of my complexion which is paler than the majority of javanese people. however, what they could not see is how much i feel attached to javanese culture and the process i have been through as a javanese indonesian. “although there is no one-to-one relationship between anyone’s language and his or her cultural identity, language is the most sensitive indicator of the relationship between an individual and a given social group.” (kramsch, 1998, p. 77). as a javanese indonesian, i somehow maintain my identity as a javanese through the use of javanese language along with the increasing use of indonesian language (bahasa indonesia) within the society. this preservation originated from the values i learned from both my extended family, who are in many senses ‘very javanese’, and my parents in particular. the act of preserving javanese-ness is done by the use of krama in my family, especially in child-parent conversation. in my generation, not many among my friends still speak krama to their parents. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 56-62 60 my friends who visited me sometimes expressed their surprise that i was speaking krama to my parents, while they preferred speaking in bahasa indonesia if not ngoko to their parents. as my second language and the official language of indonesia, bahasa indonesia offers more flexibility since it is not hierarchical and only uses one speech level (moedjanto, 1986). however, although i am competent in it, i personally do not feel myself attached to it as much as i feel to javanese. this feeling of attachment, i believe, contributes to how i identify myself. however, preserving identity is not without conflicts. for example, i was not comfortable using ‘bapak’ and ‘ibu’ when i was still in primary school because most of my friends used ‘papa’ (father) ‘mama’ (mother) in referring to their parents. what was in my mind when i used ‘bapak’ and ‘ibu’ was the feeling of inferiority as i maintained my javanese-ness. hall (1997) states that various media help produce meanings. in light of this, ‘papa’ (father) and ‘mama’ (mother) have become widely used as they appear very frequently in mass media and advertisements. the words ‘mama’ and ‘papa’ themselves are not the socalled ‘standard’ bahasa indonesia as the indonesian words are ‘ayah’ for ‘father’ and ‘bunda’ for ‘mother’. coming from outside the country, ‘papa’ and ‘mama’ have been globalised and adopted by many indonesians, especially those from higher social class. the consumed meanings and sense of more modernity that ‘papa’ and ‘mama’ retain had resulted in my being less confident in using ‘bapak’ and ‘ibu’ because the words probably signified inferiority in my friends’ eyes. according to woodward (1997), the globalisation may cause either detachment of local/national identities or resistance. in my case, it can be seen that my parents chose to resist the globalised ‘papa’ and ‘mama’ by teaching us to call them using our local language, ‘bapak’ and ‘ibu’. kramsch (1998) argues that “to identify themselves as members of community, people have to define themselves jointly as insiders against others, whom they thereby define as outsiders” (p. 8). despite the discomfort i felt as a child in using the words, i still asserted my javanese identity although somehow i felt that i was an outsider and the ‘other’ (hall, 1997, p. 56). i was actually exercising power through my use of language, which, as fairclough (1989) states, resulted in my involvement “in struggle with others” to defend my position (p. 35). however, my being not confident, then, has completely vanished alongside my adolescence, which indicates a stronger sense of belonging to javanese culture. i am now even very proud that i still maintain using ‘bapak’ and ‘ibu’. ferzacca (2006) points out that “one of the important markers of being a person the javanese way is to be sopan santun” (p. 343) which means ‘polite’. besides, as a javanese i was also taught to respect people, particularly with the use of krama to them, particularly if they are older than me. politeness and respect can be seen as the manifestation of javanese etiquette, andap asor (setiawan, 1998). a javanese may consider whether it is the age, social status, or intimacy which is important for him/her most in certain discourses or social practices. these three aspects are actually intertwined that it is sometimes difficult to decide the right register. for example, when i was still living with my parents, our neighbours generally spoke krama to me although in terms of age, they were much older than me. in this case, they were positioning themselves as having lower social status and thought that it was the most important aspect to be ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 56-62 61 considered in our discourse. i, myself, spoke krama to them since i was taking their ages into consideration. from the examples, it can be seen that both my neighbours and i practised andap asor which has bound our conducts and social practices as javanese. this value of respecting older people was challenged in the first few weeks upon my arrival in australia. although in my cross-cultural understanding class prior to my departure to australia, the teacher already stated that australians had a very casual way of addressing people, it was still an awkward moment for me to call my lecturers by their first names, without any miss or mister or even doctor before their names. when i sent my first email to my lecturer, i was very confused to decide how to address him. then, i decided to put mr. followed by his full name as i thought i would have ‘sinned’ to my identity as a javanese if i had not done it. surprisingly, in his reply, he asked me to call him by his first name; something that i had never done to any of my teachers. yet, as i had been used to the new culture, i realised that some parts of my subjectivity had shifted. i was then comfortable to call my lecturers and my classmates who are from different parts of the world by their names. however, it was not because i did not call people by their title that i had lost my javaneseness. as identity is not fixed, multiple, and is a matter of positioning (hall, 1997), what i was undergoing was the negotiation of my identities as a javaness and as an ‘outsider’ in australian context. to some extent, i have learned how calling someone by his/her first name without any title actually works as a representation of how equality is upheld in australian culture. besides, although title is not frequently used, it does not mean that the sign of respect is not enunciated through english language in australia. i had seen a lot of practices there in which ‘thank you’ and ‘please’ were often spoken to signify respect for others. in spite of my being used to calling people by their first names, i still continued to call my indonesian friends who lived there with ‘mbak’ (sister), ‘mas’ (brother), ‘bu’ (ms./mrs.), ‘pak’ (mr.), as a sign of respect. in that case, i was negotiating the meanings which results to different positioning. conclusion the complexity of identity should be seen as having no clear cut definition, and stereotyping, although somehow inevitable, definitely does not apply in defining one’s identity. although people’s complexion may speak as a language and their accent can signify certain meanings, it should not be a justification to stereotype them. it is neither our appearance nor the language we speak which tells who we are, but the feelings of attachment and belongingness. besides, the identity is not a single entity as it is multiple, fluid, and constantly changing. in my case, it is not when i say ‘indonesian’ that people can recognise me as an javanese indonesian who has been through a long and never-ending process in shaping my identity. while preserving my javanese-ness, i at the same time negotiated my identities as an indonesian studying in australia, a former english teacher, a learner of english, a woman, and many others. it is then essential for me to know how to position myself depending on the context as well as keep adjusting to new situations. similar processes, or even much more complex ones, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 56-62 62 happen to every single person in this world which makes it impractical to see identity as one, fixed, and unchanging. on the whole, this autoethnography has attempted to see how language, culture, and identity are intertwined through my past experiences. hall’s (1997) notion of representation has shed light on how putri solo circulates meanings which contribute to identity formation, as well as my shifted subjectivity as a javanese indonesian and an international student. i myself have also come to a different perspective in seeing language, culture, and identity which, i am sure, will be an invaluable asset for me as a cultural member and an english language teacher in particular. references ellis, c., adams, t. e. & bochner, a. p. (2011). autoethnography: an overview. historical social research, 36(4), 273-290. fairclough, n. (1989). language and power. london: longman group uk limited. ferzacca, s. (2006). learning how to listen: kroncong music in a javanese neighbourhood. sense & society, 1(3), 331-358. hall, s. (1993). cultural identity and diaspora. in p. williams & l. chrisman (eds.). colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: a reader (pp. 392-403). hemel hampstead: harvester wheatsheaft. hall, s. (1997). representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. london: sage publications ltd. & the open university. kramsch, c. (1998). language and culture. oxford: oxford university press. mcllveen, p. (2008). autoethnography as a method for reflexive research and practice in vocational psychology. australian journal of career development, 17(2), 13 – 20. moedjanto, g. (1986). the concept of power in javanese culture. yogyakarta: gajah mada university press. setiawan, a. (1998). perilaku birokasi dalam pengaruh paham kekuasaan jawa. yogyakarta: pustaka pelajar. woodward, k. (1997). identity and difference. london: sage publications ltd. & the open university. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 76-83 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 76 poetry translation acceptability on the trials of apollo: the hidden oracle novel bintang sukmajati and patricia angelina sanata dharma university bintangsukmajati@gmail.com and patricia@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.030107 received 26 july 2019; revised 29 july 2019; accepted 19 august 2019 abstract this study aims to find out the extent of the acceptability of the poetry translation in the novel. one research question is formulated: to what extent is the poetry translations in the trials of apollo: the hidden oracle acceptable based on larson’s criteria of an acceptable translation. qualitative research by using the text analysis was conducted. the data of this research were taken from both the english and indonesian version of the trials of apollo: the hidden oracle novel. in order to answer the research question, the researchers compared the translation between the english and indonesian poetry using the theory of acceptability by larson. the results show that there are 36 poetry translations which are categorized as acceptable and three poetry translation which are unacceptable. the 36 poetry translations incorporate at least two out of the three poetry translations acceptability criteria, while the three poetry only fulfil one poetry translation acceptability criterion. keywords: poetry translation, acceptability, the trials of apollo: the hidden oracle introduction translation does not merely mean changing the source language into the target language, especially in literary works (newmark, 1988). some aspects need to be considered in order to have an acceptable translation. an acceptable translation will make the readers not only understand the meaning, but also obtain the appropriate meaning of the literary works. the form of an acceptable literary work translation, especially poetry, has not been exposed clearly because some experts even believed that poetry cannot be translated. therefore, poetry translation needs to be analyzed. poetry is the freest type of literature works whose words have powerful meaning (newmark, 1988). since the words have powerful meaning, poetry is more difficult to understand compared to other literary works. in order to make poetry easier to be understood, poetry should be translated. however, translators cannot simply translate poetry. it is due to the ‘powerful words’, which are often being represented in the form of morpheme or idiom. in translating, the source ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 76-83 77 language meaning and style should be able to be delivered into the target language as natural as possible (nida, 1974, p. 12). it means that the translators should be able to find the same ‘powerful words’ with the context of the target language. novel translation is the second most difficult literary works to be translated after poetry because it has lots of metaphors and idioms (newmark, 1988). metaphors and idioms cannot be translated word-for-word. translators should know the equivalent metaphors and idioms in order to make the translation acceptable. hence, when translating poetry in a novel, someone should consider more aspects rather than translating a poem or a novel alone. thus, this study is expected to be able to explore more about translating poetry in a novel. the trials of apollo: the hidden oracle novel was chosen because the poetry translation in that book is different from the translation of poetry in an anthology book. the poetry in that novel has restricted context. the poetry is written in every chapter, under the chapter number. it is a summary of the story in the books. in an anthology book, the poetry translation acceptability can be analyzed directly, but in this novel we should read the chapter first before we can determine whether the translation of the poetry is acceptable or not. therefore, the poetry translation in this novel needs to be analyzed. the trials of apollo: the hidden oracle the trials of apollo: the hidden oracle is the first part of pentalogy novel, the trials of apollo, by rick riordan. this novel was first published in 2016 in the united states by disney hyperion and in great britain by puffin books. the indonesian version was first published in 2017 by penerbit naura books. this novel contains 39 chapters. in the beginning of every chapter, there is a poem which summarizes the events that happen in that chapter. translation acceptability translation acceptability is the measurement of whether a translation can be categorized as a good translation or not. according to larson (1984), a translation should firstly, use the natural form of the target language, which means the translation is not stiff. in other words, it uses the daily language of the target language. secondly, it should deliver the same meaning from the source language into the target language, which means it does not change the meaning or lose its’ essential meaning (p. 6). lastly, it should maintain the dynamic of the original source language text, which means that the translation can give the same feeling to the receptor in the target language with the receptor in the source language (larson, 1984, p. 6). related to the theory of translation acceptability, a poem should focus more on the meaning of the word rather than focusing to find the same word. it means some words may be very different after being translated into the target language. in other words, to get an acceptable translation, translators should prioritize some things over the others. according to nida (1974), “contextual consistency has priority over verbal consistency, dynamic equivalence has priority over formal correspondence, the aural form of language has priority over the written form, and forms that are used by and acceptable to the audience for which a translation is intended have priority over forms that may be traditionally more prestigious” (p. 14). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 76-83 78 method this study used the text analysis method. a text analysis method is a type of content analysis in which the researcher analyzes and interprets documents to give voice and meaning around an assessment topic (neuendorf, 2002). the type of this research data was literary works. the data were 39 poems from the english version of the trials of apollo: the hidden oracle novel and 39 poems from the indonesian version. purposive sampling was used because only the poetry in the beginning of the chapter were analysed. the poetry inside the chapter were not analyzed because they have different forms from the poetry in the beginning of the chapter. the poetry in the beginning of the chapter is haiku, while the poetry inside the chapter are free poems, limerick, and pantun. the instrument used was a checklist on poetry translation acceptability. it consisted of two parts, namely the theory of poetry translation acceptability by larson and the poetry in the beginning of each chapter inside the book. the data were analysed in three steps as proposed by ary, jacobs, and sorensen (2010) namely organizing and familiarizing, coding and reducing, and interpreting and representing (p. 481). in the first step, the literal and connotative meaning of each word or phrase used in the poetry were identified and organized by listing them from chapter one until chapter 39. the second step was coding every line of the poetry depending on the existence of metaphors. the last step was interpreting and representing, which was conducted by comparing the english with the indonesian version to find out whether the translation was acceptable or not based on larson’s theory of an acceptable translation in the checklist. the poem is considered as acceptable if there are at least two criteria of acceptability translation by larson present. after that, the results were presented using a pie chart. findings and discussion acceptable poetry translation in the trials of apollo: the hidden oracle referring to larson’s translation acceptability theory (1984), a translation should use the natural form of the target language, deliver the same meaning to the target language, and maintain the dynamic of the source language (p. 6). there are 36 poetry translations which are categorized acceptable. the first example of acceptable poetry translation is found in chapter 1, which is presented in table 1 below. table 1. acceptable poetry translation in chapter 1 line code meaning in indonesian code hoodlums punch my face e1.l1 mukaku kena hajar i1.l1 i would smite them if i could e1.l2 si preman pantas binasa i1.l2 mortality blows e1.l3 nahasnya aku fana i1.l3 if the first line is translated literally, it will be preman menghajar mukaku. meanwhile, the second line will be aku akan menghantam mereka jika aku bisa, and the third line will be kefanaan meniup. however, as shown in table 1, the translation of e1.l1, e1.l2, and e1.l3 are not literal. in i1.l1, the word “hoodlums” is not translated. it is put on the second line. it is similar to the translation of e1.l2. the subject “i” is not translated on the second line. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 76-83 79 however, if it is read as one unity, it delivers the same meaning that is apollo wants to take revenge for the hoodlums. it is not translated literally because the translator wants to maintain the dynamic of the source language. thus, the translator uses the word preman in the second line and the word “i” which should become a subject is changed into clitics –ku, which has a role as possessive pronoun, in the first line. e1.l3 is also not literally translated because in the second word there is a metaphor, that is “blows”. the word “blows” in that context means mengacaukannya not meniup. after finding the appropriate meaning of the metaphor, the translator paraphrases the phrase to make the translation become more natural in the target language. it is not translated as kefanaan mengacaukannya but nahasnya aku fana. table 2. acceptable poetry translation in chapter 2 line code meaning in indonesian code a girl from nowhere e2.l1 anak perempuan entah dari mana i2.l1 completes my embarrassment e2.l2 menggenapkan aibku i2.l2 stupid bananas e2.l3 dasar pisang celaka i2.l3 the second example of acceptable poetry translation is found in chapter 2. in this poetry, the first line is translated literally, which becomes anak perempuan entah dari mana. the second line has the same case. however, the third line is quite different. when e2.l3 is translated literally, it becomes pisang bodoh. though it is not translated literally, “stupid bananas” is not a metaphor. it is weak swear words. hence, in order to make the translation of the swear words becomes natural in indonesian, it becomes pisang celaka. the third example of the acceptable poetry translation is also not translated literally. the first line is a spanish phrase which means rumah jackson. however, it is translated into di istana jackson. the spanish phrase is actually a slang which is derived from borrowed words. apollo uses spanish language as a slang because he wants to make a glorious image of percy jackson’s house which is actually a sarcasm. therefore, it is translated into istana. the second line is translated literally, but it is simplified. the word tiada replaces the words tidak ada and the word emas is deleted. hence, instead of writing tidak ada takhta berlapis emas untuk tamu, it is translated into tiada takhta emas untuk tamu. the last line is also not translated literally because it is slang. the word “dude” means bung in indonesian. the word “dude” also has the equivalent one in indonesian that is bro. thus, when it is translated literally, it becomes yang benar saja, bung? or if the slang wants to be kept, it can be translated as yang benar saja, bro? however, both options do not maintain the dynamic of the source language as well as terlalu! therefore, to fulfil the three criteria of acceptable poetry translation, e4.l3 is translated into terlalu! the complete list is presented in table 3 below. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 76-83 80 table 3. acceptable poetry translation in chapter 4 line code meaning in indonesian code casa de jackson e4.l1 di istana jackson i4.l1 no gold-plated throne for guests e4.l2 tiada takhta emas untuk tamu i4.l2 seriously, dude? e4.l3 terlalu! i4.l3 the last example has a slang which is modified into someone’s nickname. the nickname is “hunk muffin”. literally, hunk means bongkahan. in slang dictionary hunk (hunk of a man) means a well-built, sexually attractive man. muffin refers to a kind of small cake. in indonesian, muffin is still named muffin, but it will be added kue as modifier, so it becomes kue muffin. some also removes one of the “f”, so it becomes kue mufin. hence, when it is translated literally, the third line becomes bongkahan kue muffin, or when it is translated using the slang definition it becomes laki-laki seksi yang seperti kue muffin. it can be seen that “hunk muffin” does not has an equivalent word in indonesia. therefore, the translator should make a new nickname which can represent “hunk muffin”. in order to do that, the translator should think of the person who obtain this title, leo. leo is a small but attractive boy. the word kakanda is used to call a brother in a kingdom or a lover sweetly. it means that the one who is called kakanda is charming like a prince or a boyfriend. meanwhile, the word imut is the same with “cute” in “peter is cute, isn’t he?” hence, kakanda imut could represent leo and give the same vibes with “hunk muffin”, which is a small but attractive boy. the next phrase “earned” is quite literal. it only specifies the “it”. it in e39.l3 refers to the word “hit” in e39.l1. the second line and the first line are also literal. however, in i39.l1, there is a word katamu. the addition of this word does not change the meaning at all. it is only used to make the translation more natural. table 4 describes the content clearly. table 4. acceptable poetry translation in chapter 39 line code meaning in indonesian code want to hit leo? e39.l1 ingin memukul leo, katamu? i39.l1 that is understandable e39.l2 bisa dimaklumi i39.l2 hunk muffin earned it e39.l3 kakanda imut patut ditinju i39.l3 unacceptable poetry translation in the trials of apollo: the hidden oracle there are three poetry translations which are categorized as unacceptable. these poetry translations are unacceptable because the meaning and dynamic of the source language, which are included as the second and third criteria of acceptable poetry translation, are changed. the first example of unacceptable poetry translation is found in chapter 3. when the first line is translated literally, it is good. it uses the natural language of the target language, delivers the same meaning from the source language, and maintains the dynamic of the source language. however, the second line does not maintain the dynamic of the source language because the diction in i3.l2 is just the core of the e3.l2. it does not deliver the sadness apollo feels. when e3.l2 is literally translated, it becomes sekarang di tengah kota merasa sedih. it is definitely not natural, so the translator decides to take the substance of the line which is apollo is very sad. merana is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 76-83 81 equivalent to “very sad”. it means that it delivers the meaning of the content from the source language. the translator could simply say merana instead of sekarang di tengah kota merasa sedih. however, if he or she just uses the word merana, it makes the source language loses its feeling. therefore, the translator should have made a new sentence which is poetic enough to deliver the sorrow apollo feels. the third line also does not deliver the same meaning and does not maintain the dynamic of the source language. of course “bah, haiku don’t rhyme” could not be translated literally because it will become unnatural in the target language. therefore, the translator decides to take the core of line and change the diction. however, the translator may get the meaning wrong. poetry which is not rhymed is bad. in indonesian, “bad” is payah. hence, it is translated into ah, payah. however, haiku is not necessarily rhymed. in fact, most haiku are not rhymed. ah, payah is more natural and be easier to understand than ah, tak berima, which fulfils the first and second criterion of acceptable translation. however, the meaning is distorted. though nida (1974) states that a good translation should be easily understood, but it is useless if the meaning misleads the reader (p. 173). moreover, this poetry translation only uses the correct punctuation principle. hence, this translation is unacceptable because it only preserves the natural form of the target language and ignores the other aspects and principles. the details are presented in table 5 below. table 5. unacceptable poetry translation in chapter 3 line code meaning in indonesian code used to be goddy e3.l1 dahulu dewa i3.l1 now uptown feeling shoddy e3.l2 sekarang merana i3.l2 bah, haiku don’t rhyme e3.l3 ah, payah i3.l3 in the second example of unacceptable poetry translation, e7.l1 and e7.l2 have been translated into i7.l1, i7.l2, and i7.l3. it is translated literally and naturally into the target language because it does not contain any metaphor. the problem is the last line is missing or not translated. it is different from the seventh example. the seventh example also has a line which does not exist in the other language, but the missing one is the line in target language. however, in this translation the missing one is the line in the source language or deletion. addition is better than deletion if the addition does not change the core of the source language such as in the poetry chapter 22. on the other hand, deletion is not acceptable because it eliminates the meaning and may influence the dynamic of the source language. in this example, “have fun with that, lol” is a sarcasm for the apollo’s condition. in that condition, apollo is desperate but he does not look miserable. instead, he is still able to make fun of them. it changes the meaning and the dynamic of the source language when the line is deleted because it makes apollo seem miserable. in addition, this poetry translation only uses the first principle; correct punctuation. hence, this poetry translation is unacceptable because it only fulfils one criterion and uses only the correct punctuation principle. the analysis of the poetry is presented in the following table. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 76-83 82 table 6. unacceptable poetry translation in chapter 7 line code meaning in indonesian code tag with plague spirits e7.l1 kejar-kejaran dengan roh wabah penyakit i39.l1 you’re it, and you’re infectious e7.l2 jangan sampai tertangkap i39.l2 have fun with that, lol e7.l3 kalau tidak mau sakit i39.l3 in the third and last example of unacceptable poetry translation, only e14.l1 which is translated properly in i14.l2. e14.l2 and e14.l3 are nowhere to be found. as a consequence, i14.l1 and 14.l3 also do not exist in the source language when it is back-translated. when e14.l2 is translated literally, it becomes hei, sialan, apa yang baru saja terjadi? or, if it is changed into a more natural form, it becomes apa? sial. apa yang terjadi sih? however, as mentioned before, there is no sentence similar to that in the indonesian version. the last line has a similar case. when e14.l3 is translated literally, it becomes aku kehabisan ka-. there is no similar sentence existing in the indonesian version. this is the thing that should not be done by the translator. the translator should have translated it literally if there is no metaphor. moreover, these lines can easily look natural when it is translated literally. as mentioned above, the translator takes the core and remakes the lines. it is in line with what newmark (1988) suggested about translating a poem by taking the core and then making a new poem (p. 70). however, it does not need to be done if it changes the meaning rather than translating it word-for-word. it is different from the poetry in chapter 17. in chapter 17, the translator also only takes the core but it is necessary to be done because it contains metaphors which do not have equivalence in indonesian. moreover, this poetry translation does not use any principle. hence, this poetry translation is also unacceptable because it completely changes the meaning and the dynamic of the source language and does not use any poetry translation principle. the details are presented in the following table. table 7. unacceptable poetry translation in chapter 14 line code meaning in indonesian code you’ve got to be kide14.l1 kamu anak siapa? i14.l1 well, crud, what just happened there? e14.l2 apa, bercanda, ya?! i14.l2 i ran out of syle14.l3 wah, gawat ini i14.l3 conclusion there are four points that can be concluded from the study. first, to decide the acceptability of the poetry, the interpretation method should be used to find the core of the poetry. second, the poetry translation is influenced by the content of the chapter or the context. third, syllable does not influence the acceptability because indonesian tends to have more syllables than english. in other words, preserving the meaning is more important than following the syllable rule. fourth, to get an acceptable poetry translation, translators do not always need to follow the poetry translation principles but still need to consider the poetry translation principles. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 76-83 83 references aditia, h. (2011). an analysis of taboo word and swear word in dustin lee abraham’s how high movie (undergraduate thesis). state islamic university “syarif hidayatullah”, jakarta. indonesia. ary, d., jacobs, l. c., & sorensen, c. (2010). introduction to research in education (8th ed.). belmont, ca: wadsworth. bassnett, s. (2002). translation studies (3rd ed.). new york: routledge. carey, g. v. (1957). punctuation. london: cambridge university press. eble, c. (1996). slang & sociability: in-group language among college students. chapel hill: the university of north carolina press. goatly, a. (1997). the language of metaphors. london: routledge. green, j. (1993). slang down the ages. london: kyle cathie limited. herlambang, m. a. k. (2017). a study of translation equivalence and acceptability on the subtitle of intel advertisement (undergraduate thesis). sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia. lakoff, g., & johnson, m. (1980). metaphors we live by. london: the university of chicago press. larson, m. l. (1984). meaning-based translation: a guide to cross-language equivalence. london: university press of america, inc. nababan, m. r. (1999). teori menerjemah bahasa inggris. yogyakarta: pustaka pelajar offset. neuendorf, k. a. (2002). the content analysis guidebook. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. newmark, p. (1988). a textbook of translation. hertfordshire: pretince hall. nida, e. a., & taber, c. r. (1974). the theory and practice of translation. leiden: e. j. brill. riordan, r. (2016). the trials of apollo: the hidden oracle. london: penguin random house uk. riordan, r. (2017). the trials of apollo: the hidden oracle. (r. indardini, trans.). jakarta: penerbit noura books. (2016). stroilova, a. g., & makarova, a. a. (2016). russian translations of thomas grey’s elegy written in a country church-yard in 18th-19th centuries. social and behavioral sciences 231, 187 – 194. retrieved from https://ac.els cdn.com/s1877042816312010/1-s2.0-s1877042816312010main.pdf?_tid=ead63683-0efb-49a0-8b48 5c5c323df417&acdnat=1521711105_cfa4dd578f0ddfd876cb0a811e7b37e a tisgam, k. h. (2014). translating poetry: possibility or impossibility? j. of college of education for women, 511-524. retrieved from https://www.iasj.net/iasj?func=fulltext&aid=91622 veckrācis, j. (2016). translations of joseph brodsky’s poem “may 24, 1980” into english and latvian: cross-linguistic, cross-cultural and interpretative components of text analysis. social and behavioral sciences, 231, 179-186. retrieved from https://ac.els-cdn.com/s1877042816312009/1-s2.0 s1877042816312009-main.pdf?_tid=2741e0e8-9ab9-4110-beac 992fa46e8c77&acdnat=1521711298_95b1e92ebf4b3ca5986ff5ac169ff64b wojowasito, s., & poerwadarminta, w. (2007). kamus lengkap inggris indonesia indonesia inggris dengan ejaan yang disempurnakan. bandung: hasta. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 167-178 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 167 madura language variations: phonological change and its relationship with language change and ethnic identity ety setiawati, wahyu widodo, warsiman, sony sukmawan, dany ardhian brawijaya university, indonesia ety64@ub.ac.id, 2wahyu_widodo@ub.ac.id, 3warsiman050671@gmail.com, 4sony_sukmawan@ub.ac.id, and 5danyardhian@ub.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.020206 received 5 march 2019; revised 10 march 2019; accepted 18 march 2019 abstract manduro village has a similar name to madura island. the similarity of the name positively correlates with the likeness of language and local culture. they call themselves oreng manduro 'madurese'. the language used by residents is the madurese language (after this referred to as ml). this study aims to look at variations of language from the social perspective, in the form of age and ethnic main variables. of the two variables, changes in ml spoken by adults with what children say and how social contact affects these changes are also examined. this research is descriptive-qualitative research with the leading theory of sociodialectology. the research data was taken from the informants selected by purposive sampling using the swadesh list. data retrieval technique is by recording and note-taking. the results show that ml that is spoken by adults and children has a difference. differences are seen in phonological terms so that they appear to cause the differences and changes in both. from the total data found, phoneme changes significantly occur in phonemes / ɛ / to phonemes / ᴐ /. phonemes / ɛ / are phonemes spoken by ml speakers of adult age, while phonemes / ᴐ / are phonemes spoken by children in the same lexicons. keywords: ml, adult, children, ethnicity, manduro village introduction linguistic situations in indonesia are in multilingual cases. indonesian people can use several languages in certain circumstances. for example, using indonesian in formal situations such as school or work. then, the indonesian people use regional languages, according to their respective geographical origins, which acts as the first language, used when talking to families and also using english at certain times. this situation is also followed by the diversity of backgrounds of each community, both cultural context and also including language background. with these different community backgrounds, the intensity of inter-language meetings is also higher. heterogeneous conditions of society lead to the emergence of variations in a language used in communication. the location of the community's place or social factors cause the differences in language. social factors that can cause differences in a language include the age factor of the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 167-178 168 speech community, the type of community work, the gender factor, the status factor and the social class of the speech community, and the ethnic diversity of the speech community. this variation in language caused by the user's social situation is then categorized as a social dialect. social dialect can also occur due to the transfer of a speech community and its language to regions not from the origin of the community and language. language transfer and its users than in the realm of sociolinguistic studies are referred to as ethnic pockets or enclaves. ethnic pockets or enclaves are ethnic groups that are located and confined within an area outside their original territory surrounded by the ethnic majority as the original inhabitants of the region. ethnic pockets or immigrant enclaves also intersect closely with the language used by the ethnic group. similar to ethnic enclaves, the language of enclaves is a language that is confined to an area outside the original territory that survives but does not rule out the possibility of a shift caused by contact with other languages that are the native language of the region. ethnic pocket phenomena are common in indonesia. for example, the ethnic of balinese enclave in lampung, the javanese ethnic enclave in bali, and the interesting ones is the madurese ethnic enclave in jombang. madura is one of the unique icons of the east java region. madura has unique characteristics and has an independent language. this is due to the differences found in ml and javanese language, which become the umbrella area of madura, entirely different. one exciting region is the manduro village, kabuh district, jombang. communities in manduro village are madurese ethnic communities who use ml as a means of communication in daily life (savitri, 2015). in savitri's writings, it is said that the people of manduro village do not only use ml in their daily lives, but also use javanese (ibid). the discovery of the use of javanese in the community of manduro village is very natural. this is because both languages coexist and consequently frequent language contact occurs. this language meeting then leads to language variations. holmes (2008) says that variations in language can occur in several ways, namely variations over time, in meetings, and variations in language can occur socially. furthermore, according to bisang (2016), language contact is a significant factor in language change (2016: 377). allan (2016) states that all languages change over time and variations in each language develop in the area of each language's use (2016: 6). from this statement, it can be said that language undergoes changes over time and these changes occur according to the area of use of the language. as a result of the language encounter or language contact that occurs between ml and javanese in jombang, it eventually leads to linguistic features that are similar in both languages. song (2016) says that there are three ways for language to have similar linguistic features: 1) having the same family history, 2) language contact, and 3) universal preferences (2016: 410). when you look at song's statement and relate it to the phenomenon that occurs in manduro village, it can be said that the second method is the possible method. many studies related to dialectology of madurese have been carried out, including rusiandi (2015), fitria dewi, et al. (2017), fetrian rahma dewi (2010), hakim (2013), wijayanti (2016), wulan suci (2016), hasanah, et al. (2015). they focus on dialectology studies with madurese language data used in madurese ethnic areas. from the studies that were built, this study revealed differences in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 167-178 169 the location of the observation area (oa). this study focuses on madurese ethnic places surrounded by javanese in kabuh subdistrict, jombang regency, allowing language contact to influence phonological and lexical connections. this area is also a remote area with a geographical majority surrounded by teak forests so that its lexical and phonological authenticity is relatively well maintained. research that is almost similar to this study was investigated by hasanah et al. (2015). they focus on comparing javanese and madurese languages in jember regency with the padhalungan culture. from the studies that have been conducted, this study aims to complement the research of dialectology in the madurese language, especially in social dialects between adult speakers and child speakers. overview of manduro village manduro village is located in kabuh district, jombang regency, east java. the village is unique because the villagers are from madura. there is no clear historical explanation about the reason for the movement of madurese to this region of jombang. according to the website (situsbudaya.id), the first wave of madurese who moved to this region occurred in the event of the gianti agreement. from here then develops to form the manduro village which is currently divided into four hamlets. the four hamlets are mato'an hamlet, guwo hamlet, dander hamlet, and gesing hamlet. in permadi's (2013) writings, it is said that each name of the hamlet has its philosophical meaning. simply put, mato'an means to see what is in us and live according to ability. furthermore, guwo means 'use what is on you,' or in other words; we should be able to use and regulate the mind and heart to be used properly. dander means 'evaluate and correct things that are right though.' finally, gesing means 'sing eling (remembering),' this saying reminds us always to remember god (permadi, 2013: 238-239). two hamlets are closer to the highway that connects jombang and lamongan regencies, namely gesing and guwo hamlets. meanwhile, two other hamlets that were more remote and not passed by many people, namely dander dusun and matokan hamlet (see savitri, 5). figure 1. map of manduro village ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 167-178 170 method this research is a qualitative descriptive study. the data of this study are in the form of a body of language and tradition which is still used by the people of manduro village, kabuh district, jombang regency. the source of this research data is the population of manduro village which is spread in four hamlets, gesing hamlet (ao 1), dander (ao 2), gowa (ao 3), and matokan (ao 4). the subject of this study is based on dialectological research criteria (see laksono, mahsun) to determine the level of manduro dialect differences that focus on the four observation areas (ao). respondents were divided into two, adults and children who met the criteria (purposive sampling). for children, age ranges from 10-15 years.while adult age and other criteria are the same as dialectology studies in general (see laksono, 2009: 33; mahsun, 1995: 106). this research is a study of social dialectology that makes age and ethnicity as the primary research variables. besides that as a theory of assistance, this study also examines ml in manduro village concerning language contact and its changes. the study was conducted using a research instrument in the form of a swadesh list that was directly given to the selected informants. swadesh's basic vocabulary is used as an instrument for 800 basic vocabulary, 75 lists of question sentences, and five lists of question phrases. data retrieval uses recording techniques and recordings obtained from selected informants are transcribed based on phonetic symbols. in addition to recording techniques, note-taking techniques are also an effort to document the number of informants and other matters outside the research instrument. findings and discussion ml phonological variations and changes in adults and children variations in language seen from a social point of view in this study indicate differences in phonological and lexical levels. the difference is significant that between ml which is told by the age of children and adults is different. these differences occur in almost all ao, gesing, dander, gowa, and matokan. based on the results of the study there are six vocal phonemes and this is also corroborated according to sofyan's research (2010: 208), namely / a /, / i /, / u /, / ɛ /, / ə /, and / ɔ / with the following table. table 1. ml vocal phonemes front back tb b tb b high /i/ /u/ medium /ɛ/ /ə/ /ɔ/ low /a/ ml in manduro village has a high phoneme / i /, / u /, a medium phoneme / ɛ /, / ə /, and / ɔ /, and a low phoneme / a /. while viewed in terms of the position and form of the tongue, the vowel phonemes in ml are divided into three types, the front-non-circular vowel phoneme / i /, / ɛ /, the round-not-round vowel phoneme / ə /, / a /, and the vowel phoneme back-round / u /, / ɔ /. the characteristics of the phoneme classification are found in good variations used by adult speakers and children of age. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 167-178 171 besides having a vocal phoneme, ml, like other languages also has a consonant phoneme system. here are the consonant phonemes found in ml in manduro village. strengthened by previous studies (marsono, 1986; verhaar, 2014; and sofyan, 2010), the following is a classification of consonant phonemes in bm. table 2. consonant phonemes of ml b il a b ia l l a b io d e n ta l d e n ta l & a lv e o la r p a la to a lv e o la r p a la ta l v e la r u v u la r g lo ta l tb b tb b tb b tb b tb b tb b tb b b stops (plosives) p b bh t d th dh c j jh k g gh ? nasals m n ñ ŋ fricatives f s z h affricates semivokal y w lateral l trill r phonological process phonological processes or sound changes are divided into two; they are phonetic changes and phonemic changes. about this research, sound change only focuses on phonetic change, namely sound changes that do not change and differentiate meaning from the original lexicon. according to chaer (2011: 118; see also sasangka, 2011: 61) changes in a sound can occur due to the influence of the environment. these environmental influences then lead to other forms of change. at the phonological level, this study aims to see and analyze sound changes at the level of vocabulary that occurs between adult speakers and children of age. by comparing the two variations of language according to age, we will understand how different the changes that occur in ml who live in the midst of the fertile javanese language. the following are the forms of sound changes that occur in ml in manduro village which is spoken by adult speakers and children of age. abreviation abbreviation or zeroization or reduction or elimination is a process of shortening some phonemes from a word (chaer, 2011: 123; sasangka, 2011: 68). the word shortening process is divided into three basic categories which are determined based on the location of a phoneme that is omitted. phoneme removal in front of the word is apheresis, phoneme removal in the middle of the word is called syncope, and refining at the end of the word is apocope. abbreviations in ml occur in the following words. (1) adult children a. [atellɔr]  [təllᴐr] ‘telur’ (egg) b. [mbulən]  [bulǝn] ‘bulan’ (moon) c. [sɛbhuh]  [sǝbuh] ‘seribu’ (thousands) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 167-178 172 in the data (1a) there is an aviation hypothesis abbreviation which shows the phoneme / a / at the beginning of the lexicon origin [atellɔr] which occurs in the children's speech to produce a new formation [təllᴐr]. as with data (1a), data (1b) is also an apherical type of abbreviation by phoneme removal of premalignant [m] at the beginning of the lexicon. in data (1c) there is a syncope process, namely the presence of aspirate [h] noise removal in the [sɛbhuh] lexicon which is spoken by adult speakers and then produces a new form [sǝbuh]. phonemes addition the addition of phonemes in phonological processes is divided into three categories. the classification is like the abbreviation, which is determined based on the position of an added phoneme. if the addition of the phoneme in front is a prothesis, in the middle of the word is called epenthesis, and at the end of the word is called a paragogue (sasangka, 2011: 66). (2) adult children a. [sǝpᴐlᴐ]  [sǝpᴐlᴐh] ‘sepuluh’ (ten) b. [maṱa]  [maṱah] ‘mata’ (eyes) c. [bəmmbəŋ]  [mbəmmbəŋ] ‘sayap’ (wing) data (2a) and (2b) shows the similarity between the existence of a paragogue or the process of adding phonemes at the end of the word. both experience the addition of the glottal phoneme [h] so that it becomes a new formation [sǝpᴐlᴐh] and [maṱah]. while in (2c) the addition of phonemes occurs at the beginning of the word or prosthesis with the addition of a pre-phaleme [m] phoneme to produce a new formation [mbəmmbəŋ] in children's speech. free variation according to sasangka (2011:69), free variation means phoneme transformation occurred on phonemes homogram. these are the examples of free variation found in some utterances from the adult and child speakers. (3) adults) children a. [ɔlaɂ]  [ᴐlar] ‘ular’ (snake) b. [binɛh]  [binᴐɂ] ‘istri’ (wife) as regard to the examples of free variation above, it was found two different phonemes. there was a substitution on (3a) glottal phoneme [ɂ] to trill [r]. meanwhile, there were two processes of phoneme change on (3a), namely vocal and consonant change. the vocal change was occurred on phoneme transformation of reversed epsilon [ɛ] to open o [ᴐ]. also, the consonant change was happened on voiceless glottal fricative [h] to reversed glottal stop [ɂ] vocal substitution phonemes ml variations are spoken by adults and children significantly occurred on vocal phonemes. those variations indicated replacement on phonetic without change the meaning and affixes. those variations showed substitution of different vocal phonemes, rising and decreasing vocal phonemes. (4) adults children a. [lakɛɂ]  [lɑkᴐɂ] ‘laki-laki’ (boy) b. [binɛɂ]  [binnᴐɂ] ‘perempuan’ (girl) c. [sampɛr]  [sɑmpᴐr] ‘jarik’ (jarik) d. [ṱanɛh]  [tɑnᴐh] ‘petani’ (farmer) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 167-178 173 e. [rəŋɛɂ  [rəŋᴐɂ] ‘nyamuk’ (mosquito) f. [təkɔs]  [tᴐkos] ‘tikus’ (mouse) g. [kɔcɛŋ]  [kᴐcᴐŋ] ‘kucing’ (cat) h. [sapɛh]  [sapᴐh] ‘sapi’ (cow) i. [pᴐtɛh]  [potᴐh] ‘putih’ (white) j. [dɛun]  [daun] ‘daun’ (leaf) the ten data above denoted a partial change of a lexicon differently. from the total data found, the phoneme significantly transformed on reversed epsilon phoneme /ɛ/ to open o phoneme /ᴐ/. the phoneme /ɛ/ was a phoneme spoken by adult bm speaker, whereas the phoneme /ᴐ/ was a phoneme spoken by children speaker on same lexicons. the phoneme /ᴐ/ is a specific character of the javanese language. here in, although the transcription was symbolized as /a/, the phoneme /a/ was verbally spoken as /ᴐ/. the substitution of a vocal phoneme from /ɛ/ to /ᴐ/ was indicated that there were several contact influences between the bm speaker and javanese language. this phenomenon will be explained further in the next subchapter. language contact and several other things hagerstrand in johnstone (2006:208) proposed that language innovation spread in communities through interpersonal communication network performed face to face has more significant influences. regarding his notion, it can be inferred that enables the more substantial innovation occurred when emerges a face to face interaction. hence, this circumstance was undergone by manduro villagers since they interacted directly with the javanese surrounding them. this statement was analogous with the result of a discussion on the previous data that there were phonemes addition, phoneme deletion, free variation, and vocal substitution phoneme. such innovations issued the presence of language loan and transformation which also related to language acquisition on children respondent involving age factor. language loan and transformation based upon the data, it emerged some assumptions that had occurred several loan words from javanese language (jl) to ml. additionally, hoffer (2002) said that language interaction happened accidentally produced a little loanword. meanwhile, if the contact or communication occurred in neighboring regions more than a decade or even a century had resulted in large loans (2002: 3). as the eighth glossary namely gigi, dp1 on children respondents used [untu] for a dictionary of gigi. the lexicon of [untu] is a lexicon originated from bj. besides, the glossary of ibu jari also indicated the use of lexicon from bj, specifically [jempol]. furthermore, the other exciting things were that this lexicon was only used by children respondents, whereas adult respondents enjoyed using lexicon [poləmpolan]. this could be clarified that lexicon loan started to occur in ml from jl. moreover, the interaction and contact among communities are crucial in providing a pathway for linguistic change (holmes, 2008: 223). thus, it meant that the high intensity of interaction and contact in language could be the primary factor of linguistic change occurrence. according to holmes (2008), the code transition in every interaction occurred continually in two languages ultimately ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 167-178 174 makes likely similar to each other 2008: 226). the statement was in line with the data in this research. there were some phonology features of ml resembling jl. it was similar with the sound of aspirate on the sounding sound /b/ to /bh/. also, it also emerged nasal sound as [bhəmmbəŋ] for a glossary of sayap. as previously explained, linguistic change happened because of the high interaction between two languages. it could be a transfer of suprasegmental aspects. it was also coherent with the documentation result done by muthwii (1994) toward kenyan in the trilingual situation. the result is kenyan doing a vocal harmony transfer, pressure, and also titinada from kalenjin language as their national language to kuswahili and english (in sankoff, 646). therefore, this linguistic change might happen in the use of the daily language of manduro villagers. second language acquisition and its relation to age factor the ethnic grouping phenomenon outside ethnic area was massive in indonesia. as regard to meyerhoff (2006) statement, when the kinship moves to outside area where their parents’ dialect is used, the children will get local variations used in that area (2006: 239). in this case, the second generation– children respondents–had a different local language from their parents because the children are getting the local language, while parents were at the stage of translating local language through their first language. thus, based on this place, places became one crucial aspect. the data are written indicated that there was a language transformation occurred. language transformation possibly occurs from one community to others. this transformation usually spread simultaneously in the various area. besides, social factor influences transformation level and purposes as well, such as age, status, gender, and area. (holmes, 2008: 211). furthermore, holmes (2008) stated that the older adults generally use standard language (2008: 175). this transformation also related to linguistic change, for instance as showing in this following table. (5) adult children a. [pɛpɛh]  [pipi] b. [ghələŋ]  [geləŋ] the above data became high vocal which assumed as one of the age factors. besides, the older adults generally use standard language. therefore, it concluded that sound /ɛ/ was a usual sound in ml. also, in the case of looking at the entire data, it could be stated that children respondents in gesing village had more phonology and lexicon variations instead of adult respondents. they mainly had different variation from other hamlets. it is analogous with the fact that gesing village is located close to the road border between jombang and lamongan regency. sound transformation in ml occurred more in children respondents as well as due to there were assumptions by adult respondents that the sound was considered as “wrong” or unacceptable. it happened similar to australia about high rise terminal (hrt), namely the older speakers with higher status consider hrt to be vulgar so that hrt was only used in informal conversations by young people from more top social groups (holmes, 2008: 220). the prestige of jl may also result from this language transformation. it is understandable that pronunciation ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 167-178 175 considered to be prestige will be copied and disseminated in the community (holmes, 2008: 208). in addition to those factors, meyerhoff (2006) also argued that urban community is more likely to have language contact (even when people in urban areas live far apart) (meyerhoff, 2006: 260). it thus led to the notion that language transformation, which started with language contact, occurred more in the urban community. in manduro village community, gesing village is one of the villages, which runs into a change, as it is directly coterminous to inter-city roads. the contiguity madurese and javanese ethnicity the development and transformation of a language and dialect can occur internally and externally. a language transformation internally can be observed through the history of its development from time to time. otherwise, it externally can be explored through interdisciplinary studies, such as sociology, anthropology, sociolinguistics or dialectology. the language development and transformation influenced by socio-cultural factors occurred in society could be scrutinized by utilizing those studies. one of the factors externally affecting language development and change is ethnicity. ethnicity is the identity of a tribe or a community group. it thus becomes a differentiator between one community group and another characterized by cultural, language, religious, and physical attributes that define the community group. according to frederich barth (1988), the ethnicity term refers to a particular group because of similarities in race, religion, national origin, or combination of these categories bound to the cultural value system. in some instances, a community group or individual will deal with a situation in which they need social relations, or communicate with people who are ethnically different. it is required to meet the requirement of information exchange that serves as a means to connect one community group to another, so they are not isolated from each other. in this research, madurese ethnic community living in manduro village had development and could change their dialects in the language they had. it was influenced by the contiguity of two ethnic groups within the same area. manduro village is located on the java island surrounded explicitly by javanese ethnicity. dialect transformation occurred within the ml could be seen from the attached data. the difference in dialect was observed regarding the age of the user, and it could be even claimed as a shift. one of them was the difference among phonemes within the lexicon spoken uttered by adults and youth. the language development and transformation nationally (ethnic languages) and international (race) are hard to avoid. the cultural acculturation causes it among ethnicities, which was preceded by the process of shifting one language speaker to others. as a result, there will be transformations of new dialects, new lexicon creations and sentence structures in the language, which are owned by these ethnic groups. the transformation process is also driven by the behavior of speakers in their daily activities to adapt to each other and the tendency of innovating to a broader community group. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 167-178 176 from its ethnicities, the dialect differences occurred in manduro village could be observed through its use between adults and youths. table 3. ml variation gloss youths adults dp 1 dp 2 dp 3 dp 4 dp 1 dp 2 dp 3 dp 4 ular [ᴐlɑr] [ᴐlɑr] [ᴐlɑr] [ᴐlɑr] [ɔlaɂ] [ɔlaɂ] [ɔlaɂ] [ɔlaɂ] tikus [tᴐkos] [tᴐkos] [tᴐkos] [tᴐkos] [ṱəkɔs] [ṱəkɔs] [ṱəkɔs] [ṱəkɔs] sapi [sapᴐh] [sapᴐh] [sapᴐh] [sapᴐh] [sappɛh] [sappɛh] [sappɛh] [sappɛh] kucing [kᴐcᴐŋ] [kᴐcᴐŋ] [kᴐcᴐŋ] [kᴐcᴐŋ] [kɔcɛŋ] [kɔcɛŋ] [kɔcɛŋ] [kɔcɛŋ] from the table, it could be discovered that there were some dialect differences uttered by children or youths and adults. in case of age aspect, the tendency of dialect transformation or shift was more significant at a younger age; even it potentially left the language since it was easier to adjust the language. regarding ethnicity, there was contiguity between two different ethnicities, in this case, javanese majority and madurese ethnicity, which would trigger the mindset of youths in the form of loyalty and solidarity to the majority of speakers in their residences. further, the dialects indirectly would be used as a standard language or dialect in the area around manduro village because of the existence of regional languages or local dialects, which constituted the majority. as time went on and communication needs between two different ethnicities, the local dialects gradually would occupy and influence the growth of madurese language in manduro village. the mechanism of dialect transformation and difference existed can occur intentionally or unintentionally, both concerning phonology and morphology. the sound element itself is the most vulnerable toward change or shift. it is triggered regarding phonology; the sound is the smallest element of a language, which can be understood. according to the gesing, dander and matokan dialect tables between children and adults, phonology and lexicon transformations were very susceptible to change. phonologically, the regular sound transformation, which was often heard by children in their environment, would influence, and then became an indication of other sounds. moreover, all these things are much related since the contact of two different ethnicities in the same area. the case in manduro village becomes a real instance in which the ethnic majority can influence the transformation and shift of a language dialect. even though there are two different ethnicities, as a broader population, two ethnic groups have similar cultural values that create awareness of togetherness within a culture. the mindset of ethnicity-based establishes the adjustments in communication that will gradually result in a dialect shift or difference in a language within a social community group. conclusion following the discussion regarding this research, it thus could be concluded that ml usages in manduro village varied observed from age aspect, as there was contiguity among language and ethnicity with bj as well as the speakers. one of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 167-178 177 the ml variations could be seen from the phonological level. the significant phoneme transformation occurred in phoneme /ɛ/ to phoneme /ᴐ/. phoneme /ɛ/ is phoneme uttered by ml adult speakers, whereas phoneme /ᴐ/ is phoneme pronounced by children in the same lexicons. by dint of the phonological level, the data in this research indicated that there was a language transformation shown by a significant phoneme transformation in phoneme /ɛ/ to phoneme /ᴐ/. phoneme /ɛ/ is phoneme uttered by ml adult speakers, whereas phoneme /ᴐ/ is phoneme uttered by children in the same lexicons. phoneme /ᴐ/ is a characteristic of the javanese language. although the transcription was symbolized as /a/, the phoneme /a/ was verbally uttered as /ᴐ/. one of the transformations was resulted by ethnic contiguity, namely madurese ethnicity in manduro village, which was directly surrounded, by javanese ethnicity consisted of javanese language as well as its rich culture. references allan, k. 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(2010). fonologi bahasa indonesia. jurnal humaniora. 22(2), 07— 218. fakultas sastra, universitas jember. song, j. j. (2016). linguistic typology and language universals. in the routledge handbook of linguistics (ed. keith allan). new york: routledge. suci, f. w. (2016). perbandingan leksikon bahasa jawa dan bahasa madura. universitas negeri semarang. skripsi. verhaar, j. w. m. (2004). asas-asas linguistik umum. yogyakarta: gadjah mada university press. wijayanti, e. d. (2016). variasi dialek bahasa bawean di wilayah pulau bawean kabupatten gresik: kajian dialektologi. universitas airlangga surabaya. skripsi. wolfram, w. & fasold, r. w. (1974). the study of social dialects in american english. usa: prentice-hall, inc. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 193-202 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 193 the source domain of javanese women body shape in kyai sestradilaras manuscript khoirur rahmah faculty of cultural sciences gadjah mada university khoirur.rachmah@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010205 received 13 november 2017; revised 11 february 2018; accepted 19 february 2018 abstract kyai sĕstradilaras manuscript is a manuscript about the image of beauty of arjuna’s wives, including outward beauty and inner beauty. in this research, the analysis of the metaphorical and simile source domains of the body shape of javanese women in kyai sestradilaras manuscript on outward beauty is discussed. this research uses the metaphor theory initiated by lakoff and johnson (1980), the theory of source domain according to haley (1980), and simile theory according to abrams through marsono (1996). the method used in this research is descriptive qualitative method. the implementation of this method consists of three stages, data collection methods, data analysis methods, and presentation of data analysis. the data in this research are obtained from the written source. the results of the research are the metaphorical and simile source domain of the body shape of javanese women in kyai sĕstradilas manuscript. the source domains are 1) the moonlit sky to illustrate the beauty of a woman's eyes, 2) the sky to describe the beauty of a woman's face, 3) the dahlia flower to describe the beauty of a woman's face, 4) the fennel leaves to describe the beauty of a woman's face, 5) pomegranate to describe the beauty of a woman's face, 6) the moon to describe the beauty of a woman's skin, 7) golden money ray to describe the beauty of a woman's skin, 8) ivory palm to describe the beauty of a woman's breasts, and 9) cempaka flowers to illustrate the beauty of a woman's breasts. keywords: source domain, panyandra, metaphor and simile, kyai sestradilaras manumanuscript introduction tembang macapat is a traditional javanese song or poem (tofani, 1995, p.93). each stanza can have a sentence line called gatra, and each gatra has a certain number of syllables (guru wilangan), and ends in the final rhyme sound called the song teacher. the sequences of javanese songs are like the sequence of human life from birth to death. tembang macapat becomes a language research subject in this research because this research will see the phenomenon of language that comes with mailto:khoirur.rachmah@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 193-202 194 metaphor and simile approach. the poem of the song is taken from a manuscript entitled kyai sĕstradilaras, pura pakualaman library collection number 0148 / pp / 73. the manuscript of kyai sĕstradilaras is written in javanese with krama and ngoko, although some words adopt the malay and dutch words. the script used is javanese script. there are 51 pages in the ksd manuscript. the manuscript was written at the time of k.g.p.a.a. paku alam iv after being appointed as a duke of pakualaman, on tuesday pahing, the 25th of jumadilakhir wawu 1793 mangsa sad wuku galungan lambang klawu windu karta, coinciding with the date of 25 november 1864 m. but there is a possibility that the script writing was completed in the period of k.g.p.a.a. paku alam v with the same writing title (febriyanto, 2012, p.19). the manuscript of kyai sestradilaras tells the story of the odyssey of arjuna's love to his wives, the love story of raden arjuna along with the depiction of the beauty, nobleness, and beauty of his wives. the depiction of female beauty contains metaphors and similes, including the painting of faces, eyes, skin, breasts, walking, behavior, and words. this research relies on the metaphorical and simile source domains of javanese female body shape in kyai sestradilaras manuscript. in old javanese culture there is a description of the female body shape called panyandra. panyandra explains that it is a substance between the two elements, the outside and inside. outward beauty is the beauty of the face and body. meanwhile, inner beauty is the virtue that shines out of the self. furthermore, these two elements combine and provide a balance. the description of javanese female body shape inside and outside are things that can be compared. this is related to the study of metaphor. according kridalaksana (2008, p.152) metaphor is the use of words or other expressions for other objects or concepts based on equation. semantically, this is very interesting because in metaphor, the literal meaning and metaphorical meaning can be found. lakoff and johnson (1980, p.3) argue that metaphorical thinking illustrates that there is a basic tendency of the human mind to think of certain referents in a certain way. based on the background of problems, the problem studied in this research is the process of forming metaphor in the manuscript of kyai sestradiaras which builds description of javanese women body shape. the purpose of this study is to analyze the metaphorical and simile source domain of the javanese women body shape in kyai sestradilaras manuscript. this research uses metaphor theory, source domain theory, and simile to answer the existing problems. this is because the three theories complement each other to analyze the data that will appear in the kyai sestradilaras manuscript. metaphor theory to view and analyze the data found in the kyai sestradilaras manuscript, this research uses the theory by lakoff and johnson (1980, pp.5-6) explaining the essence of a metaphor which is the understanding and experience described by experience or other understandings, so essentially human conceptual systems can be defined and structured metaphorically. lakoff and johnson's opinion is consistent with the explanation of knowles and moon (2005, p.93) that metaphor is a tool of creativity in a linguistic phenomenon because it explains things with other things, so that literary authors make it a tool in creating works. therefore, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 193-202 195 metaphors are regarded as linguistic expressions embedded in one's conceptual system. there are three main elements in metaphor (ogden & richard, 1972, p.97), 1) tenors i.e. concepts, objects that are described, discussed, characterized, denoted, or compared. tenors are also called receptors. 2) vehicle, a concept that describes, equates, symbolizes the tenor. vehicle is also referred to a donor. a vehicle is a symbol or an allusion to itself. 3) ground, the relation of equation between tenor and vehicle. the relation of this equation can be an objective equation such as shape, place, nature, or combination of them, emotive equations, conceptual equations, function equations, and social and cultural equations. the conceptual metaphor is a cognitively formed systematic concept (lakoff & johnson, 1980, p.3). the conceptual metaphor analyzed as a cognitive conceptualization process depends on three things: 1) source domain, 2) target domain, 3) mapping or correspondence (cruse, 2004, p.201). in other words, the conceptual metaphor sees a connection between the two domains of the source and the target domain in the form of mapping or correspondence. the source domain relates to a world of concrete (real) and familiar experience, while the target domain is usually more abstract. source domain theory based on its comparative semantic field, the semantic field of the universal metaphor is divided into nine semantic fields (haley, 1980, pp.155-159): a. the metaphor of being is a metaphor that includes abstract things like truth and love. b. the metaphor of cosmos is a metaphor which includes cosmic objects such as the sun and the moon. c. the metaphor of energy is a metaphor with a semantic field of things that have power, such as wind, light, fire, with predictions that those things can move. d. substance metaphor is a metaphor that includes the kinds with predictions including moisture, odor, pressure, etc. e. earth terrestrial metaphors are metaphors that include things bound or sprawled on the surface of the earth such as rivers, seas, mountains, etc. in addition; this metaphor also includes matters relating to gravity that is a metaphor related to all things that fall due to the influence of earth's gravity. f. the metaphor of inanimate objects is a metaphor which includes lifeless objects such as tables, books, chairs, glasses, etc. that can be broken. g. metaphor of life / plants (living) is a metaphor associated with all types of plants (flora), such as leaves, sago, rice, etc. h. the metaphor of animate / animal beings is a metaphor related to creatures of organisms that can walk, run, fly and so forth such as horses, cats, birds and tigers. i. human metaphor is a metaphor related to creatures that can think and have reasons. simile simile is a style of language that compares something that is essentially different indirectly by using comparative words (abrams in marsono, 1996, p.449). comparative words used are lir 'like', kadi 'like', kadya 'like', upama 'like'. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 193-202 196 method this research is a descriptive qualitative research. the object of this research is the manuscript of kyai sĕstradilaras, pakualaman pura library collection. the manuscript has been transliterated, edited and translated into indonesian by muhammad bagus febriayanto in a thesis entitled "kyai sestradilaras of pura pakualaman library collection temple (edits, translations and text analysis)" in 2012. the first stage in this research is data collection. the data collection in this research used observation method with note taking technique. mahsun (2014) explains that observation method is the method of data provision by listening to the use of language. the term listening here is concerned not only with the use of spoken language but also the use of written language. the note taking technique according to kesuma (2007) is the technique of capturing data by recording the results of data on the data card. data source in this research is a written source derived from the manuscript of kyai sĕstradilaras, pura pakualaman library collection. after recording then the songs containing metaphor are searched and copied. then the songs or tembang that contains the metaphor are sorted. the stages performed in this research are collecting data, classifying metaphors and simile of javanese women body shape based on outward beauty category, analyzing the source domain of javanese women body shape in kyai sestradilaras script based on haley metaphor theory, and the last is getting the result of the metaphorical meaning analysis of the description of javanese women body shape in kyai sestradilaras. findings and discussion there are 9 panyandra about the description of javanese women body shape in kyai sestradilaras manuscript based on outward beauty. in this section the analysis of metaphorical meaning panyandra of javanese woman body shape based on outward beauty category. the categories are: 1) eye characteristics, 2) facial characteristics, 3) skin characteristics, and 4) breast characteristics. eye characteristics eyes are the five senses of vision that became one of the woman’s attractive beauties. in the kyai sĕstradilaras manuscript there is one thing that becomes a symbol that shows the methaphor of eye characteristic. the target domain of the eye has the source domain metaphor as follows, ie bomaning ngateja sasi ‘moonlit sky’. kinanthi song, gending eman-eman sari pelog (p.11) “rupa netra retnaningrum/ bomaning ngateja sasi/ catur rupa tejaning dyah/ ponca rupa tejawati/ rasa rupa tejaninggar/ samurti rĕtnadiningsih//” (1) rupa netra retnaningrum bomaning ngateja sasi. appearance eyes beautiful sky shines moon. “beautiful eyes (is like) moonlit sky” in example (1) having beautiful eye shape equated to the moonlit sky which is retnaningsih’s eyes. retnaningsih is one of arjuna's wives whose face is like a beautiful painting, bowed face, beautiful little eyes and sweet face look. the metaphor in example (1) basi ngateja sasi 'moonlit sky' is used for the beauty of a woman's eyes metaphor. the similarity between the source domain and the target domain is, first, the target domain of a woman's eyes beauty takes ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 193-202 197 the nature of a clean sky to illustrate that the beauty of the woman's eyes is clean. second, the target domain that takes the feature bright moon color and shines to illustrate that the beauty of the woman's eyes is bright and radiant. the metaphors in this example belong to the metaphorical source domain of cosmic materials. face characteristics beautiful women have typical facial characteristics, in the javanese society, there are some things that become symbols showing the metaphor of a woman's face characteristics. face characteristics target domain have metaphor target domain as follows, a) boma 'sky', b) dungeon wungu 'purple red dahlia ', c) adas rondon 'fennel leaves', and d) five 'pomegranates'. face characteristics as sky “boma” the characteristic meaning of the face as the 'sky' boma on the metaphor in kyai sĕstradilaras manuscript is the face of a beautiful woman equated with the sky. the use of sky elements has a unique provision, so it becomes the choice of the javanese in describing the word beauty which refers to the beauty of a woman. the characteristics of the sky is brightly colored, stretched wide, and has a smooth surface is compared with the characteristics of a woman's facial beauty that has a bright and smooth face, do not has many acnes or black spots. the song or tembang containing the metaphor is as follows. tembang kinanthi, gending eman-eman sari pelog (p.11) kanĕmnya dyah tejaningrum/ kasapta dyah tejarĕsmi/ mutyadi teja asmara/ kan[g] nawa tejadewati/ bomanya sampurna watya/ warna rupa tejaningsih// (2) bomanya sampurna watya. sky perfect wati (symbolizes a woman) ‘(like) a beautiful sky’. one of arjuna's wives depicted in example (2) whose facial beauty is equated to the sky is dyah teja dewati. dyah teja dewati's face was so beautiful that arjuna fell in love with her. the metaphors in this example belong to the metaphorical source domain of cosmic materials. face characteristic as red purple dahlia “daliyah bang wungu” the characteristic meaning of the face as daliyah bang wungu 'purple red dahlia flowers' on metaphors in kyai sĕstradilaras manuscript is the face of a beautiful woman equated with the red and purple dahlia flowers. dahlia flower is a bulbous bushy plant that is annual (perenial), eternal life, and flowering in summer until autumn. the nature of the purple red dahlia flowers can be equated to the beauty of a woman who remains beautiful in the morning and evening, his beauty will be immortal and very special in front of men. the tembang containing the metaphor is as follows. tembang gawan gending, gending laras driya slendro (p.12) (3) sumarah sang anom/ tan giwang trap pratikĕle/ dhasar ayu ngawanggah banjar adi/ tanĕman puspadi/ daliyah bang wungu// ‘resigned the princess, all her efforts are not faltering, really beautiful all beautifully planted with beautiful flowers, red pulple dahlia’. one of arjuna's wives depicted in example (3) whose facial beauty is equated to purple red dahlia is sumbadra. sumbadra is the daughter of the late king prabu basudewa, a king of the mandura, banjarpotaman. sumbadra is also ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 193-202 198 the most beautiful princess in the world. the metaphors in this example belong to plant metaphor source domain. face characteristics as fennel leaves “adas rondon” the meaning of the face as an adas rondon 'fennel leaf' on metaphors in kyai sĕstradilaras manuscript is the face of a beautiful woman equated with fennel leaves. fennel plants have some physical characteristics that are plants that have elongated and compounded leaves, and have many leaves. the relation of equation between facial characteristics with fennel leaves is the equation of the characteristics between facial characteristics with fennel leaves characteristics. first, the face of a beautiful woman has a firm line of face. second, a beautiful woman's face usually has a pointed chin / taper, as well as fennel leaves that have a pointy shape on the tip and base. tembang gawan gending, gending laras driya slendro (p.12) (4) sumarah sang anom/ tan giwang trap pratikĕle/ dhasar ayu ngawanggah banjar adi/ tanĕman puspadi/ daliyah bang wungu// lawan adas rondon/ jejerira dlima bangle/ dlima <13> wungu tuwin dlima putih/ dlima patra wilis/ ngrĕmbaka kang taru// ‘resigned the princess, all her efforts are not faltering, really beautiful all beautifully planted with beautiful flowers, red pulple dahlia’. ‘with fennel leaves parallel to the bengle pomegranate, pomegranate <13> purple, white pomegranate, patra wilis pomegranate, the trees thrive’. one of arjuna's wives depicted in example (4) whose facial beauty is equated to an fennel leaf is sumbadra. sumbadra is the daughter of the late king prabu basudewa a king of the mandura, banjarpotaman. sumbadra is also the most beautiful princess in the world. sumbadra is very caring for her beauty, so she is told as an unequaled beautiful woman. the metaphors in this example belong to the plant metaphor source domain. face characteristics as pomegranate “dlima” the characteristic meaning of the face as the 'pomegranate' in the metaphor of the kyai sĕstradilaras manuscript is the face of a beautiful woman equated with pomegranates. pomegranates’ physical characteristics are smooth skin surface, red color, and round fruit shape. the tembang containing the metaphor is as follows. tembang gawan gending, gending laras driya slendro (page: 12) (5) sumarah sang anom/ tan giwang trap pratikĕle/ dhasar ayu ngawanggah banjar adi/ tanĕman puspadi/ daliyah bang wungu// lawan adas rondon/ jejerira dlima bangle/ dlima <13> wungu tuwin dlima putih/ dlima patra wilis/ ngrĕmbaka kang taru// ‘resigned the princess, all her efforts are not faltering, really beautiful all beautifully planted with beautiful flowers, red pulple dahlia’. ‘with fennel leaves parallel to the bengle pomegranate, pomegranate <13> purple, white pomegranate, patra wilis pomegranate, the trees thrive’. one of arjuna's wives depicted in example (5) whose facial beauty is equated to pomegranates is sumbadra. the relation of the equation between the face beauty with the pomegranate is the equation of physical characteristics between the pomegranate with the face beauty. first, the pomegranate has a smooth skin surface depicting that the woman's facial skin is smooth. second, the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 193-202 199 pomegranate has a faint red color depicting that the woman's face was a blush of red blush on the cheeks and lips. third, the pomegranate has a round shape of fruit which means to describe the shape of a round female face. the metaphors in this example belong to the plant metaphor source domain. skin characteristics the woman's skin is one of the most treatable parts of the body and the center of attention. in javanese society, there are some things that symbolize the metaphor of women's skin characteristics. the target domain of skin characteristics has a simile of source domain as follows, ie a) sitĕngsit 'moon', and b) dinar sorote 'golden money rays'. skin characteristics as moon “sitĕngsit” the characteristic meaning of skin as sitĕngsit 'moon' in the simile in the script kyai sĕstradilaras is the skin of a beautiful woman equated with the moon. the use of solar system elements in the form of the moon has a unique provision, so that the javanese chose it in describing the word beauty that refers to the beauty of a woman's skin. the moon has a very bright light and yellow, it is the same as the beautiful woman's skin has a bright color and yellowish white. simile in this example belongs to the simile source domain of cosmic objects. the song ‘tembang’ containing the simile is as follows. tembang kinanthi, gending eman-eman sari pelog (p.11) kadwinya musthikaningrum/ srikandhi rĕtnaning estri/ tan lĕnggana ing sakarsa/ ngimpuni para absari/ mung putri cĕmpala arja/ crĕma maya lir sitĕngsit// (6) crĕma maya lir sitĕngsit. skin bright like moon. ‘her skin glowed like a moonlight’. one of arjuna's wives depicted in example (6) whose skin beauty is equated with the moon is srikandhi. srikandhi is a princess from cempalaarja country. srikandhi is portrayed as a very beautiful woman. her movements are all worthy and supple. srikandhi's beauty is also depicted as yellow like a sharpened gold, a clear / radiant face like the sky, fierce but sweet eyes, lanky, her teeth are glowing. beside of having a beautiful face, srikandhi is also told as a daughter of an incredible soldier. she has a good archery skill and good combat. skin characteristics as golden money ray “dinar sorote” the characteristic meaning of the lskin as a 'golden money ray' dinar sorote in a simile in the kyai sĕstradilaras script is the skin of a beautiful woman equated with golden rays of gold. gold has a shiny, bright, and yellow. the song containing the simile: tembang gawan gendhing, gending laras driya slendro (p.12) sumbadra sang kaot/ crĕma lir dinar sorote/ panukmanira sang sinta dewi/ rĕtnaning widadari/ bĕg budyarja ningrum// (7) crĕma lir dinar sorote. kulit seperti uang emas sinarnya. ‘her skin shone like golden rays of money’. one of arjuna's wives depicted in example (7) whose skin beauty is likened to the golden money rays is sumbadra. the relation of the equation between sumbadra’s skin beauty with golden rays of gold is the equation of the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 193-202 200 nature between the beauty of sumbadra skin with golden rays of money. beautiful women's skin has bright, yellow, and sparkling colors. simile in this example belongs to the simile source domain of inanimate objects. breasts characteristics one part of the body that describes the beauty of a woman's body is the perfect shape of breasts, in kyai sĕstradilaras script there are some things that symbolize the metaphor of breast characteristics. the target domain of breast characteristics has simile source domains as follows, ie a). cĕngkir gadhing 'ivory coconut', and b). cĕpaka 'cempaka flower'. breasts characteristics as ivory palm “cĕngkir gadhing” the characteristic meaning of breasts as a cengkir gadhing 'ivory palm'. cengkir gadhing in simile in the kyai sĕstradilaras script is a perfect breast shape likened to ivory palm. cengkir gadhing consists of the word cengkir meaning 'young coconut' (poerwadarminta, 1939, p.635) and the word 'gadhing' type of coconut tree with generally small fruit '(poerwadarminta, 1939, p.127). ivory palm has a medium size, not the same as the coconut in general that has a large size. in the text kyai sĕstradilaras , the equation relation between the characteristics of breasts with ivory palm is the the equation between the characteristics of breasts form with ivory palm, which is the description of medium-sized and toned breasts. the song ‘tembang’ containing the simile: tembang megatruh, geding drawina pelog (p.14) (8) pan pinaring cĕpĕngan pundhak para rum/ suswarja lir cĕngkir gadhing/ engge/ bok lara gĕndhis ingutus/ udhĕtira gadhung mlathi/ babo mondakaki sĕkarnya mrok// ‘the women have been given a handle (flowers) pudhak. their breasts are like ivory palm. engge. mbok lara gendhis is sent, her belt is like (garlands) gadung (and) jasmines (which are) about to bloom’. in example (8) whose perfect breast shape is equated with ivory coconut is srikandhi’s breasts. srikandhi is a very beautiful woman and has beautiful breasts with medium size and still tight. simile in this example belongs to the simile source domain of plant. breasts characterisics as cempaka flower “cĕpaka” the characteristic meaning of breast as cepaka 'cempaka flower’ in simile in kyai sĕstradilaras script is the perfect breast shape equated with cempaka flower. cempaka flower is a yellow and white flower, its flower buds are shaped like a half ball. the relation of the similarity between breast characteristics with cempaka flowers is the similarity between the breast shape with cempaka flowers. breast of a young woman is still tight and like a half ball, as well as flower buds that look like a half ball. the song ‘tembang’ containing the simile is as follows. tembang gawan gendhing, gending mimi pelog (p.40) (9) tindak mring langon paladi/ kang dherek para bedhaya/ asinjang grompol prasami/ udhĕt ingga tinĕpi/ mĕksih timur dadya pinjung/ suswarja lir cĕpaka// ‘(they) go to langon paladi followed by the (dancers) bedaya (motif) gerempol. (the dancers are wearing) udhet to form into a fist. (they are dancers who) are still young (their) breasts is like (flowers) cempaka’. in data (9) whose breast characteristics are equated with cempaka flowers is the breasts of bedhaya dancers. bedhaya dancers are young, very beautiful and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 193-202 201 have a beautiful body shape. one of the beautiful body parts is the breasts, the bedhaya dancers’ breasts are in medium size and it is still tight. simile in this example belongs to the simile source domain of plant. conclusion based on the nine panyandra that have been analyzed, about the source domains of metaphorical and simile of the body shape of javanese women in kyai sestradilaras manuscript. the nine panyandra of javanese women body shape in kyai sestradilaras manuscript is divided into four categories, 1) eye characteristics, 2) facial characteristics, 3) skin characteristics, and 4) breast characteristics. the source domains of the nine panyandra of javanese women body shape are abstract and concrete, and they are often encountered in the daily life of javanese society. the source domains are 1) the moonlit sky to illustrate the beauty of a woman's eyes, 2) the sky to describe the beauty of a woman's face, 3) the dahlia flower to describe the beauty of a woman's face, 4) the fennel leaves to describe the beauty of a woman's face, 5) the pomegranate fruit to describe the beauty of a woman's face, 6) the moon to describe the beauty of a woman's skin, 7) the golden money ray to depict the beauty of a woman's skin, 8) ivory palm to depict the beauty of a woman's breasts, and 9) cempaka flowers to illustrate the beauty of a woman's breasts. from those descriptions, the nine panyandra of javanese women body shape in kyai sĕstradilaras manuscript refers to the outward beauty of women. however, the real beauty of women is not only the outward beauty, but also the inner beauty. references cruse, a. (2004). meaning in language: an introduction to semantics and pragmatics (2 nd ed.). oxford: oxford university press. febriyanto, m.b. (2012). kyai sĕstradilaras: suntingan, terjemahan, dan analisis teks (skripsi, fakultas ilmu budaya universitas gadjah mada, 2012). halley, m.c. et.al. (1980). linguistisc prespective on literature. london: rougtlededge & kaegan paul. keraf, g. (2010). diksi dan gaya bahasa. jakarta: pt gramedia. kesuma, t.m.j. (2007). pengantar metode penelitian bahasa. yogyakarta: carasvatibooks. knowless, muray., & moon, r. (2006). introducing metaphor. new york: rouledge taylor. kovesces, z. (2000). metaphor and emotion. cambridge: cambridge university press. kovesces, z. (2005). methapor in culture. united kingdom: cambridge university press. kovesces, z. (2010). metaphora a practical introduction (2 nd ed.). new york: oxford university press. kridalaksana, h. (2008). kamus linguistik. jakarta: pt. gramedia pustaka utama. knowles, m., & moon, r. 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(2012). kinanthi terlahir kembali. yogyakarta: pt. bentang pustaka. tofani, m.a. (1995). sari-sari basa jawi pepak. tuban: yayasan amanah. wahab, a. (1995). teori semantik. surabaya: airlangga university press. wahab, a. (1990). metafora sebagai alat pelacak sistem ekologi. yogyakarta: kanisius. wahab, a. (1991). isu linguistik pengajaran bahasa dan sastra. surabaya: airlangga university press. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 37-46 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 37 multicultural education as seen in forrest carter’s the education of little tree ignatius indra kristianto universitas atma jaya yogyakarta ignatius.indrakris@yahoo.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010104 received 14 april 2016; revised 28 february 2017; accepted 11 july 2017 abstract this paper’s primary purpose is to examine the concept and the impact of multicultural education that is seen in the education of little tree. this paper employs american studies perspective and historicism theory in order to obtain the purpose of the study. using american studies perspective, this research views native americans as indigenous people of america. using historicism theory, this research is able to uncover the concept and the impact of multicultural education in the novel by viewing the socio-historical context that is referred by the novel and the socio-historical context when the novel was written and then published. based on the analysis, it can be concluded that the concept of multicultural education that is seen in the the education of little tree is similar to the concept that is promoted by the experts of multicultural education. the education that is given by the grandparents promotes cultural pride, knowledge of historical information of a culture, and respect towards other cultures. furthermore, there are several positive impacts of multicultural education that is seen in the education of little tree, they are: first, children possess cultural pride; second, children possess the historical knowledge of their own culture; third, children possess the cultural knowledge of other cultures in their society; and fourth, children respect other cultures in their society. keywords: concept, multiculturalism, impact, native american, education introduction education is an interesting topic to be explored since education is very important for everyone. education can serve as a means to elevate a person’s knowledge and status in a society. on the other hand, education can serve as a means to control and rule minority groups in a society. one of the examples was education that was given to native americans. native americans were forced to assimilate into america, since native americans were considered as uncivilized people. one of the ways to assimilate native americans was to educate native americans children using education that is based on whites’ educational system. fortunately, the civil rights movement in the 1960s changed the perspective of many americans. americans began to insert multiculturalism into their educational system. thus, the concept of multicultural education started to emerge mailto:ignatius.indrakris@yahoo.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 37-46 38 in america. based on those backgrounds, this paper investigates about the concept of multicultural education through the education that is given to native americans. in order to achieve that goal, this paper primary purpose is to examine the concept and the impact of multicultural education that is seen in the education of little tree. theory this research applies american studies perspective as the foundation for explaining the concept of multicultural education and its impact as seen in the education of little tree. in his work paradigm drama, tremain mcdowell (1948) (as cited in merideth, 1968) explains that, american studies is a “synthesis of knowledge” which applies interdisciplinary approach as a holistic study of american culture. it is challenging to conduct a study on the concept and the impact of multicultural education as seen in the education of little tree since lucy maddox (1999) stated that american studies as an academic enterprise devoted to the interdisciplinary study of american history and culture. the civil rights movement in america in the 1960s and 1970s changed american studies’ theory and method. american studies scholars explored wider boundaries such as black studies, gender studies, ethnic studies, etc. based on those statements, this paper conducts a research about education which was given to native americans children. to analyze the concept of multicultural education and the impact of multicultural education as seen in the education of little tree this paper employs historicism theory in its analysis. raman selden (2005) argued that historicism was the offspring of hegelian idealism and several major ‘historicist’ studied literature in the context of social, political and cultural history. according to palmer (1987), historicism is usually reserved for that approach to literature which sets it in the context of ideas, conventions and attitudes of the period in which it was written. by using historicism theory this paper is able to uncover the concept and the impact of multicultural education in the novel by viewing the socio-historical context that is referred by the novel and the socio-historical context when the novel was written and then published. the descriptive qualitative method is applied in this paper. creswell (2003) stated that qualitative method was described as an approach used to gather data systematically, but the data were purely descriptive, and therefore not numerical. the paper also applies library research in order to obtain better understanding of the problem and in order to obtain data for the research. the complete study of this paper contains of data collection and data analysis. in data collection, the researcher applies library research in order to obtain better understanding of the problem and to obtain data for the paper. the data is divided into two categories: primary data and secondary data. primary data used in this paper is a novel entitled the education of little tree by forrest carter. the secondary data are any data gathered from books, journals, research papers, e-books and e-journals which support the analysis of the research. multiculturalism and multicultural education the idea of a multicultural society has become an official policy in many western cultures and represents a liberal democratic attempt to promote ethnic or ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 37-46 39 racial equality. baker (2004) stated that as a policy approach it has been influential in the education and cultural spheres where it has underpinned attempts to introduce people to a range of different beliefs, values, customs and cultural practices. for example, the teaching of multi-faith religious education and the performance of rituals became facets of educational policy. furthermore, according to feinberg (1996), there are three main goals of multiculturalism in education, namely: 1) cultural pride should be encouraged, 2) cultural respect should be fostered, and (3) cultural information should inform children about the range of historical experiences that have affected those who are or have been considered culturally different. from the previous concept of multiculturalism, educational practitioners inserted multiculturalism into educational system. multicultural education has been used by countries all over the world in referring to educational efforts that have attempted to inculcate more positive values about human pluralism and improve the learning potential for all students. according to ellen swartz (1992), multicultural education is an education that uses methodologies and instructional materials which promote equity of information and high standards of academic scholarship in an environment that respects the potential of each student. furthermore, according to james a. banks (1997), multicultural education as an idea holds that all students—regardless of their gender, social class, ethnic, racial, or cultural characteristics—should have an equal opportunity to learn. the socio-historical context of the novel in the early 19 th century, education for native americans was mainly proposed by missionaries and ex-generals of american army. some native americans children were put under white educational system in order to assimilate them. native americans children as young as five years old were sent to the boarding schools. according to engan-barker (2004), the shock, fear, and loneliness which these children faced upon being uprooted from everything familiar and known can only be imagined. as the new century began, the continued inability of boarding schools and english-only education to transform native americans into white people led to disillusionment and lowered expectations for native americans education. enganbarker (2004) stated that increasingly, native americans were viewed in the same light as blacks at that time: as a permanent underclass for whom an inferior, nonacademic, vocational education was appropriate and adequate. the life of native americans changed during the 1970’s, under presidents richard nixon, gerald ford, and jimmy carter. in may, 1977, the congressional american indian policy review commission, which included five native americans members for the first time, made more than two hundred recommendations, most of which aimed at confirming all tribes’ power to enact laws within the confines of their own reservations. the condition also changed in the educational system for native americans. the indian education act in 1972 provided for special programs benefiting native americans children in reservation schools as well as those attending urban public schools. it was amended in 1975 to require that native americans parents be involved in the planning of these programs. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 37-46 40 in 1960s the usa experienced civil rights movement. civil rights movement changed cultural point of view in america. oppressed ethnic groups in america started to fight for their civil rights. the need of education was the trigger of civil rights movement. civil rights movement also brought impact to native americans. a significant but controversial piece of legislation designed to guarantee the rights of individual native americans came about in special native americans titles of the civil rights act signed into law on april 11, 1968. according to barret (2003), federal recognition or regulation of tribes does not make them part of the united states government or guarantee constitutional protection for tribal members. the existence of tribal governments and tribal courts had raised the issue of protection of the individual rights of native americans living in a tribal context. theory application the concept of multicultural education in the novel in order that little tree may be able to live successfully and harmoniously in a culturally diverse society, he needs to comprehend firstly about the culture of his own tribe, the cherokee. it is a custom for native americans that many hours are spent with their elders, especially grandparents. they do that in order to learn tribal history and myths. children are the key to the future, and elders seek to instil in them the tribe’s ancient traditions. little tree needs to understand the reasons behind his grandparents’ choice of a way of life. he also needs to understand the way of life of his people, the cherokee. the knowledge of cherokee’s way of life is very important for little tree so that he is aware where he is and where he belongs in the society. that way, little tree may not be carried away by the dominant culture of his society. the first thing to be introduced to little tree about cherokee’s culture is about the traditional religion of cherokee. cherokee believes in the existence of spirits. the strongest spirit for cherokee is the earth mother. the second thing to be introduced to little tree about cherokee’s culture is about cherokee’s way in fulfilling their daily needs. since cherokee depends heavily on the nature to fulfil their daily needs, it is very important to take care of the nature. cherokee will only take what they need from the nature. the grandmother added the knowledge about cherokees’ way in fulfilling their daily needs by giving information about plants. the grandfather added the knowledge about cherokees’ way in fulfilling their daily needs by giving information about cherokees’ system of planting. the cherokees’ system of planting is different from the white’s system of planting. the third thing to be introduced to little tree about cherokee’s culture is about cherokee’s way to handle things, such as facing a situation or solving a problem. little tree learns that in order to solve any problem in his life, he must keep his cool and use senses all the time. that way, he may be able to find the best solution for his problems. the grandmother adds the knowledge of cherokee’s way to handle things by giving the knowledge of body living mind and spirit mind. by using spirit mind, little tree may be able to understand more about the nature and other people that he encounters in life. furthermore, by using spirit mind, little tree may be able to see the true nature of people who he meets. he can also read ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 37-46 41 the signs from the nature because sometimes nature gives out signs in order to give hints that something is going to happen. in the early twentieth century, american government showed little interest in retaining native americans’ culture. however, in 1928 there was an investigation conducted by lewis meriam, a student of native americans culture. she criticized american policy that showed no intention in preserving native americans’ culture. the report of investigation advocated spending more money for economic assistance and suggested that the aid go directly to local tribal councils. the councils, rather than bureau of indian affairs officials, should decide how to spend the funds. according to tischauser (2003), meriam called for a policy of cultural pluralism: native americans should be allowed to live by their old customs and values if they chose. it would lead to milestone legislation in 1934, the indian reorganization act. the second knowledge that little tree needs to comprehend is the knowledge of the history of cherokee. it is very essential that little tree comprehends the history of his own tribe. the cherokees lost their land although they had established the cherokee nation. according to pritzker (1998), the cherokees nations was founded in 1827 with “western” democratic institution and a written constitution (which specifically disenfranchised african americans and women). after the finding of gold in cherokee’s land, most of cherokee were forced to move to the west of mississippi river. the government passed the 1830 indian removal act. they were forced to live in reservation. some cherokee who could escape from the forced removal to the west stayed to live in the mountains of north carolina. the history of cherokee that is told by the grandparents to little tree is the trail of tears. it reveals to little tree that despite the cherokees were in a sorrowful condition, they held their pride as cherokee very high. it is the reason behind the preservation of cherokee’s culture and way of life. they do not want to lose their identity as cherokee, so they maintain their way of life and culture despite being oppressed and dominated by white’s culture. the government tries to civilize native americans in order to assimilate them into white’s society without considering the existing native americans’ culture and way of life. american government wants to educate native americans children using white’s educational system so that native americans can merge into white’s society. the third knowledge that little tree needs to comprehend is the knowledge of other cultures in the society. this knowledge is related to the word kin. for cherokee, understanding is more important than love. little tree must understand the reasons behind an act by a person before he falls into negative prejudice of that person. the same also applies for other culture. little tree has to understand other culture so that he knows the reason behind the existence of cultural differences. the first knowledge of other cultures in little tree’s society is the knowledge of other religion. little tree becomes aware that each religion possesses its own ritual. cherokee embrace mon-o-lah by enjoying the beauty of nature and at the same time preserving the nature. christians accepted god by being baptized using water. however, different denominations have different ways in baptizing using water. and sometimes they fight about it. little tree is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 37-46 42 amazed at the fact that those christians worry about water that much. he thinks that water is abundant in the nature and everyone can use it as they want. it means that nature is a gift from earth mother and no one can claim it as their possession. it is different from the whites who think that possession of natural resources is very important. the second knowledge of other cultures in little tree’s society is the existence of white’s culture. in the early twentieth century, the dominant culture was the white’s culture. the grandmother shares this knowledge to little tree through books. grandfather explains to little tree that the whites have different method in agriculture. since, the whites are ignorant to the nature. the whites will utilize the nature as they please and they will take from the nature as many as they can. it is a comparison between modern agriculture and traditional agriculture. in the early twentieth century, modernization in agriculture meant that farmers were able to produce more. farm began to grow larger. landowner possesses hectares of land. new investors in modern agriculture approach the politicians in order to grab more land from native americans. little tree becomes aware that the possession of land is very important for the whites. the third knowledge of other cultures in little tree’s society is the existence of sharecroppers. sharecroppers are the opposite of wealthy landowners. sharecroppers are poor farmers that possess no land. in order to earn a living, they have to work for a landowner. similar to native americans, sharecroppers also received prejudice from the society. they are considered as lazy and irresponsible. little tree comprehends that prejudice can happens to anyone in the society. even white americans may receive prejudice from the society. the grandparents share the knowledge of the culture of cherokee, the history of cherokee, and the knowledge of other culture in their society because this knowledge is something good that need to be shared. cherokee believes that if a person possesses something good, it is better to share it with anyone. multicultural education as a concept is something good that must be shared to everyone. so that respect and embrace of cultural difference will be accepted by a lot of people. the impact of multicultural education in the novel the first impact that can be seen from the novel is that little tree possesses the cultural pride of cherokee’s culture. following the teaching from his grandfather, little tree will follow “the way” of the cherokee. little tree takes only what he needs from the nature. if natural resources are not protected, the younger generations will be able to utilize them. furthermore, little tree experiences the educational system of the whites when he is forced to live in a christian orphanage by the law. the grandmother already introduces little tree to whites’ culture through books that she reads every sunday night. however, it does not alter little tree’s identity of being a cherokee. it can be seen when little tree is in the christian’s orphanage. when little tree is asked by wilburn about what will he do when he grows up, little tree answered that he wants to be a native american. since he has cultural pride of being a cherokee, he wants to merge with the society without losing his identity as a cherokee. the second impact that can be seen from the novel is that little tree possesses the historical knowledge of his tribe, cherokee. little tree aware that ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 37-46 43 the possession of land is an important matter for the whites. little tree knows that cherokee used to live in a very vast fertile land. unfortunately, the government took the land from native americans by force. little tree comprehends that cherokee was forced to move from their land because the whites found gold on the land. little tree comprehends that in cherokee’s point of view a person or a tribe cannot survive without land. however, cherokee does not have the concept of land possession. land is a gift from earth mother that needs to be preserved for the survival of cherokee. little tree also becomes aware the historical background behind his grandfather’s trade of whiskey making. the third impact that can be seen from the novel is that little tree possesses the knowledge of other culture in his society. little tree becomes aware that the dominant culture in his society is the whites’ culture. the domination of whites’ culture to the culture of native americans can be seen through the infiltration of christianity in the american government policies towards native americans. however, the policies are altered in 1978. according to cannon (2003), on the heels of this symbol of intended reform, the u.s. congress passed the 1978 american indian religious freedom act, which guaranteed freedom for tribes to practice their own traditional religions. this act ended the mixed legacy of several centuries of insistence that missionary conversion and education following christian principles were vital aspects of native americans-white relations in the united states. little tree becomes aware that the cultural difference between native americans and whites can bring misunderstanding and prejudice. the knowledge of other culture makes little tree grow up as a boy who is not naïve or who doesn’t think that all people are nice. his grandparents already teach him the existence of bad person in other culture. little tree is encouraged to use his senses in order to know whether a person is nice or bad. he also learns to be more careful in dealing with another person. little tree becomes aware that the society where he lives in is in trouble. white’s culture is all about earning a lot of money. unfortunately, when the system is damaged, the whites cannot handle the condition well. pine billy says that the world was coming to an end. he said there are rumours of wars, and famine had set on the land. banks are mostly closed and those that are not closed are being robbed all the time. pine billy says there is no money to be had hardly at all. he says that folks are still jumping out of windows in the big cities whenever the notion took them. little tree understands that the event is the great depression. unlike the whites who get influenced heavily by the great depression, native americans do not feel the impact of the great depression. especially for those who still depends on the nature in providing their daily needs. the fourth impact that can be seen from the novel is that little tree is respecting other culture in his society. little tree possesses understanding of other people in his society through the grandparents’ teaching and his own experience. he comprehends that he needs to possess good understanding so that he will not fall into prejudice for other people in the society. it is appropriate with the lesson from the grandfather. understanding is important for cherokee. thus, little tree needs to understand other people in the society. little tree is committed in trying to understand other people in the society. he respects the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 37-46 44 sharecropper family who has to move from one land to another. he respects mr. jenkins who is fair in doing whiskey trading with the grandfather. furthermore, little tree respects the whites’ orientation for money. one of them is the small family’s acquaintances, mr. wine. he is a jew who lives in the settlement but earns his living by fixing clocks. little tree respects the fact that that mr. wine is a thrifty person. since, little tree has respect towards mr. wine; mr. wine gives back the respect by teaching little tree about figures and reading the time. little tree possesses the experience of having education using the whites’ system. little tree is forced to go into a christian’s orphanage by the government. little tree does not like to live in the dormitory because it does not appreciate cultural differences. it only promotes how to be a good citizen and assimilate into white’s society. the reverend who leads the orphanage does not acknowledge little tree’s parents’ marriage. that is why, little tree is considered as a bastard who cannot be saved according christian’s point of view. little tree wants to live in a society where the people are respecting each other without having any prejudice. furthermore, by possessing the knowledge of other culture’s religion, little tree develops a certain point of view towards those religions. when facing white’s religion, he is in the position of onlooker. that is why when little tree is forced to go into christian’s orphanage, he does not complain when he is prohibited from attending the mass. if there is understanding in the society, everyone may be able to work together without any prejudice. little tree gets this lessons from his grandfather. the grandfather has an experience of witnessing this kind of unity when he was a child. two whites were working together with a black man in order to plough the land. it shows that unity between quarrelling parties can be achieved. little tree is amazed by the story. he realizes that unity in the society may be achieved through understanding which resulted respect for other culture in the society. the american government showed respect towards native americans when they enacted the indian self determination and education assistance act of 1975. the act marked a radical change in federal policy—the assimilationist philosophy of the federal government was replaced by policies favoring tribalism and native americans sovereignty. according to barret (2003), the act clearly endorsed native americans decision making, and the preamble declared that the united states recognized its obligation “to respond to the strong expression of the indian people for self-determination by assuring maximum participation in the direction of educational as well as other federal services to indian communities so as to render such services more responsive to the needs and desires of those communities.” conclusion the concept of multicultural education in the education of little tree can be seen from the education that is given by the grandparents to little tree. the concept of multicultural education that is seen in the grandparent’s education is similar to the concept that is promoted by the experts of multicultural education. the education from the grandparents promotes the encouragement of cultural pride in children. the education from the grandparents also promotes the introduction of historical events that have affected those who are or have been ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 37-46 45 considered as culturally different. in that manner, children may be able to understand better those who are or have been considered as culturally different. furthermore, the education by the grandparents also promoted that children’s respect towards other cultures should be fostered. the concept of multicultural education that is seen in the education of little tree also rejects the assimilation purpose of white’s educational system. children shall be able to merge into the society without losing their cultural identity. thus, the concept of multicultural education encourages the maintenance of native rituals and cultures in education. teachers should encourage children to perform their rituals and cultures, such as traditional dances and songs. furthermore, education in a democratic society shall require teachers to respect the rights of students to be culturally different. there are several positive impacts of multicultural education that can be seen from the education of little tree. the first impact is that children possess cultural pride. the second and third impacts of multicultural education are that children possess the historical knowledge of their own culture and knowledge of other cultures in the society. the fourth impact of multicultural education is that children are respecting other cultures. it is fascinating that the education of little tree captures the spirit of multiculturalism in its story. the education of little tree considers that multicultural education as a concept is something good that must be shared to everyone. with that, respect and acceptance of cultural differences are practiced by all the people. references banks, j. a. (1997). multicultural education: theory and practice (6 th ed.). boston: allyn and bacon. baker, c. (2004). the sage dictionary of cultural studies. london: sage publications ltd. barrett, c. a. (2003). indian civil rights act. in carole a. barrett (ed.), american indian history (pp. 193-196). pasadena, ca: salem press inc. cannon, byron d. (2003). indian-white relations: u.s., 1934-2002. in carole a. barrett (ed.), american indian history (pp. 292-300). pasadena, ca: salem press inc. creswell, j. w. (2003). research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches (2 nd ed.). california: sage publications, inc. engan-barker, d. (2004). education: post-contact. in carole a. barrett and harvey j. markovitz (eds.), american indian culture (pp. 245-254). pasadena, ca: salem press inc. feinberg, w. (1996). the goals of multicultural education: a critical reevaluation. new york: philosophy of education. maddox, l. (1999). locating american studies: the evolution of a discipline. baltimore and london: the john hopkins university press. merideth, r. (1968). theory, method and american studies. in robert merideth (ed.), from american studies (pp. 88-124). columbus, oh: charles e. merill. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 37-46 46 palmer, d. j. (1987) historicism. in roger fowler (ed.), a dictionary of modern critical terms (pp. 121-134). new york: routledge & kegan paul. pritzker, b. m. 1998). native americans: an encyclopedia of history, culture, and peoples. santa barbara, ca: abc-clio inc. selden et al. (2005). a reader’s guide to contemporary literary theory (5 th ed.). edinburg gate: pearson education limited. swartz, e. (1992). multicultural education: from a compensatory to a scholarly foundation. in carl a. grant (ed.), research & multicultural education: from the margins to the mainstream (pp. 31-42). washington d.c.: the falmer press. tischauser, l.v. (2003). reservation system of the united states. in carole a. barrett (ed.), american indian history (pp. 478-484). pasadena, ca: salem press inc. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 47-56 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 47 investigating efl learners’ “indonglish” usage by english department students: a qualitative study ikrar genidal riadil independent researcher, indonesia correspondence: ikrargenidal21@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v5i1.1943 received 5 october 2020; accepted 28 september 2021 abstract the aim of this study was to analyze the specific vocabulary in the indonglish phenomenon that the tidar university students use in the educational environment at tidar university, the meaning that exists in indonglish at tidar university, and the impact indonglish usage in the use of indonesian is correct and right in the environment education in universities in tidar university in a signification effort indonesian. indonglish is a term often used for the use of the english language which is nuanced by indonesian culture. indonglish study focuses on environmental education, particularly in higher education that is not only limited to the academic setting but also non-academic. the researchers used qualitative research, the data of this research were a wide range of speeches acquired in an educational environment, especially in java, in which there are forms of language linguistically mixed indonesian and english. locational data source of this research were the perpetrators of students in environmental education at tidar university. the result is the 5th semester students produced 35 indonglish vocabulary and the 7th semester students produced 31 indonglish vocabulary. the basic assumption for determining the locational data sources was the consideration that the students, faculties, and staffs had a varied background of social, economic, cultural so that it was expected to describe the condition of society. the data analysis was conducted by applying the distributional method that was commonly done in linguistics. the method of analysis was done after the data were collected and properly classified. furthermore, the interpretation of the data was done. then, the interpreted data were presented informally. keywords: efl learners, english department students, indoglish, language introduction english is approved as an international language in this world. referring to english, world englishes as an umbrella that differs and analyse of englishes worldwide. as stated by bolton (2012), favour a discussion of “world english” in the singular, and also employ terms such as “global english” and “international english,” while others adopt the same terms in their plural forms. bolton added, in recent years, a plethora of terminology has come into use, including: english as an international (auxiliary) language, global english(es), international english(es), ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 47-56 48 localized varieties of english, new varieties of english, second-language varieties of english, world english(es), new englishes, alongside such more traditional terms as esl (english as a second language) and efl (english as a foreign language). world englishes, narrower sense, “new englishes” focuses on the real characteristics of regional englishes, along with an emphasis on the linguistic description of autonomous varieties of englishes. because people learn english, some people also learn other languages, and this is called multilingual community. because of the importance of english, indonesian government adds english as compulsory foreign language subject at school. however, some schools add other foreign languages such as chinese, japanese, spanish, arabic, and so on to learn it. related to the multilingual community, sociolinguistics studies bring impact for the language used in society. according to wardhaugh (2006), sociolinguistics is the study of our everyday lives – how language works in our casual conversations and the media we are exposed to, and the presence of societal norms, policies, and laws which address language. language is an important aspect of human being. by learning language, people can communicate with each other, get information from one to another and interact (riadil, 2019). language has a big role in human life to make a relation in their environment. one of the expert states that language is used widely in communication between people who do not share the same first (or even second) language (harmer, 2007). it indicates that language is very important to learn in human life (riadil, 2020b). unfortunately, in the real condition, it is still difficult for indonesian students to practice their english ability in daily conversation even though they have been studying english for ten years in formal junior high school, senior high school and university due to they might get a good score of english in their report card but they cannot speak english fluently yet (kayaoğlu & sağlamel, 2013). it is the fact that many english as a foreign language (efl) teachers complain about their speaking classes in which a considerable number of students are not responding actively in speaking exercises (abadi, 2015). inevitably, (saddhono & rohmadi, 2014) stated that indonglish is a term that is often used for language usage english that is still nuanced in indonesian culture and language. speech events like this are deep sociolinguistic studies are often said to be a phenomenon of code mixing and lending or "borrowing". however, when examined further and in depth the shape of the course indonglish is a unique and unique form in which the existing form is a blend of english and indonesian. indonglish is a special form because although it is a combination of indonesian and english forms but this form of indonglish is also not clearly included in indonesian or languages english. therefore, the form of speech is english but the meaning contained in it is indonesian culture and language. the emergence of this indonglish form in general is not due to lack of competence from the speaker. however, sometimes it arises because of certain backgrounds and purposes the speaker. based on the observations of researchers so far, it turns out that many factors are the background of the use of the indonglish form in society. one background the emergence of this indonglish form is as a form of prestige or prestige. this phenomenon often used by celebrities in indonesia, especially in infotainment. speakers feel prestigious when using indonglish forms. therefore, this form of indonglish used by celebrities, this phenomenon is then copied by the public ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 47-56 49 general, especially teenagers. teenagers in general will feel prestigious when they can follow the trends carried out by celebrities, one of which is related to use of the language. another background that drives the emergence of the indonglish form is because in indonesian the exact form has not yet been found when expressing said speech. often there are words or phrases contained in indonesian no can fully represent the purpose of the speech so that the speaker is more frequent use a foreign language, in this case english (nurmasari, subiyantoro, & fadhilah, 2017). but the form of language what emerged was nuanced in indonesian and this was later stated with the indonglish form. this indonglish form is a typical form, where the form is in english but its meaning has entered into the language culture indonesia. the indonglish phenomenon is an example of "up to you" speech. mean the speech has an indonesian cultural background, moreover there is a word which states the submission of the speaker to the speech partner. if in english language the word occurs in formal and serious situations but in indonesia the utterances, it occurs in informal or relaxed situations. indonglish usage in society is mostly dominated by young people which is teenagers. this is because at that age teenagers are looking for identity with various ways to express, one of them with language. therefore, at that age you can it is said to be of school and college age so that many indonglish studies are found on the realm of education. this indonglish phenomenon often arises when a fellow teenager communicates with a variety of backgrounds. based on the researcher's hypothesis, the use of indonglish in the educational environment apparently not solely as a form to be prestigious but also because of demands academic. this is because in the environment of education, science and technology very rapidly developing so that the terms are up to date and indonesian don't have the right word equivalent. therefore, research is concerned with being, background and determinants of the use of indonglish in the educational environment, especially in higher education is needed to identify the motives for the emergence of indonglish. the focus of indonglish studies is in the educational environment, especially in this tertiary institution not limited to the academic atmosphere but also non-academic. nonacademic atmosphere in here intended are events that occur when students interact with friends, lecturers, and other academicians in the education environment. this is meaningful in research this does not rule out speech events that tend to be informal in general outside the context of the purpose and educational environment. this is because it is in informal speech events that natural, deep forms of linguistic forms emerge the actual context of linguistic research must be a preference for illustration at tidar university in central java the real language situation. related to the problems and urgency of research on indonglish at tidar university in central java, the objectives of this study are: (1) what are the specific vocabulary in the indonglish phenomenon that the tidar university students use in the educational environment at tidar university?, (2) describing the meaning that exists in indonglish at tidar university, (3) impact indonglish usage in the use of indonesian is good and right in the environment education in universities in tidar university in a signification effort indonesian. the benefits that can be taken on this research day can be divided into two, namely the theoretical benefits and practical benefits. the theoretical benefit of this research is adding studies in the field of linguistics, especially in the field of sociology. research related to language with any object of study will contribute to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 47-56 50 the development and development in sociolinguistic science. as a science, studies in the field of sociolinguistics will always be dynamic even though sometimes when viewed from practical science, this study is considered something small and meaningless. however, it must be emphasized that with the number of studies in the field of sociolinguistics will certainly enrich the study of sociolinguistics in future. this journal research is relevant because this research is about language, a mixed language between indonesian and english and the object is indonesian efl learners which majoring english education program. inevitably, these students should produce plenty of english words when they are speaking in english. in addition, this research paper is also contemporary for other researchers because they will know that indonglish term is exist and numerous of people or even students use it whether they are majoring english language or not. besides, it is an interesting research to be conducted because we may know that from this research the readers can pursue their skill in english, they will decrease their awareness in speaking english. there are certain factors that causes people hardly to speak english is because they think if they sometimes mix the language within l1 and l2 to be in the same sentence when they utter, that would be embarrassing, but in fact, it is good to mix the l1 and l2 in speaking, it can increase their confidence so they can fully speak english and majoring numerous of english words. the practical benefit of this research is that it provides a clear understanding of the relationship with the linguistic phenomenon that is around us. good understanding is related to the use of existing languages will have an impact on better interactions. this is certainly very important because the use of language in the educational environment sometimes has a wide-ranging impact the community. the educational environment, especially in tidar university, is approached by the wider community as a domain filled with intellectuals and academics. as we know it that higher education is the beginning of the good and bad use of language starts. if the use of language in tidar university is good, then the view of the community will be good and vice versa. therefore, the results of this study are expected to be selfreflection and even reflection for the academic community in tidar university, both lecturers, students, and employees. with these efforts, it is hoped that more indonesian dignified and become a pride for the people and nation of indonesia. the goals of this research is to investigate how much the students produces english words and how frequent the students mix the language within l1 and l2. and then, we will know that from this research the readers can pursue their skill in english, they will decrease their awareness in speaking english. there are certain factors that causes people hardly to speak english is because they think if they sometimes mix the language within l1 and l2 to be in the same sentence when they utter, that would be embarrassing, but in fact, it is good to mix the l1 and l2 in speaking, it can increase their confidence so they can fully speak english and majoring numerous of english words. method qualitative research used in this research. patton & cochran 2007) defines qualitative research is categorized by its purposes, which belongs to understanding some feature of social life, and this technique which is generate the word, rather than numbers, as data for the analysis. qualitative research is understanding of social phenomenon based on participant’s point of view (williamson, given, & scifleet, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 47-56 51 2018). in order to increase information into a certain phenomenon, such as an environment, a process, or a belief (cam & tran, 2017). the purpose of this study was to analyze the specific vocabulary in the indonglish phenomenon that the tidar university students use in the educational environment at tidar university, the meaning that exists in indonglish at tidar university, and the impact indonglish usage in the use of indonesian is good and right in the environment education in universities in tidar university in a signification effort indonesian. the object of this research was 5th and 7th semester english department students in tidar university. since this research showed a discourse analysis, the researcher used the transcripts of student utterances. to instigate the study, the researcher defined what indonglish are rendering to some experts. then, the researcher observed and recorded the 5th and 7th semester english department students in tidar university of their conversations. after collecting the objects of this research, the researcher wrote the transcript of the selected conversations from the voice records. in the next part of the research process, the voice records and the transcripts were analyzed by using the theories. in this process, the researcher used three steps. first, the researcher observed and recorded the 5th and 7th semester english department students in tidar university of their conversations, and then found the words or vocabulary containing indonglish in their utterances. second, the findings were analyzed and classified into the analyze the specific vocabulary in the indonglish phenomenon that the tidar university students use in the educational environment at tidar university. third, the findings of classifications were defined and explained as the possible reasons why 5th and 7th semester english department students in tidar university used indonglish technique in their daily conversations. those three steps were to respond and answered the research questions in this study. finally, the researcher drew the conclusion based on the finding on this research paper. findings and discussion findings lowenberg in (riadil, 2020a) stated that prestige may still be a secondary motivation for speakers, while supporting motivation is a special meaning in the realm that drives modern. indonesians can produce semantics that they get in english, and they will buy from english to be able to find meaning the same as using english. furthermore, it was stressed that indonesian was a language that was constantly strived to become a dignified language. dignified language usually has a high power of expression. that is, the language can be used to accommodate a variety of functions. thus it can be emphasized that a dignified language is a language that can carry many functions. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 47-56 52 table 1. type of indonglish utterance of 5th and 7th semester students no type of indonglish utterance (5th semester) total type of indonglish utterance (7th semester) total 1 guys 1 all 1 2 submit 2 submit 2 3 paper 4 proposal 4 4 download 1 paraphrase 1 5 free 1 detect 1 6 what 1 plagiarism 1 7 deadline 2 oh i see 2 8 hardcopy 1 guys 1 9 softcopy 1 breakfast 1 10 i think 1 spicy 1 11 yes 1 i think 1 12 browsing 1 yes 1 13 references 2 good 1 14 journal 2 idea 1 15 lowbat 1 oh okay 1 16 games 1 let’s go there, then 1 17 searching 2 anyway 1 18 anyway 1 stay 1 19 keyword 1 teaching english as foreign language 1 20 up to you 1 action 1 21 keep 1 research 1 22 calm 1 data 1 23 good 2 really 1 24 save 1 cool 1 25 send 1 thank you 1 26 thanks 1 calm 1 total 35 total 31 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 indonglish usage 5th semester students 7th semester students according to the table above the 5th semester students produced a lot of more english words when they speak in l1 and l2 language. it shows that the fifth ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 47-56 53 semester students produced 35 words rather than the seventh semester students who only produced 31 english words. in addition, we can conclude that the 5th semester students are more confidence speaking in two languages which is very good things, they can increase their speaking skill in english as a foreign language more proper and efficient. discussions in the situation as above, indonesian language occupies two positions, namely position as national language and position as state language. in its position as a national language, indonesian has a number of functions, namely symbols of national pride, symbols of national identity, unifying tools of people who have different socio-cultural backgrounds and languages, means of inter-regional and intercultural communication. in the position of the state language, the indonesian language functions as the official language of the state, the language of instruction in the world of education, a means of communication at the national level for the benefit of development and governance, and as a tool for the development of culture, science, and technology. one more thing that needs to be added, is that in its position as a state language, indonesian also functions as the language of the mass media. in this study, several examples of indonglish usage among students in tidar university can be explained: 5th semester student (1) student 1 : hai, guys, udah submit tugas uts paper mata kuliah maam lilia belum? (2) student 2 : belum nih, aku masih nge download beberapa materi. ini materinya ada yang gak free tapi harus bayar. padahal senin besok harus di submit. (4) student 1 : what? ndak senin minggu depan to? (5) student 2 : ngawur, senin besok. makanya aku buat dateline hari ini harus selesai buat paper nya karena dateline udah mepet banget. (6) student 3 : tugasnya hardcopy atau softcopy? (7) student 1 : dua-duanya deh, i think. (8) student 2 : yes, dua-duanya. ini aku lagi browsing artikelnya kok gak ada ya? susah banget nyari artikel dan references journal tentang materi paper ku, wah lowbat juga laptopku. (9) student 3 : lah kamu sambil main games sih. (10) student 2 : engga kok. ini aku masih cari materi dan references journal tapi belum dapet. (11) student 1 : santai aja, coba aku searching di google. biasanya cepat ketemunya. anyway, carinya keyword nya apa? (12) student 2 : up to you lah yang penting ada hubungannya dengan tema paper aku. (13) student 1 : oke. lah ini banyak hasil searchingnya. yang penting materi dah ada semula. nggak usah panik keep calm aja hahaha. (14) student 2 : lah iya. good good. ini bagus artikelnya, tolong di save dan send ke whatsapp ku ya. thanks ya bro. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 47-56 54 explanations and informations: 1. speech performer: speech actors are fifth semester students at a tertiary institution in central java. speakers and speech partners are male with an average age of 20-21 years. the speakers are javanese ethnic background. 2. speech situation: speech situation is non-formal because it occurs on campus outside the learning process. 3. speech topics: tudents are looking for references to complete course assignments on campus. 4. objective speech: students discuss to look for material in order to complete the assignment from the lecturer. 5. location of speech: speech events occur in class on a campus that occur outside the teaching and learning process. 7th semester student (1) student 1 : hai, all, udah submit laporan proposal belom? (2) student 2 : belum nih, aku masih nge paraphrase beberapa kalimat. soalnya masih ada beberapa kalimat yang ke detect plagiarism (4) student 1 : oh i see (5) student 2 : eh guys, makan yuk, udah pada breakfast belom? (6) student 3 : belom, ayo makan yuk, aku lagi mau makan yang spicy gitu nih (7) student 1 : i think, seblak enak deh (8) student 2 : yes, seblak enak tuh, good idea (9) student 3 : oh okay deh, let’s go there then (10) student 2 : eh anyway, submit proposal nya kapan deh? (11) student 1 : rabu depan deh, santai aja, stay calm hahahah (12) student 2 : oh i see, oke deh (13) student 1 : proposal kamu tentang apa emang? (14) student 2 : proposal ku tentang teaching english as foreign language, tapi action research sih, ambil data pas kemarin ppl (16) student 1 : wah mantap, really cool (17) student 2 : hahaha thank you deh explanations and informations: 1. speech performer: speech actors are seventh semester students at a tertiary institution in central java. speakers and speech partners are male with an average age of 20-21 years. the speakers are javanese ethnic background. 2. speech situation: speech situation is non-formal because it occurs on campus outside the learning process. 3. speech topics: students are looking for references to complete course assignments on campus. 4. objective speech: students discuss to look for material in order to complete the assignment from the lecturer. 5. location of speech: speech events occur in class on a campus that occur outside the teaching and learning process. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 47-56 55 conclusion this research is very close to the position of indonesian as a state language, especially in relation to its function as a vehicle for education because speech events occur in tertiary institutions that are included in the realm of education. in general, it can be said that the mastery of indonesian by students is apparently not good enough. motivation to learn indonesian in general is also not high enough among college students. most stated that they felt bored in learning indonesian because from the lowest to the highest level of education they learned indonesian, and their language authority did not improve. with this background indonglish then emerged as a form of speech by young people that occurred in the realm of education. indonglish also appears as a form of identity and identity search for teenagers who have curiosity and experiment, including the use of the language. the result is the 5th semester students produced 35 indonglish vocabulary and the 7th semester students produced 31 indonglish vocabulary. the basic assumption for determining the locational data sources was the consideration that the students, faculties, and staffs had a varied background of social, economic, cultural so that it was expected to describe the condition of society. the data analysis was conducted by applying the distributional method that was commonly done in linguistics. the method of analysis was done after the data were collected and properly classified. furthermore, the interpretation of the data was done. then, the interpreted data were presented informally. references abadi, c. p. (2015). developing speaking skill in efl english course. journal on english as a foreign language, 5(2), 133. https://doi.org/10.23971/jefl.v5i2.373 bolton, k. (2012). world englishes and linguistic landscapes. world englishes. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971x.2011.01748.x cam, l., & tran, t. m. t. (2017). an evaluation of using games in teaching english grammar for first year english-majored students at dong nai technology university. international journal of learning, teaching and educational research, 16(7), 55–71. retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ea44/48f1c6cbb8dab7420abbd20a993a8672820 6.pdf harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english languag teaching. 394–409. kayaoğlu, m. n., & sağlamel, h. (2013). students’ perceptions of language anxiety in speaking classes. journal of history culture and art research. https://doi.org/10.7596/taksad.v2i2.245 nurmasari, l., subiyantoro, s., & fadhilah, s. (2017). primary school students’ barriers on learning javanese language: a case study in central java, indonesia. https://doi.org/10.2991/ictte-17.2017.103 quinn patton, m., & cochran, m. (2007). a guide to using qualitative research methodology. in medecins sans frontieres. retrieved from http://msf.openrepository.com/msf/handle/10144/84230 riadil, i. g. (2019). the efl learner’s perspectives about accuracy, fluency, and complexity in daily routines. journal of research on applied linguistics, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 47-56 56 language, and language teaching, 2(2), 160–166. riadil, i. g. (2020a). a study of students’ perception: identifying efl learners’ problems in speaking skill. international journal of education, language, and religion, 2(1), 31–38. riadil, i. g. (2020b). investigating efl learners’reading comprehension problems and strategies in tidar university. jellt (journal of english language and language teaching), 4(1), 48–58. saddhono, k., & rohmadi, m. (2014). a sociolinguistics study on the use of the javanese language in the learning process in primary schools in surakarta, central java, indonesia. international education studies. https://doi.org/10.5539/ies.v7n6p25 wardhaugh, r. (2006). an introduction to sociolinguistics (5th ed.). in blackwell publishing. williamson, k., given, l. m., & scifleet, p. (2018). qualitative data analysis. in research methods: information, systems, and contexts: second edition. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-08-102220-7.00019-4 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 256-366 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 256 analysis on clarity and correctness of google translate in translating an indonesian article into english tira nur fitria institut teknologi bisnis aas indonesia correspondence: tiranurfitria@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i2.3205 received 22 march 2021; accepted 30 march 2021 abstract the objective of this study is to analyze the aspects of clarity and correctness in google translate’s ability in translating an indonesian article from english into indonesian. this research refers to qualitative research. data used in this research is a published indonesian article which is translated into english by using google translate. based on the analysis, the researcher concludes that google translate is a machine translator, but there is always going to be potentially less clarity and correctness at the end of the translation product such as in indonesian articles into english. because english grammar is a complicated thing to be learned, people perhaps cannot expect more that machine translator understands every aspect of the way human beings communicate with each other. that is why the answer about the clarity and the correctness of google translate is that it still has a way to go before it can consistently, clearly, and correctly translate the language without errors. in the clarity aspect, there is still no clarity in english translation by google translate, even it translated the language word-for-word. in the correctness aspect, it refers to the mechanical rule in writing which is related to grammar, punctuation, and spelling. some examples of noncorrectness are related to grammar and punctuation errors. machine translators have come a long way in a short amount of time, but some features still lack good translation such as in aspects of grammar and punctuation. keywords: google translate, translation, article, clarity, correctness introduction the idea of using computers in translating human language is almost as old as the computer itself (trujillo, 2012, p. 4). machine translations have also increased in complexity and usability in recent years, beyond what we expected. it has increased in recent years because of the increase in english communication between countries in the world (li et al., 2014). many people have proposed that an endangered species could be human translators. currently, several online translator sites can translate every language in the world. machine translation (mt) is a perfectly appropriate solution to translation, but where there is a lack of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 256-366 257 comprehension or unreasonable standards, complications often follow (calvin, 2017). machine translation translates text or voice from one language into another using algorithms. to easily substitute words in one language with words in another, mt uses a machine translation engine but that alone typically does not generate the highest quality translation of a text. (gubler, 2016) states that machine translation is a machine that uses translation tools to translate written or spoken texts from one language to another, such as a computer, tablet, or smartphone. because of its simplicity, google translate is one of the most used machine translation services. at present, more than 100 billion words a day are translated (mcguire, 2019). he also adds that the use of automatic machine translation such as statistical machine translation service, google translate (gt) was launched in april 2006, using documents from the united nations and the european parliament to gather linguistic data. it searched for similarities in these documents during translation to help determine what the correct translation was (twose, 2019). google translate has been the go-to resource for fast, easy foreign language translations on the internet (sommerlad, 2018). indeed, millions of people worldwide use this service every day to translate any language (herlina et al., 2019). correctness is about a mechanical rule in writing. it has two points, both factual precision and mechanical correctness (major, 2008, p. 8). correctness is also related to grammar, punctuation, and spelling even capitalization. some examples of correctness are misspelling (or spelling error), punctuation error, agreement of subject and verb, and other common errors (major, 2008, p. 10). nordquist (2019) states that the term conciseness (clarity) refers to language that is brief and to the point in speech or writing. concise writing must convey a simple meaning using an economy of words to be effective. conciseness or clarity is essential to getting your message across accurately and efficiently. justesen (2017) states that concise means writing everything that is needed in as few words as possible. in improving the comprehension and understanding of writing, clarity is one of the essential dimensions of good writing. clear writing communicates best (harris, 2017). according to li (2013, p. 189), clarity refers to words or groups of words used to express the intended meaning correctly without ambiguity to the other. there are some previous studies relating to this research. the first, research is written by nadhianti (2016) entitled “an analysis of accuracy level of google translate in english-bahasa indonesia and bahasa indonesia-english translations”. the goal of this study is to find the accuracy level of google translate in english–bahasa indonesia and bahasa indonesia–english translations. the second research is written by ulfah (2015) entitled “an accuracy analysis in indonesian-english translation using “google translate” machine translation”. the goal of this study is to figure out the effectiveness of "google translate" in translating english sentences into indonesian sentences. there are difference and similarity both two previous studies focus on the accuracy and this research. the two previous studies above focus on the accuracy level of google translate, and they also have the same purpose of the research to find the accuracy level or the effectiveness of translation. while, this study, also ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 256-366 258 focuses on google translate, but this research wants to know the aspect of clarity and correctness of the translation result. based on the explanation above, the researcher wants to study google translate. therefore, the researcher writes the title “analysis of google translate in translating article from indonesian into english: clarity and correctness”. the objectives of this study are to analyze the aspects of clarity and correctness in google translate’s ability in translating indonesian articles from english into indonesian. method this research refers to qualitative research. according to watzlawik & born (2007, p. 59), qualitative research is a research approach that leads to a comprehensive understanding of the perception, explanation, and analysis of reality. the principle is focusing on a single case. the technique of collecting data used is document analysis. as stated by patton (2002, p. 4) that qualitative data findings consist of three kinds of data collection, such as in-depth or open-ended interviews, observation (direct), and written documents. so that, the document used in this research is taken from an indonesian article written by fitria (2018b) entitled “implementasi program kegiatan "english club" sebagai salah satu kegiatan mahasiswa di stie aas surakarta”. then, this article is translated into english. the translations can be found in various writing both non-academic writing and academic writing, such as article journals (fitria, 2018a). document content is important because such content may be studied during the research (silverman, 2004, p. 77). the technique of analyzing data in this research uses three flows of steps, such as 1) data condensation or data reduction, 2) data display, and 3) drawing conclusions or verification (miles et al., 2014, p. 12). findings and discussion some findings related to this research show the aspects of clarity and correctness in google translate’s ability in translating indonesian articles from english into indonesian. there are some examples of clarity and correctness in translation result by using google translate as follow: clarity clarity refers to words or groups of words used to express the intended meaning correctly without ambiguity to the other. for example: indonesian article : …perlombaan bahasa inggris yang diikuti mahasiswa sejumlah anggota english club, … google translation : …english language competition which is participated by a number of english club members, … the example above shows that the indonesian article is translated into english by using google translate, but it is seen that there is no clarity in english translation. in indonesian, “sejumlah” is translated to be “a number of”. the phrase may be wordy so that it is considering changing the other wording which cannot influence the meaning in the context. so, the better english translation is “some”, “several”, or “many”. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 256-366 259 indonesian article : …agar mahasiswa mampu berkomunikasi dan berwacana dalam bahasa inggris. google translation : …skills so that students are able to communicate and speak in english. the example above shows that the indonesian article is translated into english by using google translate, but it is seen that there is no clarity in english translation. in indonesian, “mampu” is translated to be “are able to” or “to be + able to”. the phrase may be wordy so that it is considering changing the other wording which cannot influence the meaning in the context. so, the better english translation is “can”. indonesian article : ada beberapa kegiatan yang bisa dilakukan pada kegiatan english club, … google translation : there are several activities that can be carried out in english club activities, … the example above shows that the indonesian article is translated into english by using google translate, but it is seen that there is no clarity in english translation. in indonesian, “ada beberapa kegiatan” is translated to be “there are several activities”. the meaning is similar to the indonesian meaning, but google translate translates it word-by-word. the english translation can be changed into “several activities” only by removing “there are” because it cannot influence the meaning in the context. so, a better english translation is “several activities”. indonesian article : … apa yang mereka lihat atas dasar minat mereka, latar belakang, pengalaman, dan sikap. google translation : …what they see on the basis of their interests, backgrounds, experiences, and attitudes. the example above shows that the indonesian article is translated into english by using google translate, but it is seen that there is no clarity in english translation. in indonesian, “atas dasar” is translated to be “on the basis of”. the phrase may be wordy so that it is considering changing the other wording which cannot influence the meaning in the context. so, a better english translation is “based on”. indonesian article : maka peneliti mengambil kesimpulan bahwa… google translation : the researcher draws the conclusion that… the example above shows that the indonesian article is translated into english by using google translate, but it is seen that there is no clarity in english translation. in indonesian, “mengambil kesimpulan” is translated to be “draws the conclusion”. the meaning is the same as the indonesian meaning, but google translate translates it word-by-word. the english translation can be changed into ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 256-366 260 “draws the conclusion” only because it cannot influence the meaning in the context. then, the phrase “conduct research in” maybe unnecessarily wordy. it is considered to replace the noun with a corresponding verb. so, a better english translation is “conclude”. indonesian article : …sebagaimana yang nyata terjadi dalam arti temuan fakta google translation : …it actually occurs in the sense of fact finding… the example above shows that the indonesian article is translated into english by using google translate, but it is seen that there is no clarity in english translation. in indonesian, “sebagaimana yang nyata” is translated to be “actually”. the phrase “conduct research in” maybe unnecessarily in this sentence. it is considered to replace or remove it. so, a better english translation is “some members”. indonesian article : … english club untuk melakukan penelitian dalam kelompok english club… google translation : …english club group to conduct research in the english club the example above shows that the indonesian article is translated into english by using google translate, but it is seen that there is no clarity in english translation. in indonesian, “untuk melakuan penelitian” is translated to be “to conduct research”. the meaning is the same as the indonesian meaning, but google translate translates translated it word-by-word. the english translation can be changed into “research” only by removing “to conduct” because it cannot influence the meaning in the context. then, the phrase “conduct research in” maybe unnecessarily wordy. it is considered to replace the noun with a corresponding verb. so, a better english translation is “some members”. indonesian article : data hasil observasi tersebut kemudian dibandingkan apakah sesuai dengan data hasil wawancara. google translation : the observational data is then compared whether it is in accordance with the interview data. the example above shows that the indonesian article is translated into english by using google translate, but it is seen that there is no clarity in english translation. in indonesian, “sesuai dengan hasil data” is translated to be “in accordance with”. the phrase may be wordy so that it is considering changing the other wording which cannot influence the meaning in the context. so, the better english translation is “by, following, under”. indonesian article : …, dimana mahasiswa duduk dengan cara melingkar… google translation : …, where students sit in a circular way and… the example above shows that the indonesian article is translated into english by using google translate, but it is seen that there is no clarity in english ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 256-366 261 translation. in indonesian, “dengan cara melingkar” is translated to be “in a circular way”. the meaning is similar to the indonesian meaning, but google translate translates translated it word-by-word. the english translation can be changed into “circularly” which refers to an adverb. as we know that in english, the adverb of manner is formed by adjective + ly. while indonesian adverb is formed by ‘dengan + adjective’. this adverb also cannot influence the meaning in the context. so, a better english translation is “circulary”. indonesian article : …, apalagi ada beberapa anggota english club yang merupakan mahasiswa olimpiade. google translation : ,..., especially there are some members of the english club who are olympic students. the example above shows that the indonesian article is translated into english by using google translate, but it is seen that there is no clarity in english translation. in indonesian, “ada beberapa anggota” is translated to be “there are some members of”. the meaning is similar to the indonesian meaning, but google translate translates translated it word-by-word. the english translation can be changed into “some members” only by removing “there are” because it cannot influence the meaning in the context. so, a better english translation is “some members”. correctness correctness is a mechanical rule in writing both factual precision and mechanical. it is also related to grammar, punctuation, and spelling even capitalization. some examples of correctness are misspelling (or spelling error), punctuation error, agreement of subject and verb, and other common errors. for example: grammar grammar is the set of rules that describes how words or word groups can be arranged to form a sentence in a particular language (cowan, 2008, p. 3). fitria (2018a) states that grammar is the system of a language or sometimes it can be said as "rules" of a language. without grammar, we cannot make a good language and the language we produce will not be understood by others (fitria, 2020a). indonesian article : mengungkapkan persepsi pada hakikatnya… google translation : states that perception is essentially the example above shows that the bold phrase is translated into english by using google translate, but it does not show that the correctness in english translation. in indonesian, “hakikatnya” is translated to be “essentially”. the word shows grammar errors. it appears that the adverb “essentially” should be an adjective based on the sentence structure. it should be replaced by an adjective. so, the correct word is “essential”. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 256-366 262 indonesian article : english club banyak ditemui dekat kedutaan inggris lalu merambah ke lembaga pendidikan sebagai ekskul yang cukup diminati. google translation : english club is often found near british embassies and then spread to educational institutions as extracurricular that is quite in demand. the example above shows that indonesian is translated into english by using google translate, but it does not show the correctness in english translation especially in to be because indonesian does not use ‘to be’ like in english. if we see the ‘to be’ is written ‘‘is” refers to the singular. the ‘to be’ here shows grammar errors. it appears that the verb ‘is’ does not agree with the subject. it should be changed by the other verb form. so, the correct verb ‘to be’ is “are” with appropriate with plural subject “british embassies” and “educational institutions”. indonesian article : penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan deskriptif kualitatif. google translation : this research use descriptive qualitative approach. the example above shows that the bold phrase is translated into english by using google translate, but it does not show that the correctness in english translation. the example above shows that the indonesian word “menggunakan” is translated into “use” in english. here, the plural verb ‘use’ does not appear to agree with the singular subject “this research”. it should be changed by the other verb form. so, the correct verb is “uses”. therefore, it shows that google translate cannot translate the word correctly based on the rule of subject-verb agreement in english grammar. indonesian article : …sebagai salah satu variabel campur tangan (intervening variable), bergantung pada faktor-faktor perangsang, … google translation : …as one of the intervening variables, depending on stimulating factors, … the example above shows that the bold phrase is translated into english by using google translate, but it does not show that the correctness in english translation. the example above shows that the indonesian word “bergantung” is translated into “depending” in english. here, the verb ‘depending’ does not appear to agree with the plural subject “intervening variables”. it should be changed by the other verb form. so, the correct verb is “depend”. therefore, it shows that google translate cannot translate the word correctly based on the rule of subject-verb agreement in english grammar. indonesian article : kedua, wall magazine atau majalah dinding yang diadakan setiap sebulan sekali. google translation : second, the wall magazine which is held once a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 256-366 263 month. the example above shows that indonesian is translated into english by using google translate, but it does not show the correctness in english translation especially in grammar. in indonesian, there is not found a determiner or kata sandang, but the result of its english translation appears determiner/article “the” which is unnecessary in this context. it should remove it. indonesian article : jadi hambatan utama mereka adalah waktu yang harus dibagi-bagi dengan kegiatan lain… google translation : so their main obstacle is the time that must be divided with other activities… the example above shows that indonesian is translated into english by using google translate, but it does not show the correctness in english translation especially in grammar. in indonesian, the passive form “dibagi-bagi” is translated into english passive form “divided with” or v3 (by using past participle). google translate translated into word-for-word, “dibagi dengan” into “divided with”. but, there is a grammar error of “divided with”. it appears that preposition use may be incorrect here. google translate does not follow the rule of english grammar about phrase + prepositions. it should be changed into “divided into”. punctuation punctuation is the music of language. without punctuation, the writing can be ambiguous and misinterpretation (a’morelli, 2017). indonesian article : …peristiwa yang nyata terjadi dalam arti temuan fakta. google translation : …event that occurs in the sense of the fact finding. the example above shows that the bold phrase is translated into english by using google translate, but it does not show that the correctness in english translation. in indonesian, “temuan fakta” is translated to be “fact finding”. the meaning is the same as the indonesian meaning, google can translate translated it correctly. but, it shows a punctuation error. it appears that “fact finding” is missing a hyphen. it should be added by a hyphen. so, better writing is “factfinding”. in the aspect of clarity, it refers to the language that is brief and to the point. it means that the use of words or groups of words used to express the intended meaning correctly without ambiguity to the other. indonesian article is translated into english by using google translate, but it shows that there is no clarity in english translation. for example 1) in indonesian, “sejumlah” is translated to be “a number of”. the phrase may be wordy, it should be changed into other words. 2) in indonesian, “mampu” is translated to be “are able to” or “to be + able to”. it should be changed into “can”. 3) in indonesian, “ada beberapa kegiatan” is translated to be “there are several activities”. google translate translates it wordby-word. it should be changed into “several activities”. 4) in indonesian, “atas dasar” is translated to be “on the basis of”. it should be changed into “based on”. 5) in indonesian, “mengambil kesimpulan” is translated to be “draws the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 256-366 264 conclusion”. google translate translated it word-by-word. it should be changed into “conclude”. 6) in indonesian, “sebagaimana yang nyata” is translated to be “actually”. it should be changed into other words. 7) in indonesian, “untuk melakuan penelitian” is translated to be “to conduct research”. google translate it word-by-word. it should be changed into “to research”. 8) in indonesian, “sesuai dengan hasil data” is translated to be “in accordance with”. the phrase is maybe wordy. it should be changed into “by, following, under”. 9) in indonesian, “dengan cara melingkar” is translated to be “in a circular way”. google translate translates it word-by-word. the english translation can be changed into “circularly” which refers to the adverb. it should be changed into “circulary”. then, 10) in indonesian, “ada beberapa anggota” is translated to be “there are some members of”. the meaning is similar to the indonesian meaning, but google translate translates it word-by-word. it should be changed into “some members”. in the aspect of correctness, it refers to the mechanical rule in writing both factual precision and mechanical correctness. correctness is also related to grammar, punctuation, and spelling even capitalization. some examples of correctness are misspelling (or spelling error), punctuation error, agreement of subject and verb, and other common errors. in grammar, for example: translated into english by using google translate, but it does not show that the correctness in english translation. 1) in indonesian, “hakikatnya” is translated to be “essentially”. it appears that the adverb “essentially” should be an adjective based on the sentence structure. it should be replaced by the adjective. so, the correct word is “essential”. 2) in english translation especially to be because indonesian does not use ‘to be’ like in english. if we see the ‘to be’ is written ‘‘is” refers to the singular. it appears that the verb ‘is’ does not agree with the subject. it should be changed by the other verb form. the correct verb ‘to be’ is “are” suitable with plural subject “british embassies” and “educational institutions”. 3) in indonesian, “menggunakan” is translated into “use” in english. the plural verb ‘use’ does not appear to agree with the singular subject “this research”. it should be changed by the other verb form into “uses”. it shows that google translate cannot translate the word correctly based on the rule of subject-verb agreement in english grammar. 4) in indonesian, “bergantung” is translated into “depending” in english. the verb ‘depending’ does not appear to agree with the plural subject “intervening variables”. it should be changed by the other verb form into “depend”. 5) in indonesian, there is not found a determiner or kata sandang, but the result of the english translation, appears determiner/article “the” which is unnecessary in this context. it should remove it. 6) in indonesian, the passive form “dibagi-bagi” is translated into english passive form “divided with” or v3 (past participle). the google translate translates it word-for-word, “dibagi dengan” into “divided with”. it shows the grammar error of “divided with”. the preposition is incorrect. google translate does not follow the rule of english grammar about verb + preposition. it should be changed into “divided into”. it is still difficult to consult grammar books without considerable knowledge of grammar (fitria, 2019). grammar is an important part of the english language that can make the language clear. in punctuation, for example: in indonesian, “temuan fakta” is translated to be “fact finding”. google translate can translate translated it correctly (fitria, 2020b). but, it shows a punctuation error. it appears that “fact finding” is missing a hyphen. it should be added by a hyphen into “fact-finding”. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 256-366 265 google translate is a machine translator, but there is always going to be potentially less clarity and correctness at the end of the translation product. because language is a complicated thing, people perhaps cannot expect more that machine translator understands every aspect of the way human beings communicate with each other by writing. that is why the answer about the clarity and the correctness of google translate is that it still has a ways to go before it can consistently, clearly, and correctly translate without errors. machine translators have come a long way in a short period, but they are still lacking in certain aspects of good writing and translation such as in grammar and spelling. google translate often makes this mistake. rather understandable because the translator is a machine. conclusion google translate (trying to) can translate to and from many other languages. even google translate has been able to recognize the source language that is typed or pasted in the input column. google translate has a fairly good ability to translate various languages, such as english. but if the translation involves a fairly long context, grammar and has specific content, both referring to nuances in the language contained, google translate translation results often even become increasingly difficult to understand. there are some elements of language identification that are still missing understood by a computer/machine translator and can only be understood and assessed by human translators. references a’morelli, r. d. 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(2017, february 17). how to keep your writing concise. constant content. https://www.constant-content.com/content-writingservice/2017/02/how-to-keep-your-writing-concise/ li, t. s. (2013). practical english writing in technical communication: exemplars and learning-oriented assessments. universal-publishers. major, j. s. (2008). writing classified and unclassified papers for national security: a scarecrow professional intelligence education series manual. scarecrow press. mcguire, n. (2019). how accurate is google translate in 2019? argo translation inc. miles, m. b., huberman, a. m., & saldana, j. (2014). qualitative data analysis. sage. nadhianti, m. (2016). an analysis of accuracy level of google translate in english-bahasa indonesia and bahasa indonesia-english translations [unpublished thesis]. universitas negeri yogyakarta. nordquist, r. 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(2007). capturing identity: quantitative and qualitative methods. university press of america. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 194-205 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 194 representation of social actors in the jakarta post and tempo about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case and peace journalism yosephine wastu prajnaputri sanata dharma university correspondence: yosephineprajna@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.3704 received 24 september 2021; accepted 23 march 2022 abstract religious radicalism which leads to terrorist attacks has long been a thorn in indonesia as a culturally rich secular country. in spite of that, present-day radical religious groups are weakened after years of spreading terrors. their weakening is indicated especially by their shift to internet-based radicalization strategy. it opens up an opportunity for collective counterterrorism and deradicalization attempts regardless of how implicit and shrouded the strategy maybe. one of ways to seize that, is the implementation of peace journalism principle which has been proven as successful in building peace and preventing the proliferation of violent radical ideologies. this critical discourse analysis (cda) study aims at discussing the representation of social actors in the jakarta post and tempo online news about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case and its correlation to the implementation of peace journalism principles. keywords: cda, peace journalism, representation of social actors, terrorism introduction religious radicalism which leads to current terrorist attacks suchlike the makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case has been a thorn in indonesia as a culturally rich secular country. the encounter between indonesia and religious groups took place even long before the formation of the republic of indonesia. zakiyah (2016) elaborates an example where islamic societies played an essential role in mobilizing the mass and recruiting human resources in the fight against dutch and japanese colonialists (p. 24). yet every encounter is solely the beginning of a dynamic relationship that has its own ups and downs. the early recorded conflict in the history of indonesians’ relationship with radical religious groups was provoked by clerics in minangkabau and resulted in padri war around the 1800s. padri was a title used to refer to ulama or religious clerics who had completed their pilgrimages to sacred site and returned to west sumatra. the conflict was started when padri community urged for implementing religious law widely albeit the existence of adat society who held traditional minangkabau culture tightly and resided side by side with the community in the https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.3704 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 194-205 195 same region. it then resolved after thirty years and gave birth to concepts of adat basandi syarak syarak basandi kitabullah, syarak mamato, and adat mamakai as assimilation products between islamic and traditional minangkabau principles (asrinaldi & yoserizal, 2020, pp. 163-164). though padri war had an implicit economic motive related to the struggle for dominance over coffee as the main commodity at that time (indra, 2017, p. 80), the community’s urges for implementing religious law and dominating the particular area are also shared by present radical religious groups. autocratic leaderships performed by sukarno and suharto suppressed activities of radical religious groups which mostly derived from anti-colonialist guerilla groups. still, the suppression did not wipe radicalism out. indonesians have suffered from hundreds of terrorist attacks carried out by radical religious groups especially after the uncertainty of indonesia’s political transition in 1998 (vaughn, chanlett-avery, lum, manyin, & niksch, 2008, p. 6). new order regime’s downfall that followed by the start of the reformation era opened doors for economic and people’s welfare improvement, freedom of speech, increasing opportunities for human rights struggles, and the potential for conflict and violence. indra (2017) says that the proliferation of radical religious ideologies which had been done in private began to be more exposed to the public after the downfall. radical religious groups who supported the salafi da’wa even developed paramilitary movements called laskar jihad (p. 86). aside from that, radical religious groups in conflicting areas such as moluccas also developed militia groups that justified acts of violence to achieve their goal of dominating particular area. al qurtuby (2016) notes that during 1999-2000, “existed about 25 christian militia groups consisting of about 100 to 200 members operating all over the island of ambon” with “60 percent of these militia fighters consisted of, mainly, youths between 12 and 25 years old—few were women” and they are called agas (pp. 7677). radical religious groups in indonesia, as if celebrating the reformation, nourished after the fall of new order era. in spite of that, present-day radical religious groups are weakened after years of enjoying their triumphs. their weakening is indicated by changes of characteristics. temby (2020) states that characteristics of radical religious groups; the structure of organization or hierarchy, attacks’ patterns, memberships, technical ability, and the radicalization strategies, had changed. current groups’ structural orders are more flexible and their attacks are more sporadic. in addition to that, female and young members took more roles. members are armed with lower technical capabilities as well as limited access to weapons. their radical ideologies, compared to prior groups, are propagated on the internet and social media because their modes of communication shifted to internet-based for avoiding detection and arrest (pp. 4-15). here the internet-based radicalization strategy opens up an opportunity for ideological struggle or resistance in the form of deradicalization attempts through the spread of non-radical ideologies on the internet. sumarwoto, mahmutarrom, & ifrani (2020) evaluates two ways in combating terrorism: 1) prevention, 2) eradication. both are applied by the indonesian government yet they suggest that the latter is proven to be less effective since the number of terrorist attacks in indonesia keep growing albeit eradication attempts that include even death threats. in line with sumarwoto, mahmutarrom, & ifrani, damayanti (2012) encourages a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 194-205 196 collective prevention attempt in combating terrorism among diverse parties, “the indonesian government should activate all resources which ultimately requires the involvement and coordination of security apparatus, intelligent agency, military, ministries, local authorities as well as the public” (p. 37). the press media is one of central parties to be integrated in the attempt as it embraces varied parties through accessible and structured dissemination of information. elshimi (2018) highlights that the press as publicly-consumed media plays crucial role in disseminating discourses related to terrorism. he concerns about media, both online and printed press media, for the way it portrays terrorism alongside potential implications of the portrayal. elshimi (2018) and misztal, danforth, hurley, & michek (2018) then stress that all media are platforms to be integrated properly in the collective counterterrorism attempts which prevent further proliferation of radical ideologies and violence. kustana (2017) even asserts that “the indonesian media gives indirect education to indonesian people regarding methods to combat terrorism” (p. 89). a middle ground for it, as suggest by edvinsson (2018), budak (2018), wibowo (2018), ongenga (2019), and many others, is the implementation of peace journalism proposed by galtung and fischer (2013) and developed by hussain and lynch (2018). peace jourmalism is a journalism principle that focuses on conflict resolution and peace to prevent violence and further proliferation of conflicts’ roots, including radical ideologies, through the press media. corresponding to the suggestion about peace journalism and the counterterrorism agenda, this study is aimed at correlating the representation of social actors to the concept of peace journalism towards proffering a simple illustration of peace journalism’s implementation. discussion in this study will be based on critical discourse analysis or cda (fairclough, 1995) principle, representation of social actors (leeuwen, 2008), and peace journalism (galtung & fischer, 2013, hussain & lynch, 2018, and jacob, 2016) theories. two online news that each was published by the the jakarta post and tempo about makassar cathedral church suicide bombing case will be objects of this study. method this study is a critical discourse analysis (cda) that aims at bringing: 1) the representation of social actors in the jakarta post and tempo’s online news about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case and 2) whether the representation of social actors reflect the peace journalism for discussion. fairclough (1995) formulates that cda is a multidisciplinary approach which sought for revealing the hidden agenda in discourses. he states that cda is categorized in two forms: “linguistic and intertextual analysis” (p. 185). this study will perform linguistic and intertextual analysis based on two concepts as follows. linguistic analysis of this study is based on the concept of social actors’ representation by van leeuwen to reveal the implicit narration within discourses. the intertextual analysis of this study will be formulated by the help of peace journalism concept proposed by johan galtung and developed by jake lynch. the representation of social actors will help the researcher in observing whether peace journalism is reflected in the news. two online news about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case, one from each the jakarta post (entitled: “newlywed suicide bombers identified ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 194-205 197 in makassar church attack”) and tempo (entitled: “suicide bombing in makassar; densus 88 nab 13 suspected terrorists in 3 regions”) is selected as the object of this study. the jakarta post and tempo are selected over other online media in indonesia as they are popular media that provide english-language news. tempo is a media that has planted its roots in indonesia for more than 40 years while the the jakarta post is indonesia’s current leading english-language media that, “generally permitted greater leeway when commenting on sensitive political issues than its indonesian counterparts” (eklof, 2003, p. 14). both media’s popularities are indisputable thus they have more than enough chance to participate in the counterterrorism attempt. five steps are taken in carrying out this study: 1) data collection of social actors comprised in every sentence of the news, 2) categorization of social actors into five groups specifically perpetrators, victims, authorities, affiliations of the prior three groups, and others, 3) identification of social actors’ representation strategies, 4) intertextual analysis of social actors’ representation strategies in relation to peace journalism, 5) conclusions’ drawing. findings and discussion findings and discussion of this study will be delivered in two sections. firstly, the researcher will present findings on the analysis of social actors’ representation strategies, detailed modes, and role allocation according to leeuwen’s framework. findings on three social actors’ groups (perpetrators, victims, and authorities), out of all five groups, will be presented individually as they took leading roles in both media’s news. secondly, the researcher will present findings on the analysis of the implementation of peace journalism in the jakarta post and tempo’s online news about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case. the analysis will be based only on the representation of perpetrators, victims, and authorities as leading social actors of the phenomena. perpetrators: members of the society, members of a terrorist group perpetrators of makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case are represented by the jakarta post and tempo rather differently. this difference is reflected in two main points: perpetrators’ relations to other actors and perpetrators’ names or titles. the jakarta post introduced perpetrators by presenting perpetrators’ relations with their acquaintances (family, neighbors or makassar residents) besides their relations to radical religious group whereas tempo introduced perpetrators through their affiliation to radical religious groups only (jad). their different preferences are realized in role allocations and representation strategies of social actors. perpetrators are largely represented as passive actors who are being testified about his involvement both in the society and the bombing by diverse parties (makassar resident, perpetrators’ family, the police, and jad) in the jakarta post. rather different, tempo represents perpetrators as passive actors whose involvement in the bombing is the only matter being testified by only one actor: authorities. it denotes that the jakarta post emphasize perpetrators’ relations with varied actors. contrarywise, tempo put perpetrators as passive actors whose relations are limited to radical religious group and being under the power of authorities. in addition to role allocation, the jakarta post and tempo adopted disparate detailed of representation’s modes in terms of quantity and their ways of adopting ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 194-205 198 them. perpetrators are represented through many detailed modes of inclusion; classification, functionalization, relational identification, individualization, collectivization, as well as impersonalization strategies the jakarta post. for instance, in (jp/p1/l13/2), perpetrators are addressed as the street food seller which involves suffix -er in seller and indicates their function or their occupation. perpetrators are also represented as newlyweds in (jp/p1/l1/1) which implies that perpetrators belong to certain classification of marriage status/phase. besides, perpetrators are represented through classification strategy as a male suspect and a passive actor where another actor (makassar resident) testified that perpetrators “lived in a rented house” (jp/p1/l13/2). various strategies of representation reflect that the jakarta post offers diverse sides of perpetrators’ life: their identities as newlyweds, bombers, street food seller, as well as their relations to other actors: makassar resident and family. on the other hand, tempo represents perpetrators through three inclusion strategies only; association, relational-identification, and collectivization, with an emphasis on their relations with jad. the first mode implies that perpetrators are represented as parts of a group, the second mode implies that perpetrators are represented as having kinship or work relations to each other or other actors, the third mode implies that perpetrators are represented as a collective or a whole group. for instance, in (tp/p1/l4/2) perpetrators are represented as members of the same group in villa mutiara thus they are represented both through association and relational identification along with other ‘members of the same group’. tempo, in contrast to the jakarta post, represent perpetrators as mere perpetrators: members of a radical religious group which involved in acts of terrorism. besides detailed representation modes, different preferences of perpetrators’ representation between the jakarta post and tempo are apparent in the way both media addressed perpetrators. titles of both media have actually reflected their different ways of representing perpetrators. the jakarta post refers to perpetrators as newlyweds while tempo addressed perpetrators as terrorists: newlywed suicide bombers identified in makassar church attack (the jakarta post) and suicide bombing in makassar; densus 88 nab 13 suspected terrorists in 3 regions (tempo). in addition to that, the jakarta post referred to perpetrators with much more variety compared to tempo. newlyweds, the couple, the street food seller, the pair, the male suspects, and the suicide bombers are examples of the way the jakarta post addressed them. tempo, instead, addressed them as: two suicide bombers, members of the group, l and ysf (perpetrators’ names). the jakarta post represents perpetrators as members of the society as well as perpetrators of makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case whereas tempo represents perpetrators as members of radical religious group (jad) that has been the mastermind behind various acts of terrorism in indonesia. victims: there is no single victim victims are represented equivalently by the two media as a collective of social actors who feel the damaging impact of perpetrators’ actions. this representation reflects that victims of makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case comprise of plenty of people. broadly speaking, the jakarta post and tempo accentuate violence, as well as suicide bombing in particular, do not result in a single victim but many victims. such highlight on the number of victims is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 194-205 199 identified from the inclusion strategies, detailed representation’s modes while the role allocation of victims highlights victims’ position as the recipient of actions. furthermore, the number of victims is also apparent in the way both media addressed victims as social actors in the makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case although the jakarta post addressed victims more varied than tempo. victims, for instance, are referred to as worshippers, victims, congregants, the church, people, security forces, and the catholic cathedral church by the jakarta post whereas tempo referred to them as churchgoers, the cathedral church, they, and the security personnel. nonetheless, strategies of victims’ representation in both media are rather similar. inclusion strategies of representation is used solely to represent victims as social actors: there are no exclusion strategies. such preference implies that both the jakarta post and tempo intend to present the effect of the bombing case to complement their reports on the cause or background, chronological order, or involving actors of the bombing. collectivization strategy of inclusion representation is the most-identified representation modes of victims in the jakarta post and tempo’s online news about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case. the strategy, as previously mentioned, implies that social actors belong to a group or a collective. it also implies that the number of the social actors is plural. both media applies the strategy in almost all representation of social actors although it is used in conjunction with other strategies such as functionalization and classification strategies. for instance, in (jp/p1/l2/2), victims are represented by the jakarta post as worshippers which is identified as both collectivization for its plural form and functionalization for its -er suffix that indicates its function. tempo also represents victims through collectivization and classification strategies in the word churchgoers in (tp/p1/l17/3). the word choice connotes the use of collectivization strategy in its plural form and classification in the way that its -er suffix does not indicate the function or the occupation of victims as churchgoers but the classification of victims as those who go to church. in addition to the inclusion representation and collectivization strategy, victims are represented as passive actors who received actions such as being reported by authorities, being wounded by perpetrators, and others. the passive role allocation emphasizes victims’ position as actors who received actions from other actors and feel the damaging impact of perpetrators’ actions. for instance, in (jp/p1/l2/2), victims are represented by the jakarta post as 20 people whose role is passive actors that were wounded by the bombing incident. tempo, likewise, represents victims as churchgoers in (tp/p1/l17/3) who were injured as the result of the explosion. victims are represented as a collective who feel the damaging impact of the bombing in the makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case in the jakarta post and tempo’s online news. authorities: performing a function and a one-man show authority is a group of social actors in the jakarta post and tempo’s online news about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case whose role is handling terrorist attacks. as the name implies, this group of social actors has the authority to carry out investigations, record data, collect evidence, and arrest perpetrators of the bombing. both media represents authorities based on their capacity equivalently. however, the researcher identifies that both media’s manners ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 194-205 200 in representing authorities in contrast to other social actors are pretty distinctive. tempo, for instance, represented authorities with the highest frequency compared to other social actors while the jakarta post represented all social actors adequately. authorities are represented 17 times out of 42 times of all social actors’ groups representations in tempo’s news about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case. this implies that the representation of authorities as a group of social actors in tempo covers around 40% of the total representation of all social actors’ groups in the news. when being set side by side, the quantitative ratio of authorities’ representations between the jakarta post and tempo is 9:17. such a clear difference of quantity is in line with how both media address authorities: tempo has more diversified names in representing authorities than the jakarta post. the national police, the south sulawesi police headquarter, the national police’s anti-terror squad densus 88, densus 88, and sigit are names used by tempo in representing authorities. in contrast, the jakarta post only represents authorities by four names: police, authorities, indonesia’s counterterror squad, and national police chief gen. listyo sigit prabowo. the two media’s manners when representing authorities in contrast to other actors based on the number of representations and the diversified names are distinctive: tempo represents authorities strongly while the jakarta post represents authorities fairly than other social actors. in addition to the number of representations and the diversified names, the jakarta post and tempo have different preferences for the inclusion strategies of authorities’ representation modes. tempo preferred to represent authorities primarily through individualization and utterance autonomization. these two representation strategies are akin because individualization implies that an actor is represented as an individual. at the same time, utterance of autonomization indicates that an individual actor is represented based on his or her statements. authorities represented by tempo as “sigit” (the national police chief) in (tp/p1/l4/3). the representation takes active role where sigit underwent verbal process of transitivity “said”. such combination of the active role allocation and verbal process of transitivity indicates that an actor is represented through utterance autonomization strategy. hence authorities are represented in (tp/p1/l4/3) through two strategies simultaneously: individualization and utterance autonomization. simultaneous adoption of the two representation strategies, reflected in “sigit” and his verbal processes, is often identified in tempo’s news about the makassar cathedral church's suicide bombing case. “sigit” as one of tempo’s names for authorities’ representations is combined with “said”, “explained”, “remarked”, and “appealed” in 10 of 17 representations of authorities. this denotes that tempo represents authorities as a social actor by narrowing their identities to one individual: sigit. relatively different, the jakarta post preferred to represent authorities predominantly through functionalization strategy. the strategy narrows social actors’ identity to their functions or occupations. for instance, the jakarta post represents authorities as “the police” in (jp/p1/l9/1), (jp/p1/l1/3), (jp/p1/l3/3), (jp/p1/l15/1). it also represents them as “authorities” in (jp/lp1/l7/1) and (jp/p1/l1/1). such preference is reflected in how the jakarta post addressed authorities in their news as well: names used to address authorities are related to authorities’ functions or occupations. police, authorities, indonesia’s counter ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 194-205 201 terror squad, and national police chief gen. listyo sigit prabowo indicate that the social actors work or function as authorities in the case of makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing. nevertheless, the jakarta post also represents authorities through other strategies of social actors’ representation such as collectivization, individualization, and classification. collectivization and functionalization strategies are always simultaneously adopted in representing authorities as “authorities” in the jakarta post’s news. it is because “authorities” indicates both function of the actor and the its plural number. the use of two strategies highlights that authorities are represented as a collective or a group of people who work as authorities and function in accordance to their occupation. representations of social actors and the peace journalism peace journalism principle, as stated by galtung, jacob, and hussain & lynch, strives for conflict resolution through “good journalism”. it rejects disregards of wrongdoings or conflict reduction and aims at one goal: accurately presenting reality. to do so, there are some points of peace journalism to be pondered as guidelines for journalists in constructing news and for researchers in analyzing the application of peace journalism in discourses. two points of peace journalism will be discussed in relation to representations of perpetrators, victims, and authorities in the jakarta post and tempo’s online news about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case. both points are ‘people-oriented’ and ‘voices from all parties’ as suggested by hussain & lynch (2018) and jacob (2016). discussion on aforementioned points will be delivered in accordance to the representations of perpetrators, victims, authorities. perpetrators are represented very differently by the two media. the jakarta post represents perpetrators as members of the society while tempo represents perpetrators as members of a terrorist group through detailed modes of inclusion representation strategy. perpetrators, in the jakarta post, are represented as members of the society who sell street food and build relatively decent affiliation with residents through collectivization and classification strategies. tempo represents perpetrators based on their affiliations with radical religious groups such as jad and villa mutiara’s study group through association mode of inclusion strategy. when being related to the two points of pj, the jakarta post’s representations of perpetrators bespeak peace journalism more than tempo. the jakarta post strives to show the human sides of perpetrators more than tempo by presenting perpetrators as others (street food seller, newlyweds, parts of a family, makassar residents) than mere perpetrators. such representation indicates ‘peopleoriented’ and ‘voices from all parties’ principles because it places perpetrators as humans and gives voices for perpetrators’ affiliations (makassar residents and perpetrators’ family) to give testimony about perpetrators’ involvement in the society. tempo, however, strives to show perpetrators’ affiliations with radical religious group to report the actual progress of the bombing case’s investigation. nevertheless, it does not indicate ‘people-oriented’ point clearly since perpetrators are represented more as villains than humans who have diverse sides of life or roles in the society. the representation limits perpetrators’ identities as mere perpetrators. though such limitation may contribute to conflict resolution given that it informs readers about the actual investigation process to build readers’ awareness, it leaves no gaps for perpetrators’ human side. it also does not leave room for ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 194-205 202 perpetrators to speak up because all representations of perpetrators are based on authorities’ statements. on the other hand, victims are represented according to peace journalism as both media highlight their human sides. representations of victims of the bombing case are equable in the two media. both the jakarta post and tempo represent victims based on their quantity. such representation implies that violence, especially the suicide bombing case, results in plenty of victims. it will evoke readers’ sympathy and prevent further violence in the long run as well. the ‘peopleoriented’ point of peace journalism suggested by hussain & lynch (2018) and jacob (2016) is identifiable in victims’ representations. as one of the social actors in makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case, victims are represented as humans through detailed modes of inclusion strategy such as collectivization and classification strategies. nevertheless, victims are positioned as passive actors in both media. they are represented primarily as passive actors who feel the damaging impact of the bombing. unlike other two leading actors, there is no room for victims to represent themselves because their sufferings and experiences are already represented through other actors’ or the reporter’s statements. it might seem customary given victims, as the name suggest, are social actors who receive a relatively terrible end from actions of other actors or from incidents. still, the point of ‘voices from all parties can be applied in this case since victims of the bombing are in a situation that allows them to play active role. the two points of peace journalism are not entirely recognizable in both the jakarta post and tempo’s victims’ representations. authorities as one of leading social actors in the jakarta post and tempo’s online news about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case are represented in accordance with the two points of peace journalism. representation strategies of authorities in the two media suggest that authorities’ human sides are represented through their functions. at the same time, their active role allocations imply that authorities are given rooms to act and speak. authorities’ representations in both media, in contrast to other actors, clearly illustrate two points of peace journalism: ‘people-oriented’ and ‘voices from all parties.’ yet tempo’s manner in representing authorities may not fully address the aims of peace journalism principles. authorities are represented as dominant active actors in tempo given their number of representations is the largest amongst all social actors. besides, authorities’ dominance is evident in their relation with perpetrators as perpetrators are represented primarily through authorities' statements. such dominance is less coherent with peace journalism principles that uphold voices for all parties equally. hence authorities’ representation in tempo needs to be investigated further given that it may impact readers’ impression on the conflict although it clearly illustrates ‘people-oriented’ and ‘voice from all parties’ points. instead of focusing on conflict resolution through impartial coverage and "good journalism", tempo perpetuates authorities' dominance. conclusion terrorist attacks as manifestations of religious radicalism have been longterm threats in indonesia. radical religious groups suchlike jad keep growing especially after the downfall of the new order notwithstanding eradication attempts performed by indonesian government. despite that, present-day radical religious ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 194-205 203 groups have weakened and their radicalization strategy shifted to be internet-based. the shift opens up opportunity for ideological struggle and deradicalization attempts as internet is open to the public. one of ways to seize the opportunity is through engaging the media in such attempts. peace journalism as a principle of journalism that is proven to be effective in preventing conflict, including proliferation of violent radical ideologies, can be applied as a deradicalization strategy through the media. constant application of the principle may prevent proliferation of violent radical ideologies given that society will focus more on the conflict resolution rather than the violence and violent radical ideologies. in this regard, representations of conflicting parties are crucial in peace journalism since they shape readers’ perspectives in understanding the conflict. this section will present conclusions that include the representation of parties or social actors in the jakarta post and tempo’s online news about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing and the application of two points of peace journalism based on the representations. perpetrators, victims, and authorities are three leading parties or social actors in the jakarta post and tempo’s online news about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case. they are represented through various representation strategies and different role allocations by the two media. perpetrators are represented in relatively distinct manners by both media: the jakarta post represents perpetrators as members of the society while tempo represents perpetrators as members of a terrorist group. victims, on the other hand, are represented similarly in both media. they are represented based on their large quantity. such representation indicates that victims of violence, particularly the suicide bombing, are never singular. authorities are represented in distinct ways by the two media. the social actors are represented by the two media differently. the jakarta post’s authorities are represented as parties who have a function or job of handling acts of terror. tempo represented the authorities as an institution whose identity was represented by only one person. in addition to representations of social actors, peace journalism principles are identifiable in the jakarta post and tempo’s online news about makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case. ‘people-oriented’ as a point of peace journalism principle is visible in both media’s representations of perpetrators, victims, and authorities given that the two media strives to represent them as humans. nonetheless, actors’ identities are narrowed to certain labels such as ‘terrorist’ or ‘perpetrators’ in tempo. the second point, ‘voices from all parties’, is also visible in representations of perpetrators and authorities. perpetrators’ voices are represented through their affiliations such as their neighbors (makassar residents) and their family in the jakarta post. authorities in tempo, by contrast, are given the largest space to speak their voices. nevertheless, the researcher finds that tempo’s manner in representing authorities may not fully address the aims of peace journalism principles as it perpetuates authorities’ dominance instead of presenting impartial coverage. in conclusion, the jakarta post and tempo present distinctive representations of perpetrators and authorities. at the same time, the two media present akin representation of victims. both media’s application of ‘peopleoriented’ and ‘voices from all parties’ points of peace journalism is identifiable to a certain degree based on their representations of perpetrators, victims, and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 194-205 204 authorities. this study, however, offers only a simple example of the analysis on the representation of makassar cathedral church’s suicide bombing case’s social actors in the jakarta post and tempo along with their relation to peace journalism. this study is yet capable of providing a comprehensive assessment of how indonesian media represents perpetrators, victims, and authorities as social actors in the suicide bombing at the makassar cathedral church. at the same time, this study is not sufficiently expert to evaluate the application of peace journalism principles in indonesian media. thus, the researcher expects that this study can encourage other researchers to further investigate the representation of social actors in media’s coverage of terrorism in indonesia and the application of peace journalism on the topic. references al qurtuby, s. 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(2016). the chronicle of terrorism and islamic militancy in indonesia. analisa journal of social science and religion, 19-39. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 1 using metaphor in efl classroom to enhance writing skills: a case study nguyen thi hong thu hanoi law university, viet nam thuvicnguyen@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.030101 received 19 july 2019; revised 31 july 2019; accepted 27 august 2019 abstract this study discusses the effects of using metaphor in the development of writing skill as well as find out the challenges learners may face, then propose the suitable suggestions to boost metaphoric awareness and competence in learning english. the writer conducted two measuring instruments: proand pre-test for two groups (control and experimental) to examine the effectiveness of using metaphor in writing; two questionnaires to measure the attitude of the students towards using metaphor in writing that was conducted basing on a 5 point likert-scale. the study’s participants were 30 english major students at hanoi law university. the findings from the study showed that learners with the instruction from teachers on metaphor in songs when writing tended to get the better scores than the other ones. however, they also showed that although it is important to learn metaphor, a lot of challenges still maintain. the paper hopefully helps learners have new insight into aspects of figurative language studies and pedagogical applications. keywords: metaphor, metaphoric competence, metaphoric awareness, conceptual metaphor. introduction foreign language learners have more convenient conditions to practice the new language in a multi-cultural context in which learners are exposed to diverse authentic english uses. that the opportunities in the communication of multilanguage community increases merges more challenges for learners to acquire the figurative language which is different from the literal language. glucksberg, (2001) manifests that one of the most noticeable challenges is learning and using figurative language, whose intended meaning does not coincide with the literal meanings of the words and sentences used. as a result, a second language learner needs to master metaphor to obtain foreign language proficiency. although the metaphor is one of the important figurative aspects of language, it is not easy to catch its meaning and use it exactly in each particular context. lakoff & johnson, (1980) define that figurative language can be approached from two perspectives: stylistic and cognitive one in which the writers focus on meaning and thought through the conceptual metaphor. in the consideration between language and thought, metaphor is considered as “powerful tools for our conceptualization of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 2 the world” (ungerer & schmid, 2006, p. 114). to acquire what the writers want to imply in the words, readers need to go beyond the existed language in their mind which helps them to understand the context properly and more deeply. therefore, it is vital to instruct learners to be aware of figurative language properly, with the concern about semantic transformation, rather than learn words by heart and remember fixed forms mechanically (boers & lindstromberg, 2006). a large number of educators and researchers have taken interest into exploring awareness-raising methods in which theory of conceptual metaphor in lakoff & johnson’s (1980) has already brought about beneficial effects on l2 learners’ awareness, as well as raising the understanding about theory and classroom practice in learning figurative expressions. several writing experts have proposed using metaphors for writing. metaphor spreads so widely and commonly in spoken and written english that it is important for learners to accumulate metaphor awareness and so, they can enhance the ability to tackle the problems and challenges in learning and understanding figurative language (cooper, 1999). especially, at the advanced level, english major students have more chances to use metaphor in their writing, which is considered as a short step in a process to language competence. it can be said that the world we live and work in gets around metaphor. in other words, metaphor is permeating into everyday life, language, thought and action “metaphors are something one lives through” (kjeldsen, 2009, p.245). according to jakobson (2003), figurative language proved its pervasive power through its presence in every field from art, to ordinary life. metaphor, which is traditionally believed to be associated with literary or poetic language, is also an ideal new land in the music world for musicians and the language learners to discover. metaphor is a wonderful device for musicians to compose love songs through which learners can discover a lot of amazing things and inspire passion for language learning process. nowhere can learners take interest in metaphors as much as in songs and poems which create a lot of emotion and motivation. it is music that easily touches the soul and interest of listeners so teaching metaphor through songs will be the suitable teaching activity for learners of english. by teaching students how to use metaphor in writing, we can lead them to unleash their creativity and imagination. metaphor can also be effective in training learners in abstract thought as well as familiarizing them early with literary skills they will need later. the pervasiveness of metaphor in all aspects of language prompt people to study and research more to achieve linguistic proficiency. the present study aims to investigate the importance, challenges, and effects of using metaphor in writing skill; learning strategies on their development of metaphoric competence. the following two research questions will be addressed: 1. to what extent do the metaphoric instructions affect english major students’ writing skill? 2. what are the students’ attitudes towards using metaphor in writing? conceptual metaphor seen from the cognitive approach, george lakoff and mark johnson claimed that metaphor is “not just a matter of language, but a matter of thought” (1980, p7). this was instantiated through how we live and communicate. these writers ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 3 considered language as an “indicator of the nature of our conceptual system”, and metaphor features what and how we are aware of and interact with the world around us. the term ‘conceptual metaphor’ appeared in order to distinguish with metaphor from stylish perspective. often we treat it only as a stylistic device which features each field such as the metaphors of politics, economy, music with, but in essence, metaphorical expressions express the way of human thinking and reasoning. metaphor is a way of understanding a concept and according to lakoff and johnson, meaning and truth depend on the understanding of human. truth is not objective, but depends on context; it relies on a human thinker. thus, metaphor structures what we perceive as truth. kövecses believes that metaphor involves using one conceptual domain to understand another conceptual domain (kövecses, 2002, p4). cognitive linguistics give prominence to human cognition with the metaphorical thinking which is available in communication. metaphor awareness metaphor shed a light into using cognitive language flexibly and creatively. however, to approach nearer the metaphoric competence, students must go through a metaphor awareness process. metaphor awareness is regarded as understanding of the knowledge related to metaphorical theory. boers (2004) gave some benefits learners can get when obtaining metaphor awareness such as the ablility to: recognize the importance of metaphor in daily life, clarify source and target domains of conceptual metaphors, find out the cultural identity and boost intercultural awareness, recognize the cross-linguistic variation metaphors (p. 211). seen from boers’s theory, metaphor is not only a specific stylistic device in some certain fields, but also a common cognitive linguistic form occurring in daily life with clearly identifying source domains. more importantly, learners must increase their knowledge of culture to realize the cross-cultural differences and linguistic variation in both conceptual and linguistic metaphor in their l2. according to boers (2000), to raise metaphoric awareness, there should be a plenty of activities for students to involve in, including inquiring students about theoretical metaphor such as: concepts, features and domains, asking students to explain metaphorical themes based on experience, letting students clarify individual idiomatic expressions, and taking a notice of historical-cultural backgrounds to distinguish ross-cultural differences in the students’ first and second language. kalyuga & m. kalyuga, 2008 asserted that knowledge of conceptual metaphor contributes to the speedy success of learning and boost the retention of polysemantic and idiomatic expressions in a second language. moreover, metaphor awareness plays an important role in raising autonomy and problem-solving skills. as a result, in every situation and context, students themselves can deduce the meanings of metaphorical expressions (kalyuga & m. kalyuga, 2008, p. 252). last but not least, metaphor awareness is imperative to identify and comprehend new metaphorical expressions in the l2, and it is also a basic step to move to the higher standard in practicing metaphormetaphoric competence. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 4 metaphoric competence to achieve the proficiency in using the second language, beside metaphor awareness, metaphoric competence is a dispensable factor. according to low, (1988), metaphoric competence is the ability to accurately interpret and utilize metaphors. he also recommended a variety of metaphoric competence raising skills, including the ability to form possible meanings, to raise knowledge common metaphorical expressions, to realize metaphorical topics and vehicle combinations, to interpret and utilize hedges, to increase awareness of ‘socially sensitive’ metaphors, to recognize multi-layer metaphors, and interactive awareness of metaphor. littlemore & low, (2006a) pointed out the correlation between person’s “associative fluency,”, the ability to make a wide range of connections and “metaphor fluency” or metaphoric competence. thanks to the metaphor competence, language learner can enhance their reasoning and critical thinking skills in which one thing will be understood in a variety of concepts and by a number of ways. from this, in each situation or when facing the problems of interpreting meaning, learners promptly come up with the various ideas and think of multiple source domains and multiple interpretations for a particular metaphorical expression. as a result, learner can easily approach the language competence. littlemore and low (2006a, p. 56)) revealed the difficulties and challenges that learners can be confronted, concluding the source and target domain analogies, cultural knowledge, intuition and activation of relevant networks of features to arrive at a correct interpretation. in short, in learning a foreign language, it is important to improve l2 metaphor awareness focusing on knowledge of metaphor and metaphor competence related to recognizing skills, comprehending skills, analyzing ability and appropriate interpretation. teaching metaphor for writing skill in the previous studies, there was a consensus researchers pointed out that increasing metaphor competence in using figurative language in writing has been correlated to increasing fluency and proficiency in a second language. in a research of littlemore, krennmayr, turner, and turner (2014) by examining two hundred essays written by english language learners for cambridge esol examinations, they assumed that proficient l2 writers could utilize a variety of metaphors in their writing. in addition, metaphor were applied in their writing to increase the sophisticated functions. furthermore, nacey (2013) manifested the challenges in using novel metaphor, of which non-native speakers faced was mostly the language error. furthermore, according to kathpalia and carmel (2011), cross-cultural competence has an effect on metaphor competence. the misunderstanding in inter-cultural communication causes inaccurate interpretation toward the metaphors in their writing. finally, for learner to be easier to gain the metaphor competence, macarthur (2010) recommended incorporation step into writing instruction process. they should be assigned to write on similar abstract topics, and revising the knowledge of metaphor elements from source domain language relevant to the target domain. a number of metaphor awareness enhancing activities are recommended by macarthur (2010) for learners when writing, such as discussing the transfer of metaphor in l1, practicing using the user-friendly metalinguistic terms, consulting large electronic corpora not ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 5 depending on bilingual dictionaries too much. littlemore and low (2006a, p. 203) suggested that students must be shown how to “use figurative language creatively, appropriately, and, at times, persuasively” in writing. this helps to enhance students writing ability and strengthen their writing in an impressive and persuasive way. in short, it is necessary for efl students make use of appropriate metaphorical expressions into their writing. these findings indicated that using metaphor partly has a good effect on writing skill of students despite the mistakes and problems they faced. as a result of fact, teachers somehow introduced metaphor in writing course to increase the figurativeness and diversity in students’ papers. however the effectiveness of this application depended much on the different factors such as language competence, cultural knowledge, and time for practice. method the current study was conducted in a mixed approach in which the data were collected quantitatively. the study was open in the aim of investigating the benefits and challenges and effects of using metaphor in writing, then find out some strategies to support this. participants the study was carried out in a writing classroom with 30 english major seniors at hanoi law university whose english proficiency was at the intermediate to high-intermediate level. they were joining in the writing 3 class in the first semester of the third year data collection instruments participants’ essays the students in two groups were asked to write two essays about 300 words with the same topic in which the draft essay or pre-test was written according to the students’ own opinion without any interference from teacher and the final essay or pro-test of control group was revised at home and handed in teacher after a week meanwhile the postessay was revised and submitted under the teacher’s instruction on metaphors in some songs teacher provided. questionnaire participants were delivered three questionnaires with a variety of items related to benefits, challenges, and frequency of using metaphor in writing. 30 questionnaire sheets collected from students were properly answered, among the rest, some had missing items. the questionnaires were designed on a five-point rating scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. procedures the paper conducted an experiment in the process of writing 3 course. in this course, students are asked to practice writing complete essays with different types such as narrative, description, opinion. when writing an opinion essay sample, the instructor asked the students of two groups to write an essay on the same topic “what is your opinion about student love at university?” after submitting the first draft, the students in the experimental group were supplied with the knowledge of metaphor: definitions of conceptual metaphor, metaphoric mappings from source domains to target domains. above 25 quotes cited from the famous love songs in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 6 the late 20th century are introduced to the class as metaphoric examples with the explanation from the teacher to help students figure out metaphoric expressions of love and imagine how “love” is understood in poems and songs. the teacher instructed students to read and complete some handouts including the tasks related to metaphor such as identifying metaphor in several songs and poems and to circle the idiomatic expressions used in them and explain the metaphorical expressions basing on the teacher’s instruction. after that, students themselves were suggested brainstorming the images of love and idiomatic expressions in their own mind. at that time, students had to clarify metaphoric mappings for the metaphoric expressions of love such as love is a journey, love is fire, love is a concrete thing, etc. the handouts were collected back to the instructor to check after the students completed the exercise. at the end of the period, the students in eg were told to revise their first draft at home and were assigned to create as many metaphoric expressions as possible. they submitted both the original and the revised essays a week later. meanwhile, the students in the control group were also asked to rewrite the essay at home without any instruction on metaphor from teachers. the essays were then analyzed and scored by the instructor to assess how the students used metaphoric expressions and to measure the effects of using in writing. both students‘ pre-tests and post-tests were graded under 5 evaluation criteria namely task fulfillment, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation, using a 10 point scale to assess the students ‘writing performance. finding and discussion effects of using metaphor instructions in writing. to answer the first research question, the writer found the results of the essays of two groups. the results of pre-test and post-test of the control class were analyzed then compared and summarized in table 1 as follows: pre-test and post-test of the control group table 1: the comparison between cg students‘pre-test and post-test in this subsection, the results of the pre-test and post-test of the control group were analyzed and compared to find whether rewriting at home impacted writing ability for students. as can be seen in table 1, the mean score of the post-test was 6.5 (out of 10) that is higher than 6.25 of the pre-test. it was easy to calculate that the decline in the mean score between the post-test and pre-test was 0.25, which implied that there was a little improvement in the writing of the control class after rewriting at home. also, the result of the paired-samples t-test showed that the critical value of p for a two-tailed test and there was a significant difference in the results of the post-test and pre-test with p-value (0.078) is higher than 0.05. pre-test post-test control group number mean stdev number mean stdev 15 6.25 0.767 15 6.5 0.863 p-value 0.078 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 7 these findings have proved that rewriting the second essay has very little impacts on writing ability for students without using metaphor. experimental group students’ pre-test and post-test results table 2: the comparison between eg students‘pre-test and post-test results pre-test post-test experimental group n mean stdev n mean stdev 15 6.0 0.702 15 7.25 0.658 p-value 0.000 in this subsection, the results of the pre-test and post-test of the experimental group were analyzed and compared to find whether that revising at home with the using metaphor in paper has impacts on writing ability for students . the table 4 indicated that there was a significant improvement in writing performance between the pre-test and post-test of the experimental group. specifically, the mean score of the post-test rose noticeably from 6.0 to 7.25 points in comparison with that of the pre-test. furthermore, the pvalue between the post-test and pre-test was 0.000 that is much smaller than 0.05, which means that the difference between the post-test and pre-test results reached a statistically significant level. these findings have proved that using metaphor has a significant impact on students’ writing ability. test results between the pre-tests of control and experimental classes the results of the pre-test and post-test of the two classes were analyzed and compared by using independent-samples t-test to reconfirm the starting point in the performance in the pre-test of the two classes before the experiment; and to find the effectiveness of using metaphor in writing of the experimental class compared with that of the control class after the intervention. table 3 displays the descriptive statistics as well as the comparison of the pre-tests of both groups. table 3: comparison of the pre-tests of both groups pretest number mean steve control group 20 6.25 0.767 experimental group 20 6.0 0.702 p-value 0.403 it can be clearly seen from table 3, the mean scores of the eg students and cg students in the pre-test are 6.0 and 6.25 (out of 10) respectively. the independent-samples t-test shows p-value 0.403 that is higher than 0.05. this means there is a similarity between the mean scores of both groups. these findings indicated that there is no significant difference in the results of the pretests between the cg and eg. it has been implied that before the intervention of treatment, students of the cg and eg were at a similar level of writing skill. furthermore, as shown in table 3, the standard deviation (sd) of eg is 0.702 while that of cg is 0.767, which means that the scores of eg students were more various than those of cg students. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 8 descriptive statistics of post-test of both groups table 4. comparison of the post-tests of both group posttest number mean steve control group 20 6.5 0.863 experimental group 20 7.25 0.658 p-value 0.007 smd 0.869 table 4 shows a remarkable difference in the mean scores of the post-tests between eg and cg. from the table above it can be seen that the mean scores of the eg students (7.25 out of 10) are higher than those of cg (6.5). also, the independent-samples t-test shows that p-value is 0.007 that is smaller than 0.05. these values indicate that the difference between the two groups reached a statistical significance. also, with smd (0.7<0.869<0.9), based on cohen’s d effect size we can see that the treatment has a great effect on practice writing of the students. it could be concluded that there is a statistically significant difference in writing between the two groups in using metaphor. in other words, what could be inferred from the findings above at the end of the intervention is that both the experimental group and control group showed the progress in their writing but the improvement of the eg students who received the treatment of metaphor application was greater than the cg students. students’ attitudes towards using metaphor in songs in writing to answer the second research question, the writer collected the data and showed them in figure 1, 2, and table 5. figure 1 describes the frequency of using metaphor in writing from participants. 20 % of respondents replied that they do not use metaphor in writing. 40% responded “seldom,” while 33% of students said that metaphor is sometimes used in writing and only 7% considered metaphor as a type of frequent figurative language in writing classroom. it can be seen from the data that although these students are the intermediate or upper-intermediate english major seniors, few metaphors are used in their writing frequently. even, the number of students “never used” counts up to 20%. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 9 20% 40% 33% 7% 0% frequency of using metaphor in writing never seldom sometimes frequently always figure 1: frequency of using metaphor in writing. benefits of using metaphor in writing 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 metaphor can make your writing more figurative and interesting make your mind more creative and imaginative increase the culture knowledge use language more flexibly and naturally increase the number of vocabulary enhance critical thinking da a unc d sd figure 2: benefits of using metaphor in writing. it can be seen from figure 2 that the respondents took a high interest in expressing their views and perceptions towards the benefits of using metaphor in writing. most of the students agreed that using metaphor in writing brings about a lot of significances supporting them in their learning. related to the performance of students in classroom with using metaphor in writing, the data shows that more than half of the students agreed and strong agreed that using metaphor in writing can make your writing more figurative and interesting, make your mind more creative and imaginative, increase the cultural knowledge, use language more flexibly and naturally, increase the number of vocabulary and enhance critical thinking while 2%, 0% or lower reveal their disagreements with those statements. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 10 challenges of using metaphor in writing table 5: challenges of using metaphor in writing challenges sa a ud da sd a little understanding of words meanings 5 6 15 4 0 lack of familiar metaphorical expressions in their l2 10 17 3 0 0 difference in variation for different conceptual metaphors preferred 7 20 2 1 0 variation of the similar metaphor of different languages 6 12 4 4 0 lack of vocabulary to use metaphor 7 15 7 1 0 differences in culture lead to misunderstanding 9 15 6 0 0 lack of cultural knowledge to interpret metaphor 8 17 6 0 0 individuals’ creative skill, imagination or ideas 5 6 15 4 0 the data above shows that most students encounter the challenges in using metaphor in which the vocabulary, culture and preference problems take majority with 23, 25, 27 students. most of the students agreed that they have these difficulties in using and learning metaphor. this can explain the reason why students do not use it frequently. intending to investigate the effects of using metaphor in writing and the writer conducted experimental tests namely pre-test and post-test. the findings from data shows that the score of pre-test and post-test of each group (post-test > pre-test) revealed that there is an increase in writing ability of students when they had time to rewrite the essay at home and especially with the instructions on metaphor in songs from teacher, the students of experimental group had a significant increase in score. these findings indicated that using figurative language in writing had a certain effect on the result of essays. these findings go in line with the results of the previous studies on the effect of using metaphor in writing by different researchers, macarthur (2010), turner (2014) and boers (2000). in addition, it is clear from the data that the results of pre-test of control and experimental group are similar but after applying the new treatment, the score of post-test of experimental was higher than the one of the control group. this means there was a remarkable increase in the writing performance of experimental students. in short, these findings are a clear answer to the first research question that using metaphor have a positive effect on the writing for english major students to some extension. to identify the attitudes of students towards using and learning metaphor, the writer conducted a series of questionnaires related to frequency, benefits, and challenges of using metaphor. the data showed that although students do not use metaphor as frequently as expected, they realized a lot of benefits from using metaphor. that is to say, metaphor plays an important role in improving the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 11 writing performance. however, they had a lot of difficulties when using metaphor such as lack of vocabulary, cultural knowledge, and creativeness. conclusion this study is aimed to investigate the effects of using metaphor in the development of writing skill as well as find out the challenges learners may face, then propose the suitable suggestions to boost metaphoric awareness and competence in learning english. the findings from the rerearch coincides with the theory and hypothesis the previous researchers such as littlemore, krennmayr, turner, and turner (2014), nacey (2013), macarthur (2010) gave and asserted that metaphor has a good effect on writing skill, it could enhance language profiency but there are also certain challenges in using metaphor flexibly and effectively. the results of the study suggest students may need more class instruction to develop their metaphoric competence because students face a lot of challenges in using metaphor.... when studying one language, it is necessary not only to study vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, speaking or listening, but also to know how to use language naturally. metaphor is specially used in daily life, in any languages, and many situations. in both spoken language and literature language, metaphor can frequently appear. as soon as understanding the message of each metaphor in songs and literal works, learners can easily communicate with native speakers naturally or use metaphor flexibly in their own writing. so, metaphor plays an important role in improving reading and writing skills. it is necessary to write paragraphs containing a metaphor appropriately as possible. learners should use metaphors in their own writing to train their language competence better. as students become aware of their own metaphors for learning they can recognize how their language competence progresses. in addition to the above skills, learning literature cannot lack using metaphor. the use of metaphor in poetry is one of the most important aspects of poetic style that must be mastered. despite being the major students of english, they have few chances to practice using metaphor in writing. they still get a loss to understand and analyze metaphor in song or literary works. therefore, when learning english literature, they must try their best to identify, analyze and use metaphor steps by steps from sentence to text. more importantly, teachers should spend enough time and create appropriate methods to teach them to learn it in the best way. encouraging students to use metaphors will help them improve their writing ability and produce interesting pieces that others will enjoy reading. however, there are activities that teachers can use to help students understand metaphors and to inspire the use of these literary devices. teachers, also, should provide students with knowledge of culture. once learners are able to have their metaphors and use them to promote the ideas flexibly, they will become metaphor masters. if the learners know to take advantages of the benefits of using metaphor, they can improve all the skills in learning a second language. conceptual metaphor provides students with the possibility of understanding one concept in terms of another. from a domain, they can refer to many various domains by the metaphorical expressions. as a result, they will broaden their vocabulary and make them more productive. learners ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 12 should know what a metaphor is if they are studying examples of metaphors in text. simply knowing the definition, however, is not sufficient. they should be able to identify examples of metaphors in the text on their own. they should be able to explain the purpose of the metaphor and analyze how it contributes to the theme of the work. thus, applying conceptual metaphors in learning language will help students improve their reading comprehension a lot. references boers, f. (2000a). enhancing metaphoric awareness in specialized reading. english for specific purposes, 19, 137-147. boers, f. (2000b). metaphor awareness and vocabulary retention. applied linguistics, 21(4), 553-571. boers, f., & lindstromberg, s. (2006) cognitive linguistic applications in second or foreign language instruction: rationale, proposals, and evaluation. in g. kristiansen, m. achard, r. dirven & f. j. ruiz de mendoza ibáñez (eds.), cognitive linguistics: current applications and future perspective (pp.305355). berlin: mouton de gruyter. boers, f. (2004). expanding learners’ vocabulary through metaphor awareness: what expansion, what learners, what vocabulary? in m. achard and s. niemeier, (eds.), cognlinguistics, second language acquisition, and foreign language teaching (pp. 211—232). berlin: de gruyter. cooper, t. c. (1999). processing of idioms by l2 learners of english. tesol quarterly, 33(2), 233-262. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3587719 glucksberg, s. (2001). understanding figurative language: from metaphors to idioms. new york: oxford university press. grady, j. (2007). metaphor. in geeraerts, d., and cuyckens, h. (eds.), the oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics, (pp. 188–213). oxford: oxford university press. lakoff, g. (1987). woman, fire, and dangerous thing: what categories reveal about the mind. chicago, london: university of chicago press. lakoff, g., & johnson, m. (1980). metaphors we live by. chicago: university of chicago press. jakobson, r. (2003). the metaphoric and metonymic poles. in r. dirven & r. pörings (eds.). metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast (pp. 41-47). berlin, new york: mouton de gruyter. kalyuga, m., & kalyuga, s. (2008). metaphor awareness in teaching vocabulary. language learning journal, 36(2), 249–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571730802390767 kathpalia, s., & carmel, h. (2011). metaphorical competence in esl student writing. relc journal, 43(2), 273–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688211419379 kendon, a. (2004). gesture: visible action as utterance. cambridge: cambridge university kjeldsen, j. e. (2009). retorikk i vår tid. en innføring i moderne retorisk teori. oslo: spartacus forlag as. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571730802390767 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 1-13 13 kövecses, z. (2002/2010), metaphor: a practical introduction. new york: oxford university press. littlemore, j., & low, g. (2006a). figurative thinking and foreign language learning. new york: palgrave macmillan. littlemore, j, krennmayr, t., turner, j., & turner, s. (2014). an investigation into metaphor use at different levels of second language writing. applied linguistics, 35(2), 117–144. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amt004 low, g. (1988). on teaching metaphor. applied linguistics, 9(2), 125–147. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/9.2.125 macarthur, f. (2010). metaphorical competence in efl: where are we and where should we be going? a view from the language classroom. aila review, 23(1), 155-73. nacey, s. (2013). metaphors in learner english. amsterdam: john benjamins. ungerer, f., & schmid, h. (2006). an introduction to cognitive linguistics (2nd ed.). harlow, england: pearson longman ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 107 compliments in the educational institution: compliments among indonesian students of english department nugraha krisdiyanta stba lia yogyakara nugrahakris@yahoo.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.020110 received 2 august 2019; revised 31 august 2019; accepted 3 september 2019 abstract this paper investigated how indonesian people give compliment to others in english to find the formula of the compliment the students use. the subject of the research is 27 indonesian students of english department from three universities. the data are collected by giving questionnaire to the students using the discourse completion task. students are asked to complete the sentences for giving compliment. the compliments requested are about appearance which consists of hairstyle, dress and figure; and ability and performance which consists of test result, getting the scholar and cooking ability. the result shows that for appearance, the most used formula is by using the word look then the use of be+adj. for ability and performance, students use the word congratulation and be+adj for cooking ability. however, some students give compliment based on bahasa indonesia form, not english form by giving some statements which are not related to the context. it is affirmed that compliment is influenced by the language that the people use and it is different from one culture to another. keywords: dicsourse completion task, compliment, compliment formula introduction compliment is a remark that says something good about someone or something (merriem-webster dictionary). people tend to compliment other people in their daily conversation. compliment is sometimes considered as a way to establish a communication. it is a speaker’s expression of a positive stance toward some referent attributable to her/his addressed recipient (pillet-shore, 2015). however, compliment is not always expressed in verbal communication. it can also be an action which expresses admiration or approval (merriem-webster dictionary). holmes argues that ‘a compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some “good” (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer’, and she also asserts that ‘compliments are generally regarded as the paradigm of a positive politeness strategy’ (holmes,1986, cited in holmes, 2015:117). it is a type of speech acts which maintain good feeling for the hearer. a genuine compliment always makes ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 108 others feel good. it can reduce the social distance between the speaker and hearer (holmes, 2015). when conducting her research in new zealand, holmes even found that women do compliments more than men. they use compliments to maintain the solidity and solidarity between the speaker and hearer. oppositely, amongst men, compliments are mostly face threatening. they use mock insulting and sparring to cement their friendships. looking at this situation, coates even says that complimenting is one of the women’s linguistic behaviour beside apologizing and it is a part of our communicative competence (2013:86). manes and wolfson (1981), cited by aijmer (2014), show that compliments can be used to begin a conversation. it can function as a greeting. the response of the compliment can be used to continue the communication. even when the interlocutors just meet for the first time. compliment on the neutral subject can engage to a continuation when it is responded. it can even continue to come to an agreement or appointment. further, manes and wolfson explain that compliments can be used as thanking. when a person says ‘you are such a good man.’, he sometimes says it as an expression of thanking. compliment is mostly used for new things, such as new car, dress or even a hairdo. it can also be used to reestablish the friendship when two friends meet after long time of being separated. complimenting, as other speech acts, is contextually dependent. it very much depends on the context. people sometimes find themselves different in expressing compliment. some people, like americans, use verbal compliment more often than other people, such as japanese. on the contrary, japanese sometimes feel more comfortable to express their feeling through action than verbal utterance including in complimenting others (takahashi, 2009). people are using compliments more and more in their daily life. compliments can be produced, in some extent, anywhere, anytime, and by anyone. it can in school or universities (danziger, 2018), or in the workplace (holmes and stubbe, 2015), or even in the social media (eslami et al., 2019). in some circumstances, compliment shows the respect to the addressee (alfonzetti, 2013: 280). as it can be produced by anyone, therefore, compliment is considered as an interesting topic to conduct research. there are some researches on compliments conducted on different languages, such as italian (alfonzetti, 2013), jordanian arabic (al-batayneh, 2019), indonesian (indah and rifana, 2018), mexican spanish and irish english (flores-salgado and witten, 2018), iranian (eslami et al., 2017, 2019), javanese (kumuda and wrihatni, 2018), israeli hebrew (danziger, 2018), american english (placencia and lower, 2018), and chinese (chen and yang, 2010); or on non-native english learners (valkova, 2013; duan, 2011) to mention. again, it is because compliment is a part of communication which people always do in their daily life, when they are getting along with other people. compliments, then, are becoming routinized. since it is routinized, it becomes formulaic especially in english. there are hundreds of compliment formula used by people as investigated by manes and wolfson. eventhough manes and wolfson’s research is arguable since it is based on the field note, the fact that there are a lot of compliment formula used by people is still considerable as confirmed by jucker (2009). they found that the majority of compliments ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 109 contain one of a highly restricted, set of adjectives and verbs. adjectives nice and good are the most common. others use adverbs and verbs like really and love (manes and wolfson cited by aijmer, 2014). that is why it is common to see such compliment like: a. it is a nice book. b. your car looks good. wolfson and manes further stated in their research that there are some semantic patterns for the compliments produced by people (aijmer, 2013: 13-14). a. np {is/looks} (really) adj ex. your belt looks nice this is really good. b. i really {like/love} np ex. i love your shoes. i really like those spectacles. c. pro is {really} an adj np ex. that’s a nice piece of essay that was really a great performance. they also found some compliments which were rarely used like: a. you are driving well. b. peter, you are so intelligent. holmes (2015), on the other hand, also proposes some formulae of the compliment based on her research in new zealand and america. there are some syntactic formulae that they use. a. np be int adj ex. your car is really great b. be looking ex. you are stunning c. i (int) like np ex. i simply like that coat. d. pro be a (int) adj np ex. that’s a very nice blouse e. pro be (int) (a) adj np ex. that’s really great. f. (int) adj (np) ex. really cool short. people over the world use compliment to begin a conversation. the response of the compliments is used as the means of engagement which sometimes can lead them to an appointment. it can also be used to establish a relationship when the interlocutors who meet for the first time talk about the neutral subject. when people talk about something new, like car, appearance, or even hairdo, they make a compliment. if it is produced for old thing, it can be inferred as an indication of jealousy (holmes, 2015). indonesians, as other people, also make a compliment for something new. they also produce a compliment for some achievement that people gain. in addition, they also make a compliment to begin a conversation. compliment is a good way to create a good situation to begin a conversation because compliment ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 110 is believed as the best way to start a communication in which people can mitigate the face threatening. this research is aimed at finding the formula of english compliment produced by indonesian learners (students) of english. it also tries to find the reasons why such pattern occurs in the compliment. method subjects of research the subjects of the research are 37 students of university. they have been studying english since elementary school. they are now studying english in the university. the length of their study in the university ranges from 1 year to 3 years. since they are all studying in the english program, it is assumed that they are at least in the intermediate advanced level of english. instrument the data are collected using a questionnaire based on the discourse completion task (dct). discourse completion task (dct) itself is a type of production questionnaire in which speech acts are elicited in the written form by some kind of situational description (billmyer&varghese, 2000 in sweeney & zhu, 2016). in this case, students are given a text complete with the context and they are asked to answer the answer based on the context provided. the questionnaire for this research is available in the appendix. as said, students were asked to complete the dct based questionnaire. there are 2 situations in the dct with 3 sub-situations in every situation. table 1. situation for dct no. situation sub-situation 1 appearance 1. hairstyle 2. dress 3. figure 2 ability and performance 1. test result 2. getting the scholar 3. cooking ability all the situations are about their friends in their institution. therefore, the respondents can adapt their answer based on the reality that they face every day. they are not asked to pretend to be somebody else but themselves. when the dct is related or close to the reality, it is hoped that the answers on the dct is as natural as it can be. data analysis the data are analyzed based on the formula of the compliments proposed by manes and wolfson (1980 in coates 2013) and holmes (1986 in holmes 2015). they, then, are analyzed to find the reasons why such compliment or compliments occur, also to find the object and the interpretation of the compliment (chen, 2010). findings and discussion ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 111 the results are managed based on each situation in the questionnaire. so, there are four situations with each sub-situations which are described in this session. situation 1: compliment on the appearance a. compliment on the hairdo most, even all, of the compliments addressed to the hearer about the hairdo. of course, since it is about the hairdo, all the compliments must be about it. however, in some sub-situations, indonesians are giving compliments not only about the person but also on the thing while the compliment is supposed to be addressed to the hearer about his/her performance. since it is about the thing, most of compliments use the word look. more than 50% of the respondents use that word. the next formula that is mostly used by the students is be + adj. the adjective mostly used by the speakers is beautiful which is used by 16 respondents then followed by nice. not only using the above formula, students also use the wh + adj when expressing their compliments. beside the general adjectives like beautiful and nice, they also use more specific adjectives like gorgeous and awesome. indonesians, when asked to express their compliment on the new thing, sometimes express their feeling of being surprised. therefore, the exclamation word is sometimes used when they give their compliment about the new thing. they are not used to express the compliment on a new thing without giving the exclamation. exclamation is considered as an expression of intimacy or attention on someone’s appearance. the words wow and whoa are mostly used by the speakers who use the exclamation. intensifiers, so and really, are also used to emphasize the compliment. the following are the examples of the compliment expressed by the students when they are asked to express their compliment on the hairdo of their friend’s. example: 1. whoa, you look so beautiful today. 2. wow, how beautiful you are. 3. you are really awesome today. 4. awesome. some students not only give compliment but also give comments following their compliment. even some of them give the comment before giving the compliment as seen in the example below. 1. your hairstyle is so cool, and it makes you beautiful. 2. wow, you are so beautiful today, you should keep this hairstyle. 3. new hairstyle, huh? it looks beautiful. 4. why do you change your hairstyle? but i like it. for indonesians, especially javanese, the society where almost all of the respondents come from, comments are considered as an expression of intimacy. the more comment they give, the more attention they pour to the hearer. most of the speakers give short comments as stated above. however, there is one respondent who gives long comments which in reality nearly impossible to occur. or, if it happens in the reality, the hearer will feel awkward to respond the compliment because the respondent, who is accidentally a male, gives a long and repeated compliment. it is strange since among indonesians, women are ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 112 considered as the ones who always give more compliment than men. most women are more talkative than men. this is the prejudice that occurs among indonesians. wow, how beautiful you are. you look so beautiful with your new hair style. i really love your hairstyle. it’s good. and it would be better if you always come to campus with this new hairstyle.” the above compliment and the comment might happen when the speaker and hearer are having a conversation. or, they stop for a while and chit-chat while stopping before continuing their activity. for some indonesians, it is common to stop for a while and have a conversation especially when one of the interlocutors has something new. and, it is also common for indonesians women, and sometimes men especially when they are close friends, to talk and give more comment on that new thing and also to suggest the hearer to one of the respondents does not give compliment on the hairdo. when asked to give compliment, she writes as seen below. “is this a special moment to celebrate?” indonesians are familiar with such question while in some culture, the question can be considered as a privacy breaker. this such question is common to show the intimacy and it is accepted since among indonesians this question shows that the speaker pays and gives attention on the new thing. b. compliment on the dress almost the same as the compliment on the hairdo, compliment on the dress mostly uses look as the verb which is mostly used by the speaker. more than 50% of the respondents use that verb. the formula be + adj is also used by few students, about 6 respondents. formula wh + adj n is also used by four respondents. the respondents give compliments not only on the thing (cloth/jacket) but also on the person wearing the cloth. therefore, nice, which is a general adjective, and handsome, which is specifically used for specific term, are commonly used by the respondents. as stated, indonesians are used to giving an exclamation when they give compliment to somebody or something. they use the exclamation word wow. ten respondents are using the word wow. below are examples of the compliment. almost all respondents give compliment on the person. one respondent gives compliment on the thing. only one respondent gives compliment on the thing, and followed by giving compliment on the person (thing, then person). others are giving compliment on the person then followed by giving compliment on the thing. below are examples of the compliment. 1. wow, look at you now, you are very different from the old one. 2. i never thought you would be such a dashing while wearing a wedding dress. 3. wow, nice suit dude. you have changed a lot. 4. wow, how handsome you are with your dress. 5. you look cool. as stated, indonesians like to give comments on the compliment. the comments are sometimes short, sometimes a little bit long. they put the comment ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 113 before or after the compliment. even some of the respondents put their comment both before and after the compliment. 1. you’re so perfect today. do you enjoy your style? 2. wow, this is the real side of you, huh? what a handsome man. 3. hey, is it you? you look so different. i think it’s better for you to wear clothes tidily like this everyday. one of the respondents shows his compliment in the form of the expression of surprise as seen in the example below. “how come? i can’t believe my eyes.” meanwhile, another respondent gives a unique compliment because it also shows how the speaker is feeling about the way the hearer dresses. the expression shows how close their relationship is and in some sense, it shows how much the speaker (a girl) shows her love to the hearer. “why you make me feel happy to see you?” the above statement also expresses that the hearer rarely uses tidy cloth or rarely looks tidy. as it is stated, one respondent gives a compliment on the thing. however, his compliment seems awkward for english native since it is a long compliment. nevertheless, for indonesians, that such compliment is common for women and men who are close each other. they can even give compliment again and again on the same thing. “nice. i absolutely like on what you are wearing especially your jacket. that jacket and tie are suit with you. it looks really nice as well as perfect on you.” basically, when asked to give compliment on the dress, the respondents use either general or specific adjective. some of the respondents use both general and specific adjectives on their compliments. however, one of the respondents gives a compliment in a strange way. “nice to look you like that.” c. compliment on the figure when giving compliment on the body, most respondents (19 persons) use the word look, and 11 persons use be + adj. there is no dominant adjective which is used by the respondents. most of them use general adjectives like good (by 5 persons), fantastic and perfect (by 4 persons each). even the adjective beautiful which seems inappropriate since the hearer is a boy is also used by 4 persons. only two persons use the specific adjective handsome. to start a compliment, the respondents use an exclamation word to show that they are surprised and also to show their attention to the hearer. again, the word wow is used by the respondents to show their surprise. instead of using exclamation word, the respondents also use intensifier to emphasize their ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 114 compliment. they use so, really and very to intensify their compliment. examples of the compliment are exposed below. 1. wow, you look so good now. 2. you look so different. you look fantastic. 3. you look more beautiful.* 4. wow, your body is good now. as other indonesians who like to give comment on compliment, the respondents also give comment on their compliment. some of the comments are also the compliment when they are seen from the meaning. the comments which show their attention to the hearer are sometimes in the form of questions which do not need to answer. 1. wow, your change is amazing. how often do you do sport in week? 2. how often do you do exercise? you look so perfect. 3. wow, i don’t believe it’s you. you are so perfect, much better than before. 4. glad to see you like that. one of the respondents gives a compliment and a comment at the same time. her compliment is longer than the others and it shows how close her relationship to her friend. she is proud of him. based on her compliment and comment, it seems that she does not expect him to change so much. she might have challenged him before and she is surprised to see how different he is now. “i’m really proud of you. you become different in the best way. your body is proportional now and it is good for you.” however, if they do not have close relationship, this such compliment and comment might not be appropriate to utter. another respondent also produces the similar comment. his comment seems to show that he challenged his friend in the past before they meet. “see, you look fantastic with your body now. it’s totally different since i haven’t seen you 5 years. for the first time i see you again, i almost don’t recognize that it is you. you look very handsome with your well-built body that you have now” in reality, those two comments rarely happen. even if we have a close relationship, it is not appropriate to say how proud we are. it is not such a competition or an achievement. we do not know what happens to him. when we meet after long time, it is not good to say ‘see’ as if we challenged him to lose his weight. when the word see is not used, the expression will be appropriate. situation 2: compliment on the ability and performance a. compliment on the test result there is not any dominant formula produced by students in this case. only pro v in which the verbs are not stick to a particular verb. most of the verb used is do which is variously used to show a congratulating action. the adjective that is mostly used is great and of course exclamation word is also used to show their surprise toward the achievement. they did not expect him to pass the test since he said that he did not have any hope to pass the test. therefore, when he passes the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 115 exam, they are surprised and they express their surprise together with their compliment. and of course, most of the respondents use congratulations for this case. 1. wow, you did it well. 2. wow, you get good score. congratulations. 3. congratulations for your hard work. since almost all respondents congratulate, the phrase good job and well done are used by the respondents. they appreciate the hard work that the hearer has done. 1. good job. 2. good job. you did it. 3. well done, my friend. they give a compliment not only on the person as stated above but also on the thing or the result. the statements are common in bahasa indonesia, the language that all respondents use in their daily life. however, in some cases, the statements might express an underestimating expression that the hearer can do by himself. 1. wow, that’s a great score. 2. that’s amazing result. 3. that’s gift from your effort. and from the compliments produced by the respondents, it seems that they do not use the semantic formula that most people do. they use various expressions which in some cases they seem not related to the compliment. 1. how can you do it? 2. can you teach me how to do it? can we study together? 3. it’s miracle. one of the respondents even writes the expression which is widely used in the television. however, this expression does seem appropriate to be expressed to a friend. he writes ‘that’s my boy’. in many movies, this expression is used as a compliment but it is not used as a compliment to a friend who has the same status. this expression is patronizing, which is used by a father or a person who has higher status than the hearer. some of the respondents even give comments which support the hearer to keep the achievement. they also say that they are proud of the achievement that the hearer gains. these expressions of support show that the speaker has a close relationship with the hearer. the expressions also show how big the attention that the speaker gives to the hearer. 1. well, congratulations because you’ve got a satisfactory result. you’ve worked hard and kept trying. you also never give up, and here’s the result you got. very impressive. 2. excellent. i believe that you can pass on the final exam test. your test result is good even you also got a satisfying score. i appreciate on you hard work. good job and you are excellent. keep your score. 3. congratulations. you do a good job. i am proud of you. as seen above, there is no dominant formula. even some respondents use the indonesian expressions but they express them in english. they still deliver indonesian pragmatic expressions within the english language. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 116 b. compliment on the scholar almost similar to the previous situation, most of the respondents congratulate the hearer. the congratulating expression is followed by comment as most indonesians do. 14 respondents use the word congratulation and followed by some comments. surprisingly, not many respondents use exclamation. only 1 respondent use the exclamation wow. for some respondents, being chosen as a scholar is a luck. therefore, instead of congratulating, the respondents give a compliment on his luck. 1. congratulations. how lucky you are. 2. you’re so lucky, keep spirit to reach your dream. 3. what a lucky boy. 4. so lucky are you! however, being chosen a scholar is not only a luck. it needs a hard work. the respondents realize that getting a scholar is not easy. they have to study and work hard, even much harder than before. so, when they get the scholar, all the hard work is paid off. the scholar is like an award for given to them. it is an award for their hard work. 1. you have the right to get it. 2. that’s a good achievement. i know your effort, and this is the result. good job. 3. congratulations for your hard work. 4. hard work always pays off. getting a scholar is sometimes considered as an achievement. those who get a scholar must be smart people. they must have worked hard. therefore, they must be smart since they study hard to get the scholar. 1. you are so smart. the school is not wrong giving you scholarship. congratulations. 2. how smart you are. i’m really proud of you. getting a scholar can make everyone happy. not only the getter who is happy, but also their friends. they also feel happy and proud when one of their friends gets it. the expression of being proud ‘proud of you’ is expressed again and again by ten respondents. 1. glad to hear that. 2. i’m proud of you. 3. congratulations. i’m proud of you. 4. amazing, man. finally, you get the scholarship. i am proud of you. however, they know that it is not the end of their study. getting a scholar is just the beginning of their future study. they must study hard to keep the scholarship. otherwise, the school will withdraw the scholarship. 1. congratulations for your scholarship. you must keep it and keep your study. 2. i am proud of you. congratulations, your effort is not useless. good luck for your next education. some of the respondents (7 person) do not give a compliment. they say something which is not directly connected to the compliment. they just give comment on the achievement. 1. i never expected. 2. well deserved. 3. as long as you work hard, nothing is impossible. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 117 as stated before, indonesians always give comment on something, even on the achievement like the scholarship. for them, giving comment and advice means that they get involved on somebody’s life. it, further, means that they are still having a relationship, close relation. he combines all the compliment stated above. you are very lucky. you can get a scholarship to continue your study. it is not easy. i am proud of you. congratulations. i say to you for on what you have got. i admire you as well.” c. compliment on the cooking ability actually, this situation is about to compliment the ability of a person in cooking. however, since it is also related to food, many respondents give a compliment on the food. therefore, the construction be + adj is dominant in this situation, produced by 20 respondents. consequently, the specific adjective which is related to food, delicious, is also used by 19 respondents. in this situation, the respondents also use exclamation word, either using wow or adjectives used as exclamation, like great, good, and terrific. some respondents also use wh construction to show their surprise. some examples can be seen below. 1. wow, it’s delicious. 2. what a delicious food. 3. love your cook so much. what a food. 4. wow, your food is so delicious, yummy. given delicious food, some respondents thank the hearer. besides, they also give compliment on the food that they receive. 1. that was delicious food. thanks for the delicious food. 2. it’s really delicious food. thank you. 3. it’s good food. thank you. besides giving compliment merely on the food, some respondents give compliment on the ability of the person without giving compliment on the food. they do not know that their friend can cook. so, they are surprised when she gives some food to them, and they give the compliment to their friend without giving a compliment to her food. and dealing with the person, adjective talented is used by 10 respondents. 1. you’re talented. 2. i’m surprised you can cook so good. you are so talented. 3. you’re a very talented cook. 4. you’re a great chef dude. the other respondents give compliment on the food and on the person. some of the compliments on the person seem like a comment to show surprise. however, some show that they do not give comment, but they truly comment on the person. 1. it is very delicious food that i have tasted. i think you are the good chef in your home. 2. i didn’t know you have a good hand to cook. it’s nice. 3. it tastes good. i think you can be a chef. even one of the respondents shows his exaggerated feeling. he not only gives comment but also gives compliment and expresses his happiness. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 118 terrific! evidently, you are great in cooking. i can’t believe this first but it’s real. you have great cooking ability. i am so happy to know it. conclusion compliments among indonesian students of english are pragmatically based on bahasa indonesia, their language. it can be understood since they are all indonesians and none has ever been in an english speaking country. however, some of the respondents imitate english natives in giving compliment with wrong target like in ‘that’s my boy’ which seems patronizing while they are complimenting their friends not their sub status. this phenomenon, complimenting using english with their native pragmatic context, confirms the theory that native language influences persons in complimenting and that complimenting differ from society to society even though they use the similar language (chen, 2010). therefore, there are some compliments that are not using the formula of compliments uttered by english natives. references aijmer, k. (2014). conversational routines in english: convention and creativity. new york: routledge. al-batayneh, h. h. (2019). implicit compliments in jordanian arabic. (a thesis). doi: 10.13140/rg.2.2.31306.41927 archer, d., karin, a., & anne, w. (2012). pragmatics. an advanced resource book for students. new york: routledge. chen, r., & yang, d. (2010). responding to compliments in chinese: has it changed? journal of pragmatics, 42, 1951-1963. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2009.12.006. chen, r. (2010). compliment and compliment response research. in trasborg, a (ed.). pragmatics across languages and cultures. berlin: de gruyter mouton. coates, j. (2013). women, men, and languages. new york: routledge. danziger, r. (2018). compliments and compliment responses in israeli hebrew: hebrew university in jerusalem students in interaction. journal of pragmatics, 124, 73-87. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2017.12.004. duan, y. (2011). a pragmatic research report on compliment speech act. theory and practice in language studies, 1(4), 356-360. doi:10.4304/tpls.1.4.356360. eslami, z. r., jabbari, n., & kuo, l. j. (2015). compliment response behaviour on facebook: a study with iranian facebook users. international review of pragmatics, 7, 244-277. doi: 10.1163/18773109-00702005. eslami, z. r., jabbari, n., & kuo, l. j. (2019). online compliments of iranian facebook users. retrieved on august 27, 2019 from https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108182119.004 flores-salgado, e., & witten, m.t. (2019). a comparative study of mexican and irish compliment responses. colombian. applied linguistic journal, 21(1), 125-138. https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.14670 holmes, j. (2015). women, men, and politeness. london: longman ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 107-119 119 holmes, j., & stubbe, m. (2015). power and politeness in the workplace. new york: routledge. indah, r. n., & rifana, n. f. (2018). the patterns of compliments in instagram photo comments. international journal of research studies in language learning, 7(3), 57-69. doi: 10.5861/ijrsll.2017.1830 jucker, a. (2009). speech act research between armchair, field and laboratory. the case of compliments. journal of pragmatics, 41, 1621-1625. kumuda, p. d. n., & wrihatni, n. s. (2018). humor in ludruk: between insults and compliments. iop conf. series: earth and environmental science, 175. doi :10.1088/1755-1315/175/1/012118. ogiermann, e. (2018). discourse completion tasks. in jucker, a. h., schneider, k. p. & bublitz, w. (eds.). methods in pragmatics, 229-255. berlin/ pillet-shore, d. (2015). compliments. in tracy, k., ilie, c., & sandel, t. the international encyclopedia of language and social interaction. doi: 10.1002/9781118611463/wbielsi127 placencia, m. e., lower, a., & powell, h. (2016). complimenting behaviour on facebook responding to compliments in american english. pragmatics and society, 7(3), 339-365. doi 10.1075/ps.7.3.01pla sweeney, e. & zhu, h. (2016). discourse completion tasks. in hua zhu (ed.), research methods in intercultural coommunication: a practical guide. west sussex: john wiley & sons. inc. trasborg, a. (2010). pragmatics across languages and cultures. berlin: de gruyter mouton. válková, s. (2013). speech acts or speech act sets: apologies and compliments. linguistica pragensia, 2. retrieved on august 26, 2019 from http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-695bced84b87-4e55-b106-7baf96a6add6/c/silvie_valkova_44-57.pdf ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 30-43 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 30 extralinguistic context roles in determining meanings of javanese phatic expression ‘mboten’: a sociopragmatic perspective r. kunjana rahardi sanata dharma university kunjana.rahardi@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.030103 received 27 may 2019; revised 1 july 2019; accepted 20 august 2019 abstract the indirect expression of intention in the javanese culture-based speech community requires the speaker and the hearer to understand the importance of contexts in communication. failure to understand the context of interaction will definitely impede communication and interaction, or even worse it may cause misunderstanding in the communication and interaction process. in the javanese speech community, people may say ‘mboten’ or ‘no’ without intending to negate or to express falsity. on the contrary, people may say ‘inggih’ or ‘yes’ which does not necessarily mean to affirm or to express an assertion. therefore, it is clear that in the javanese speech community, the extralinguistic contexts in the communication is very important and defines the purpose of utterances. based on the research background, the research on extralinguistic contexts to determine the meaning of ‘mboten’ was carried out. the objective of the research was to elaborate the extralinguistic contexts which determine the meaning of ‘mboten.’ the data consists of excerpts containing javanese phatic ‘mboten’. the technique of collecting data was recording and note-taking. besides, interview or speaking method was employed to gather the data. the data analysis was done using the distributional and content analysis methods. this research results in five functions of extralinguistic contexts to determine the meaning of the utterance. the five functions are: (1) the extralinguistic contexts to affirm the intention of negation; (2) the extralinguistic context as the background of negation; (3) the extralinguistic contexts to confirm the meaning of negation; (4) the extralinguistic contexts to affirm the intention of negation; (5) the extralinguistic contexts to affirm the phatic function. the result of the research is very important and contributes significantly to the development of linguistics, especially the development of pragmatics embedded in culture-specific concepts. keywords: extralinguistic contexts, pragmatic meaning, culture-based phatic introduction the linguistic phenomenon found in the javanese speech community rich of culture-specific phenomena is interesting to describe. for centuries, the largest ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 30-43 31 speech community in indonesia has attracted linguists to describe its linguistic aspects, especially the culturally embedded language (sukarno, 2015). in the javanese speech community, indirectness or insinuation in expressing the meaning of utterances is prevalent in almost every utterance. people will speak directly only in certain situations, for example when the intentions conveyed through indirectness and insinuation have failed to take effect (subandi, 2011; irawanto et al., 2011). in the javanese speech community, being silent or keeping quiet or ‘anteng’ and restraining oneself from speaking or ‘meneng’ can also be used to convey one’s disagreement with something. thus, instead of wasting too much energy to speak, or to argue, and to insist on something with too many words, the javanese people usually resort to refusing to talk altogether in order to express one’s disagreement. in a particular situation, the act of clamming up or refusing to talk can also be used to convey one’s culminating anger and resentment (anderson, 1972; sukarno, 2015). the indirect delivery of intention in the javanese culturebased speech community requires the speaker and the hearer to understand the importance of context in communicating and interacting with others. failure to understand the context of interaction will definitely impede the communication and interaction, or even worse it may cause misunderstanding in the communication and interaction process (rahardi, 2017; chen, 2017). for this purpose, the research on the extralinguistic contexts to determine the meaning of ‘mboten’ in the javanese speech community was carried out. in the javanese community, people often say ‘mboten’ although they do not always mean to negate something. on the contrary, they would say ‘inggih’ or ‘nggih’ although they do not always intend to affirm something or to express agreement. it is clear, therefore, that in the javanese speech community, extralinguistic contexts (recanati, 2008; allan, 2007; rahardi, 2016) to determine the linguistic meaning play a fundamental role. literature review there are two theories underlying the research in the culture-specific pragmatic perspective or known as sociopragmatics. they are the culture-specific pragmatics theory or sociopragmatics, and the theory of culture-specific contexts, involving social, societal, and situational dimensions (clyne, 2006). the first theory refers to the sociopragmatics which was first proposed by leech as the counterpart of the term ‘pragmalinguistics’ (chen, 2017; leech, 2007). the second theory refers to the theory of social, cultural, and situational contexts proposed by several theorists. pragmatics is commonly understood as the branch of linguistics that studies the speaker’s meaning (rahardi, 2017b; culpeper, 2010; streeck, 1984). therefore, pragmatics is commonly understood as the study of the extralinguistic factors because the object of the study is the factors which are outside of the language being studied (blackledge & pavlenko, 2001; verschueren, 1997). the study of the speaker’s meaning cannot be carried out without relating it with contexts. it means that the existence of context is fundamental and absolute to be taken into account in the pragmatics study (gretsch, 2009; rahardi, 2018a; lee, 2001). thus, it can be confirmed that the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 30-43 32 study of the speaker’s meaning cannot be carried out by stripping and excluding the contexts of utterances. thus, pragmatics is also referred to as the context-dependent study, while the linguistic study is commonly known as the context-independent study (waugh et al, 2016; lee, 2001). pragmatics in the general sense can be defined by basing the data and facts on the western perspective. it can be seen from the fact that most of the concepts in the western pragmatics is based on the data and facts from anglocultural languages (rahardi, 2018a). pragmatics whose principles are formulated in the generalized perspective cannot be applicable for culture-specific communities. in the javanese community, for instance, grice’s cooperative principles and leech’s politeness cannot fully be applied (rahardi, 2017b). the maxims in the pragmatic principles may lead to different results when they are applied in the javanese culture-based data and facts. for this purpose, leech proposed the idea of sociopragmatic concepts. sociopragmatics is actually pragmatics, which is based on the culturespecific data and facts (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2005). the sociopragmatic perspectives do not focus on the social dimension, but on the pragmatic dimension or the speaker’s meaning. similarly, the counterpart of the sociopragmatics is pragmalinguistics (dippold, 2012; chen, 2017). pragmatics focuses on the linguistic dimensions, other than merely linguistic. the linguistic dimension in pragmalinguistics focuses on the linguistic meaning in pragmatics (rahardi, 2010). furthermore, the theory of contexts is employed as the analytical tool in this research. thus, the pragmatic meaning or intention of ‘mboten’ as the object of this research employed the theory of context as the analytical tool. the social contexts initiated by hymes become the starting point of the sociopragmatic study (gumperz, 2008; rahardi, 2018b). likewise, the theory of societal contexts by mey was also used as the starting point in this research. social contexts are different from societal contexts in that the former focuses on the horizontal communal dimensions, while the latter focuses on the vertical communal dimensions (mey, 2006). in other words, the horizontally-dimensional contexts are interconnected with social distance, while the vertically-dimensional contexts are related with social status and ranks (mey, 2017; rahardi, 2018a). in addition to the social and societal contexts, this research also employed the concepts of cultural contexts. contexts are related to the social contexts despite their different perspectives. social contexts have highly dominant social perspectives, while cultural contexts have observable cultural perspectives (chen & yang, 2010; hassall, 2012). for example, the notion shared among the javanese people that it is taboo to trample on the ancestors’ tombs, to shout loudly, and to curse in the cemetery ground is related to cultural contexts. however, the fact that it is impolite for javanese people to speak to someone older than them using the ‘ngoko’ language, or the lowest variety of javanese, is a matter of social context. in a nutshell, social, societal, and cultural contexts are not the same, and therefore they cannot be generalized (limberg, 2009; scollon & scollon, 2001). careful examination of each similarity and difference among the three aspects is important in sociopragmatics. further, pragmatics cannot be separated from the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 30-43 33 situational contexts as proposed earlier by leech. the pragmatic meaning of the same linguistic entity may be different because the contexts are different (yu, 2011; gretsch, 2009). the form ‘kurang ajar temenan’ or ‘you little rascal’ expressed by a father to his son when he is angry has a different pragmatic meaning from the same statement expressed when they enjoy a father-and-son playtime. it is clear that situational contexts are very important to understand the speaker’s meaning of a certain utterance (mey et al., 2006; van dijk, 1977). in terms of phatic function, it is important to note that in the discussion of word categories, kridalaksana states that this linguistic form does not have a category. in his view, linguistic forms such as ‘ah’, ‘ih’, ‘lho’ and so on are classified as phatic fillers. leech asserts that the phatic functions are merely used as fillers to break the silence between interlocutors (leech, 2007). by employing fillers to break the silence between the speaker and the hearer, the conversation may run smoothly (spencer-oatey & jiang, 2003; leech, 2007). in other words, phatic functions are actually said to initiate conversations, start communication and interaction (kulkarni, 2014). leech’s view is different from the notion of phatic communion which was firstly proposed by malinowski based on his research in trobrian islands in the pacific ocean (kulkarni, 2014; robbins, 2008). in his view, phatic functions are ‘a mere exchange of words.’ therefore, in his view, no actual meaning is carried in the linguistic phatic functions (senft, 2014). the research by rahardi found that culture-specific phatic communion is different from the findings from previous research. he states that phatic functions can be used to express the speaker’s meaning, be it informative, or any other functions (rahardi, 2017b). the theories of pragmatics and sociopragmatics, the theory of contexts, and the theory of phatic functions are employed in this research as both the frame of reference and as the analytical tool. method research on the role of extralinguistic contexts to determine the pragmatic meaning of ‘mboten’ is a descriptive qualitative research. the type of research was chosen because the purpose of this research was to describe contexts and to analyze data using analysis and interpretation, instead of using numerical computations. the substantive data source of this sociopragmatic study was excerpts of recorded utterances containing phatic ‘mboten’ spoken by the javanese speech community members. thus, the research data was the excerpts of utterances from the substantive data source mentioned previously (yusuf et al., 2014; mahsun, 2005). furthermore, the research data was collected using the observation method commonly employed in a linguistic study. the basic and advanced techniques are recording and note-taking (sudaryanto, 2016; chen, 2017). after the data was gathered, it was classified and typified to be the subject of the analytical method and technique. the analytical method employed in this research was distributional and contextual methods (mahsun, 2005). the distributional method was used to describe the linguistic dimensions in this research, while the contextual method was used to describe the dimensions of pragmatic meaning or intent in this research. the research result was triangulated ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 30-43 34 to an expert to ensure the reliability and validity of the data and the analysis results. after the data and the analysis results were validated by the expert, the results were presented using an informal method. the informal method in the linguistic study refers to the method of presentation by elaborating and describing the analysis using an ordinary language, instead of using numerical computations, as commonly used in other disciplines (mahsun, 2005; (sudaryanto, 2016; scollon & scollon, 2001). findings and discussion in this section, the various functions of extralinguistic contexts related to the use of the word ‘mboten’ will be described in details. the functions of the extralinguistic contexts will be clear when they appear in the various contextual uses of the word ‘mboten.’ as previously explained, the theory used to analyze the research data was the theory of contexts. how certain contexts play their role in determining the meaning of phatic ‘mboten’ will be elaborated one by one in the following section. the extralinguistic contexts to affirm the negative intention the extralinguistic contexts play central role in interpreting the speaker’s meaning / intent. the utterance which is interpreted by stripping the extralinguistic contexts will result in the wrong interpretation of the utterance. thus, such meaning can only be derived from the linguistic forms. in fact, the pragmatic meaning may not always be derived from their linguistic forms, but also from the social, societal, cultural, and situational contexts encompassing it (rahardi, 2017a; travis, 2004). the explanatory function of the meaning of the extralinguistic contexts can be seen in the following excerpt. excerpt of utterance 1: s: ayo, nambah lagi siji maneh lah. enak ya masakan iwakke! iku rewangku prigel tenan yen masak. m: sampun, sampun. mbotenlah, pun cekap. kula sampun tuwuk saestu, kangmas. s: halahh....nambah siji maneh. ra popo! ben tambah gendhut ra kerempeng. s: please, have another filling. the meat is delicious, isn’t it? my maid is a very good cook. m: no more. no more, please. i can’t. it’s enough. i am full already, kangmas. s: oh, come on! one more time, please. it’s alright! you are just skin and bones. context: the utterance took place between a host and his friend who came to visit. the utterance took place in the dining room, during the dinner. the host offered more side dish to the hearer, who was already feeling full. in the excerpt 1 above, the form ‘mboten’ in the utterance ‘mbotenlah, pun cekap’ or ‘i can’t. it’s enough’ has a phatic function. actually, the hearer may not necessarily have felt that he was full as stated in the following statement: ‘kula sampun tuwuk saestu, kangmas’ or ‘i am full already, kangmas.’ in the javanese ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 30-43 35 speech community, small talks often take place in the daily conversations (irawanto et al., 2011; anderson, 1972). in the family domain, saying ‘mboten’ or ‘no’ may not always mean that the person really means to negate a proposition or to reject something. likewise, when someone says ‘sampun tuwuk saestu’ or ‘i’m full already,’ it does not necessarily mean that the person is really full. this statement is conveyed out of politeness through indirectness. polite conversations are commonly expressed using indirect statements (subandi, 2011). the term ‘jaga rasa’ or ‘being considerate / respecting others’ feelings’ is obvious among the javanese community members who are often indirect. moreover, due to the dominant indirectness, people judge the javanese people to have a ‘samudana’ culture. the term ‘samudana’ is almost the same as camouflage, or white lie and not telling the truth, whose purpose is to be considerate or respectful of others’ feelings. the feelings being respected in the community are, first feeling towards oneself as a person, and the feeling towards others / hearers (sukarno, 2015; rahardi, 2018a). pragmatically, it can be confirmed that the javanese speech community is very rich in pragmatic values. those who can understand the contexts during the conversations with others have a greater change to be successful in communicating and interacting with other people. on the contrary, those who like to ‘antem krama’ or to ‘go straight’ and pay no heed to situational contexts may face challenges in communicating with the javanese speech community (anderson, 1972). in the above utterance, the meaning of ‘mboten’ whose pragmatic meaning is not merely saying ‘no’ must be interpreted by connecting it to the contexts. the function of the extralinguistic contexts in interpreting utterances is to affirm the meaning. if contexts are scrutinized more closely, the pragmatic meaning of ‘mboten’ will be easily grasped. the extralinguistic contexts as the background of the negative intention the negation of the meaning of the utterance using the form ‘mboten’ can really be interpreted as rejection, or it can be interpreted as fake rejection. pretending to say no may mean that the negation refers to the action of ‘i reject’. the clear meaning of the different pragmatic meaning of the word ‘mboten’ may be clarified by identifying the contexts precisely. the function of the extralinguistic contexts as the background of ‘negation’ of the text’s meaning (rahardi, 2018b; izadi, 2016) can be seen closely in the following excerpt. excerpt of utterance 2: s: sudah sarapan belum tadi pak. ayo tak traktir ke sgpc bu wiryo. angetangetlah! m: wah....mboten pak. aku wis sarapan dimasakke istri e tadi. s: mboten-mboten pripun tho? wis ayo tak sopiri pake mobilku. m: hehehe....yo ayo! s: have you eaten breakfast, sir? let’s go to sgpc bu wiryo (a famous restaurant selling peanut sauce vegetable salad). my treat. something to warm us up. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 30-43 36 m: well....no, sir. i had my breakfast. my wife cooked it for me. s: what do you mean by saying “no”? let’s go. i’ll drive. m: well, what the heck? let’s go. context: the speaker and the hearer are lecturers in a university. they both had a spare time because they did not have classes or consultation. the lecturer stopped by his colleague’s office and asked him to have breakfast together outside campus. they are close friends. they treat each other breakfast or lunches. there are two forms of ‘mboten’ in the excerpt 2 above. first, the word ‘mboten’ in the utterance ‘wah....mboten pak. aku wis sarapan dimasakke istri e tadi’ (well....no, sir. i had my breakfast. my wife cooked it for me.) and the word ‘mboten’ in the utterance ‘mboten-mboten pripun tho? wis ayo tak sopiri pake mobilku.’ (what do you mean by saying “no”? let’s go. i’ll drive.) the pragmatic meaning of both statements is not the same. in the excerpt 2, the form ‘mboten’ in ‘well....no, sir. i had my breakfast. my wife cooked it for me.’ sounds like a rejection to the offer. when someone was asked by a colleague to have breakfast together, he refused because his wife cooked him breakfast. however, was it really a rejection? apparently, it was not so. after being coaxed with the form ‘mbotenmboten pripun tho? wis ayo tak sopiri pake mobilku’ (what do you mean by saying “no”? let’s go. i’ll drive.), he relented and went to have breakfast with the speaker. therefore, the negation is not a real rejection. the form ‘mboten-mboten’ which appears in the above utterance functioned as the speaker’s way to persuade the hearer. thus, it can be affirmed that the function of the contexts in the form ‘mboten’ and ‘mboten-mboten’ in the above utterance is as the background of the negation or the rejection. the careful understanding of the extralinguistic contexts in the excerpt above will lead someone to interpret utterances properly (science et al., 2017; gretsch, 2009). the extralinguistic context as confirmation of the negation the extralinguistic context in the form of social, societal, cultural, and situational contexts play various roles. in the previous excerpts, contexts serve to confirm the intent and serve as the background of the negation, while in the following excerpt, contexts are used to confirm the negative intent or rejection. the form ‘mboten’ in ‘mboten niku. aku mangkat no ke surabaya. lha iku scopus je’ or ‘no, i did not. i am positive that i will leave for surabaya. it’s good for scopus.’ confirms the negative intent. in the next utterance: ‘oh....mboten tho. yo aku seneng nek ono kancane hehehe’ or ‘oh, you did not cancel it. that’s great. i’m glad i have a company to go there.’ the form ‘oh....mboten tho’ clearly confirms the negative intent. the extralinguistic context presented in the excerpt functions to confirm the negation or rejection (norrick, 2009; eckert, 2008). readers may read several times to prove that the function of the extralinguistic context is to confirm the negation or rejection. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 30-43 37 excerpt of utterance 3: s: penjenengan mbatalke rencana keberangkatan seminar ke surabaya napa nggih pak? aku kok krungu saka bu yuliana pa seka sapa ya wingi kae? p: mboten niku. aku mangkat no ke surabaya. lha iku scopus je. s: oh....mboten tho. yo aku seneng nek ono kancane hehehe. p: eh lha....kita kan satu kamar berdua tho pak. s: did you cancel the plan to go to the seminar in surabaya? i thought i heard it from bu yuliana or somebody. did you? p: no, i did not. i am positive that i will leave for surabaya. it’s a scopus meeting. s: oh, you did not cancel it. that’s great. i’m glad i have a company to go there. p: didn’t you know? we share the same hotel room together. context: the speaker and the hearer are lecturers at the same study program. both are close friends and they often go to the same seminar together. the speaker was worried that the hearer canceled his plan to go to the seminar in surabaya with him. the extralinguistic context as affirmation of the negation the javanese language is one of the pillars buffeting the indonesian language because the javanese language is rich with a double entendre. therefore, many sources mention that the javanese community is known as the community with the ‘samudana’ culture. samudana means camouflage or double entendre. the javanese people are used to communicating in camouflage, indirectness, and insinuation (rahardi, 2018a; gu, 1998). someone may say ‘yes’ although he or she does not necessarily agree, or someone may say ‘okay’ although he or she may not be able to carry out the task. the same thing happens to a community member who says ‘mboten’, he or she may not necessarily mean to say ‘no’ as a real rejection. people may say ‘mboten’ while he actually agrees with the statement. by saying ‘mboten’ when being offered to say something, the person is actually willing to say something. then, why does the person say ‘mboten’ in the conversation? perhaps, he or she wants to know how serious the other person asks him or her. sometimes, the meaning of ‘mboten’ is an affirmation of the negation, as in the following utterance in excerpt 4: excerpt of utterance 4: s: wah....wah....iku mambu opo iki? p: mambu opo tho? aku ora mambu opo-opo je! s: penjenengan lali rung adus ya hahahaha.....kok srang-sreng ambune. p: mboten......mboten. wah ngisin-isini. wong ganthenge koyo ngene je! s: hahahaha.... yo wis nek ngono! s: well…well…what smell is this? p: what smell? i don’t smell anything! ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 30-43 38 s: did you forget to take a bath hahahah……..i can smell your bad odor coming and going. p: no……no way. that would be embarrassing. a handsome man like me smells bad? no way. s: hahahaha.... well, okay then! context: the conversation took place in the secretariat of the study program. the employee joked with the other employee of a particularly bad smell. actually, the intention of their conversation is to insinuate the third person who was not involved in the conversation. both had complained of the third colleague’s bad odor. although the insinuation was expressed in a joke, the speaker and the hearer hoped that the third person could get their point. in the utterance above, the form ‘mboten’ in ‘mboten......mboten. wah ngisinisini. wong ganthenge koyo ngene je!’ or no……no way. that would be embarrassing. a handsome man like me smells bad? no way,’ conveys the meaning of strong negation. the repetition of the form ‘mboten’ in the excerpt shows that the negation is very strong. thus, in the above excerpt, the use of ‘mboten-mboten’ really serves to negate the previous statement, namely ‘penjenengan lali rung adus ya hahahaha.....kok srang-sreng ambune,’ or ‘did you forget to take a bath? hahahah……..i can smell your bad odor coming and going.’ it is clear, therefore, that the form ‘mbotenmboten’ in the beginning of the sentence is the negation of the previous statement (yu, 2011; irawanto et al., 2011). the meaning of the affirmation of the negation can also be examined in the following excerpt: excerpt of utterance 5: s: nyuwun sewu kangmas, kula badhe ngresahi. p: ono opo tho dik, kok njanur gunung, tumben banget? s: njih niki, nyuwun ngapunten njig sak derenge. saestu badhe ngresahi. nyusun sambetan. p: sambetan piro? aku yo lagi wae ragat mbakyumu neng rumah sakit je. s: sambetan 15 juta kemawon mas. tahun ngajeng kula wangsulke. p: wah......mboten saged. nyuwun ngapunten....jan mboten saged. mboten wonten dik. s. saestu kamas. s: excuse me, big brother. i’d like to ask you for a favor. p: what is it, little brother? it’s unusual for you to come and visit. s: well, yes. i’m sorry. i’d like to apologize in advance. i really want to ask for a favor. i was wondering if you could loan me some money. p: loan? how much? don’t you know that i also need money? my wife is hospitalized. s: i’d like to borrow fifteen million rupiahs. i promise to pay back next year. p: no......no way. i’m sorry....i really can’t help you. i don’t have that much money. s. really? ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 30-43 39 context: the interlocutors in this conversation are actually brothers. they are siblings. the speaker wants to borrow fifteen million rupiahs from the hearer, but the hearer refused because an urgent situation forced him to refuse. the rejection caused the brothers to have an awkward situation. context: the conversation took place in the secretariat of the study program. the employee joked with the other employee of a particularly bad smell. actually, the intention of their conversation is to insinuate the third person who was not involved in the conversation. both had complained of the third colleague’s bad odor. although the insinuation was expressed in a joke, the speaker and the hearer hoped that the third person could get their point. in the above utterance, the form ‘mboten’ to negate appears three times, namely in ‘wah......mboten saged. nyuwun ngapunten....jan mboten saged. mboten wonten dik,’ or ‘no......no way. i’m sorry....i really can’t help you. i don’t have that much money.’ the repetition carries the meaning of negation which is strongly expressed (coupland et al., 1992). it means that the person strongly rejects or negates the previous statement. the negation is actually the rejection towards the speaker’s intention to borrow money from the hearer as shown in the following statement: ‘sambetan 15 juta kemawon mas. tahun ngajeng kula wangsulke,’ or ‘i’d like to borrow fifteen million rupiahs. i promise to pay back next year.’ even though the speaker promised to pay back the loan the following year, the hearer still refused him because he had a more urgent situation. the extralinguistic context to affirm the phatic function the phatic function is stated in the javanese negative utterance, namely ‘mboten’, as in the following excerpt: ‘mboten napa-napa tho niki mboten lulus?’ or ‘is it alright not to let him pass the test?’ the word ‘mboten’ in the utterance is intended to affirm the phatic function, or to establish social relation, by pretending to ask whether it was alright to fail a student under the supervision of a certain lecturer in a thesis defense. the use of the word ‘mboten’ in the utterance is expressed twice. it means that the negation is expressed strongly as shown in the repetition. the two ‘mboten’ in the utterance does not obviously show the meaning of negation. the second utterance, ‘mboten! kula ya nilaine mepet kok. wong ra iso njawab kabeh kok,’ or ‘no! i also gave him barely minimum scores. obviously he could not answer the whole questions,’ has two pragmatic meanings. the first ‘mboten’ refers to ‘i do not really mind’, while the second ‘mboten’ means ‘i mind.’ the role of context accommodating the utterance is very important. the relation between the speaker and the hearer is also important to interpret the right pragmatic meaning of the word ‘mboten’ as shown in the above excerpt. therefore, it can be confirmed that the exstralinguistic contexts have a significant role in determining the meaning of an utterance (recanati, 2008; yang et al., ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 30-43 40 2011). the following excerpt contains utterances to be examined in detail in order to grasp the meaning of the javanese phatic ‘mboten’. excerpt of utterance 6: s: mboten napa-napa tho niki mboten lulus? p: mboten! kula ya nilaine mepet kok. wong ra iso njawab kabeh kok. s: kula ra penak karo penjenengan je. pembinge profesor kok ra lulus. p: rasah ngono. nggo kepenak wae rasah neka-neka. ra lulus yo ra lulus! s: is it alright not to let him pass the test? p: no! i also gave him barely minimum scores. obviously he could not answer the whole questions. s: i feel uncomfortable. he is supervised by a professor. it’s not right that he fails after all you have done. p: you don’t have to feel that way. make it simple. he fails. that’s all there is to it. context: the speaker and the hearer are examiners of a final examination in a particular university. the speaker felt uncomfortable because he had to fail a student who was supervised by the hearer because the student did poorly in the test. the hearer who was more senior than the speaker convinced the speaker that his student should not pass the test. conclusion in conclusion, the extralinguistic contexts play a significant role in determining the speaker’s intent in an utterance. from the analyzed data, there are five roles of the extralinguistic contexts to determine the pragmatic meaning of the javanese phatic ‘mboten’. the five roles are presented as follows: (1) the extralinguistic contexts affirm the negative intent; (2) the extralinguistic context serves as the background of the negation; (3) the extralinguistic context confirms the negative intent; (4) the extralinguistic context affirms the negative intent; (5) the extralinguistic context affirms the phatic function. the research result is beneficial and will contribute to the development of linguistics, especially pragmatics embedded in the culture-specific forms. the research had a few limitations in terms of determining the locational data source. the javanese speech community in indonesia is spread in all corners of the archipelago and not limited to those residing in the java island. further research is expected to reach the wider scope. with the breadth of the scope of the research area, it is expected that the results of these studies will better illustrate more tangible forms of language. references allan, k. 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(2014). research philosopy and methodologies of e-government: update from eceg and iceg. in proceedings of the european conference on e-government, eceg. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 221 a study of politeness strategies used by erin gruwell in freedom writers movie sharly prisca maria leihitu and veronica triprihatmini english language education study program universitas sanata dharma sharlyleihitu06@gmail.com and v.triprihatmini@usd.ac.id doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i2.3239 received 28 december 2020; accepted 29 march 2021 abstract this study aims to identify and describe the four politeness strategies and the factors which are proposed by penelope brown and stephen c. levinson as seen in an american movie entitled freedom writers. it is qualitative research since the focus is on analysing the utterances of the main character. the data is taken from the movie script. there are two research questions discussed in this study: (1) what are politeness strategies used by erin gruwell in the freedom writers movie? and (2) what factors influencing the politeness strategies? the findings show that erin gruwell applied the four politeness strategies, which are bald-on record, off-record, negative and positive politeness. however, the dominant strategy used by erin is positive politeness, where erin wants to get close and satisfy the hearer’s face. related to the factors influencing the politeness strategies, the finding shows that there are two factors that affect erin in choosing the politeness strategies: the payoffs and the sociological variables. in addition, sociological variables have three sub things: social distance, relative power and rank of imposition. keywords: politeness, politeness strategy, freedom writers, language introduction communication plays an important role in human beings' lives. as human beings, we need to interact, socialize and exchange ideas with each other. in communication, language is an important instrument that is used by people in delivering messages. through language, people not only are able to deliver the message, but they can also express feelings, criticise a problem, receive a message, or even ask people to do something. one of the issues in communication is politeness. according to brown and levinson (1987), the relevant concept of politeness is the concept of face. being polite means respecting and maintaining other’s faces. face is categorised into two, which are positive face and negative face. positive face is defined by brown and levinson as the self-image that he or she wants to be desirable, to be mailto:sharlyleihitu06@gmail.com mailto:v.triprihatmini@usd.ac.id2 ijhs, e-issn 9999-2345, p-issn 1234-5678, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 222 appreciated, and to be liked by others. meanwhile, a negative face is the selfimage that wants to be free, independent, and not to be imposed by other people. unconsciously, some people tend to threaten other’s face through their speech acts. we might see that many problems in such places are caused by our language choices, especially in the education field. as a teacher, or even students, we need to be more aware of language politeness in order to minimize this phenomenon which is still happening. by considering the latest phenomenon above, this study analyses the four politeness strategies proposed by brown and levinson found in an american movie entitled freedom writers. there are two research questions discussed in this study: (1) what are politeness strategies used by erin gruwell in the freedom writers movie? and (2) what factors influencing the politeness strategies?. review of related studies and theories there are several studies conducted on politeness strategies applying brown and levinson theory of politeness strategies. the first study was written by liu peng, fang xie, and lingling cai (2014) entitled a case study of college teacher's politeness strategy in efl classroom. this study is a qualitative research since the focus is analysing teacher’s language in the classroom by using teaching learning recording. the second study was conducted by mifta hasmi (2013) entitled a pragmatic analysis of politeness strategies reflected in nanny mcphee movie. the focus of this study was the language politeness of the main character in the nanny mcphee. hasmi (2013), and it applied descriptive qualitative approach. the third study was done by widiadnya, i., seken, k., and santosa, m. (2018) entitled the implications of politeness strategies among teachers and students in the classroom. the data of this study was taken from tenth grade efl teacher and some students of smk nusa dua bali. the data were collected through observations and interview. brown and levinson theory of politeness is also applied by the researcher in analysing the data. the fourth study was written by ardi, h., nababan, m., djatmika, and santosa, r. entitled politeness strategy in indonesian translation: has it already changed? this study is aimed at comparing politeness strategies used in directive act in the novel deception point written by dan brown (2001) and its two translation versions released in 2006 and 2015. this study uses four different theories as a reference in data analysis, which are speech acts theory proposed by searle (1976), the concept of politeness related to face-saving by brown and levinson (1987), theory of translation techniques proposed by molina & albir (2002), the impact translation techniques toward the quality of translation used nababan, nuraeni, & sumardiono (2012). the fifth study was written by almoaily, m. (2018) entitled greetings as a politeness strategy in efl distance learning students' official emails. the study analysed the efl online students’ politeness strategy in greeting their supervisors through email. the researcher applied face theory from goffman and politeness theory from brown and levinson. the sixth study was written by marpaung, t. (2019) entitled politeness strategy among teachers and students in efl classroom. this study is a qualitative research since its purposed to find out the types of politeness strategy ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 223 by using brown & levinson theory (1987) and to find out the most dominant of politeness strategy of english teacher and grade eight students in classroom conversation. speech acts language does not only produce sounds, words, or utterances. however, it carries action behind them all, namely speech acts. speech acts is a sociolinguistics field and part of pragmatics study. according to searle (1969) speech act is the production or issuance of a sentence token under certain conditions. it means that the uttering words or sentences are produced by the speaker based on the condition. there are three kinds of meaning in producing utterance; locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary (austin, 1962). locutionary the speaker produces an utterance as a particular linguistic expression with a particular structure and literal meaning (austin, 1962) which means that what the speaker said to the hearer is the authentic meaning of the utterance without any reference. for instance, someone enters a room and finds that the room is not comfortable because of the temperature, and suddenly says “the room is superhot” this statement indicates that the temperature in that room is humid and hot. illocutionary the illocutionary act is the social function that the utterance has, in which illocutionary means the act of doing something. for instance, when somebody asks “do you have some water?” after exercising, the illocutionary act is a request: “please give me some water.” in searle taxonomy, there are five points of his taxonomy. these five points represent an important attempt to classify actions that people can perform their utterances. the first is directives, which is an attempt to make the hearer perform some future actions, such as requesting, ordering, and questioning. the second is assertives, an attempt to represent an actual state of affairs, such as asserting, concluding, informing, predicting, and reporting. the third is commissives, committing the speaker to a future course of action, such as warning, promising, threatening, and guaranteeing. the fourth is declaratives, an attempt to bring a change in some institutional state of affairs, such as declaring war and performing a marriage. the fifth is expressive, expressing a psychological state, such as thanking, complaining, greeting, and apologizing. perlocutionary perlocutionary is the result or effect that is produced by the utterance in that given text. it brings the consequence or effect of uttering sentences from the speaker to the hearer. the effect of the utterance can make someone do what the speaker has said. according to searle, the effects can be enlightenment, inspiring, convincing, and persuading. face according to p. brown and s. c. levinson (1978), face is defined as a basic ‘want’ of individuals. face is something that is emotionally invested, lost, maintained, or enhanced and must be included in interaction. face is categorised into two aspects, which are negative and positive faces. based on brown and levinson in politeness book “negative face is the basic claim to territories, ijhs, e-issn 9999-2345, p-issn 1234-5678, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 224 personal preserves, rights to non-distractions, for example: to freedom of action and freedom from imposition.” positive face is the wants of someone which should be desirable by other people or at least some others, for example: life, health, honour, a positive self-image. face threatening acts face threatening act or fta is the act of being impolite and can have risk to threaten either positive or negative faces. very often we threaten other’s faces with our expressions and non-verbal communication, such as requesting, offering, giving suggestions, advising, or even staring at someone with no reason. politeness strategy in order to save hearer’s face of doing fta in communication, politeness strategy is developed by brown and levinson in 1978. politeness strategy is a strategy that is used to prevent a violation of the hearer’s face. brown and levinson divided human politeness behaviour into four strategies namely negative politeness strategy, positive politeness strategy, bald on-record strategy, off-record strategy. negative politeness strategy appears when people show respect of deference, avoiding imposing or offending, acknowledging their “rights”. this means the speaker is trying to avoid offense and maintaining the distance between them and giving them an option to choose. brown and levinson (1987) propose the strategies to indicate negative politeness strategy as being conventionally indirect, questioning and hedging, being pessimistic, minimizing the imposition, giving difference, apologizing, impersonalizing speaker and hearer, stating the fta as a general rule, nominalizing and going on record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting hearer. positive politeness strategy refers to showing emphatic with someone, commiserating with one another about common problems, admiring the other’s taste in clothes by commenting approvingly, and friendly joking. according to brown and levinson (1987), there are 15 strategies to show positive politeness strategy, namely noticing and attending hearer, exaggerating, intensifying interest to hearer, using in-group identity markers, seeking agreements, avoiding disagreement, presupposing/raising/asserting common ground, joking, asserting or presupposing speaker’s knowledge of and concern for hearer’s wants, offering and promising, being optimistic, including both speaker and hearer in the activity, giving (or asking) reasons, assuming or asserting reciprocity, and giving gifts to hearer in the forms of goods, sympathy, understanding or cooperation. findings and discussion politeness strategies used by erin in freedom writers movie in the freedom writers movie, the four politeness strategies are used by erin gruwell. she considers hearer’s public face as the important aspect to implement her politeness strategies in communication. the payoffs or result and sociological variables affect erin’s politeness strategy, since those always appeared in the utterances. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 225 figure 1. politeness strategies used by erin gruwell positive politeness positive politeness strategy is the dominant strategy found in erin gruwell’s utterances. according to the result, there are 105 utterances that are categorised as positive politeness strategy. this strategy is applied by speaker to protect her/his self-positive face, which includes the awareness of hearer’s wants and needs, the optimism, promising, complementing, and the use of personal pronoun such a “we” or “us” to imply that either speaker or hearer have the same value or the same in group. brown and levinson state some advantages of positive politeness strategy: giving compliment; satisfying hearer’s positive face; minimizing the face threatening acts (fta); and minimizing the intention of being debt such as requests and offers. there are several situations in which, positive politeness strategy is applied by erin gruwell in the movie, one of them can be seen where eva comes to the classroom and talks to erin. in this case, eva has problem with her family and cannot go home for a while. then, she asks erin’s permission whether she can stay in or not. erin’s response below is categorised as positive politeness strategy because it has saved eva’s want in public. this utterance also belongs to illocutionary act, which shows an assertives type to inform that erin let eva to stay. setting : room 203 participants : eva and erin situation : eva asked erin’s permission to stay late with her to do her work in the room. time : 01:34:42 eva : see, my aunt lives even further away, so i was just wondering if i could, like, stay here late with you, so i can get my homework done, 'cause it's late by the time i get home. erin : you can stay as late as you want. and i can even drive you to your aunt's, if it gets too late. ijhs, e-issn 9999-2345, p-issn 1234-5678, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 226 the situation above, where eva requests something to erin, indicates that eva is showing her positive face to erin. here, eva’s wants or needs should be accepted by the hearer, if not, her positive face will threaten. erin responds “you can stay as late as you want. and i can even drive you to your aunt's, if it gets too late.” this responds has totally saved eva's positive face. look at the first statement, “you can stay as late as you want.” it indicates that erin accepts eva’s request to stay in the classroom and she also gives eva a freedom to stay for how long. this utterance also belongs to illocutionary act, which shows an assertive type to inform that erin let eva to stay. in the second statement, “and i can even drive you to your aunt’s, if it gets too late.” erin attempts to get closer to eva by offering something as if both of them are a close friend who will be there if the other needs help. erin puts aside the distance between them. negative politeness negative politeness strategy is in the second place after positive politeness. the result shows that there are 31 utterances which belongs to negative politeness. according to brown and levinson (1987), negative politeness strategy is oriented towards hearer’s negative face and the basic want to maintain distance and selfdetermination. negative politeness strategy has some characteristics which contrast with the previous strategy that have been explained above. specifically, negative politeness is signalled by being self-effacement, being formality and restraint, being pessimistic, and being indirect. moreover, the payoffs of negative politeness strategy are satisfy hearer’s negative face by giving respect and deference to hearer, avoiding incurring, maintaining the social distance and avoiding the threat. the example of negative politeness application strategy can be seen in the following dialogue, where erin asked for discount to the bookkeeper. erin attempts to be polite when asking for a discount to someone who she did not know before. the use of words “excuse me” and “could” are considered as polite way in delievering her intention. moreover, the use of hedging “sort of” also indicates that erin attempts to maintain hearer’s negative face by reducing the strength of her utterance of asking for discount. the strategy is suitable to be used when a speaker does not really know a hearer and wants to be seen polite. furthermore, erin’s utterance shows an illocutionary act, in which she is requesting a discount to a shopkeeper. setting : in a book store participants : book keeper and erin situation : erin was in bookstore and looking for a book for the students time : 00:55:55 erin : excuse me, if i wanted to order any books in bulk, could i get some sort of a discount? from her words above “excuse me, if i wanted to order any books in bulk, could i get some sort of a discount?” erin attempts to be polite when asking for a discount to someone who she did not know before. the use of words “excuse me” ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 227 and “could” are considered as polite way in delivering her intention. moreover, the use of hedging “sort of” also indicates that erin attempts to maintain hearer’s negative face by reducing the strength of her utterance of asking for discount. the strategy is suitable to be used when a speaker does not really know a hearer and wants to be seen polite. furthermore, erin’s utterance shows an illocutionary act, in which she is requesting a discount to a shopkeeper. bald on record on-record strategy is a direct, clear and unambiguous expression. the communication between speaker and hearer is straightforward and not rambling. in this strategy, the speaker does not really pay attention to the hearer's face, in which it might cause the hearer to get some shock. on-record strategy can be used in urgent situation. on-record strategy is in the third position after negative politeness. it has 21 points, according to the result. erin gruwell applies this strategy in some situations, one of them is in the classroom, the example can be seen in the following explanation, in which erin is about the first time teaching in room 203, and is surprised that her students are impolite and rude in the classroom. some inappropriate words are heard in the conversation between erin and her students. the use of on-record strategy by erin gruwell conceives some payoffs or the advantages, which are enlisting pressure against the hearer, giving clarity, avoiding to be seen as manipulator and misunderstanding. the conversation can be seen in the following dialogue. setting : room 203 participants : andre, marcus, eva, jamal situation : erin was explaining the materials for today time : 00:20:45 andre : think we don’t know tupac? marcus : white girl gonna teach us about rap. erin : no, it’s not that. see, what i was trying to do... eva : you have no idea. what you’re doing up there, do you? you ever been a teacher before? jamal : and teacher gets nailed, y’all! erin : all right, jamal, enough. jamal! that’s enough! you know what? i want you to move to this front seat right here now. jamal : what? erin : come on. i am sick of these antics in my classroom. erin gruwell as the first time being a teacher in wilson high school does not know her students’ character and condition at that time. she is shock when her expectation about being a teacher is not going well. although, there are still some students who responds in good manners, but most students are aggressive, sensitive, rude and impolite. in room 203, erin starts to teach her students about poetry and rhyme. she asks the students whether they know tupac shakur or not, a well-known rapper and actor in america. tupac shakur is chosen because his song lyrics and poetry ijhs, e-issn 9999-2345, p-issn 1234-5678, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 228 are so cool and sophisticated. unexpectedly, erin’s question is answered impolitely by some students. in the dialogue 1, after getting such a bad response from her students, erin responds “all right, jamal, enough. jamal! that’s enough! you know what? i want you to move to this front seat right now.” this utterance shows that erin does not like jamal’s action who has underestimated a teacher through his actions in the classroom. bald on-record strategy can be seen in erin’s response, in which her utterance shows three hints of doing on-record strategy. she mentions his nickname (jamal), she uses directives category of illocutionary speech act (i want you to move to this front seat), and she specifies the time (right now). moreover, she adds “come on. i’m sick of these antics in my classroom.” in the following expression, it indicates erin’s positive face has been threatened by the students’ utterances. off record in contrast with on-record, off-record strategy is an indirect way to say something. here, a speaker lets the hearer decide what the speaker means, and the hearer should interpret by himself. some linguistic realizations in off-record are used, such as metaphor and irony, rhetorical questions, understatement, and all kinds of hints that a speaker wants to communicate. several advantages of offrecord strategy are avoiding responsibility which potentially damages the hearer’s face, being tactful, and testing hearer’s feelings towards him. based on the result, off-record is the lowest strategy found in the movie. the total utterances are 12. the example of off-record application can be seen in the dialogue 10, where erin and scott are talking about the latest discussion with her father in a restaurant, in which, what her father did actually made them offended. here, erin applies off record strategy by giving association clues to scott. she presupposes her father with an actor in a book to kill a mocking bird, atticus finch, a wellknown lawyer who was competent in solving a problem by questioning witnesses. an illocutionary act is applied in erin’s actions, where she complains to scott about her father. setting : in the bedroom participants : scott and erin situation : they were talking while brushing teeth. time : 00:18:55 erin : what’s happened to him? he was like atticus finch to me when i was growing up. in the utterance above, erin applies off record strategy by giving association clues to scott. she presupposes her father with an actor in a book to kill a mocking bird, atticus finch, a well-known lawyer who was competent in solving a problem by questioning witnesses. an illocutionary act is applied in erin’s actions, where she complains to scott about her father. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 229 the factors affecting politeness strategies by erin gruwell as the main character in freedom writers movie this part defines some factors influencing the main character’s politeness strategies in the movie. there are two factors affecting the character’s politeness strategies, namely payoffs and sociological variables. the payoffs according to brown and levinson, payoffs are the advantage of doing the four strategies. since there are four politeness strategies, brown and levinson stated four different payoffs of each strategy based on their conditions. the four different payoffs reflected in erin gruwell’s statements are presented as follows. on-record payoffs the use of on-record strategy by a speaker conceives some payoffs or the advantages, which are enlisting pressure against the hearer, giving clarity, avoiding to be seen as manipulator and misunderstanding. the example of onrecord payoffs can be seen in the following dialogue. dialogue 10 erin : all right, jamal, enough. jamal! that’s enough! you know what? i want you to move to this front seat right here now. jamal : what? erin : i’m sick of these antics in my classroom. erin was about to start the class by asking them about song lyrics which were written by tupac shakur who was an american actor and rapper. however, the students responded to erin impolitely. then, erin used on-record strategy in this conversation by saying “i’m sick of these antics in my classroom” which indicates that erin’s face has threatened by the students, that is why erin’s effort to protect the students’ face was less, and preferred to be clear and direct in expressing her speech. the next example of on-record payoff can be seen in the dialogue 11, where erin and scott were arguing erin’s profession as a teacher. scott actually did not feel comfortable with what erin was doing for her students because she has been very busy taking care of the students. dialogue 11 scott : they're not even your kids! erin : why do i have to be asked? scott... i finally realized what i'm supposed to be doing and i love it. on-record strategy was used by both of them in the dialogue above. erin’s response “i finally realized what i’m supposed to be doing and i love it” is the very clear, honest and unambiguous statement that erin said to scott as the reason why she was so busy just for the students. another example of on-record strategy payoff is listed in the following dialogue. the circumstance is erin was trying to explain why she could not continue teaching them in senior year. but then, a student named marcus replied ijhs, e-issn 9999-2345, p-issn 1234-5678, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 230 to her, and it surprised erin a little bit. the response from her student made her use an on-record strategy which can be seen as follows. dialogue 12 erin : i want you all to know that dr. cohn and i tried very hard. but it's been decided we can't continue with each other junior year. all students : what? what? erin : you... wait. wait. guys. everyone. marcus : no! that don't fly, ma! erin : look, first of all, i'm not anyone's mother in here, okay? she emphasizes “look, first of all. i’m not anyone’s mother in here, okay?” to make the students understand that erin was not their mother who would be together and help them forever. they could do something even with or without her. positive politeness payoffs according to brown and levinson theory of factors influencing the choice of strategies, there are several advantages of positive politeness strategy. the payoffs are giving compliment, satisfying hearer’s positive face, minimizing the face threatening acts (fta) and minimizing the intention of being debt such as requests and offers. the following dialogue is the example of positive politeness payoffs. dialogue 13 erin : i want you to take one of these glasses of sparkling cider, and i want each of you to make a toast. we're each gonna make a toast for change. the students were shocked by erin’s plan today. she prepared some glasses and bags to make a deal together. a toast for change indicates that nobody will never disturb them from now on and every voice that stops them should be disappeared. the he signal “we’re” indicates that erin avoided fta such as requesting and offering by including hearer and speaker equally as participants. another example of positive politeness strategy payoff can be seen in the scene, where a student asked to read his diary in front of the class, and erin pleased him by saying “that’d be great.” dialogue 14 student a : ms. g? can i read something from my diary? erin : that'd be great. “that’d be great” is the positive politeness strategy which indicates that erin was trying to protect that student’s positive face. she satisfied the student by agreeing his request to erin. negative politeness payoffs negative politeness strategy payoffs aims to satisfy hearer’s negative face by giving respect and deference to hearer, avoiding incurring, maintaining the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 231 social distance and avoiding the threat. the dialogue 15 below is the example of negative politeness strategy payoff that the main character did in the movie. dialogue 15 ms. campbell : apparently you're taking your students on a trip? erin : yes, but it's over the weekend, so it won't affect any test schedules. i know how busy you are. and since i'm paying for it myself, i didn't want to bother you. the conversation started when ms. campbell asked erin about a trip that erin had planned with the students. actually, erin did not tell her about that plan because she did not want to disturb ms. campbell. however, it threatened ms. campbell's negative face as a principal in the school. she was mad at erin and left her before erin finished her words. here, erin showed her effort to save ms. campbell’s face by applying a negative politeness strategy. the utterance “i know how busy you are. and since i’m paying for it myself, i didn’t want to bother you.” shows the reason why erin used negative politeness strategy, in which the utterance indicates that erin was showing her respect to ms. campbell by not disturbing her freedom as a principal. another example of positive politeness payoff is listed in the dialogue 16, where erin just came home late because she should drive the students’ home. the circumstance can be seen in the following dialogue. dialogue 16 erin : sorry, it got late. i drove the kids home. i didn't want them taking buses. the underlined utterance above shows that erin was giving an apology to her husband who has been waiting for her. she realized that it was already late at night and she just came home. here, she was trying to minimize the potential face loss of her husband by apologizing. she also showed her respect to scott because he was her husband. off-record payoffs several advantages of off-record strategy are avoiding responsibility which potentially damages the hearer’s face, being tactful, and testing hearer’s feelings towards him. the dialogue 19 above is the example of off-record strategy payoffs. dialogue 17 her dad : i thought you were an architect. erin : he is. he's just taking a break. scott : and the money's good for now. her dad : how much are you making? $27,000 before taxes? erin : if you know, why are you asking? the example of off-record payoff can be seen in the conversation above, where erin, scott, and her dad were having dinner in a restaurant. her dad started the conversation by asking scott about his job. since erin applied to be a teacher, ijhs, e-issn 9999-2345, p-issn 1234-5678, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 232 her dad got suspicious whether scott could earn money by himself or not. he interrogated scott with some questions, who made erin use negative politeness strategy to respond to her father “if you know, why are you asking?” which indicates that she used a rhetorical question to emphasize some points being discussed and have an obvious answer. here, erin let her father interpret by himself what actually the meaning of her words were. the use of this strategy means that erin was avoiding responsibility for fta interpretation. the sociological variables according to brown and levinson, besides payoff, another factor of choosing politeness strategy is influenced by sociological variables. those variables are social distance, relative power and ranking of imposition. the detailed explanation will be served in the following discussion. social distance according to brown and levinson, social distance is the common factor influencing a speaker in choosing their politeness strategy. commonly, social distance is determined by three things, which are age, gender and intimacy. if the social distance between speaker and hearer is close, the speaker can apply onrecord and positive politeness strategies in their conversation. however, if the closeness and distance between participants is less, then, the speaker may use negative politeness or off-record strategies in a conversation. in this study, social distance always appears in the data, which means it is a factor influencing the speaker to choose the politeness strategies in his or her speech. dialogue 18 eva : see, my aunt lives even further away, so i was just wondering if i could, like, stay here late with you, so i can get my homework done, 'cause it's late by the time i get home. erin : you can stay as late as you want. and i can even drive you to your aunt's, if it gets too late. eva : ms. g, let's not get nuts. the relationship between erin and eva is a teacher and student. however, in the conversation above, the way they both speak as if they are close friends. erin wanted to satisfy eva positive face by letting her to stay as late as she wanted, also, by giving an offer to drive eva to her aunt’s home. here, the use of positive politeness strategy is applied because the distance between them is less. relative power the relative power is also a factor affecting speakers in delivering their politeness strategy. here, a speaker who has greater power than others, they can use either on-record or positive politeness strategies in their speech. on the other hand, a speaker who has low power in certain situation, they can use negative politeness or off-record strategies. the relative power example can be seen in the following illustrated. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 233 dialogue 19 steve : oh, no. no, no, no. erin? get back in the car. erin : dad, he lives right here. steve : i'll get him. get back in the car and lock your door. what's his name? erin : andre bryant. steve gruwell is the father of erin. as a father, steve has higher power than erin. by asking her “get back in the car” “i’ll get him. get back in the car and lock your door.” erin could not ignore him. her utterance “dad, he lives right here.” does not be listened by her father, in which it indicates that erin has less power to rule her father. erin realizes that if she ignores her father, she will do the fta which is impolite as daughter to father. rank of imposition rank of imposition is determined by the obscurity surrounding a speaker and hearer. positive politeness or on-record strategies can be applied when the rank of imposition is less. on the other hand, a speaker can use negative politeness or off-record strategies when the rank of imposition is high in order to avoid face threatening acts. dialogue 20 scott : i feel like we haven’t talked about anything, other than your job, in like forever. erin : i’m sorry in the conversation, scott expressed what he felt to erin. by saying “i feel like we haven’t talked about anything, other than your job” indicates that scott is giving a clue to erin which led erin to interpret what scott wants. here, the rank of imposition is high because erin did not realize that she has ignored scott by talking her job only. erin gives her regret to scott for her mistake she made by applying negative politeness strategy “i’m sorry.” conclusion based on the findings, the first research question was answered by categorising the utterances of the main character using brown and levinson theory of politeness, and the study found that the four strategies (bald-on record, off-record, positive, and negative politeness strategy) are implemented by erin in the movie. positive politeness strategy is the most dominant strategy since the relationship between the main character and other characters is close. meanwhile, in the second research question, the study found that there are two factors that affected erin in using the politeness strategies in the movie. those two factors are the payoffs and the sociological variables namely social distance, relative power and rank of imposition. payoffs refers to the advantage or result of each politeness strategy. the payoffs in positive politeness strategy means, a speaker wants to be close to hearer, satisfy hearer’s face, and minimize acts that can threaten hearer’s face. for bald-on record, a speaker wants to be direct, clear and unambiguous in uttering speech. meanwhile, the payoffs in negative politeness strategy, a speaker satisfies hearer’s freedom of not to be imposition and respects hearer’s negative ijhs, e-issn 9999-2345, p-issn 1234-5678, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 221-235 234 face. the advantage of doing off-record politeness strategy, a speaker can avoid responsibility in damaging hearer’s face and test hearer whether he or she cares to the speaker or not. the study can add more knowledge related to some values in politeness either for english teachers or students who deal with language. dealing with language does not stop in learning the rules or enriching vocabulary, yet, politeness is an important part of learning a language. therefore, through the study, all english teachers and students are expected to have more knowledge by reading and understanding the study which contains politeness, its strategies and factors influencing the choice of politeness strategy. references almoaily, m. 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(2019). qualitative research method theory and practice (3rd ed.). jakarta: penerbit salemba empat. widiadnya, i., seken, k., and santosa, m. (2018) the implications of politeness strategies among teachers and students in the classroom. retrieved on march 27, 2021, from https://www.shsconferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2018/03/shsconf_gctale2018_00067.pd f yule, g. (1996). pragmatics. oxford: oxford university press. http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jhss/papers/vol.%2024%20issue4/series-9/h2404095155.pdf http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jhss/papers/vol.%2024%20issue4/series-9/h2404095155.pdf http://www.academypublication.com/issues/past/tpls/vol04/01/16.pdf https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2018/03/shsconf_gctale2018_00067.pdf https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2018/03/shsconf_gctale2018_00067.pdf https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2018/03/shsconf_gctale2018_00067.pdf ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 163 ideas of science and nature in biographies for filipino child readers christine veloso lao university of the philippines diliman, philippines correspondence: cvlao@up.edu.ph doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i2.3152 received 25 february 2021; accepted 20 march 2021 abstract many biographies for children are written to teach their readers social values and acceptable patterns of behavior. but even when no such pedagogical aims are stated, biographies for children perform an ideological function. since they narrate a “true story,” they direct young readers to think of the world and its people in the way these are presented in the text. the bookmark inc.’s women of science se-ries comprises ten books, each narrating an episode in the life of a living filipino woman scientist. the series’ aim is to encourage more filipino girls to consider ca-reers in science. its author, didith t. rodrigo, herself a scientist, completed writ-ing the series through a grant from the philippine government. using an ecofemi-nist lens, i analyze the series to answer the following questions: what political view point or interests do these biographies serve? what patterns of behavior do they motivate children to emulate? what social relationships, and relationships between the human and non-human, do they tend to reify? i argue that the series generally promotes anthropocentric views of science, consistent with philippine policy pronouncements on science. however, tension points between this ideolog-ical frame and the words and practices of scientists featured in the series can be gleaned from the series itself. i demonstrate how these tension points can lead to fruitful discussions on scientific practice informed by ecological understanding. keywords: children’s literature, literary criticism, ecofeminism introduction children are naturally curious about the world around them—including the social world. biographies, being true stories about people, naturally pique their interest. arguing for the construction of more biographies written with a child reader in mind, grace miller heriot pointed out that biographies have the added value of “inspiring” children with “ideals” (1948). today, many biographies for child readers are published aiming to inspire young people to follow model exemplars. tahanan books’ great lives series, for example, consists of 12 books recounting the life stories of 12 important philippine historical figures and heroes. the bookmark inc.’s modern heroes for ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 164 the philippine youth, consists of 24 books about the lives of contemporary filipinos, many of whom were alive when the books were published. these books are written to teach them social values and acceptable patterns of behavior. the most recent example of biographies for children is the bookmark inc.’s women of science series—10 books narrating an episode in the life of a living filipino woman scientist. the series’ aim is to encourage more filipino girls to consider careers in science. as i will show in this presentation, women of science accomplishes this by portraying successful women scientists as exemplars of behavior that ensure success in the scientific field. these biographies, which all aim to motivate children to behave in certain ways, perform an ideological function. according to daniel bell (1960), ideology is an action-oriented system of beliefs. being “true stories,” biographies direct young readers to think of the world, its peoples and cultures, in the way they are presented in the text. accepting this portrayal of the world, children act according to what they believe is expected of them—that is, in a manner consistent with what the text suggests is correct and true. but precisely because its purpose is political, ideologies often operate to obscure reality, so that certain social institutions or interests may be served, and specific points of view, affirmed. for example, it has been argued that the great lives biographies were what louis althusser called an “ideological state apparatus,” a state-approved tool that reified existing class relations. francis ang noted, for example, how the books highlighted fairly minor life events, but omitted controversial incidents— points of contention between the state-supported narrative and counter-narratives about the hero and about philippine history. in this way, ang concluded, the biographies reified “a clear mainstream narrative that supports the existence of the [philippine] nation” (2016). bearing in mind that biographies perform an ideological function, what mainstream narratives do the life stories in the women of science series support? what political view point or interests do they serve? what do they teach our children about our world? what patterns of behavior do they motivate our children to emulate? what social relationships, and relationships between the human and non-human, do they tend to reify? method the women of science series and philippine state policy on science the women of science series stands out among contemporary filipino children’s books. re-leased in 2017 by the bookmark, inc., each of the ten books in the series consists of 20 fully illustrated pages that narrates an episode in the life of a living filipino woman scientist. award-winning children’s author, didith t. rodrigo, who is herself a scientist, obtained a grant from the gender committee of the national book development board’s trust fund grant program to interview and write about ten of the country’s “most respected female scientists” (rodrigo, 2017b, p. 19). she then recounted incidents from the lives of her interview-ees, focusing on how they became scientists, or on narratives that described what it was like to do scientific work in the philippines. rodrigo’s aim was to encourage more filipino girls to consider careers in science. each book contains an afterword which states that “[w]omen and girls opt out of steam fields not because of a lack of talent” but because of “a lack of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 165 encouragement.” consequently, “relatively few women and girls enter the fields of science, technology, engineering, agriculture, and mathematics” (19). statistics from the commission on higher education for 2016-2017 bear this out. out of 448,550 students enrolled in engineering and technology courses at the tertiary level, 317,152 (70.7%) were male, and 131,398 (29.3%), female. ecofeminist critique ecofeminists draw connections between anthropocentrism in scientific practice and the capitalist mindset, which is perpetuated by dualistic hierarchies of domination, premised upon an ontological divide between human/non-human; culture/nature; man/woman; man/child; mind (soul)/body; heaven/earth, etc. as alice curry discusses this in environmental crisis in young adult fiction: a poetics (2013), in a capitalist patriarchy, women, nature, and body are all correlated, coded as fecund, nurturing, and nourishing— but also primitive and non-human; men, on the other hand, are viewed as the dominant force in politics, economics, and culture, the embodiment of reason; harbingers of human civilization, progress and development. just as women are thought of as having a natural, physiological connection to the earth, children are traditionally viewed as “mere products of heredity and the environment,” and embodiments of innocence and imagination, qualities that are replaced by sophistication and rationality in adults. in turn, nature has been viewed as possessing qualities associated with children: “immediacy, wildness, uncultivated simplicity” (curry 2013). these cognitive biases have serious material effects. the asian development bank gender hub reports that only 49% of women of working age in the region participate in the labor force compared with 80% of men; and a woman receives, on average, only 77% of what her male counterpart is paid. to this day, only around 10% of women in developing asia own land (2018). in certain countries around the world, more boys than girls enroll in school. for example, 78 girls in chad and 84 girls in pakistan are enrolled in primary school for every 100 boys (unicef 2020a). this, despite the fact that increasing the number of girls in school has not only proven to increase girls ’earnings throughout their lifetime, but has also coincided with drops in child marriage, child mortality, maternal mortality, and child stunting (unicef 2020b). until today, ilo reports, there are around 265 million child laborers around the world, unable to enjoy the right to education (ortiz-ospina et al. 2016). ecofeminists point out that the same global corporate practices that use science as a means to extract more profit from exploiting the natural world, are the same ones that tolerate, if not encourage, women’s exploitation and child labor. because of the problems ’ontological roots, ecofeminists call for the eradication of the false divides between the categories man/woman, culture/nature and human/nonhuman, using “the underlying association between women and the natural world…as a source of both subjugation and resistance, exploitation and inspiration” (curry 2013). where the mainstream narrative emphasizes division and alienation, ecofeminism encourages community, creaturely feeling, embodiment and embeddedness. where texts or practice tend to subordinate women and children, ecofeminism seeks readings that amplify their humanity and agency, and promote their empowerment. where nature is presented as nothing ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 166 more than resource for human consumption, ecofeminism raises the possibility of nature’s (that is, non-human) autonomy, agency, even culture (plumwood 2001). findings and discussion that bookmark inc.’s women of science series aims to inspire young girls to study science and aspire to become scientists seems consistent with ecofeminism’s empowering objective. the books do the work of raising women’s representation in what is perceived as a male-dominated field, thereby breaking this particular gender stereotype. some stories foreground the fact that their subjects worked in prestigious or otherwise important institutions, and occupied leadership positions: jurgenne primavera was a scientist working in the aquaculture department of a research center in iloilo (rodrigo, 2017f, p. 4). giselle is a chemist who works at the university of the philippines diliman. she studies the bacteria found in turrids, a family of snails found in the ocean (rodrigo, 2017j, p. 4). nida never pictured herself as a botanist, but there she was, one year later, at the smithsonian working on the seagrasses and seaweed collection. (rodrigo, 2017e, p. 13). evelyn formed a team made up of engineers and scientists from different fields. they set up a food waste research program. (rodrigo, 2017i, p. 5). nina and her assistant, toto, had been hiking up the mountain for over an hour (rodrigo, 2017b, p. 2). other stories presented their subjects as being at home with scientific concepts and jargon—emphasizing their ability to live the life of the mind: jinky bornales studied the random walks of something called polymers (rodrigo, 2017g, p. 6). when ninette looks at a mat, she sees what is known in geometry as symmetry or rigid motion” (rodrigo, 2017h, p. 5). moreover, the subjects are represented as plucky and resourceful, unafraid to go head-to-head with government officials, company owners, and other authority figures, who, in all of the stories, happen to be male: “cap, please don’t kill the mangroves.” “ma’am jurgenne,” cap relied, “i need to create jobs for the people in my community.” jurgenne had to think quickly. “but i have a research project in that forest.” “is that so?” cap frowned (rodrigo, 2017f, p. 10-11). “well,” the captain said, “we can’t really stop people from going there. this is their area after all…” ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 167 “we don’t have to prevent people from going to all the caves,” ging replied. “we just have to conserve some so that the birds and the bats have places to live” (rodrigo, 2017c, p. 13-14). some stories begin with the subjects persuading a reluctant male in a gatekeeper or custodian’s role to allow for the scientific study of some property: mr. palma was unconvinced. “we have experts who know how to do this already. all they have to do is look at a mat and they can tell where it’s from” (rodrigo, 2017g, p. 11). some people had doubts. mr. rex, the owner of a large mango processing plant, did not believe that evelyn’s team could make something useful from the mango wastes (rodrigo, 2017i, p. 7). but in the end, the men admit they were wrong: mr. palma approached her after the talk and said, “i always knew that our mats were beautiful, but i never realized how complex they were until i listened to you” (rodrigo, 2017g, p. 14). one day, evelyn was surprised to receive a call. it was mr. rex. “i’ve been keeping up to date with your work,” mr. rex said. “it’s been fantastic, really! congratulations!” (rodrigo, 2017i, p. 16). male community leaders ask the subjects’ advice, banking on their scientific expertise: turning back to gemma, the mayor continued, “is this still related to the weather somehow? is this something that could come again?” gemma paused for a moment. “let me look at the data and get back to you” (rodrigo, 2017a, p. 13). instead of emphasizing childhood passions or a natural inclination for the sciences, the stories foreground qualities and values to which success and excellence in the sciences are attributed. for example, the stories communicate the message that the success of a scientist is the outcome of consistent, patient work, innovation, and attention to detail—all of which are qualities that are identified as valuable to science, rather than attributed as the natural inclination of one sex: decades of patience, concentration, and effort made her a true master of her craft. procedures that used to take two years now take only two weeks. before, she required hundreds of kilos of plants and gallons and kilos of chemicals to do her work. now she can work with a sample as small as 10 grams…she has also mastered scientific writing. it took her literally years to finish her dissertation paper. now, once she has her lab results and the data interpreted, she is able to finish writing a single scientific paper in about one day (rodrigo, 2017d, p. 13-14). nida…learned how to identify the different grasses and seaweeds. she learned how to make technical drawings of each species. she learned how to photograph the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 168 specimens and develop the pictures. when they received a specimen, she asked herself: was it something they had already catalogued? was it something completely new? she had to compare it against all the other specimens to find out. nida quickly learned that details were essential. knowing details was the only way to know science (rodrigo, 2017e, p. 13). these qualities are emphasized as key to a child’s future professional success in the sciences. the story chemical romance, for example, begins with: “what does it take to be a world-class scientist? read this story and find out” (rodrigo, 2017d, p. 2). but this drive to achieve success is not for purely personal reasons; it is presented as advancing the country’s position as well: researching on our own sea creatures could bring local science up to international standards. we could stand shoulder to shoulder with leading scientists from other countries (rodrigo, 2017j, p. 14). moreover, the series takes pains to show how their subjects use their knowledge of science to solve human problems such as illness, poverty, and climate change: there were many new organisms that were stronger and more resistant to current drugs. studying organisms like the bacteria in turrids might help scientist find new treatments.(rodrigo, 2017j, p. 13). connie focused her studies on dilang baka, a common weed that thrived in the uplb campus. some people used dilang baka leaves to heal wounds and to reduce swelling, but no one knew for sure if or why the plant worked. if the compounds that connie found turned out to be good for human beings, people could then invest in more research to determine how this plant could be used as medicine (rodrigo, 2017d, p. 6). what was most important to evelyn, though, was that the work she was doing was helping poor people. evelyn, her team, and their partners set up a company called green enviro management systems (gems), inc…in its first two years, gems employed 36 people from janssenville, people who would otherwise be picking garbage from the dumpsites (rodrigo, 2017i, p. 14). gemma stood at the podium and looked at the crowd. a strong typhoon had recently hit this small rural town. many of the farmers lost their crops. the fishermen lost their boats. some people lost their homes. would they really listen to a university professor speak about climate change? (rodrigo, 2017a, p. 7). it is not difficult to see how the narratives serve to make the science an attractive career option for the filipino girl child. a career in science, these stories suggest, does not necessarily call for extraordinary talent or smarts—but for hard work and discipline. jobs in science are equal-opportunity environments, where girls can succeed, and even become leaders in the field. pursuing scientific knowledge is presented as desirable, not just for its own sake, but because it can help solve social problems. science allows the child to imagine herself being useful to society, and presents the ability to contribute to human flourishing as desirable. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 169 questions from an ecofeminist lens it is not enough that the series raises female representation in the sciences; ecofeminists would ask how such representation is raised. might it be asserted, for example, that although the stories propose that women, like men, can be scientists too, they also suggest that success in the sciences requires the adaptation to patterns of behavior expected from, and values held by, male scientists? disembodied subjectivities although (as previously mentioned) values and behavior patterns that are identified as important to success in the sciences are not explicitly coded as male or female-specific, one cannot help but notice that the female-ness of the subjects—for example, information about their marital status, or whether or not they have children— are pointedly ignored. it may be argued that these questions are not often asked of male scientists (if at all). but most men are not interrogated about these matters because these responsibilities are so commonly expected to be borne by women. to downplay these issues in the lives of women scientists closes the door to questioning the status quo. what’s missing here is the sense that the scientists portrayed in the series are not embodied subjectivities. the female body that is perceived to be so closely related to the earth, is mentioned only in one story—that of a scientist who doesn’t have children: nida has spent much of her life caring for the environment and teaching others to do the same. she has no children of her own, but she has had many, many students (rodrigo, 2017e, p. 15). what emerges is the message that a successful scientist is, first and foremost, a thinking, observing subject—a brain. it is as if the woman’s body is so closely tied to ideas of the primitive, the backward, the underdeveloped, that one must efface it altogether so that one might better claim parity with men in science. ironically, therefore, equality is sought (if not obtained) by reinforcing the mind/body duality. acquisitive materialism and specie dominance de-emphasizing human embodiment denies how embedded we are in nature. to imagine oneself as disembodied subjectivities makes it easy for us to treat nature as an object of consumption—and this, too, facilitates the human tendency to take and use what nature gives until it runs out. there is an acquisitive quality that the stories seem to privilege: many of the subjects are praised for possessing curiosity, a spirit of inquiry, and a strong desire to know—in fact, a strong, overriding desire to possess knowledge: people send her new plants for analysis all the time. when they do, she is always challenged, but never daunted. after a few preliminary tests, she immediately has a hypothesis about what it contains. “i know what you’re made of!” she say and then proceeds to her laboratory to prove it. (rodrigo, 2017d, p. 16). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 170 because nature is the object of scientific study, this unquenchable thirst for knowledge transforms into an unrelenting quest for rare creatures so that they might possess new knowledge: after four nights of netting bats, nina and toto walked down the mountain. their arms and backs ached, their stomachs grumbled, and their clothes were muddy. in nina’s notebook, though, was information that no one else had before, and this was enough to make them smile (rodrigo, 2017b, p. 17). there is even something pleasurable but also transgressive in the acquisition of knowledge, as suggested by the following passage: “these tiny creatures had finely tuned survival skills. how did they continue to exist after ages and ages? she was prying into the secrets of nature” (rodrigo, 2017j, p. 13). the scientist’s study of non-human creatures is an exercise of power, and possibly, a claim of dominion. what these, in turn, suggest is a reinforcement of patterns of human domination over other species. a number of the stories justify the acquisition of knowledge to be essential to the survival of the human specie; to eradicate poverty or sickness. but these only tend to demonstrate the anthropocentric thrust of scientific practice today. in one story, the conservation of forests, mountains, and caves was asserted to be important “for future generations to enjoy” (rodrigo, 2017c, p. 16). representations of nature despite the preponderance of stories about conservation, the texts invariably suggest a landscape of abundance, one that is rarely matched elsewhere in the world: the variety of life in philippine oceans was so abundant, few other places in the world had the same diversity. the series suggests that scientists practice in this natural environment teeming with life: when she returned to mindanao, she focused her research on cataloguing the rich animal life in forests, mountains, and caves…after hours on rough road, they camped near streams or rivers so that they always had fresh water (rodrigo, 2017c, p. 6). the lush landscapes depicted in the series might make a child wonder why nature needs to be conserved in the first place. shouldn’t humans—especially those struggling with poverty and who live in countries suffering from underdevelopment— have the right to take what they need from nature— including space—since nature is so abundant anyway? such stories take as given that human society and nature occupy separate spaces. in a world of finite resources, humans will inevitably wrest space and resources from nature. science enables this human mastery over nature and wilderness, or at its least aggressive form, polices the two separate realms strictly (for example, humans are entitled to use certain caves, but leave the rest to non-human life). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 171 filipino scientists have the privilege to work in one of 18 mega-biodiverse countries in the world. the country is believed to contain 2/3 of the earth’s biodiversity and between 70 to 80 percent of the world’s plant/animal systems. this notwithstanding, the philippines, like all other countries on earth, is threatened by climate change and environmental degradation. there is, however, a curious silence as to this crisis of planetary proportions, and the role human activity has played in bringing it about. one story, beyond the storm, describes how dr. gemma narisma helps a community hit by a typhoon understand how to minimize risks brought about by natural calamities (rodrigo, 2017a). although the text is a straightforward account of dr. narisma educating the community during a meeting, illustrator george vincent bien portrays dr. narisma as a sword-and-shield bearing warrior fighting against threatening anthromorphized rain clouds on the book cover (figure 1). another illustration shows the same rain clouds attempting to blow down a set of anthromorphized houses (figure 2). these illustrations suggest that humans are at odds with nature; nature is the enemy; and nature must be defeated by human. figure 1. cover of beyond the storm by george vincent bien (d. rodrigo, beyond the storm, 2017; the bookmark inc.). figure 2. illustration from beyond the storm by george vincent bien (d. rodrigo, beyond the storm, 2017; the bookmark inc.). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 172 in portraying nature as human society’s enemy, the illustrations do not tell an important part of the story: that the effect of many natural disasters today are exacerbated by climate change. human activities around the world, such as the burning of fossil fuels, are touted to be the reason behind it. although dr. narisma is a climate change expert and was likely called to speak to the community because of her expertise, climate change is not mentioned in the story. admittedly, it is difficult to explain how a scientist and her team can defeat, not just nature, but climate change—widely touted to be the biggest threat to life on the planet today. one might argue that there is no space in a children’s book—especially one that aims to encourage young girls to get into the sciences—to discuss the structural and material causes behind the modern human’s drive to maximize extraction of value from nature (capitalism, for example). this, however, speaks of what we, authors and scholars, assume about child readers—and these assumptions may very well be wrong. we may assume, for example, that child readers would not be able to understand complex social issues—and thus leave these out of a text. but perhaps it is we—parents, publishers, authors—who have difficulty thinking through and communicating our own convoluted assumptions about reality to our children. that we face wicked problems is an altogether different issue from what child readers can, and cannot understand. it is important to remember that pre-modern societies lived with nature, rather than separately from it. once, the human occupied a place within nature, rather than outside it, a place that was in harmony rather than conflict with it. what changed things? how might things change again? how does the modern human, the scientist who sees nature primarily as object of study and as resources reembed herself in nature, restore relations between herself, her community, and the non-human? these are questions that are both interesting and relevant to adults and children alike. our search for answers may very well ensure the survival of all creatures on earth, including ourselves. we would do well to introduce such questions to our young. counter-narratives in the women of science series to sum up: there is a danger that discourses of individualism and species dominance in human/non-human relations are strengthened by narratives that do not emphasize human embodiment and ecological embeddedness. to imagine nature as an aggressor makes it easier for us to destroy it. conversely, to imagine oneself as part of nature leads to the realization that to preserve nature is to preserve the human self. we need to cultivate our imaginations in this direction so that we might develop an ethics of care. fortunately, there are stories in the series that demonstrate a healthy tension between anthropocentric scientific practice and views and a more ecological understanding. the story capturing flight: a story about nina ingle, suggests, on the one hand, the pursuit of scientific research for the sheer and individualistic pleasure of finding—and possessing—“information that no one else had before” (rodrigo, 2017b). however, the story itself actually goes into painstaking detail about how dr. ingle and her assistant toto put into operation a scientific protocol that allowed them to study bats without having to hurt or kill them. after tagging ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 173 them, dr. ingle would set them free. the protocol speaks volumes about the respect dr. ingle had for the bats. it is the respect one accords a fellow creature. it is mangrove warrior: a story about jurgenne primavera, that portrays most eloquently how a scientist—a human being—pays attention to nature, not as an object of study but as a fellow creature (rodrigo, 2017f). unlike the other stories in the series, mangrove warrior foregrounds the strong emotional connection dr. primavera felt toward the ibajay mangroves in aklan. it was “close to her heart.” it enchanted her. she “instantly falls in love” with it (rodrigo, 2017f, p. 5). lost in the mangrove, she notices with concern that the bark of some trees had been deliberately removed—a practice, she is told, preparatory to killing them off. when she learns that the barangay captain had decided on replace them with bakhaw, which could be cut down and sold (rodrigo, 2017f, p. 8), she resolves to “do something to save their trees.” and it is at that moment, we are told, when she and her companions find their way out of the forest. instead of viewing or talking about the trees as though they were her objects of study, primavera recognizes nature’s sentience, and accords it a kind of agency: “were there indeed spirits watching them as they walked? did they test her heart, find that her intentions were good, and then lead them back to the highway?” (rodrigo, 2017f, p. 9). once out, primavera meets with the mayor and insists she needs the trees for her research—despite the fact that she had not yet secured any grants to fund it. to save the forest from human degradation, she embarked on mangrove research. nowhere else in the series does a scientist undertake research as a strategy to ensure that the nonhuman be protected from human encroachment. the story is interesting in its portrayal of its subject—the protagonist—as a scientist who relates to nature as a being of equal status and dignity. a similar sentiment is expressed in gardener of the sea: a story about nida calumpong. at the end of the book, dr. calumpong expresses that all her efforts to teach people to restore and rehabilitate underwater areas was to allow all life to flourish: when i die, plant a tree and bury me under it the tree will bear fruit and the cycle of life will continue. the purpose of life is to give life. it doesn’t have to be of the same species (rodrigo, 2017e, p. 16, emphasis supplied). conclusion if ideology both constitutes and obscures reality through the reification of ideas and ideals that form the basis of our actions, one way of resisting ideology is to question these ideas, their representations, our received values and meanings—not so much that we might possess the answers, but to clarify our desires. questions create space for us to view things differently, thus enabling the possibilities for living differently, and more deliberately. although we can never completely escape ideology, questioning can help us live with it more intentionally, as individuals and as a collective. even texts that tend to reify mainstream narratives contain seeds of possible counter-narratives; but unless one inquires into the former, these counter-narratives might never even be identified. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 174 beyond questioning a text, one might wish to inquire into what child readers think about issues and concerns that are frequently de-emphasized in mainstream narratives. for example, one might ask a child who has just read one of the books from the woman of science series to imagine what kind of childhood the subject of the book had. this might lead to an investigatory project and possible interview and interaction with one of the subjects of the biography series—for all are living scientists.this project would provide the child with a context to ask the scientist about an early childhood experience with the natural world. such an interaction might yield an account left out in the book, one that may very well reveal the scientists’ direct and embodied responses to nature. children may also be asked about their own embodied experience in the world and in nature. they might be asked to describe where they live, their “natural habitat,” the home, and what creatures, other than human, shelter in the same place. one might even ask them to imagine themselves as one of these creatures: how would you now see the world from that creature’s point of view? such questions and activities can be springboard for further discussions and inquiries that serve to unify, rather than divide human/non-human; woman/man, etc. finally, one may ask child readers to ask about issues such as climate change, poverty, gender discrimination, and social inequality, and, together with the rest of the class pursue a joint investigation on how these issues are all connected to the way we envision ourselves in the world. references ——— (n.d. b). male vs. female enrolment by discipline group 2016-2017. statistics. https://ched.gov.ph/statistics/. ang, f. e. (2016). an analysis of the biography for young readers as literary history through the great lives series by tahanan books . proceedings the 4th literary studies conference “children’s literature in southeast asia” (pp. 95–107). universitas sanata dharma. asian development bank. (2018, december 5). closing the gender gap. asian development bank. https://www.adb.org/themes/gender/overview. bell, d. (1960). the end of ideology: on the exhaustion of political ideas in the fifties. the free press of glencoe. commission on higher education (n.d. a). higher education sex-disaggregated data. statistics. https://ched.gov.ph/statistics/. curry, a. (2013). environmental crisis in young adult fiction: a poetics of earth. palgrave macmillan. government of the philippines (2017). philippine development plan 2017-2022 abridged version, national economic development authority. http://www.neda.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/abridged-pdp-20172022_updated-as-of-01052018.pdf. heise, u. science and ecocriticism. asle. https://www.asle.org/wpcontent/uploads/asle_primer_heise.pdf. heriot, g. (1948). children and biography. elementary english, 25(2), 98-102. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i40067213 https://ched.gov.ph/statistics/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 163-175 175 leitch, v. (2001). louis althusser. in the norton anthology of theory and criticism (pp. 1476–1508). norton. ortiz-ospina, e., & roser, m. (2016, february 9). child labor. our world in data. https://ourworldindata.org/child-labor. plumwood, v. (2001). nature as agency and the prospects for a progressive naturalism. capitalism nature socialism, 12(4), 3–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/104557501101245225 rodrigo, d. (2017 a). beyond the storm: a story about gemma narisma. the bookmark, inc. rodrigo, d. (2017 b). capturing flight: a story about nina ingle. the bookmark, inc. rodrigo, d. (2017 c). cave dweller: a story about ging nuneza. the bookmark, inc. rodrigo, d. (2017 d). chemical romance: a story about connie ragasa. the bookmark, inc. rodrigo, d. (2017 e). gardener of the sea: a story about nida calumpong. the bookmark, inc. rodrigo, d. (2017 f). mangrove warrior: a story about jurgenne primavera. the bookmark, inc. rodrigo, d. (2017 g). random walks: a story about jinky bornales. the bookmark, inc. rodrigo, d. (2017 h). rigid motion: a story about ninette de las penas. the bookmark, inc. rodrigo, d. (2017 i). treasure from trash: a story about evelyn taboada. the bookmark, inc. rodrigo, d. (2017 j). the stuff of life: a story about giselle concepcion. the bookmark, inc. unesco (n.d.). unesco science, technology, and innovation policy development. science, technology, and innovation policy. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/science-technology/stisystems-and-governance/sti-policy-development/. unicef. (2020 a, march 4). gender and education. unicef data. https://data.unicef.org/topic/gender/gender-disparities-in-education/. unicef. (2020 b, january 19). girls' education. unicef. https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/science-technology/sti-systems-and-governance/sti-policy-development/ http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/science-technology/sti-systems-and-governance/sti-policy-development/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 276-287 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 276 men’s sexual trauma resistance in black american folklore: a postcolonial criticism of negro “woman tales” simon ntamwana ecole normale supérieure du burundi, burundi correspondence: simon.ntamwana@ens.edu.bi https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5702 received 6 january 2023; accepted 1 march 2023 abstract the purpose of this paper “men’s sexual trauma resistance in black american folklore: a postcolonial criticism of negro “woman tales” from the gulf states” was to discuss the reflection of postcolonial sexual trauma and resistance to it through storytelling among african americans in the gulf states. the study was concerned with 3 folktales classified under the cycle “woman tales”. the folktales were selected from the collection made by zora neale hurston in the southern states of alabama, florida, and louisiana from 1927 to 1930 and compiled in the book every tongue got to confess: negro folktales from the gulf states (2001). the postcolonial approach and trauma theory based on the interpretative qualitative method and library research was used in the discussion of the selected folktales. it was found that the performance of the “woman tales” is informed by the black men’s traumatic memories of slavery and post-slavery emasculation. black male narrators imitate trauma narratives in which they reflect male sexual trauma and recreate black woman identity to contain it. through this imitation and reflection, the folktales challenge the legacy of the plantation patriarchy by reconstructing a woman's identity that is docile to black masculinity. keywords: african american, folklore, postcolonial trauma introduction the interest in the present paper was inspired by sethi’s assertion that “postcolonial studies and the us have a deep and binding connection” because the settling of the europeans in america, the genocides of the indians, and the enslavement of africans are essentially postcolonial concerns (2011, p. 87). in light of this idea, afro-american narratives are in themselves postcolonial discourses and are reliable data for the study of black american responses to the traumatic experiences of slavery and racism. therefore, the study of african american oral narratives from this perspective sheds light on the contemporary sociocultural, political, and economic realities among the black american folk groups to a lesser extent and the whole american mainstream society to a greater extent. in what follows, i support this idea by arguing that the performance of the negro “woman tales” from the gulf states is informed by the oppressive sexual conditions of black mailto:simon.ntamwana@ens.edu.bi https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5702 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 276-287 277 men and reflects the resistance to this traumatic experience. in addition to the introduction that comprises the background, problem statement, and theoretical and methodological framework of the study, the paper includes findings and discussion, and conclusion sections. for the clarity of the problem treated here, the concepts of trauma resistance, african american, folklore, and folktale are defined in the orientation of the topic. firstly, the term trauma and ‘resistance’ are, here, conceptualized from the perspective of the postcolonial framework. the issue of resistance is central to postcolonial studies. it operates to capture the different forms of subjugation of the “other group” and its resulting struggle. according to david jefferess, there are two tendencies in the interpretation of resistance in postcolonial theory (2018, p. 3). the first view considers resistance as a form of mimicry, hybridity, or ambivalence of the colonial power, that is, the subversion of the colonial binary opposition and related subaltern identities resulting from colonial awareness. on the other hand, resistance is addressed from the perspective of decolonization to refer to the political and military opposition to undoing colonial rule and all the oppressive sociocultural structures connected with it. these two forms of resistance, that is cultural subversion and political or military revolt are germinated by identity negotiation. in this thesis, african americans claim their identity through the first form of resistance, that is, through the hybridization process. african american folklore as a resistance narrative challenges the trauma of “self-identity” and differential identities of race, gender, and ethnicity which are linked with the politics of power and cultural imperialism” (starosta & chen, 2003, p. 226). secondly, the expression “african americans” or “black americans” refers to black american slaves and their descendants (kusharyanto, 2012; marbley, 2011, p. 35; ). the first africans arrived in america in 1619 in virginia but slavery began in the massachusetts colony in 1641. the descendants of these people are referred to as african americans or black americans. jerrilyn mcgregory in encyclopedia of american folklife (bronner, 2013) refers to the “african american community” as the african american single and collective unit. in other words, the expression “african americans” implies a sense of a shared ethos, culture, and value system. despite the varieties of folk traditions and communities, there is a common folklife that distinguishes african americans from other ethnic groups in the united states. in this study, the expressions “african americans”, “black americans”, afro-americans, and “negro americans” are interchangeable. thirdly, in his discussion of history and scholarship in america, simon bronner, in folk nation: folklore in the creation of american tradition (2002) collects papers and letters dealing with the movements in the historical development of african american folklore. the paper written by alice mabel bacon mentions that the beginning of african american folklore coincides with the black folklore movement that took place at hampton institute between 1894 and 1894 (p. 87). this first movement in african american folklore aimed at collecting and representing black-american traditions in the context of american cultural development and civilization. later with the contribution of black american elites such as robert russa morton, booker t. washington, and w. e. b. dubois the goals of the hampton institute were improved to advocate african american ethnic groups in their cultural diversity and dynamics. thus in these attempts, african american folklore corpus was defined to include such genres as folktales, customs, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 276-287 278 folk arts, traditional ceremonies and beliefs, proverbs and sayings, and songs and music that reflected the past and current conditions of african americans. various studies in the area of african american folklore followed the hampton institutes' initiation adopting either a eurocentric approach or an afrocentric hypothesis. while the eurocentric tradition has been characterized by a tendency “to attribute any african american expressive tradition with an apparent parallel in european tradition rather than african cultural provenance”, the africanist scholars have stressed the existence of a “dynamic continuity between african and african american cultures and folk traditions” (roberts, 1990, p. 9). in this study, i apprehend african american folklore from the perspective of folklife practices, expressions, and behavior patterns developed by black people in response to their experiences in the united states. finally, according to dan ben-amos, a folktale is an oral narrative that is “told by peasants, lower classes, or traditional people whose literacy, if existing, is minimal” (bauman, 1992, p. 101). as a genre of oral tales, a folktale is one of the three main elements in the “european generic classification of oral narratives”. other genres of the oral tale include legend and myth. the distinction among these forms of verbal folklore varies with culture and with time in a particular society. thus in terms of the cultural conception of truth and reality, “a myth is believed to be true, a legend purports to be true”, whereas a folktale is purely fiction and fantasy (p. 102). moreover, considering these genres in their relation to belief, a myth deals with “supernatural beings that exist beyond the boundaries of human time and space”. as for the legend, it is concerned with “identifiable personalities, dates, or places”, even though it involves extraordinary events whereby humans and supernatural beings interact. as far as the folktale is concerned, it is a fictional and fantastic tale that involves human characters, times, and spaces that cannot be identified socially, historically, or geographically. however, the categories of tales overlap and make the study of folktale genres complex. zora neale hurston in her collection of african american folklore compiled in every tongue got to confess: negro tales from the gulf states (2001) classifies african american folktales under 15 cycles, namely god tales, preacher tales, devil tales, witch and hunt tales, heaven tales, john and massa tales, tall tales, neatest trick tales, mistaken identity tales, fool tales, woman tales, school tales, talking animal tales, and animal tales. only one out of the fifteen categories, that is “woman tales” constitutes the study object for this thesis. these tales are treated as a form of traumatic narratives of the american oppressive culture and discourses that are based on the cultural performative imitation of african american twentieth-century conditions in the gulf states. the present paper sets out to examine how and why the performance of negro folktales expresses black men’s sexual trauma resistance in the gulf states. it is based on the following research questions: 1. why does the narration of negro folktales mirror resistance to sexual trauma among african american men in the gulf states? 2. how does the narration of negro folktales reflect resistance to sexual trauma among african american men in the gulf states? while various studies have been conducted on african american folklore in general and african american folktales in particular from various approaches and theoretical perspectives, no postcolonial trauma study has been done on african ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 276-287 279 american folktales collected by zora neale hurston and compiled in every tongue got to confess: negro folktales from the gulf states (2001). however, many studies have been conducted on african american folktales assembled in other folklore book collections. from different approaches, jacqueline fulmer (2002), purnowidodo (2003), christopher peterson (2011), tytianna nikia and maria wells smith (2012), anish alfred vaz (2013), and nur saktiningrum (2017) have written on african american folklore either focussing on the experience of slavery and/or racism among africans americans. but, to the best of my knowledge, no postcolonial trauma study has been conducted to examine trauma reflection in the folktales collected by zora neale hurston in every tongue got to confess: negro folktales from the gulf states. the study is conducted against the backdrop postcolonial approach and trauma theory based on bell hooks’ concepts of plantation patriarchy and black masculinity and apprehended from the perspective of american studies. two main schools inspire postcolonial trauma criticism, namely the aporetic and therapeutic hypotheses (visser, 2015, p. 251). these central approaches to postcolonial trauma studies have been amended or reconciled by scholars among others, jeffrey alexander (pucherova & gafrik, 2009, p. 148), visser (2015), and martínezfalquina (2015, p. 842). while the first two scholars emphasize a sociological approach to postcolonial trauma, the latter deals with power relations in postcolonial traumatic experiences. in general, scholars establish a relationship between literature and trauma. jeffrey c. alexander sustains that postcolonial literature is a trauma narrative because it is a socio-cultural construction that captures traumatic experiences in their interrelations to the past and the present by articulating “conflicted traumatic memories of individual and collective complicity with hegemonic systems of oppression” (visser, 2015, p. 258). for visser, postcolonial criticism must study how literature articulates the way indigenous people express their traumatic experiences and the way they confront them through their “belief systems” and “rituals”. in the view of silvia martínez-falquina, postcolonial literature is considered a resistance narrative because by expressing their traumatic experiences, the subalterns react against the “silencing” act of colonial oppression and redefine themselves (p. 838). therefore, postcolonial trauma criticism must deal with how the margin groups express their traumatic experiences and how they represent “unequal relations of power” and challenge or revert them (p. 842). the points made by these scholars are pertinent to the investigation of postcolonial trauma among african americans by focusing on their folktales. abigail ward, in postcolonial traumas: memory, narrative, and resistance mention that african americans’ dolorous experiences, such as “enforced migration to the us”, “enslavement and suppression”, “segregation”, “resistance”, “civil rights movement”, and “self-representation and responses to the western master discourses” are relevant to postcolonial trauma theory (2015, p. 7). in this spirit, marshall confirms that african american oral narratives narrated during the plantation period feature “ambiguity, transformation, and transcendence” capable of confronting the anguish of racism and slavery (ward, 2015, p. 49). relying on marshal’s argument, african american folktales are a form of trauma narratives that enable the participants in performance in the plantations or on the porch to express and challenge the traumatic experience or legacy of the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 276-287 280 transatlantic voyage, the plantation oppression, and the racial discrimination following the emancipation of slaves. while marshall intends to apply the trauma theory to the postcolonial criticism of the african american novels by ellison and larsen, it is employed here to approach folktales in a bid to discuss the representation of resistance to the traumatic oppression of african americans in the gulf states. thus, bell hooks’ concepts of plantation patriarchy and black masculinity that are exposed in we real cool: black men and masculinity (2004) are applied. through this exploration, folktales are treated as “trauma process narratives” constructed by black men to undo the sexually traumatic experiences connected with the legacy plantation patriarchy. additionally, the narratives reflect the recreation of a new black woman identity in view to restoring the black masculinity linked with african american tradition and ethnic values. method as stated in the previous paragraph, this study is conducted against the backdrop postcolonial approach and trauma theory. it follows the interpretative qualitative and library research methods. in the data collection process, the library documentation method is used. the study is based on a corpus of three (3) folktales, (t1) “once there was a man who wanted to catch up with his wife…” (hurston, 2001, pp. 185‒186), (t2) “a lady once married and her husband never would stay home…” (hurston, 2001, p. 187), and (t3) “there was a widow woman …” (hurston, 2001, pp. 188‒189). by the topic and aims, the researcher uses the interpretative qualitative method (stokes, 2003, p. 2). the analytical procedure includes reading “woman tales” meticulously by identifying trauma forms and resolutions linked with them; relating the data obtained from the folktales to the african american storytelling context and sociohistorical and cultural conditions in the south; and critically analyzing the folktales and discussing them in the light of postcolonial trauma theory. finally, to make easy the interpretation and citation of folktales, a sequential order is used in each category of folktales. the tales will be respectively labeled t1, t2, and t3, that is, tale 1, tale 2, and tale 3. findings and discussion this section explores the cause of the black man’s performance of sexual trauma and the way he challenges it through oral narratives based on women. the black woman is signified through controlling images by black men who struggle to recuperate their masculinity dismantled by the white heteronormativity and plantation patriarchy. legacy of plantation patriarchy and black men’s sexual trauma in “women tales”, the husband is represented as castrated or abstracted by his adulterer wife. in t1, the husband is emasculated through love triangulation. the story “once there was a man who wanted to catch up with his wife…” opens with a marital infidelity conflict. the narrator mentions, “once there was a man who wanted to catch up with his wife. so he pretended he was going to work and sent a little boy to his house to spend the night” (lines 1‒3). these opening lines introduce us to the spousal relationships among african americans in alabama. the mythological character of the folktale ensures the reality of marital infidelity in the homes of black americans. the storyteller arthur hopkins takes his audience ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 276-287 281 into mythological fiction by building on existing realities in the day-to-day life of the afro-americans. adultery among black american women was a common phenomenon. patricia collins associates the strange behavior of afro-american women with their historical and cultural backgrounds (p. 70). during slavery, black american women were the sexual property of the white master, his sons, and his overseer. they became used to sexual intercourse with many partners. in addition, the division of labor in the plantation and the house of the white masters did not distinguish male and female tasks. they were equally treated. then they lost the sense of the african family which was patriarchal. this squash of black masculinity developed a feeling of emasculation for black men. as bell hooks mentions in we real cool: black men and masculinity (2004), through “racist discrimination and exploitation”, black men were deprived of their patriarchy (p. 12). the african american woman was not afraid of the black man, she had witnessed a series of humiliations by the whites, especially sexual violence. in the new african american families, the wife was not perpetually bound to her husband like in the african tradition; rather she would try any man who pleased her. in other words, in addition to her husband, a woman could have a secret sweetheart as is the case in this story. the narrator uses repetition and contrast formulas to act out the romantic identity and infidelity of the woman. the castration of the husband in t1 is represented by the woman’s romantic interaction with her sweetheart. the narrator mentions a black woman's character, “you better eat, as we have plenty to eat this afternoon” (line 7). of the man, she mentions, “let us talk, we have plenty of time to eat” (line 8). the sweetheart’s intention for the visit is not food but love. the absence of the husband captures the sexually traumatic import of the story. this is achieved through the performance of romantic aesthetics whereby the food and a tantalizing dialogue between the lovers are presented to the audience. the dialogue indicates that the black woman is not a sign of mother and maternity. she is an independent lovemaker who takes the profits of her wealth to seduce a man of her choice. the male participants in the story performance are led to the “plantation patriarchy” and later racist practices that reduced the black man to a boy. these memories resurrect the trauma of black men whose manhood and power to control black women and their sexuality were denied to them (p. 170). the historical castration of the black man by the white vigorous male who controls both black and white women and their sexuality still haunts the negroes in the gulf states. the abstraction of the husband and his replacement by a little boy is a signification of man’s narrative reflection of sexual trauma in “women tales”. arthur’s storytelling (t1) suggests the trauma associated with the domination of femininity over masculinity. before the woman prepares food for her sweetheart, she sends the little boy upstairs to bed. this insinuates that the woman controls the man and his sexuality. the little boy is forced to sleep while the wife enjoys her sweetheart’s bosom in the absence of her husband. when the husband intrudes into the house, the little boy gets ready to report marital infidelity. the connection between the arriving husband and the reappearance of the little boy ensures masculine power or patriarchal abstraction. the little boy “came down stretching as if he had been asleep” (line 15). the performer acts out the boy through the insertion of a small tale into his story (lines 19‒24). by this insertion technique in the storytelling, the performer demonstrates his skills in telling stories and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 276-287 282 delivering moral lessons to prove the reduction of the black patriarchy to a boy easily endeared by the dominating female. the small tale included in the quotation contains the images, that is ‘father’ and ‘pig’ which demonstrate a masculine struggle to regain the power to control the woman. on the contrary, “saw” symbolizes femininity which dominates man. the sweetheart in the pot rack is effeminate. by hiding himself in the pot rack in the kitchen, he has symbolically lost his masculine power and condescended to the traditional woman status. he is like the mythological sow or metaphor of the woman that is culturally a sign of kitchen and sex. in the closing statement, the narrator uses the performance formula “every since then” (lines 23) to restore the past and makes the participants sense the female thwarting of patriarchy in the african american ethnic group. the black man suffers his desire to be equal with the mainstream american white society whose woman is “regarded to be more suitable to deal activities involving emotion” such as caregiving, educating children, cleaning the house, cooking for the family, sewing, and washing clothes”; the black man wants to maintain the status quo (juliasih, 2012, p. 205). as a result of the “woman tales” performance, male participants release their trauma linked with their lost image of the invincible power that must be respected and feared by any female member of the community. the abstraction of masculinity is also reflected in t2, that is, “a lady once married and her husband never would stay home…”. the performance represents the incapacity of the postcolonial black man to cope with the new black femininity constructed by the american sociocultural environment. the new woman's identity does not signify marriage and sex. she has lost her culinary skills and household care. she is no longer courteous towards her husband. the hoodoo lady tells the protagonist, “you havin’ trouble with your husband” (lines 4‒5). the conflict here is because the woman does not meet the cultural responsibility demanded by the black patriarchal masculinity, that is, to have skills and abilities to manage the material domestic life of the family and to be trained enough to optimally quench the erotic thirst for her husband. the hoodoo lady demanded the protagonist, “all right, come take me to yo’house” (line 7). she takes the woman back to the household because she has backslidden from her cultural responsibility. the anguish of her husband is her shift from her traditional role. the husband is an abstraction without ‘real’ existence before the wife restores her cultural attributes. for bell hooks, the aspiration to “maleness” and “patriarchal manhood” develops trauma in many black boys (p. 81). the black man suffers the melancholy of his lack of patriarchal power to dominate black women. in t3 man’s sexual trauma is reflected through the image of a seducer widow. in the story, “there was a widow woman …”, the woman is presented as a “hot momma” and seducer widow in search of a husband. the narrator mentions that “she had been trying to get one for years” (line 2) and that “every sunday she uster dress up and put cologne water on herself and primp her mouf up little to go to church” (lines 2‒4). the madonna myth is here used to suggest the sexuality of the black woman and its impact on black masculinity. the woman is, here, portrayed as an extravagant temptress in the quest for men. her target is an unmarried local preacher. like jannie who runs after tea cake after castrating jody before his subsequent death in “their eyes were watching god” (hurston, 2000, p. 35), the protagonist is presented as a churchgoer hypocrite running after her pastor. by ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 276-287 283 presenting a widow as a ‘pretty baby’, the black men display their historical unconscious castration. this construction of the woman in men’s narrative among african americans is referred to by patricia collins as the controlling signification of the woman (2000, p. 75). in the american patriarchal culture, a black woman is portrayed as an emasculator. this myth of the black woman is used in the oral narratives in the gulf states to represent black men’s sexual trauma. additionally, the death of the husband in the narrative suggests the absence of male heteronormativity. the wife is a lure who lives alone. the oppressive conditions linked with post-slavery and the legacy of racism in the south affect the life of the woman. her adoption of the urban ways of the white woman around her does not please the man who expects her to be his mule. the narrator makes a connection between the fashionable woman and the “mule” (line 10) in the cornfield to insinuate the desires of the black men in the southern states. the performer draws his audience’s attention to the confrontation between the woman and the mule, “you mule, git out dat corn; oh, you mule, go on out de corn!” (line 10). the performer is representing the trauma of men who feel that the black woman should not be an urban extravagant beauty. rather she would remain a mother for field and domestic work. restoration of black masculinity and sexual trauma challenge in “woman tales”, the storytellers redefine the woman for the sake of the recovery the black masculinity. they imitate a woman who constructs her behavior and uses folkloric activities to satisfy a man. the woman is mirrored by the performers as a lovable and domestic subject. she resorts to folkloric activities and behavioral patterns to operate a cultural transformation that satisfies man’s wishes. in t1, the african woman character is characterized by a mastery of folk cuisine. she uses foodways for sex and love purposes. she “baked a cake of cornbread and fried some meat for the little boy” (lines 3‒4) and “baked a pig with an apple in his mouth [and] a sweet potato pone for her sweetheart” (lines 5‒6). through this folk culinary art, the woman goes back to the kitchen to satisfy masculinity. her skills in foodways or material folklore empower her to gain the love of man. the gender roles division that black patriarchy claims are restored. the performer plays on the african american cookery to present the identity of the woman needed by black masculinity. she must be a skillful domestic woman while the husband retains the appanage of public life. the performers capture sexual recovery through their association of cookery with love. the food that the protagonist woman gives the little boy is a mere nutrition portion without any sexual import. but the pig that she roasts with an apple in its mouth is more than a simple food portion. in addition to aesthetics, the food cooked for the man has love and sexual connotations. the pig was a precious food for african americans. by baking the pig with an apple, the woman romantically entices the man. moreover, by presenting him with sweet potato pone, she excites his sexual appetites. the spicy ingredients in the pone are sex drive for the sweetheart. then both the pork and the pone constitute an aphrodisiac food to stimulate the man victim of the american racist institutions. like t1, t2 represents the restoration of black masculinity through the male reconstruction of a woman's identity. folk religion and black feminine touch are distinguishing markers of the black woman. at the beginning of the story, a female ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 276-287 284 hoodoo doctor is presented with solving a spousal relationship conflict. the performer mentions, “a lady once married and her husband never would stay home, so she said she’d go to the hoodoo” (lines 1‒2). through this performance opening formula, wade, the performer takes the audience to the identity of the woman in the complexity of african american folk culture. he further mentions, “so she went to the hoodoo and she ast de lady (line 3). the story suggests that african american women participate in the cultural network of the natural and the supernatural, religion and medicine, and life and magic. the protagonist in the folktale has to consult a hoodoo lady to change the behavior of her husband who is no longer interested in her. the hoodoo lady consulted by the woman in the story foretells the client what made her come to see her before the visitor says anything. the narrator says, “so de lady said, “here you come, and i know whut you come for. you havin’ trouble with your husband” (lines 4‒5). this shows that hoodoo craft is more than a mere medication. the conjurer is a goddess who can see through the patient and space before a sick person visits her. in the south, conjurers or supernatural practitioners are believed to be powerful in society. the “hoodoos” and “root workers” are believed to be capable of manipulating unseen forces; “work the spirits”, “root doctors” are considered as persons who practice healing; and the “conjure doctors” are known for possessing the power to do harm as well as heal (chireau, 2003, p. 21). this cultural complexity points to the interrelationships between gender, culture, and politics expressed by african american folklore. through hoodoo ritual performance, the woman rootworker is endowed with the power to arbitrate males and females through her medical power. in addition, this folkloric practice enables her to participate in the economic machine of the community by generating familial and social revenues through goods and services. in addition to folk religion, women are redefined by black patriarchy from their folk feminine touch. the hoodoo lady does not administer any root medication to the woman. she rather suggests her client take her to her place. then when they arrive home, the hoodoo woman prescribes an easy posology. she says, “get you some concentrated lye, scrub yo’house, wash all yo’clothes, comb yo’head, powder yo’face, make up your bed, light and neat, and don’t have a thing to say to him when he come in” (lines 9‒11). the male participants in the storytelling event are made to appreciate the african american aesthetics and culture of beauty and love. by decorating her body and her house, the hoodoo lady is sure that the husband will be stimulated to love his wife. through cultural aesthetics and arts, the woman reestablishes the distorted spousal relationship. she becomes a master of bed and home. in the story, when the man comes back home, he cannot resist the folk feminine touch of his wife. therefore, both lounge on the porch before the husband endears the wife, “dear let’s go to bed” (line 16). the folkloric activities of the wife strengthen her domestic life and her relationship with her husband. in the performance of t2, the couple relaxes both on the porch and in bed. the porch which is a symbol of african american folklore suggests, here, expressive communication between the husband and his wife. this interconnectedness between hoodoo performance, feminine touch performance, house care aesthetics performance, and porch stories performance validates the fluidity of oral-aural arts supported by ngũgῖ in his performance theory of orature that is exposed in his article “notes towards the performance theory of orature” (2007, p. 4). various forms of black folklore are integrated into one vision of life ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 276-287 285 to cement familial relationships in accord with the cultural system of the community. the porch provides the integration and complete recovery of a man from his sexual trauma. it operates as a folk tradition platform where the woman can perform stories and jokes to fascinate further her husband. as a result of this performance, the man can yield to his wife. therefore, the orature circle or pitikian full circle is fulfilled (thiong'o, 2007, p. 1). through folklore, the hoodoo lady, wife, husband, hoodoo art or magic, religion, and various elements of nature are integrated into a web of communication to support the african american folklife universe. this is further evidenced by the end of the story. the following day, in the morning, the wife speeds up gaily to the hoodoo lady to pay her due. the performer mentions, “she got up the next morning and went back to de hoodoo lady and paid what she charged and de hoodoo lady told her to jest keep dat up twice per week and her husband would always go to bed and go to sleep” (lines 17‒20). by practicing hoodoo, the lady improves her economic conditions. in addition, she is favored with the love of the patriarchal and masculine power. contrary to the plantation patriarchy that is characterized by gender and race violence, this new masculinity is characterized by collaboration between black american spouses. bell hooks, in we real cool: black men and masculinity, uses two different generations of black men and the way they live their sexuality to illustrate the difference between this form of black masculinity and the plantation patriarchy. she compares the way her father and brother relate differently to woman's gender and sexuality (2004, p. xiii). in the comparison that she makes, she indicates that the early generations of african american men imitated the plantation model of patriarchy whereas the younger generation attempted to forge a new masculine identity seeking gender equality and freedom for both men and women in american society. in t3 the power of black masculinity is restored through the mythological imitation of a connection between the black woman and the mule. taylor performs a story about a widow who uses her body makeup to win the love of a new preacher in a local church. but in the end, her elegant attire is defiled by a mule. the distortion of the woman's make-up by the mule in the story shows that the black woman is acting her false identity. tylor acts out, “now look whut you done! done made me open my mouf wide. now i got to go all de way back to de house and primp it agin befo’ i kin go tuh meeting” (lines 15‒17). the woman has to go back home to her cultural place. their extravagant appearance cannot make her appreciated by black men. the narrator makes the black woman pass through corn fields on her way to the church “meeting” (line 18). this indicates a connection between agrarian life and the black woman's identity. in addition to her household tasks, the black woman can also work on the plantations. this resistance of black patriarchy to the urban surrounding corroborates chireau’s assertion that the black patriarchy intends to save its position despite the sociocultural transformation of the south (2003, p. 37). this goes with the attempt to preserve african american folk culture during the white american culture especially the church and other social institutions. the construction of a domestic woman by the black chauvinistic system is a result of the appropriation of the postcolonial trauma. the younger generation of black american men is still affected by the legacy of their ancestor’s horrors. therefore, they operate to subvert their conditions by controlling the black woman in signifying her through cultural behavioral patterns and actions. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 276-287 286 conclusion in the “woman tales”, the myth of the african american woman is represented by the black patriarchal culture to challenge sexual trauma. relying on bell hooks’ concept of plantation patriarchy and black masculinity, the examination of the “woman tales” showed that the performers are moved in their mythological imagination by their everyday sexual traumatic experiences linked with the legacy of racism, slavery, and post-slavery and their impact on the african american family. their stories mirror the everyday experience of the african american woman and mythologically imitate how she relates to the patriarchal culture that creates the folktales and mythology. thus in the folktales examined, that is, t1, t2, and t3, the woman is constructed as a resistance to the plantation patriarchy. but a new woman's sexual identity is constructed by the male narrators in the course of the narratives to ensure full control of the woman and her sexual life in the perspective of black ancestral patriarchy. thus foodways, feminine touch, folk religion, and other folkloric activities and cultural behavioral patterns are used by the performers to signify the african american woman. as a result of these folkloric activities and behaviors, in t1, the woman is constructed through ambiguous signification whereby she has the power to restore man’s dismantled masculinity or against her husband by resorting to love triangulation. in t2 and t3, the distorted black patriarchal masculinity is 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(2015). postcolonial traumas: memory, narrative, resistance. hampshire: palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/1352 https://doi.org/10.1080/13528160701771253 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 228-236 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 228 the linguistic features of indonesian children poetry tri mulyono, agus nuryatin, rustono, and suminto a sayuti university pancasakti tegal, state university of semarang, state university of semarang, yogyakarta state university upstrimulyono@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010208 received 11 december 2017; revised 30 january 2018; accepted 19 february 2018 abstract this study was inspired by the fact that the study in the field of children literature is rarely found in today's era, especially the study of poetry. even though there are a lot of children poetries written by child poets nowadays, but still the research in children poetry is still low. therefore, the researchers conducted this study which is expected to enrich study in the field of children literature. specifically, this study limited its objective into describing the language features of indonesian children poetry. to pursue such objective, this study employed 50 titles of indonesian children poems written by child poets. the data of those poetries were collected by reading and writing (recording). once the data were collected, they were analyzed in descriptive qualitative. the results show that the linguistic features of indonesian children poetry written by child poets is foregrounded by having these features: word shortening, meaning deviation, the use of foreign language words and javanese language. keywords: literary work, linguistic features, indonesian children poetry introduction if carefully observed, so far literature studies are mostly done in the field of adult literature such as studies conducted on sapardi's poetries, short stories of ahmad tohari, and drama scripts of arifin c noor. this proves that children literature studies are rarely done. it is quite disappointing that indonesian children literatures have been written a lot nowadays, not to mention children poetry. a lot of children literatures can be easily found in media close to our daily life. for example, suara merdeka (central java) daily newspaper which releases children poetries every sunday. the same thing is done by kompas (jakarta) newpaper. on the one hand, bobo children's magazine also releases three poems of indonesian children at once in its publication. meanwhile, the poetries found among those media are such as abdurahman faiz (2005) with his poems under the title of aku ini puisi cinta (i am the love poetry), neva zahrani (2016), a child poet who published her poetry while she was still in the fifth grade of elementary school entitled andai aku jadi presiden (if i were a president). rampan (2014) also does not want to miss chance of publishing his own literary mailto:upstrimulyono@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 228-236 229 work. he selected short stories and poems from various sources, then published them with the title balon keinginan (the balloon of whises). although the children poetries have been written a lot, but research on it has not been done quite often yet lately. it is proven by the absence of the study focusing on children literatures in international conference on language, literature, and teaching (fbs unnes, 2017) held on 10 october 2017 at hotel mg setos semarang. it was found that among 80 paper, there was even no paper discussing children poetry. given that the poetry of indonesian children has not been much discussed, therefore this article is written to discuss children's poetry. the discussion is conducted with the aim to describe the linguistic features of indonesian children poetry. sudjiman (1986) mentions that poetry is a literary variety whose language is bound by rhythm, rhyme, and dimension as well as number of lines and stanzas. in this case, literary variety means literary works. in line with this, wellek and warren (2014) states that literary variety covers poetry, fiction prose, and drama. in his book entitled anatomi sastra (the anatomy of literature), semi (1984) quotes mulyana, wordworth, and arnold on the meaning of poetry. according to mulyana poetry is the synthesis of the various events of the language that has been filtered purely and the various processes of the soul who seek the essence of its experience, and arranged with a correspondence system in one form. first, poetry is the synthesis of various language events. it means that poetry is a braid of life events or experiences such as the braid of grief and sorrow, sadness and joy. second, the language event has been filtered purely in the process of choosing words or diction. thus, a poet or writer carefully choses words in expressing his idea. the chosen words are only those which are worth to represent poets' ideas. for example, chairil anwar uses different title in publishing his poetry. the one was published with the title of "aku" (i am ), while another was entitled "semangat" (spirit). third, the language event is composed by correspondence system in one form. in this case, correspondence system is realized in form attachment. although poetry consists of a number of stanzas, and each stanza consists of a number of lines, but the whole is a unity. that is what so called as a valuable poem. william worsworth says that poetry is the best word in the best order. only the best words the poet chooses to express his ideas. the idea is expressed in its best form. inside that good form contains a good verse, enjambment, and homologues. alternatively, mathew arnold argues that poetry is a criticism of life. that is the same as what was said by one of the former president of the united states, john f. kennedy that when politics is dirty then the poem will clean it. on the other hand, children poetry is a poetry that is deliberately written for the target audience of children. meanwhile, the categorization of children put forward by erikson, huck, and piaget. as quoted by saadie and tarigan (1993, p. 54), ericson argues that based on the human nature development, children are divided into four, namely: 1. trust (obtained at the age of 1 year); ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 228-236 230 2. a sense of autonomy (realized at the age of 3 years); 3. a sense of initiative (evolving between 3-6 years); 4. a sense of duty (growing between 6-12 years). based on the above human nature category, children are referred to those who are in the range of 1 to 12 years old. in other words, children are those who are in elementary school age (sd). huck, et al (1987: 64-72) suggests that based on the suitable reading materials for children, the meaning of children is: 1. those who are before school or who are in growth (age 1 and 2 years); 2. those in preschool and right-kindergarten (ages 3-5 years); 3. those in the early school (age 6 and 7 years); 4. those who are in the middle elementary period (ages 8 and 9 years), and 5. those who are in the final elementary period (10-12 years of age). under the huck category, children are also those who are aged 1 to 12 years. as quoted brady (sexby, 1991), according to peaget's level of intellectual development, children are divided into four groups. they are as follows: 1. motor sensory stage. that is those who are at the age of 0-2 years; 2. preoperational stage. that is those who are at the age of 2-7 years; 3. concrete operational stage. that is those who are aged 7-11 years; 4. formal operational stage. that is those who are at the age of 11-12 years. based on the peaget category, children are those who are between 1 and 12 years of age. thus, children poetry is a poetry written to read by those aged 1 to 12. poetry is part of a literary work because literary works cover poetry, fiction prose, and drama. thus, every trait which is in the literary work is a characteristic of poetry as well. not excluded the characteristics of indonesian children poetry. sarumpaet (1976, p.24) for example, puts forward three characteristics of literary works which are the characteristics of children's poetry as well, namely the existence of a number of abstinence, directness, and applicable. not every theme can be written for children poetry. themes like marriage, divorce, polygamy are not worth writing for children to read. thus, the themes that are generally written for children's poetry are themes of parents and teachers, animals and the natural and religious environment. the language of indonesian children's poetry is straightforward. its meaning is not convoluted rather to be easily understood. this is due to the level of reasoning of children who have not been complicated and still simple. applicable means can be practiced or proven in everyday life. thus, the idea of indonesian children poetry can be sourced from sensory experience; for example, based on something that has been seen, something has ever been heard, or something the poet once ever felt. when thoroughly observed, the characteristics of the literary works have not been based on the linguistic aspect, whereas literature and poetry in particular is an imaginative work with language as a means of disclosure. considering this, this study examined the characteristics of poetry based on aspects of language that have not been presented by sarumpaet. nurgiyantoro (2005, pp.321-353) mentions that the elements of children poetry builders are sounds, words, means of rhetoric, and themes. further, a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 228-236 231 poetry composed by language means contains the element of sound. it is because language is a system of symbols of sound. for example, the poetry entitled "aku" is the composition of the sound element of a-k-u. the meaning of sound here is primarily the various forms of sound financing such as alliteration, assonance, anaphora, epistrophe, and rhyme. what is meant by word in the previous explanation is word selection. to produce the desired meaning and rhyme, the poet needs to choose words. rahardi (2010, p.31) mentions that the choice of the word actually questiones "the ability of a word, phrase, or group of words to give the right idea to the image of the reader or hearer." to find the desired word, it is not uncommon for a poet to deviate and destroy (distortion) the words. nurgiyantoro (2005, p.335) states that meaning deviation includes the omission or word shortening, the use of foreign or javanese words, and meaning divergence. these three aspects will be analyzed as the marker of the linguistic features of indonesian children poetry. method this research was conducted with the data source of 50 indonesian children poetries written by child poets. those were chosen based on the consideration that all the poetries are loaded with aspects to be analyzed according to the purpose of his research. for more, the manuscripts of the study were taken from various sources, namely bobo children magazine and the collection book of poetry entitled balon keinginan (the balloon of wishes) by rampan's wish (2014). the selection of the compilation book was caused by the difficulty in getting the original source of the poetry. the data from the above source were collected by reading the poetries repeatedly and then being noted or recorded with the data units of words, phrases, lines, and stanzas. specifically, the recording process was done by using data card. meanwhile, the research instrument was the researcher himself. once the data has been collected, they were analyzed descriptively qualitative. further, the collected data were coded, classified based on the subject of the study, and interpreted based on relevant references. at last, the conclusions were done inductively. the validity of this study was tested using semantic and intra-rater validity. the semantic validity was done by interpreting the parts of the research subject based on the structure and discourse shown, while intra-rater validity was done by reading poetry carefully and repeatedly until the necessary data were found. meanwhile, the credibility of interpretation was done by consulting the data with three experts as mentors, namely agus nuryatin (unnes), suminto a sayuti (uny), and rustono (unnes). findings and discussion it was mentioned earlier that the linguistic features of indonesian children poetry cover word shortening, meaning deviation, and the use of a foreign or javanese language. word shortening the word shortening was found in 28 titles of poetries. those are “gunung kok bangun tidur” (what makes a mountain wakes up from its sleep?), “ayah” (father), “narkoba” (drugs), “mengenang pak harto” (remembering mr. harto), ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 228-236 232 “ayah bundaku” (my father and mother), “ayah bunda tersayang” (my lovely father and mother), “ayahku tidak merokok” (my father does not smoke), “matahari” (sun), “almari” (cupboard), “bonekaku” (my dolls), “terima kasih sepatuku” (thanks, my shoes), “bulan sakit” (the sick moon), “waktu” (time), “bidadariku” (my fairy), “hadiahku” (my gifts), “naik kelas” (promoted to the next grade), “penghapus” (eraser), “bbm” (fuel), “papaku” (my dad), “hatiku yang hilang” (my missing heart), “raden ajeng kartini”, “r.a kartini”, “guruku” (my teacher), “pengamen cilik di lampu merah” (young artists at traffic light), “bila burung pipit di bilik rumahku” (when a sparrow is on my room), “anak ayam” (chicks), dan “guru” (teacher). the shortened words found were such as the shortening of the words "tetapi" (but) into "tapi", "engkau" (you) into "kau", "tidak" (not) into "tak", "aku" (i) into "ku", "menjadi" (become) into "jadi", "berbau" (smell) into "bau", "akan" (will) into "kan", "telah" (has/ have been) into "tlah", and "mencari" (look for) into "cari". the word tapi is the shortened form of the original word tetapi. it was found in the poetry entitled "gunung kok bangun tidur" in stanza ii. tapi tiba-tiba kau bangun dari tidur (but you suddenly wake up from your sleep) menggeliat dengan getaran di perut bumi (squirming along with the vibration in the bowels of the earth) menyemburkan asap, panas ke atas bumi (spouting hot smoke onto the earth) lalu meletus dahsyat tinggi menjulur (and then strongly erupt onto the sky) the word "tak" is the shortened form of the original word "tidak". it was found in several poetries. one of which is in the poetry of "naik kelas". in this poetry, the word "tak" was found in stanza ii. akhirnya buku biru itu kuterima (i finally received that book) buku rapor namanya (the name is rapor or the book containing the final score in a semester) kubuka.... (when i opened it) tak ada angka enam! (there was either no six) tak ada angka lima! (or five!) the word "ku" is the shortened form of the original word "aku". the use of "ku" word shortening was found in a poetry entitled "hatiku yang hilang". in that poetry, the word "ku" was found in line seven. the following is the excerpt. hatiku... (my heart) hatiku tlah hilang (it is missing) tak tahu hilang ke mana ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 228-236 233 (i don’t know where it is) mungkin hilang (it may be lost) dimakan kegelapan malam (in the dark of the night) yang sunyi senyap (that is silent) kini ku bersedih (i am now sad) kini kumenyesal (i regret) tlah menelantarkan hatiku (abandoning my heart) hatiku yang penuh (my heart which is full) misteri cerita (the mystery of stories) meanwhile, the word "jadi" is the shortened form of the original word "menjadi", the word "bau" is the shortened form of the word "berbau", the word "kan" is the shortened form of the original word "akan", the word "tlah" is the shortened form of the original word "telah". also the word "cari" is the shortened form of the original word "mencari", other than word shortening, indonesian children poetries also contain meaning deviation. it is showed in the following analyses. meaning deviation meaning deviation is resulted by the utilization of language style such as the use of metaphor, metonymy, simile, and personification. according to the data analysis, the researcher found that the meaning deviation was caused by personification. personification is the man-like language style applied on noun outside human. it was found in several poetries, namely “gunung kok bangun tidur”, “narkoba”, “ayah bundaku”, “matahari”, “bulan sakit”, and “bidadariku”. the example of this personification is in the poetry entitled "gunung kok bangun tidur". in this poetry, a mountain is admitted as a human being. it can sleep and be invited to talk like human. the following excerpt shows it. kata ilmuwan... kau tidur panjang (scientists say that you are sleeping in the long period) kata peneliti, kau sudah mati (they also say that you are dead already) dan tak mungkin hidup kembali (and impossible to be alive again) kata pakar, kau cuma tiang pancang (experts say that you are just a pile) yang terus diam sepanjang zaman (which always remain silent all the time) tapi tiba-tiba kau bangun dari tidur (but you suddenly wake up from your sleep) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 228-236 234 menggeliat dengan getaran di perut bumi (squirming along with the vibration in the bowels of the earth) menyemburkan asap, panas ke atas bumi (spouting hot smoke onto the earth) lalu meletus dahsyat tinggi menjulur (and then strongly erupt onto the sky) another personification was found in the poetry entitled "narkoba". it is also admitted as a human being who have polluted, poisoned, and tormented people by the poet. the following excerpt shows it. narkoba (drugs) by nia nur adiya kau telah mencemari (you have polluted) banyak orang (many people) kau telah mencemari negeri ini (you have polluted this nation) banyak pemuda-pemudi kau (not to mention poisoning the youths) racuni narkoba ... (o.. drugs) kau telah sengsarakan (you have tormented) banyak orang (many people) banyak pemuda-pemudi (a lot of youths) gagal berprestasi (are failed to achieve their dreams) narkoba ... (o.. drugs) ayo kita perangi narkoba! (let us fight against drugs!) ayo kita binasakan narkoba! (let us destroy it!) jangan sampai narkoba (do not let drugs) mengganggu dan merusak (threaten and ruin) hidup kita! (our lives!) for more, personification was also found in a poetry entitled "matahari". in this poetry, the sun is admitted as a human being. it was greeted by the use of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 228-236 235 word "kau" (you), the same as what is used for human being. the following excerpt shows it. matahari (o.. sun) kau menyinari dunia (you shine the world) kami hangat karena kau (we feel warm because of you) kau membantu semua orang (you help all people) semua nyaman karena engkau (all feels comfortable because of you) in the poetry entitled "bulan sakit", the researcher also found a personification. as what happens to human being, the moon is also said to be able to get illness. the following excerpt shows it. aku duduk di tangga masjid (i was sitting at the stairs of a mosque) sambil melihat ke atas (while starring at the sky) aku menemukan bulan separuhnya hilang (i found the moon was lost its half part) juga bersinar merah (and also shined the red light) kukira bulan itu mau muncul (i though it was about to appear) tapi kulihat atlas (but when i looked into atlas) kalau bulan separuhnya berwarna merah (that the moon apparently had its half part in the red color) katanya dia sedang sakit (someone said that she was ill) aku sedih.... (i was sad) aku tak mau bulan sakit (i did not want to see the moon got ill) aku mau bulan menerangi malam-malamku (i want it to illuminate my nights) beside word shortening and meaning deviation, indonesian children poetry also contains the use of javanese or foreign language. the following description shows it. the use of foreign language words the use of foreign language words was found in the poetries of “mengenang pak harto”, “ayah bundaku”, “ayahku tidak merokok”, “luar angkasa” (space), “bonekaku”, “guruku”, “waktu yang terbuang” (the wasted time), and “olahraga” (sports). the example of the use of foreign ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 228-236 236 language words is taken from the poetry of “mengenang pak harto”. it was found that this poetry uses the word "surga" (heaven) which is a word coming from arabic language. several poetries also use foreign language words. for example, in the poetry entitled “ayah bundaku” the researcher found the word "surge", in “luar angkasa” poetry the researcher found the word "astronot" that is a word coming from english, in “guruku” poetry the researcher found a word "heroic" that is a word coming from english, in “waktu yang terbuang” poetry the researcher found words "iman" (belief) and "ibadah" (prayer) which are words coming from arabic language, and in “olahraga” poetry the researcher found words "jiwa" (soul)), "raga" (body), and "men sana in corpore sano" which are words coming from sanskrit language. a javanese language word were also found in the poetry entitled "bonekaku" that is by the use of the word "imut" (little). conclusion based on the above elaboration, it can be concluded that in order to create the beauty of poetry, a poet does word selection. it is realized in the form of word shortening, meaning deviation, and the use of foreign language as well as indonesia local language. overall, those are the linguistic features of indonesian children poetry. acknowledgements the completion of this study cannot be separated from the supervision of three experts, namely mr. agus nuryatin (unnes), mr. suminto a sayuti (uny), and mr. rustono (unnes). therefore, the researcher would like to give sincere thanks to all of those three experts. references hahardi, k. (2010). bahasa indonesia untuk perguruan tinggi. jakarta: penerbit erlangga. huck, c.s., et al. (1987). children literature in the elementary school. new york: holt rinehard and winston in. mulyono, t. (2017). struktur dan nilai estetika pada puisi anak-anak indonesia. semarang: draf disertasi. nurgiyantoro, b. (2005). sastra anak: pengantar dunia anak. yogyakarta: gadjah mada university press rampan, k.l. (2014). balon keinginan. bandung: yrama widya. sarumpaet, r.k. (1976). bacaan anak-anak suatu penyelidikan pendahuluan ke dalam hakikat, sifat, dan corak bacaan anak-anak serta minat anak pada bacaannya. jakarta: pustaka jaya. saxby, m. & winch, g (eds). (1991). give them wings, the experience of children’s literature. melbourne: the macmillan company. semi, m.a. (1984). anatomi sastra. padang: angkasa raya. tarigan, h.g. (1995). dasar-dasar psikosastra. bandung: angkasa. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 266-274 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 266 tetun language maintenance in east timor former refugee community agnes maria diana rafael universitas citra bangsa, indonesia tmachsi@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030211 received 14 november 2019; accepted 18 february 2020 abstract this study was conducted with the aims of: (1) describing the use of tetun language in east timor former refugees community manusak village and (2) describing the factors of tetun language’s maintenance in manuasak village. this research uses the sociolinguistic approach, the method used is descriptive qualitative method. the results of the study show that: (1) tetun is still survives so far as it has migrated for 20 years from its native land. of the 132 informants interviewed, 86.36% of informants used tetun language as a lingua franca with different age categories. for partner selection, 71.21% of informants use tetun language when communicating with family members and neighbors. then 58% of informants use tetun language when communicating with family members, neighbors, and coworkers, while 21.21% of informants use the language when communicatin with family members, closest neighbors and game friends. the topics chosen were: (1) 59.09% of informants chose topic about daily life activities, 9.1% chose topics about daily life and some topics that are related to work, 14.4% of informants chose topics about daily life, economic topics, political topics, religious topics, and work topics, 6.81% of informants chose topics about daily life, topics about education, economic topics, political topics, topics about religion, and topics about work, and 10 , 60% of informants chose topics about daily life, topics about education, religious topics and work topics. for the domains of using tetun language, then tetun language is used in the family domain, neighborhood and at the workplace. next are the factors caused the maintenance of tetun language: loyalty to mother tongue, pride in using tetun language, family supporting environment and regional conservation. keywords: language maintenance, speech community, east timor, former refugee introduction east nusa tenggara community (ent) is known as a language community that has an epic and unique linguistic features. spread across the eastern part of indonesia, homogeneous ent communities have hundreds of local languages. those languages are used as the communication tools among the speakers, both in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 266-274 267 the language geographical area or outside it. the habit of using the local languages show the dynamics of language communities in ent province. as in one of the districts in ent, namely kupang district, there is a youngest ethnic group that comes from timor loro sae, or it is common known as the democratic republic of east timor (rdtl). on 30 august 1999, the people of timor leste (then known as east timor) chose to separate from the republic of indonesia, through a referendum that was supported by the united nations (un). because of the referendum, the indonesian national army (tni) worked together with the anti-east timorese independence organization to evacuate more than 300,000 of east timorese people to depart from east timor. therefore, there were about 3.000 moved to kupang district, thus the majority of ex-refugee from east timor inhabit in several areas and villages in kupang district. those villages are noelbaki, tuapukan, oebelo and manusak village. in daily life the ex-east timorese people use tetun (abbreviated into tl) and kupang malay (abbreviated into kml) as a means of communication among the fellow citizens. the high contact interaction among ex-east timorese and the indigenous people of kupang district who come from various ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds could cause a language competition. then a language competition itself could form a language maintenance or a language shift. a language is said to experience a shift when a community begins to leave its traditional language (local language or mother tongue). sumarsono, (2011) stated that a language shifting are two sides of a coin, because these phenomenan are two phenomenan that occur simultaneously. still according to sumarsono (2011) the language shift occurs when a language changes its position as the first language in its’ communication area. meanwhile, a language maintenance is the strength of a language to stand in its position as a lingua franca, so that it cannot be interchangeable or displaced from surrounding languages. in general, language maintenance is defined as the decision of a language community to use a language collectively from a generation to generation (fasold: 1984). jendra (2012: 26) stated that although there are some conditions that affect a language community to use another language, but if the community is not easily in using that other language, then a language maintenance has been occurred. conversely, if a language community does not have the awareness to preserve its language, it will accelerate the extinction of their local language. judging from the history of former east timor refugee communities (from 1999 2018) in several villages in kupang district, the language and cultural adaptation must have occurred both in terms of language, culture and tradition. however, there is an interesting linguistic phenomenon that occurs in manusak village, the use of tl is quite high. almost all the children who were born in manusak village by the former refugee’s parents acquired tl as their first language, then they acquire kml as their second language. tl maintenance phenomenon in the midst of the competition of varied local languages in manusak village is very interesting to study. especially, a contact between tl and kml will automatically become an obstacle to the language pattern and the language attitudes in that community. if a speech interaction of exeast timorese community groups involves the members of the same ethnic group, then the verbal communication patterns is tend to use tl. conversely, if the interactions between ex-east timorese communities involve the members of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 266-274 268 different ethnic groups, then the communication pattern will be marked by using kml. furthermore, the effectiveness of tl speakers might show their partiality towards tl maintained, therefore this research must be carried out to unmask the phenomenon of tl survival in manusak village. practically, this research is expected to build a positive language awareness so it can play its role as a marker of ethnic identity, both in social role and communication tool. by carrying out this research the researcher hopes that tl can be accepted by all residents of kupang district as one of the local languages in the kupang district. with the acceptance of tl, it is hoped that the former refugees from east who live in manusak village can also be accepted as part of other kupang district communities, so that local conflicts between the indigenous people and the former refuges can be minimized. furthermore, this research is also expected to be used as reference material or consideration in the framework of developing languages in ent province. moreover, according to unesco, every year there are ten regional languages that are experiencing extinction (antara news report 2009: 01). the extinction of regional languages in indonesia is caused by a variety of factors, therefore understanding of the importance of the diversity of regional languages in indonesia in general and in kupang regency in particular must be improved. one effort that must be done to prevent language extinction is by maintaining the language. the preservation of local languages, including tl, as the nation's cultural wealth which is passed down from generation to generation, through a long historical journey, really needs to be improved in order to prevent the extinction of these languages. hopefully this research can change the skeptical perspective on the importance of teaching local languages to the younger generation. method this study uses a sociolinguistic approach, which is an approach that examines language in relation to the community, or the behavior of certain groups or language communities, not individuals (wardhaugh and fuller, 2015: 2). in accordance with the character of the problem examined, the method used is a qualitative descriptive method to obtain actual and natural exposure to tl maintenance. the research had been conducted in manusak village (± 71 km from kupang city), east kupang district, kupang regency, east nusa tenggara province. the time of research is in april – july 2019. the subjects in this study were 153 of ex-east timorese who inhabitants in the housing complex built by the indonesian government in rt 15 / rw 06 manusak village since 2011. the data collection was carried out in several ways, namely: 1) interview by referring to the list of questions prepared in accordance with the objectives of the study. the composition of the questionnaire contains the reasons for choosing the language of the informant by formulating the question of who is speaking to whom, what is the topic of the conversation, in what situations and in what areas is the language used. an unstructured interview was conducted to obtain information relating to the problem; 2) researchers conducted participant observation and non-participant observation; 3) mini survey to support qualitative data on language selection, topics of conversation and speech partners. then in the data analysis techniques, the researcher involved five components, namely ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 266-274 269 transcribing recorded data, identifying data, classifying and tabulating data, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions. findings and discussion the use of tl to find out the choice of languages used, the researchers asked about the choice of languages (tetun abbreviated into tl, indonesian abbreviated into i, kupang malay abbreviated into kml and other local languages abbreviated into oll), the speech partner (family members, neighbors , classmates, coworkers and strangers) and the topics (daily, economic, social, political, education, health, etc.). there are 132 informants, the following are the presentations of the tabulated data the discussion. language choices tabel 1. language choices age category total informants % tl % i % kml % oll % total ˂18 22 16.6 19 86,4 0 0 3 13,6 0 0 100 19 25 21 15.9 19 90,5 0 0 2 9,52 0 0 100 26 – 35 13 9.8 10 76,9 0 0 3 23.1 0 0 100 36 – 45 44 33.3 37 84,1 0 0 7 15,9 0 0 100 ˃ 46 32 24.4 29 90,6 0 0 0 0 3 9,38 100 total 132 100 nb: tl (tetun language), i (indonesia), kml (kupang malay language), oll (other local languages) by looking at table (1) above, we got the results of the language choices based on the age categories as follows: 1. from 22 informants whose age is under 18 years there are 19 informants or around 86.4% of the informants answered that tl is the only language choice that they use everyday. from the 19 informants, there were 13 informants who were still in elementary school level, 4 informants in junior high school level and 2 informants in senior high school. even though they have attended school and have friends who use kml as a medium for exchanging information in communication, the frequency of using tl is more frequent. however, there are 3 or about 13.6% of informants in this age category chose kml. the reason for choosing kml is because those informants have already worked as the child caregivers in several families who are living in oelamasi (the capital of kupang district), hence they are tend to use kml more often than tl. 2. from 21 informants there were 19 informants or around 90.5% informants chose tl. the majority of the 19 informants have been married and have had the jobs as the farmers, therefore the domain in using tl is only around their ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 266-274 270 family and in the fields where they planted their agricultural products. while there are 2 informants or around 9.52% of informants chose kml as a means of daily communication. both of them work as the security officers at the kupang district office so the intensity of using tl is more intense than any other languages; 3. from 10 informants or 76.9% of informants chose to use tl. they argued that their life activities are more in agricultural fields and in residents, so tl is their choosing languages to be spoken. they added that they only use kml if they meet and talk with other residents in manusak village who are come from other ethnics, but the duration of their conversation is not too long and not too frequent. whereas there are 3 informants or around 23.1% of informants chose to use kml because of work demands, there are 2 informants who trade the vegetables in the oesao market and 1 informant who works as the corn seller. thus work place becomes the reason of choosing kml than tl for three of them. 4. from the 44 informants, there are 37 informants or around 84.1% of the informants chose tl. the 37 formants said that tl is their daily language, while there are 7 informants chose kml compared to tl. this is also for work reasons, their professions are the vegetable traders in the oesao market (4 people), some work as household assistants (1 person) in one of the families who live about 2 kilometers from the housing location, and there are two people who work as a fueling officer at a gas station in kupang district. because of the demands of the job they chose to use kml, because kml is a lingua franca in kupang district. 5. there are 32 informants aged over 46 years, from that numbers there are 29 informants or around 90.6% of informants chose tl over other languages. in manusak village, the 32 informants are elders. some of them are the former indonesian national armies. furthermore, in addition to that, there are 29 informants chose tl, there are 3 informants or about 9.38% of informants who only speak in mambae language (local language in east timor), those three informants are hardly understand tl or any other languages. selection of speech partners table 2. selection of speech partners total informants % the family members the neighbors co-workers playmates 94 71,2 1 ˅ ˅ 10 7,58 ˅ ˅ ˅ 28 21,21 ˅ ˅ ˅ 132 100 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 266-274 271 next table (2) shows that there are 94 informants or around 71.21% who use tl when communicating with family members and neighbors. furthermore, there are 10 informants or around 7.58% who use tl when communicating with family members, neighbors, and coworkers who also have the same migration history as them, while there are 28 informants or 21, 21% have quite a wide variety of speech partners: they use tl when the speech events happens among the family members, closest neighbors and playmates. selection of discussion topics. tabel 3. topic selection total informants % topic daily life topics education economics politics religions jobs 78 59,09 ˅ 12 9,1 ˅ ˅ 19 14,4 ˅ ˅ ˅ ˅ 9 6,81 ˅ ˅ ˅ ˅ ˅ ˅ 14 10,60 ˅ ˅ ˅ ˅ 132 100 for the selection of discussion topics, the informants have chosen some variety topics when communicating using tl. table 3 shows that the most commonly topic is the topic about daily life. from 132 informants there were 78 informants or around 59.09% who chose to talk about the daily life. the 12 informants or around 9.1% chose the topics that are related to daily life and job. when the researchers asked the reasons why the topic of job was chosen, they answered that they often exchange information about workloads and their responsibilities in carrying out their work with the other fellow colleagues who also speak in tl. furthermore, 19 informants, or around 14.4%, chose a topic that was quite varied, namely topics on daily life, economic topics, political topics, religious topics, and work topics. next there were 9 informants or around 6.81% who chose topics that varied widely, the topics are about the daily life topic, education topic, economic topic, political topic, religion topic, and topics about work. the last is there are 14 informants or around 10.60% who communicate in tl to discuss some topics about the daily life, education, religious topics and work topic. factors supporting tl maintenance in manusak loyalty to mother tounge loyalty to tl as a mother tounge has a very high frequency. all informants are more likely to choose tl as a mother tongue than any other languages. they acquired tl directly when they were toddlers, then in the stages of development, they used the language when communicating with parents and other family members who lived in the house. therefore it is not surprising that they are very ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 266-274 272 loyal in using tl as their native language. this loyalty factor is the most important factor for the survival of a language, even though the language has experienced migration from its origin place for decades, even hundreds of years. pride in using tl from the interviews, information was obtained that the ex-east timorese people still felt proud of their motherland, even they still frequently visited it in order to meet with their relatives in the state of timor leste. the moments of christmas, easter, weddings, deaths and ceremonies for making traditional houses, are moments when the ex-east timorese people visit timor leste. a feeling of pride of their native land is also one of the main factors for the fertility of tl in manusak. in addition to visiting families who live there, there are also some young people who choose to make a living by migrating to dili, the capital of timor leste. currently the city of dili and several regions in the country of timor leste are in the infrastructure development, so the country needs a lot of construction workers. these young men work as monthly contract laborers paid in dollars. when their work contracts are completed they will return to manusak, so tl continues to flourish in the village, because tl is the lingua franca for job seekers in timor leste. family environmental factors the family environment is a supporting factor for maintaining tl in manusak village. tl maintenance can be seen from the frequency of using it among children under 12 years of age. this can be seen from the use of language that has a high enough frequency in the realm of the home and neighboring domain, while the frequency for using mkl and i is very low. mkl is a second language for east timorese children, most children get the language in the realm of association with other children in the surrounding environment. whereas indonesian is obtained and used in the education domain. however, even though they learn indonesian but they still cannot use indonesian properly and correctly. migration factors and regional concentration migration and regional concentration are actually a factor in language shifts, but this case is not in line with fasold's (1980) opinion, that if the speakers of a language migrate to another place, and the number of speakers over time increases, then it will produce and create an environment that is significant enough to encourage language shifts. but the facts show that the higher the population of former east timorene in kupang district, the stronger tl has roots in that village. this is likely due to the establishment of housing estates for former refugees in kupang timur sub-district, so that the concentration tl speakers are more found in several villages in that sub-district. conclusion empirically, based on data from the results of structured interviews, observations, mini questionnaires and document searching, the researchers formulated several conclusions that answer the problem. first, it can be concluded that bt is still very much survived even though the language has migrated for 20 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 266-274 273 years from its original land, east timor and settled in manusak village, east kupang sub-district, kupang regency. table 1 shows that from a total of 132 informants, as many as 94 informants or 83.2% of informants used bt as the language most frequently used daily. from 132 informants, there are 94 informants who use bt when communicating in their daily lives. the 94 informants have a variety of different speech partners when they speak using bt. table 2 shows that 100% of informants used bt as a means of communication between fellow family members. table 3 shows the informants had various topics when communicating using bt in their daily lives. the most common topics are the problems of daily life. bt is also the most widely used in the realm of the home, the realm of neighborhood and the realm of traditional activities. so it is very clear that for the case of bt retention in manusak village that the more a regional language is introduced to children at a very early age and the higher the intensity of the use of language in the realm of the home and neighborhood, the higher the language survival. second, the factors that cause bt survival in manusak village, there are four factors. second, it appears that bt retention is caused by several factors, namely: (1) loyalty factor towards mother tongue; (2) pride factor for bt; (3) family environmental factors; (4) migration and regional concentration. third, the language attitude influences the level of bt retention of members of the spoken word. the entire conversation shows that their language attitude is very positive towards bt. references ahmad, m., et al. 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(2011). metode penelitian kuantitatif, kualitatif dan r&d. bandung: afabeta sumarsono. (2011). sosiolinguistik. yogyakarta: pustaka pelajar. widianto, e. (2016). pilihan bahasa dalam interaksi pembelajaran bahasa indonesia bagi penutur asing. seloka: jurnal pendidikan bahasa dan sastra indonesia, 5(2), 124-135. sudirman, w. (2005). minority language, ethnic identity, and defense language: case of sumbawa language in lombok. in indonesian linguistics. 23rd year, 1, 89–102. wardhaugh & fuller. (2014). introduction to linguistics (7th ed.). us: wileyblackwell wilian, retrieved from https://www.linguistikindonesia.org https://www.linguistik-indonesia.org/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 57 indonesian graduate students’ attributional beliefs and metacognitive strategies in the academic reading comprehension elizabeth emmanuela sulistyawati1, concilianus laos mbato2 1,2sanata dharma university, indonesia queeneliza111@gmail.com; cons@usd.ac.id correspondence: queeneliza111@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v5i1.3679 received 13 september 2021; accepted 24 september 2021 abstract the field of students’ beliefs in reading comprehension has become an increasingly significant research issue in the educational context. however, there have been very few studies examining attributional beliefs and metacognitive strategies adopted by efl graduate students to deal with comprehension skills and reading difficulties. applying the attribution framework, this study aimed to fill in the gap by investigating students’ attributional beliefs, metacognitive reading strategies, and the correlation between attribution and metacognitive reading strategies. the researchers employed mixed-method research with questionnaires and interviews as the instruments to collect data. the results showed that the majority of students attributed their successes or failures to internal factors (efforts and strategies). many students claimed that they often experienced reading difficulties during online learning. lastly, the pearson correlation showed that there was a strong correlation (r = 0.746) between attributional beliefs and metacognitive reading strategies. this study offers several implications for language learning, in particular, the academic reading comprehension. first, students need to have a higher awareness of attributional beliefs in academic reading. second, language teachers should support students to develop internal attribution and metacognitive strategies in academic reading. keywords: attributional beliefs, efl graduate students, metacognitive strategies, reading difficulties introduction successful graduate students require english language proficiency. despite this requirement, many students have limited english proficiency which may cause comprehension problems in the academic reading process (wang et al., 2014). second language academic literacy in distinct discourse values and culture may be a challenging and complex process for graduate students (singh, 2014). rivera-mueller (2020) confirms that many teachers encounter students’ reluctance, avoidance, and disengagement from the academic reading process. many students assume that building reading comprehension is too demanding and it may press down upon their mailto:queeneliza111@gmail.com mailto:cons@usd.ac.id mailto:queeneliza111@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 58 self-beliefs and existing knowledge. however, reading various literature allow students to broaden their knowledge and improve language skills (triwidayati, 2019). elgendy et al. (2021) find that students’ academic reading difficulties may be caused by their psychological and internal factors such as reading anxiety, procrastinating, low confidence, and binge reading. when students believe that reading can somehow be stressful for them, they often perceive reading as a challenging course and process that must be endured, rather than engaged (riveramueller, 2020). in addition, bekkaloglu (2020), reveals that less use of metacognitive strategies may lead students to experiencing reading difficulties such as poor comprehension and lack of world knowledge. therefore, to achieve academic reading success, graduate students need to be able to understand the meanings, provide solutions to several problems, and become metacognitively active (florida & mbato, 2020). furthermore, mbato (2013) highlights that the use of metacognitive reading strategies can greatly help students to monitor their behavior and regulate their reading activities. metacognitive reading strategies promote students to understand ways to plan the goals, monitor their reading process, and evaluate how well their strategies achieve reading outcomes (chamot and o’malley, 1994, p. 60). being self-regulated readers are quite demanding, students have to focus and understand how to control their feelings and attribution beliefs with metacognitive strategies to achieve language learning demands (phelps, 2002). metacognitive students who have good attributional beliefs tend to understand the significance of efforts and perseverance in integrating metacognitive strategies to enhance reading comprehension skills and deal with challenges (cf. mbato, 2013). mbato (2013) perceives that attribution is students’ beliefs about their success or failure in the specific learning context, in particular, english language learning areas. that is the reason why the integration of metacognitive strategies may prompt students to evaluate and reflect on the tendency of their internal and external attribution for reading successes and failures. according to the attribution theory, weiner (2010) discovers that students’ attributional beliefs are influenced by their thinking process which gives rise to their feelings and actions. in academic reading comprehension and achievement, attribution beliefs mean that students’ casual thinking can be the major factor determining their responses, emotions, and learning behaviors. weiner (1985) also proposed four attribution dimensions comprising internal, external, controllable, and uncontrollable. those four dimensions also describe four main causes of students' achievement which are students’ ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck. students attributing their success and failure to controllable and uncontrollable dimensions, such as reading difficulties, failures, and insufficient comprehension abilities can be considered as students who experience learn hopelessness and reading failures. in addition to their difficulties and failures in academic reading, students tend to regularly disengage from the academic reading course and they will be unlikely to apply their effort and persistence to gain reading goals and better performances (luo et al., 2014). in the academic reading process, excellent reading comprehension and performance are obligatory for indonesian graduate students to pursue overseas training and future education. however, pammu et al. (2013), reveal that many indonesian efl students confront reading comprehension problems in dealing with a variety of lengthy texts which are more complex and demanding for second language readers since academic reading comprehension involves individuals’ mental and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 59 cultural processes. a particular indonesian researcher indicated that the majority of indonesian graduate learners experienced low abilities in comprehending reading texts (kweldju, 2001). kweldju (2001), claimed that most of them are not able to read specific text with full comprehension. this case is in line with that of sandekian et al. (2015), who find that poor comprehension abilities and insufficient level of english proficiency contributed notably to students’ academic reading problems because it is a barrier that hinders students from academic reading success. hirano (2015), explores that students’ various difficulties in academic reading can be caused by several factors. the first one is students tend to attribute to the nature of reading activities at the college level. another factor is graduate students’ unexpected amount of reading that they had to accomplish at the master program. thus, they experience reading-shocked and tend to compare the amount of reading tasks in graduate to an undergraduate program (alghail & mahfoodh, 2016). lastly, insufficient english background and reading skills lead to students’ difficulties and failure in academic reading comprehension. hirano (2015) examines that graduate students need to adopt effective strategies to cope with their academic reading challenges. metacognitive strategies can be adopted by graduate students and extensively help them to make a decision, solve reading challenges, and facilitate self-regulation of efl reading (mbato, 2013). it is notable to understand that a few studies have been conducted on students’ attributional beliefs in indonesia (sutantoputri & watt, 2012; mali, 2017; and florida & mbato, 2020). the first study was conducted by sutantoputri and watt (2012). they investigated the possible effect of different gender, ethnicity, and religion on indonesian graduate students’ attributions along with other aspects comprising efficacy, motivation, intelligence beliefs, and academic performance. the result of this study indicated that in the indonesian context, there were no major effects of students’ different gender, ethnicity, or religion on attribution, efficacy, beliefs, and academic performance. the second study was conducted by mali (2017) in that of learners’ progress of their second language learning and reasons they attribute to their success or failure of learning a second language. this particular study aimed to promote effort attributions by using three practical ways based on the theory from dornyei (2001) on the motivational teaching framework to the efl students’ learning process. the result showed that students’ motivation, academic achievements, and collaboration between parents and teachers could promote the effort attributions to students. the last study was carried out by florida and mbato (2020). they investigated how indonesian efl students attributed their success or failure in reading comprehension and analyzed the correlation between students’ attributional beliefs and their monitoring strategies in reading. the result indicated a moderate correlation between students’ attributional beliefs and monitoring strategies. it also indicated that undergraduate efl students need to regulate themselves more and direct their reading process based on attributional beliefs. those studies above were conducted on similar topics in the context of students’ attribution beliefs in academic learning to encourage students’ specific skills in language learning (sutantoputri & watt, 2012; mali, 2017; and florida & mbato, 2020). these studies, however, shared different results of students’ attributional beliefs in the academic learning process depending on the various aspects supporting the attribution. one study explicated that students’ different gender, ethnicity, or religion did not affect their attributional beliefs, efficacy, and academic learning ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 60 performance (sutantoputri & watt, 2012). in contrast, two other studies indicated that students’ attributional beliefs were supported by other aspects comprising students’ motivation, achievements, parents, teachers, and their strategies (mali, 2017; and florida & mbato, 2020). based on these findings, it can be inferred that indonesian efl students attributed their success or failure in learning to internal and external factors. however, none of the studies investigate students’ challenges in academic reading and provide strategies to deal with their difficulties. this current research aimed to examine indonesian graduate students’ attributional beliefs in academic reading comprehension and whether they attributed their academic reading comprehension success or failure to internal or external factors. the previous studies were in agreement regarding the influence of efl students’ attributional beliefs in their learning process. however, there was a dearth of research about graduate students’ attributional beliefs in academic reading comprehension especially during the online learning. those studies have not examined clearly the impact of reading difficulties on students’ failure and their strategies to deal with them. therefore, this current study intended to fill the gap in the literature by examining the graduate students’ attributional beliefs in academic reading comprehension, students’ metacognitive strategies to overcome students’ reading difficulties, and the correlation between attributional beliefs with metacognitive reading strategies during the online learning. three research questions were formulated in this research: 1. how do indonesian graduate perceive their attributional beliefs in academic reading comprehension during online class? 2. what are indonesian graduate students’ strategies to deal with academic reading difficulties? 3. is there any relationship between attributional beliefs and metacognitive reading strategies of indonesian graduate students? based on the third research question, the researchers formulated the two hypotheses: h0: there is no correlation between attributional beliefs and metacognitive reading strategies of indonesian graduate students. ha: there is a correlation between attributional beliefs and metacognitive reading strategies of indonesian graduate students. attributional beliefs it is no doubt that attributional beliefs play a significant role in students’ learning motivation, performance, and academic coping (luo et al., 2014). in the learning process, it is understood that every student presents different types of attributional beliefs. students may attribute their success or failure to several dimensions, locus (internal and external), stability, and controllability that is dependents on students’ learning experiences including past success or failure, social norms, and existing beliefs (weiner, 2010). according to ellis (2008), attribution is explained as a student’s progress of their second language learning and the reasons why they attribute their success or failure in the process of acquiring a particular target language. in the educational aspect, attribution can be defined as a determinant of students’ learning and performance affecting their motivation and academic achievement (weiner, 1985). furthermore, attribution can be described as people’s explanation for the cause of a particular event, which in turn affects their behavior ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 61 (martinko, 1995, p.8). with regards to winer’s attribution theories, martinko (1995) also mentions four dimensions of attribution: locus of causality, stability, globality, and controllability. the locus of causality focuses more on how people perceive a particular cause as being internal (abilities and efforts) or external (insufficient preparation and task difficulty). the stability dimension explores more on whether or not a particular cause can be considered as something fixed or stable. globality refers to the way how people perceive a cause is in a particular situation of their life. lastly, controllably refers to the way how people believe that they can control a particular cause. mori et al. (2010) find that the majority of students attribute their success to the influences of teachers and the conducive classroom atmosphere primarily. meanwhile, their lack of abilities and insufficient knowledge were the causes of their failure. yilmaz (2012) found that most of the students attributed their success to their suitable learning strategies, positive mood, reading interest, teachers’ feedback, and a conducive classroom environment. while, they attributed their failure in the reading process to inadequate reading abilities, lack of time, negative mood, and an unconducive environment. those findings of two different studies (mori et al., 2010; yilmaz, 2012) are in harmony with that of weiner’s attribution theory, which describes attribution through four significant explanations for success or failures in achieving students’ learning outcomes: abilities, efforts, task difficulty, and luck. reading difficulties reading is a particular process involving students to look for a series of written symbols to find the real meaning of them. pammu et al., (2013) describe that reading is the most effective and efficient way to encourage students’ comprehension, improve general language skills, change students’ bad habit in learning, and enhance their level of confidence as second language readers. according to zarei (2018), academic reading is a difficult process requiring varied strategies to cope with several issues. specific strategies might be implemented to helps students deal with academic reading problems. zarei (2018) found that those suitable reading strategies might be utilized to help students in comprehending specific texts and overcoming reading difficulties and faced by students in second language learning and acquisition. students seem to struggle the most to acquire english as a second language and to overcome reading setbacks. however, some students might not realize and understand that they need to better strategies to cope with all reading issues (alghail & mahfoodh, 2016). those reading problems might affect their reading development and comprehension. lack of metacognition leads students to not care on their reading progress and suffer reading skills and strategies. then, students experiencing less motivation and engagement in reading process pull themselves out from the academic reading process by not paying attention to the learning process, expressing their negative emotions, avoiding reading activities, and becoming disengaged readers. meniado (2016) finds that in saudi arabia, the level of students’ motivation in academic reading is low. this case leads students to have low level of reading comprehension, surface engagement in reading, less vocabulary and word knowledge. many efl students in indonesia also experience academic reading challenges such as bad habits in reading and difficulties in understanding the particular reading text (pammu et al., 2013). they find that a great number of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 62 indonesian students suffer insufficient vocabulary knowledge and strategies in reading comprehension. metacognitive reading strategies according to flavel (1979), metacognition involves individuals’ awareness and cognitive process to attain self-regulation, mental activities, and thinking strategies. fundamentally, metacognition refers to thinking about thinking and it had been categorized into two crucial aspects namely monitoring skills and cognitive knowledge for the learning process (flavel, 1979) furthermore, chamot et al. (1999) argued that metacognition is an essential knowledge that need to be developed by individuals to have abilities in planning, monitoring, and evaluating. flavel (1979) investigated that individuals who carry out the metacognitive knowledge development in their learning tend to develop higher self-beliefs and strategies to cope with learning issues. students having great deal of metacognitive knowledge can determine the most effective strategies to achieve the learning goals. however, promoting high levels of metacognitive strategies for students is quite challenging. teng (2020) found that it is difficult for students to implement metacognitive strategies in the reading process because they need to interpret, evaluate what they have read previously, and conclude the crucial information by using higher-order thinking skills. chamot et al. (1999) find that students will be success in the reading after implementing metacognitive strategies. metacognitively active students tend to develop epistemic beliefs and perceive readings are for particular purposes. in addition, developing strategy knowledge and the ability to reflect on what has been learned are the important component for constructing a strong metacognitive knowledge (flavell, 1979; & chamot, et al., 1999). the majority of graduate students experience difficulties in attaining reading comprehension due to lack of metacognitive knowledge (pammu et al., 2013; zarei, 2018). chamot and o’malley (1994) argue that graduate students who equipped themselves with language learning strategies can improve their progress in comprehending, internalizing the target language, and developing communicative ability autonomously. teng (2020), reveals that students who implement metacognitive strategies during reading may be able to regulate themselves, modify reading approaches, and become more proficient in reading. last, teng (2020) also agrees that metacognitive reading strategies may be applied to help students in building specific knowledge by planning the activity, monitoring the strategies, and evaluate whether or not the strategies suitable. method to obtain the particular data, the researchers implemented a sequential parallel mixed-method study to obtain data regarding this research. according to ary et al. (2009), a mixed-method study aimed to help researchers to combine both qualitative and quantitative approaches in a creative way utilizing the strengths of each within a single study. by mixing the methods in a specific way, ary et al. (2009) argued that it could minimize the weaknesses of one approach and reduce the overlapping with the weaknesses of another, so the study can be strengthened. in addition, creswell (2014) found that a sequential parallel mixed-method study could be used by researchers to integrate both qualitative and quantitative approaches to provide understandable research data. this current study was conducted in the area of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 63 yogyakarta. the participants in this study were 19 graduate students of the english education master program at sanata dharma university, yogyakarta. the research participants came from batch 2021 who had experienced the academic reading process through online learning during this covid-19 pandemic. they were selected as the source of data to comprehend their attributional beliefs in academic reading comprehension during their online learning. in collecting the data, two types of questionnaires comprising closed-ended and open-ended and also interviews were conducted. the close-ended questionnaire consisting of 13 statements was adopted from the existing questionnaires on attributional beliefs and metacognitive strategies by florida and mbato (2020) and mbato (2013). those questionnaires were classified into two different sections namely attributional beliefs and metacognitive reading strategies questionnaire. the attributional beliefs questionnaire asked the participants to imagine five scenarios on their success or failure in academic reading comprehension due to their ability, luck, other people or circumstances, or due to their efforts or strategies. meanwhile, the metacognitive reading strategies questionnaire asked students how they adopt metacognitive strategies in reading to overcome challenges. this questionnaire was constructed by using a likert scale in the form of numbers 1 up to 5. the degree of agreement was “strongly disagree (1)”, “disagree (2)”, “neutral (3)”, “agree (4)”, and “strongly agree (5)”. because of the pandemic constraint, the researchers shared the questionnaire through the google form platform where students filled out a consent form to participate. the researchers tabulated all of the obtained data in the form of descriptive statistics and presented the total responses of participants in the form of percentages. the researchers also conducted a semi-structured interview section to support the questionnaire data. the researchers selected four out of nineteen participants in this research purposively. these students were asked about their academic reading performances, reading difficulties, and metacognitive strategies to cope with challenges. to keep and protect the participants’ identities, the participants were named stu a, b, c, and d. the interviews were recorded and transcribed into structured paragraphs. the researchers conducted descriptive and inferential statistics to analyze students’ responses. since this particular research employed a mixedmethod study, it also provided side-by-side comparison by connecting and building the data set (creswell, 2014). to analyze the quantitative data, researchers employed the pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r) with the aid of the spps 26 to explore the correlation between students’ attributional beliefs and metacognitive reading strategies. thus, the qualitative data focused on interviews to obtain students’ experiences and reflections during the academic reading process. findings and discussion this section is executed, to sum up all of the findings gained through the questionnaires and interview section regarding graduate students’ attributional beliefs in their academic reading comprehension, especially during online learning. there are three major findings in this current study concerning attributional beliefs and metacognitive strategies. the first finding deals with students’ perceptions of their attributional beliefs in academic reading comprehension. the second finding focused on the significance of metacognitive reading strategies used by graduate students to deal with reading challenges and reading comprehension. the third ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 64 finding focused on the correlation between students’ attributional beliefs and metacognitive strategies in their academic reading. each of the findings will be presented in the table in the form of percentages and supported by some excerpts from students’ interview results, the relevant previous studies, and also the relevant theories to provide a clear and better understanding for a comprehensive discussion. how do indonesian graduate perceive their attributional beliefs in academic reading comprehension during online class? according to the previous studies (weiner, 1985; martinko, 1995) students can attribute their success or failure of learning process to four dimensions of attribution comprising locus of causality, stability, globality, and controllability. this current study examined that indonesian efl graduate students attributed their success or failure in academic reading comprehension to two chief factors: internal (lack of vocabulary, insufficient skills) and external (language difficulties and reading environment). figure 1. students’ attribution in reading as showed in figure 1, from all participants, it was indicated that 7.4% of the students attributed their success or failure to the external factors (my ability, luck, other people, or circumstances), 37.9% of the students were unsure with their attributional beliefs, and the rest (54.6%) attributed their success or failure of academic reading comprehension to the internal factors (my effort and strategies). this particular finding was also supported by the results of students’ attributional beliefs questionnaire in academic reading comprising 6 statements. the questionnaire result will be seen as follows. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 65 table 1. students’ perceptions on their attributional beliefs on academic reading comprehension no. statements my ability, luck, other people or circumstances unsure my effort and strategies mean sd att 1 low mark for incorrect reading comprehension 2 10.5% 5 26.3% 12 63.2% 2.6 0.70 att 2 able to summarize a story 5 26.3% 14 73.7% 2,8 0.42 att 3 little progress in english 1 5.3% 9 47.4% 9 47.4% 2,4 0.61 att 4 able to express ideas and concepts to a group 3 15.8% 7 36.8% 9 47.4% 2,3 0.76 att 5 unable to express ideas and concepts to a group 2 10.5% 12 63.2% 5 26.3% 2,2 0.61 att 6 english lesson goes well 8 42.1% 11 57.9% 2,5 0.51 * att= attribution, sd=standard deviation. from those statements in table 1, it can be seen that over 50 % of students expressed that they attributed the mark for reading comprehension (att 1) and the ability to summarize stories from readings (att 2) to the internal factors (my effort and strategies). this finding is in compliance with that of luo et al. (2013), indicating that the majority of students who understand their learning goals tend to attribute their success or failure to the internal factors, including effort and learning strategies. however, over 20% of the students (att 1 and att 2) were unsure whether those items were caused by internal or external factors. over 40% of the students attributed their progress in english reading (att 3) and their abilities to express ideas and concepts (att 4) to internal factors. meanwhile, in att 3 and att 4, more than 30% were unsure about their progress in english reading. these particular findings are in harmony with that of mbato (2013) who found that students who attributed their previous learning achievement to effort commonly resulted in better progress and greater abilities development. it was less than 30% of students attributed their inability to express ideas and concepts to internal factors (att 5). the majority of students (61.1%) were unsure and the rest of them (11.1%) attributed their inability to external factors. this particular finding is corroborated with the studies from weiner (1985) and luo et al. (2013), in that students without enough preparation tend to attribute academic success or failure to study skills, task difficulty, and luck, as well as the support from teachers and parents. lastly, more than 50% of the students (att 6) also attributed their reading situation to internal factors. from these findings, it can be indicated that there was a wide gap between students who attributed their abilities to summarize a story (att 2) and the situation while reading (att 6) to internal or external factors. more than 50% of the students believed that those were caused by internal factors and no one attributed them to external factors. in that case, the roles of parents and teachers in modelling the effort attribution might be affecting students in the decision-making (yilmaz, 2012). most of the students ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 66 selected to attribute their failure or success to effort and strategies because teachers and parents encourage them that make sufficient effort, employ appropriate strategies, and struggle hard in life are the keys to success (dornyei, 2001; mali, 2017). the result of the questionnaire was in consistence with the student’s excerpt in the interview. four students were asked about their opinion and perception of selfregulated readers. i believe that i am a self-regulated reader because i have high motivation to relate the reading concepts with my experiences, evaluate my reading progress, and make a conclusion of the particular reading. those strategies will help me to achieve my goals. (stu b) student b expressed that reading was one of the interesting activities so that she was motivated to read and apply strategies to achieve the reading goals. meanwhile, different opinions and perceptions were mentioned by student c concerning selfregulated readers. i am not a self-regulated reader because i consider that reading is a burden for me so i have less motivation in reading and insufficient skills. it is difficult for me to apply suitable strategies because my surroundings easily distract me to read. (stu c) from student c, it can be inferred that lack of motivation, inadequate comprehension skills, insufficient strategies, and an unconducive environment became the chief factors why academic reading was challenging for students. those students’ interview results were in compliance with that of florida and mbato (2020), who indicated that motivation is the main factor affecting students to read. in addition, students with strong motivation are able to read and learn faster rather than those without strong motivation. the students’ answers in the interview section prove that more than half of graduate students believed that internal factors navigate their motivation to improve comprehension skills and achieve reading goals. what are graduate students’ strategies to deal with academic reading difficulties? based on the findings of the second questionnaires, the researchers tried to figure out how students implemented metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor, and evaluate their reading process. seven statements from table 2 below focused on the students’ perceptions of their metacognitive reading strategies used to overcome reading difficulties. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 67 table 2. students’ responses on their metacognitive strategies in academic reading statements (st) mean sd* 1 2 3 4 5 sd % d % n % a % sa % f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 1 i decide in advance what my reading purpose is, and i read with that goal in mind. 3,94 0,72 5.3 10.5 68.4 15.8 2 before i read, i think of what i already know about the topic. 3,78 0,87 10.5 21.1 52.6 15.8 3 while reading, i periodically check if the material is making sense to me. 4,11 0,83 5.3 15.8 47.4 31.6 4 i encourage myself as i read by saying positive statements such as “you can do it.” 4,27 0,89 5.3 10.5 36.8 47.4 5 when i encounter a difficult or unfamiliar word i try to work out its meaning from the context surrounding it (such as other words or pictures) 4,27 0,82 5.3 10.5 47.4 36.8 6 after reading, i check to see if my prediction is correct. 4,11 0,75 21.1 47.4 31.6 7 after reading, i decide whether the strategies i used helped me understand, and think of other strategies that could have helped. 3,67 0,97 15.8 15.8 52.6 15.8 *sd=standard deviation; sd=strongly disagree; d=disagree; n=neutral; a=agree; sa=strongly agree; f=frequency as shown in table 2, the findings indicated that most of the students responded differently concerning the implementation of metacognitive reading strategies when encountering difficulties. based on figure 1 previously, 54.6% of the students believed that their academic reading success or failure was due to internal factors (efforts and strategies). therefore, the researchers attempted to figure out how they planned, monitored, and evaluated their reading process based on their attributional beliefs. it could be seen that 84.2% of the students set specific goals before going to read (st 1). this finding is in compliance with that of mbato (2013), indicating that setting the specific goals before reading might help students to self-regulated reading who adopt reading comprehension strategies autonomously. most of the students expressed high agreement with the implementation of metacognitive strategies in pre, while, and post-reading (st 2, 3, 6, 7). 84.2% of the students agreed that they encouraged themselves to be able to read by saying positive statements (st 3) and found the meanings of difficult words from the other words, pictures, and dictionary (st 4). this finding is in line with mbato (2013) who identified that self-regulated readers focus on their internal sources to navigate themselves to reading success by setting goals at the beginning of the reading, implementing appropriate reading ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 68 strategies, and having strong self-motivation to invest internal resources to achieve the goals. other statements showed that over 60% of the students expressed that after reading they commonly adopted metacognitive strategies such as prediction (st 6) and other strategies that best suit their reading styles (st 7). no one disagreed with statement 6 about the prediction strategy after reading. this finding is in consistence with that of bekkaloglu (2020), who indicated that being metacognitively active, students are required to implement three sub-skills comprising planning, monitoring, and evaluation. making predictions before and after reading, determining appropriate reading comprehension strategies, as well as arranging solution resources affecting reading success is the example of planning and monitoring strategies. based on the results, the high scores of sd (standard deviation) in those seven statements indicated that students shared different strategy uses. however, many students were unsure to apply metacognitive strategies when they encountered difficulties in reading. it was supported by the study from bagci and unveren (2020), in that some students who have little experience in reading and use ineffective reading strategies, as well as poor reading habits are considered as having difficulty in developing reading comprehension skills. moreover, the descriptive analysis of the questionnaire data was corroborated with one excerpt of the interviews, in which the student delivered her challenges in academic reading. i often experience difficulties in reading because of unfamiliar words, academic language difficulties, and inadequate vocabulary. it is hard for me to achieve reading comprehension during an online class. (stu d) based on the interview, student d shared her reading difficulties during the online learning. she felt difficult to discuss with many friends due to the limited connection and time. she also provided a strategy to deal with her difficulties. i tend to open the dictionary, highlight the hard parts, make notes for new vocabulary, and summarize significant content from a particular reading. i also love to reread the readings if i cannot draw the clear conclusion. (stu d) from the students’ excerpts of the interview, it can be inferred that many students experienced reading difficulties. however, some of them adopted metacognitive comprising planning monitoring, and evaluation to solve their problems (chamot et al., 1999). they also explained that they tended to evaluate and reflect on what they have read and what the information was about. is there any relationship between attributional beliefs and metacognitive reading strategies of indonesian graduate students? in this section, the pearson correlation coefficient (r) was employed to examine the relationship between students’ attributional beliefs and metacognitive strategies in academic reading comprehension with the assistance of spss to test the validity of these particular questionnaires. the result was presented in the following table: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 69 table 3. correlation between attribution and metacognitive reading strategies attribution metacognitive reading strategies attribution pearson correlation 1 .746 sig. (2-tailed) .001 n 19 19 metacognitive reading strategies pearson correlation .746 1 sig. (2-tailed) .001 n 19 19 the result of the pearson correlation coefficient (r) indicated that there is a strong correlation between students’ attributional beliefs and metacognitive reading strategies of efl graduate students, which was significant at the 0.01 level (r = .746, n = 19). this finding highlighted that the correlation between students’ attributional beliefs and metacognitive reading strategies was strong since the majority of the students (54.6%) attributed their reading success or failure to internal factors (effort and strategies). even though many students experienced academic reading difficulties, they attempted to find the strategies that best suited their reading process. many students believed that their academic reading success or failure mostly was affected by insufficient comprehension skills, lack of strategies, and inadequate vocabulary. thus, the results conclude that the alternative hypothesis (ha) was accepted and the null hypothesis (h0) was rejected. the correlation was significant for the total participants (p= 0.01 < α = 0,5). thus, this finding is also supported by the student’s excerpt in the interview section. i am a student who has no sufficient skills in comprehending any readings. it is why i try to spend lots of effort and perseverance in adopting appropriate reading strategies such as questioning, setting goals, highlighting, discussing, and drawing a conclusion. conclusion it is notable to restate that academic reading comprehension skills are the incredibly important skills that should be mastered by efl graduate students. this current study examined the influence of indonesian efl graduate students’ attributional beliefs in academic reading comprehension, especially in the online learning. the findings of this study indicated that the majority of students attributed their success or failure in academic reading comprehension to internal factors such as motivation, efforts, and reading strategies. many students expressed that they also experienced so many reading difficulties during the online learning such as limited time, limited interactions, language difficulties, and inability to discuss their academic problems with other people. however, they also confirmed that the existence of metacognitive strategies (planning, monitoring, and evaluating) can greatly help them to deal with reading difficulties. the pearson correlation (r) also showed that there was a strong correlation between students’ attribution and metacognitive reading strategies and significant at the 0.01 level (r = .746, n = 19). the result indicated that most of the students attributed their success or failure to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 57-72 70 internal factors (efforts and reading strategies). this finding was supported by students’ excerpts from interviews that they mostly implemented strategies in each stage of reading to help them enhance reading comprehension abilities and solve problems. to conclude, the researchers offered several implications. first, students need to have a higher awareness of attributional beliefs in academic reading. second, language teachers should encourage students to learn the concepts of attribution and promote them to develop internal attribution in the academic reading process. this kind of activity may provide students some opportunities to become self-regulated readers and therefore experience more reading success. lastly, language teachers need to encourage students to implement metacognitive strategies in reading including how to plan the goals, monitor reading progress, and evaluate their strategies in terms of whether or not they are effective. since academic reading requires students’ english language proficiency, teachers need to improve their teaching strategies that can help students to deal with their reading problems. thus, students can be motivated to read in spite of the challenges particularly in the foreign language learning context. despite the positive findings, this current study, has a limitation in that it involved a small sample size (n=19) from one private university. future researchers who are interested in investigating a similar topic can include a larger group of participants of several universities in indonesia. thus, they could explore more extensively the relationship between students’ attribution, internal or external factors, self-regulation, learning difficulties, and also metacognitive strategies. they may also conduct similar research with writing, listening, or speaking as their focus. references alghail, a. a. a., & mahfoodh, o. h. a. 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(2018). on the relationship between metacognitive reading strategies, reading self-efficacy, and l2 reading comprehension. journal of english language teaching, 22(22). http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1028315315574100 https://doi.org/10.5539/hes.v4n4p76 https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v2n1p12 https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12181 https://doi.org/10.1080/87567550209595885 https://doi.org/10.26858/eltww.v7i1.13010 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 67-75 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 67 berta’s food story: the case of a small scale green business in yogyakarta novita dewi, fransiscus asisi joko siswanto, and francisca reni retno anggraini sanata dharma university, indonesia novitadewi@usd.ac.id; jokosiswanto59@yahoo.com; and francisca.anggraini@yahoo.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.030106 received 30 july 2019; revised 19 august 2019; accepted 25 august 2019 abstract this study seeks to examine the extent to which micro small and medium scale enterprises (msmes) apply environmental ethics in their business praxis. the data sources were field observations and in-depth interviews with one catering business in yogyakarta known for its use of locally-sourced food and zero preservatives. this qualitative narrative research aims to answer how and why this selected msme has demonstrated environmental awareness. the study looks further at the implications of this business practice toward the sustainability thereof. the data analysis reveals that, first, the business owner, driven by internal motivation, used environmentally friendly products to care for customers’ satisfaction and need of healthy food. secondly, the business, however, did not adhere to such external motivation as cutting no trees for fuelwood. regardless of its damage for the environment, the use of fuelwood reduced production cost and no prohibition for cutting trees was thus far enacted. this study concludes that more efforts should be made to cultivate ecological concerns as the core of sustainable entrepreneurial skills. keywords: msmes, environmental ethics, green entrepreneurship introduction the indonesian government has currently given all firms including micro small and medium scale enterprises (msmes) to develop. according to the report of the national team for the acceleration of poverty reduction, msmes make up an integral part of indonesian economy with approximately 99% firms in total which contribute 97% to the country’s employment (burger, n., chazali, c., gaduh, a., rothenberg, a. d., tjandraningsih, i., & weilant, s. , 2015, p. 8). given the importance of msmes, there are a number of policies made by the government to support the development thereof, including those related to taxes for msmes. for example, the minister of home affairs regulation no. 13 of 2006 regulates taxes for restaurants, cafes, canteens and catering, and other catering services. next is the regulation number 23 of 2018 which legalizes the imposition of income tax on msmes. after the issuance of the regulation, msme entrepreneurs only pay a tax of 0.5% of their gross income. with this newer mailto:novitadewi@usd.ac.id mailto:jokosiswanto59@yahoo.com mailto:francisca.anggraini@yahoo.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 67-75 68 regulation, the business owners can save costs for tax payment with which they may earn more to develop their business further. the yogyakarta province has the largest proportion of msmes among large companies. this is in line with the economic development of the region whereby lower middle class companies are dominant. central bureau of statistics of yogyakarta province shows that the growth of msmes production in the second quarter of 2018 increased by 6.54% from the second quarter of 2017. this means that the development of msmes in yogyakarta is quite promising. according to their business sectors, types of msmes are divided into 7, namely trade and services (52.85%), culinary (27.4%), fashion (8.91%), automotive (5.58%), agribusiness (3.93%), information technology (1.16%), and education (0.17%). as part of trading and service businesses, food catering is one of the business groups with the largest percentage. catering business is quite attractive to entrepreneurs because the market potential is still wide open as shown by a number of researches on catering business in yogyakarta areas (vidianingtyas & putri, 2014; sulistyaningsih, arifin, & nurhaedi, 2016; wijaya, nurhadi, & kuncoro, 2017). despite the tax revenue and ample opportunities brought about by msmes, in this case, catering business, sustainability is an important issue to address herein. catering business is an activity reportedly contributes to the decrease in soil quality resulting from its waste production. soil pollution causes a decrease in water quality which is a necessity for human life. the sustainability of the groundwater must be pursued indefinitely for which reason the use of water must not result in risks of all kinds – ecologically, economically, and socially (paradewari, et al, 2018). some cases related to environmental pollution include toxic waste from the inflight catering service acs, a subsidiary of the indonesian aviation company pt angkasa pura in 2016 (e.g. sondakh, et al., 2014). pollution done by m sm es is not less worrying (e.g. anggadwita, g., & mustafid, q. y., 2014; mariam, s. t., roma, b., sorsa, s., worku, s., & erosie, l., 2000); and worse still, such environmental damage is often left unreported. to compare, a study of wine firms in rural africa shows that in the absence of state regulation, the role of managers with environmental responsibility is important in sustainable business in reducing the ecological risks (hamann, r., smith, j., tashman, p., & marshall, r. s., 2017). indeed, the waste produced by catering services, to mention but one impact, will cause increased levels of bod (biochemical oxygen demand), cod (chemical oxygen demand), and phosphorus in water. when water is polluted, the need for oxygen for the life of the microorganisms increases to break down the organic matter in the water. if the oxygen demand is not sufficient, the microorganisms in the water will perish. one study reports that although food waste is only a small part of biodegradable waste, this waste is the most likely contaminating other wastes and has become a major contributor in producing methane in a landfill (gomez, m. g. c., grimes, s. m., & moore, d., 2008, p. 19). as a result, the catering business’s waste cannot be decomposed. the above conditions prove that the catering entrepreneurs’ hardly show environmental concerns that help aggravate the pollution problems. the entrepreneurs should realize that their business’ waste products have caused detriment to the environment. in addition, the use of chemically processed food materials also causes health problems in the long run. as such, the catering entrepreneurs need to provide wholesome products that are environmentally ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 67-75 69 friendly whilst preserving the environment. it is thus interesting to find out to what extent the msme observed in this study shows its commitment to green business. by “green business”, it means an organization committed to environmental sustainability by way of its operation, use of renewable resources and efforts in minimizing environmental threats to future generation (čekanavičius, l., bazytė, r., & dičmonaitė, a., 2014, p. 76). meanwhile, the concept of environmental ethics used in this research is of transformative kind as proposed by öhman (2008). it integrates ethical dimension in sustainable development and democratic responsibility characteristic of education for sustainable education (öhman, 2008, p. 27). this study, therefore, aims to examine bertha catering owner’s perception of green business by specifically addressing two questions as follows. 1. is berta catering aware of environmental conservation in doing business? 2. what are the impacts of this business to the environment? method used as data sources were field observation and interviews conducted in berta catering located in ngentak viii rt 006/rw 019, sendangagung, minggir, sleman, yogyakarta. data collection was done intermittently between may to july 2019, 2 to 3 hours per visit, by making use of video camera and tape recorder to bring the data together. the main research participant was ms. cicilia rita estrihartanti (henceforth ms. rita), 50 years of age, owner of berta catering whose willingness to participate in this project had been duly authorized. according to laws of the republic indonesia number 20 of 2008 about micro small and medium enterprises, article 6, paragraph 2 (b), small enterprise has annual sales of more than rp 300,000,000.00 (three hundred million rupiahs) up to a maximum of rp 2,500,000,000.00 (two billion five hundred million rupiahs). berta catering fits in this category. mindful of the fact that culture almost always influence entrepreneurs, nonquantitative ethnographic case study was used as research strategy (dana, l. p., & dana, t. e. , 2005) by observing closely the research participant and conducting in-depth interviews (idi). here the researchers also acted as observing participants in order to grasp better understanding of the business praxis in question. a set of preliminary questions was prepared to trigger further questions during idi. the questions include activities related to production, waste management process, and attention to healthy food products (green products). to analyse and report the findings, this study applied naturalistic procedures (schwandt, t. a., lincoln, y. s., & guba, e. g. , 2007) with which several themes emerged that help the researches to draw conclusion on the business owner’s perception of environmental ethics. finding and discussion the findings obtained from answers to the research questions, namely the business’ awareness of environmental conservation and its impacts to the environment make up 3 emerging themes, i.e. 1) motivation for entrepreneurship, 2) challenges in entrepreneurship and 3) opportunities in green entrepreneurship. theme 1: motivation for entrepreneurship ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 67-75 70 gast, gundolf and cesinger define entrepreneurship as the process of opportunity in innovation, creation and exploitation that involve functions, activities, and actions with which business is based and acted upon. as a result, their delineation of ecological sustainable entrepreneurship includes the whole process of identifying, evaluating, and seizing business opportunities that reduce its impact on the natural environment whilst generating societal and communal welfare (gast, j., gundolf, k.& cesinger, b., 2017). when ms. rita started her business in 2005, this school teacher began with getting food orders for office meetings of her circles of friends and/or colleagues. luckily, many people enjoyed the food she prepared from which her intention to make a side business started to grow. ever more customers ordered her nutritious food due to its use of local foodstuffs with no preservatives, although no promotions had then been made until she later put a label onto the snack boxes she catered for her customers. she said the following: at first it didn’t occur to me to become an entrepreneur but rather to go home to accompany my parents while waiting for permanent post as a teacher at the marsudirini yogyakarta foundation. after waiting for so long, i decided to become an elementary teacher in the village and nurture my hobby in cooking. ms. rita’s statement partly exemplifies what it means to become an entrepreneur who is quick to respond to any business opportunity while catering to society’s need of (healthy) food. from the interviews, it was revealed that the business has taken orders from several institutions through words of mouth, especially in recognition of the food’s natural scrumptiousness. among the customers to this day are rs klepu, the nearby hospital, and staff from pt pertanian who often order lunch boxes for their training participants and related events. ms. rita’s use of “berta catering” label to the snack boxes was more than a small innovation. it helped improve product marketing to the wider community so that her catering gradually grew to its fame. in addition to introducing more products to the public, the label was a necessity in a consumption report to account for bos (short for bantuan operasional sekolah), the funds poured out by the government to advance secondary schools in indonesia. since then, the business has become so developed and overwhelming to handle by ms. rita all by herself. having talked over the issue, ms. rita and her husband, mr. didit, decided that mr. didit give up his job to help advance and run a better catering business in 2006 to the present. besides, ms. rita was already appointed as a civil servant and leaving her post as a teacher would not have been advisable. from the field observation, berta catering is quite promising as it has also provided living for the local people. the business sprawls on a land of around 2,000 m2 with a building area of around 700 m2. there is an asphalt road to berta catering which is located near a stretch of rice fields which makes the air fresh. there is also a small ditch on the edge of the house that flows throughout the year and a pond of gurameh, small, brightly colored asian labyrinth fish, to keep fish supply. two vans are available to buy raw materials and send orders. the average ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 67-75 71 daily order is 150 boxes priced at @ rp 20,000. the business employs 5 workers who work every day and get overtime pay. berta catering has a legal entity shown by tdp, company registration certificate, and npwp daerah, regional taxpayer registration number. here we see that berta catering has undergone the process of identifying, evaluating and seizing business opportunity as proposed above (gast, j., gundolf, k.& cesinger, b., 2017). while business acumen and societal demand give a boost to the business owner’s motivation, environmental concerns are yet to see. the growth of berta catering, like any other msmes, lends itself to challenges and opportunities to which the discussion now turns. theme 2: challenges in entrepreneurship as business grows, the work must be increasingly professional. however, employees cannot always work together professionally. investigating differing motivations in becoming an entrepreneur, a similar study in ethiopia concludes that added to their own ambitions, entrepreneurs require family members, friends and personality inclined to entrepreneurial carriers (krishna, 2013). this is to say the success of an entrepreneur is often contingent on who she or he works with. like most msmes, berta catering employs close neighbors. however, they sometimes have difficulty in finding professional staff. those who have expertise and skills do not necessarily have discipline in work. this problem has discouraged ms. rita to accept large orders. from idi, it is obvious that she experienced difficulties in dealing with co-worker neighbors who were not committed to the chores because of personal needs such as going to functions, helping out relatives in their family events, to name but two. there are times when the co-worker is of stubborn, smart-alecky type, hence refusing to listen to ms. rita’s instruction. another worker is fond of chit-chatting as to slow down the work while more works need to be done. indeed, berta catering has a lot to do for sometimes it takes care of 3 to 4 orders of 50 to 150 rice boxes in a day. (the largest order as culled from this study’s early june interview was 1,000 boxes). in addition to problems with poor quality employees, capital is also another anxiety in business development. at the beginning of the business, berta catering did not have catering equipment but it rented from party equipment rentals. ms. rita recommended her customers to order in the form of nasi kotak, “rice box”, because it does not require any tableware for serving. reservations in the form of a buffet would reduce profits because they had to pay the cost of renting equipment which was then quite expensive, approximately rp 6,000 per set. gradually berta catering managed to buy cutlery from savings. this small entrepreneur set aside their income to save with the aim of buying tableware so they did not need to rent anymore. initially there was a thought of borrowing funds from the bank but ms. rita and her husband decided not to continue with the plan due to various considerations. this reluctance to increase the capital has also caused berta catering to grow unhurriedly. another problem related to funding is uncollectible receivables. this happens because many of berta catering customers have family relationships so they cannot be billed like most businesses. expressing her concern about friends or relatives who failed to pay their orders in due course, ms. rita, smiling, had this to say: “that’s it. sometimes i don’t have the heart [to ask them to pay]. sometimes we asked them to pay but never come back to pay, 5 million, 3.6 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 67-75 72 million, 2.4 million. two hundred thousand unpaid bills are the most frequent to happen.” this then has made berta catering’s business capital slow to increase. theme 3: opportunities in green entrepreneurship there are three main issues related to environmental problems, namely internalization of environmental management practices, environmental innovation, and knowledge management (robertson, j.l. & barling, j., 2015, pp. 15-16). in the meantime, orientation in becoming green entrepreneurs may be as varied as inherent motivation including emotional attachment, market thrust, and social responsiveness (jiang, w., chai, h., shao, j., & feng, t., 2018) and therefore becoming a green entrepreneur is not easy to get done (sonenshein, s., decelles, k. a., & dutton, j. e., 2014). using the above theorization, the data analysis revealed the third theme, that is, berta catering’s potentials to continue taking on green entrepreneurship way of life. in terms of food materials supply, berta catering relies on the traditional market, the closet being the godean market that stays open for 24 hours selling vegetables, fruit, fish, meat, poultry, spices, and many more. ms. rita has made use of the main raw materials from vegetables, meat, and fish to spices and flavorings. no chemicals for food coloring are used as all ingredients are natural dyes, for example, mixture of teak leaves for color, and brown sugar for sweeteners, not to mention other herbs of different flavor and aroma. she said that the quality of food with natural ingredients was wholesome while naming klepu hospital as one loyal customer who ordered from berta catering for almost every single event. instead of using artificial preservatives, such natural ingredient as lime juice is useful to add to rice or vegetables to be cooked to prevent the materials from being stale far too soon. excepting for gourami, other fish and meats are easy to obtain from the market or retailers; hence there is no necessity to be self-sufficient for these raw materials. speaking of sustainability, the couple entrepreneur’ neighbors raise ducks and chicken fed by berta catering’s leftovers and food scraps. mr. didit used to recycle eggshell as bites for mouse trap but it did not last long because mice breed so fast compared to those trapped. what can be inferred here is that berta catering finds no difficulty in trashing out the production waste. the question here is: is the waste disposal system environmentally friendly? when pursued further about waste water, the owners quickly pointed out the ditch running behind the house. they throw away greasy water waste onto a heap of ashes in the backyard. it was only in the researchers’ next visit that a waste oil disposal container was later provided. apparently, environmental management can only be carried out by implementing policies, codes of ethics, and industrial ecological actions. it is right to say that it takes external motivation to become resolutely ecologically inclined entrepreneurs (e.g. jiang, w., chai, h., shao, j., & feng, t., 2018; robertson, j. l. & barling, j., 2015; wei, l. k., omar, r., & sa'ari, j. r., 2015) the analysis of data gleaned from both field observation and idi shows that in terms of production (cooking process), berta catering has sooner or later faced ecological problems for its use of fuelwood in reducing the production cost. berta catering uses fuelwood to cook food; this means that it has the potential to cause environmental damage because many trees will be cut down for this purpose. according to the environmental protection agency (epa), “pollution prevention ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 67-75 73 is reducing or eliminating waste at the source by modifying production processes, promoting the use of non-toxic or less toxic substances, implementing conservation techniques, and re-using materials rather than putting them into the waste stream” (robertson, j. l. & barling, j., 2015, p. 15). here, berta catering stakeholders (owner and customers) argue that cooking using fuelwood will produce more delicious dishes than using an oil stove or gas stove. this is the reason why to date berta catering continues to use fuelwood taken from melinjo tree (gnetum gnemon linn.) mr. didit decided on the use of melinjo wood because it does not cause much smoke; besides, the wood can still burn when wet, thanks to its oleaginous contents. ms. rita and her husband explained that they cut the large trees of which the trunks were also in use by the handicraft and kitchen utensil home-industry to make parut, coconut grater. they claimed that their business did not produce waste which could pollute the environment. the smoke generated from the cooking process was reportedly discharged into the air through traditionally made chimneys. they believed that their neighbors did not feel disturbed by the smoke. they once asked one neighbor and the latter declared that they did not feel disturbed. this means that living together in the environment can still be maintained even though every day there is smoke arising from the food processing. the fact that berta catering lies on the outskirts of the village seems to lessen the practical problem often occurs among neighbors. to sum up, berta catering has the potentials to operate green business in terms of societal beliefs. given its current location in ngentak, one prospective village in yogyakarta, the spirit of cooperation and harmonious neighboring life easily fit in with environmental ethics practiced within democratic and pluralistic milieu (öhman, 2008). conclusion this research limited itself on examining berta catering as the research participant to find out what factors motivate the entrepreneur to produce environmentally friendly products. ms. rita and her husband mr. didit as owners of berta catering have the motivation to continue serving dishes prepared with natural ingredients because they feel that in so doing they produce meals desirable to their consumers. for this reason, the owners will continue to maintain the business quality. the results of the study have shown that in the production process, the business stakeholders hardly perceived that berta catering disturb the neighbors and their daily activities because of its location by the village near the rice fields, hence fairly far from the settlement. berta catering has no concern about production waste either because they recycle the unconsumed food to give to the neighbors for poultry feed. however, the business owners have not had enough information on procuring fuelwood which has the potential to damage the environment. it has also been shown that driven by internal motivation, berta catering owners offer environmentally friendly products to maintain the consumers’ trust that they provide healthy and yummy food without chemically processed ingredients. meanwhile, such an external motivation as adherence to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 67-75 74 environmental and social norms has not been taken into thoughtful consideration because there are no regulations that prohibit people from cutting down trees. this study recommends 5 ideas for berta catering to have a go: (1) continually preparing locally-sourced groceries for the menu while using recyclable tablewares not the disposable ones (2) always updating culinary techniques/skills using sustainable sources or supplies; (3) minimizing the use of plastic bags of all kinds and sizes by replacing them with banana leaves or other innovative, hygienic, and ecofriendly modes of packaging (4) reducing the use of fuelwood to opt for environmentally friendly alternative fuels; and (5) upgrading the workers’ professionalism by participating in relevant trainings. as a final point, it would seem mandatory to have regulations made to reward good ecological practices and to penalize any breach of regulation so that msmes may inevitably transform into sustainable business. the success of tax policy enactment on msmes as to boost the business growth cited in the beginning of this article is a good example to implement on environmental code of practice for any business. references anggadwita, g., & mustafid, q. y. 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(2017). exploring the problems faced by practitioners of micro, small, and medium enterprises (msmes) in yogyakarta. jurnal manajemen dan kewirausahaan, 19(1), 38-45 https://doi.org/10.9744/jmk.19.1.38-45. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 251 on speech act pragmatic: political languages in 2018 elections in aceh muhammad hasyimsyah batubara stain gajah putih takengon, aceh tengah, aceh muhammad.hasyimsyahbatubara@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030210 received 24 october 2019; accepted 5 march 2020 abstract this study aims to describe the speech act pragmatic analysis of political languages in outdoor advertising text of the 2018 simultaneously election in aceh. this research used descriptive qualitative method, sources of data in the form of candidate’s utterances in outdoor advertising campaign in aceh. language research in the pragmatic is basically divided into three stages, namely (1) the stage of providing data, (2) the stage of data analysis, and (3) the stage of presenting the results of data analysis. based on the results of the analysis and discussion of speech act, the findings of this study showed in pidie jaya area are dominated by assertive/collaborative illocutionary utterances. in the south aceh area 9 assertive illocutionary utterances, and direct illocutionary speech acts were used for 5 utterances. whereas in the subulussalam area there are 5 utterances in assertive/collaborative illocutionary and directive utterances. the presentation of this study, hopefully it will enrich in understanding for us in capturing the meaning of speech messages or speech acts of candidates for elections. in the end we are not trapped like the statement delivered by charles de gaulle, president of the french republic "politicians never believe in their own words, they are actually surprised when people believe it". keywords: language, political communication, pragmatics, speech act introduction in discussions about the nature and function of language, people are often confused and mistaken in explaining these two things, because it is like two sides of an inseparable coin. not yet finished answering the differences in the nature and functions of language, we are often challenged with the question of when the language first existed. although this question can be answered from the views and understanding of theological groups, which says, language first existed when the first human ancestor "adam" was created by god. on the other hand, this group's views are at odds with theories such as organic phase theory, evolution theory, dingdong theory (nativistic theory), conventionalist theory (yo-he-ho theory), bow-wow theory (onomatopoetic/echoic theory), and gesture theory (sobur, 2013), but these theories and theological groups have common ground and mailto:muhammad.hasyimsyahbatubara@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030210 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 252 similarities in terms of explaining the meaning of the nature and function of language. back to the first question above, (edwards, 2009) provides an explanation that the position of language is undoubtedly an important and commonly used real instrument, become the strongest symbol of the group, emotionally charged symbols, the main pillar of individual, social, and crucial points that are important for ethnonational movements. even farther (cristal, 2006) mentions that language is (1) a system, the use of sounds, signs, or symbols written in human life to communicate and express themselves, (2) a system specifically designed to program and interact with computers, (3) the means by which animals use communicating, and (4) the symbolic aspects of language (not including phonetics and phonology). in addition to previous explanations, some experts also interpret language as a vehicle for the expression or exchange of thoughts, concepts, knowledge, and information as well as the regulation and transmission of experiences and knowledge, this understanding sees and are based on language only as a cognitive process, subject to social factors and subject to change, and historical development. the language in this definition refers only to specific forms of expression that are limited to humans, and differ from all languages as animals may use in communication, as well as artificial languages through creativity, the ability to make conceptual abstractions, and the possibility of metalinguistic reflection (linguistic theory, origin language ideas, language philosophy) (bussmann, 2006). in addition, every meaning that is contained in the use of language, in linguistics is part of pragmatic study. according to rowe and diane provides pragmatics is the study of the effect of context on meaning, and it is about the practical use of language. he noted it includes the study of how people use language to establish their identities through social meaning, to express their emotions through affective meaning, to perform speech acts with performative sentences, and to carry on conversations with others (rowe and diane 2016). furthermore, (finch, 1998) in his book found that language viewed from its function, in general can be divided into 2 functions, (1) micro functions: for the realist nerve/physical energy (pycologycal function), for socialization purposes (phatic function), to provide notes (recording function), to identify and classify things (identification function), as an instrument of thought (function of reasoning), as a means of communication of ideas and feelings (communication function), giving joy (function of pleasure), and (2) macro functions: ideational functions, interpersonal functions, poetic function, textual function. the explanation of the language above shows the importance of understanding the nature and function of language in broader community life. the importance of this is captured by the majority of the community of political actors in carrying out propaganda, rhetoric and interpretation in the process of introducing themselves to society. the use of language functions in the political arena lately is very interesting knowledge to understand. the use of good language plays a big role in building a person's image. in the political community circle, language is very important to learn and understand so that it can build good political communication with voters and sympathizers. in delivering campaign promises, political actors must be smart and observant in compiling diction that is used so that they are easily trusted by the public. even though in politics there is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 253 an adage that states ‘politicians may not keep their promises at the time when elected’, therein the power of language that can propagate and hypnotize voters to believe something that is absurd/impossible to achieve from the promises made. language in politics is very important to be master, especially the situation in the post-reform euphoria atmosphere, one of which gave birth to direct elections: presidential elections, regional heads, dpd/ dpr/ dprd. this democratic system provides a space for anyone to participate in the national political arena. this has an impact on how individuals or pairs of candidates are able to branding themselves in order to get positive sentiment in the midst of society. immediate political figures mushroomed from imaging methods, such as building a populist attitude, working hard, anti-corruption, modest, charismatic, and other opinions from such angles that are popular in society these days. in building self-image, a politician can not be separated from the influence and development of ict (information and communication technology), such as television, radio, internet, social media, online media, print media and other advertising media. to use these media must be supported by the mastery and use of appropriate and qualified language (written language, oral language, and body language). language plays an important role in sending propaganda messages so that the listener receives well, which in turn can become a candidate sympathizer. imaging operations with the help of media and language have a significant influence in building the atomic electability of candidates in attracting voter support. one of the political communication media that is currently effective in taking the attention of the public in sending messages and the intended purpose is outdoor advertising media (billboards), because outdoor advertising is always seen in people's daily activities throughout the day. this fact cannot be avoided from the way of life of today's consumer society. the use of outdoor advertising media was initially widely used by companies to introduce the products they made. they realized that advertising media such as billboards, banners, and posters were one of the most effective outdoor advertising media to introduce (branding) products, because this media directly touches the customer. in addition, companies understand that billboards are a form of communication and promotional propaganda that offers great promises to consumers through informative and persuasive messages that offer products that are said to be exceptional to consumers, with relatively low promotional costs from the other media. the reasons about language plays in sending propaganda messages with the help of media, like as outdoor advertising media (billboards) become a phenomenon that is captured and used by political consultants and political actors in 2018 elections in aceh, from 16 candidates’ pair in aceh (pidie jaya, south aceh, and subulussalam) used language in the realm of pragmatic studies. to conduct political communication, politicians generally use advertising media, especially outdoor promotional media to propagate aceh voters/people. speech text in outdoor advertising media tends to use the meaning of speech act implications to promote them and convey their views, vision and mission to participate in the political arena. the way of self-recognition through advertising media is expected to be able to hypnotize the audience and readers to capture the message and the intended intention can be achieved. correspondingly, aceh ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 254 politicians believe in the language used in promotional media must be selective and contain hidden, implied, or folded meanings, but the people who read it are able to recognize the goals and objectives spoken by the candidate in the outdoor advertising media. examples of the selection of speech act used on the 2018 aceh election billboards are found to have implicative meanings behind them, as shown in figures (1) and (2) below. in line with the explanation above, this study addressed research questions are (1) analysis of implied speech acts, (2) what functions of speech acts used, and (3) the trend of selected of implied speech acts concept used on political languages in outdoor advertising text of the 2018 simultaneously election in aceh (pidie jaya, subulussalam and south aceh)?. the benefits of this research are expected to contribute to the analysis of the development of pragmatic studies. it is also intended to provide knowledge and perception, most important for people who making smart political choices from the discourse of politicians that we consider relevant to the situation. language and language function in politics politics in the simplest meaning can be interpreted as an art in managing public and economic resources, then utilized in achieving a position of power or the position of public policy makers both in the legislative and executive domains. in line with the political understanding above, the functions and processes of communication in the political arena are important to be controlled by politicians in their daily activities to maintain electability in the eyes of the public or their constituents. in the political world of shrewdness to play the situation or condition, demanding a politician must be able to compose winged words or sentences according to the context where and when he is, so that the message delivered can be received by the public even though sometimes behind that message there are other goals and intentions. so it is true the expression of previous world figures about political/ politician relations with language skills, such as the words of oscar ameringer, writer and socialist activist of german heritage in the us "politics is the fine art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect one of the others ", besides ernest benn, the british political writer said" politics is the art of seeing problems, finding them whether they exist or not, diagnosing them incorrectly, and applying the wrong recipes "," the heaviest thing in political campaigns anything is how to win without proving that you are not worthy of winning "stated adlai stevenson, us vice president. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 255 specifically (joseph, 2006) in his book explains that language and politics are very closely related. he states there are three functions of language in politics: (1) rhetoric, (2) propaganda, and (3) interpretation. rhetoric is a system and investigation of stylitis tools of various official languages. this function is commonly used by the government or politicians in speeches whose aim is to convince and eliminate people's anxiety in a mild form. propaganda itself is an activity carried out by government or politicians in the form of agitation, invitation, campaign, persuasion, promotion, publicity, proclaiming, humming, shouting, heralding, promoting, bruit a bout, advertising, roaring an issue. while interpretation is a theoretical view of something, giving an impression, opinion, or view based on a theory of something, interpretation, interpreting. additional view, the function of language in politics according to (blumler, 2019 ; gould, 1998) campaigning is holistic, it is a complete activity involving every element of the political experience, to successful campaigns must get not just a single element right, they have to get everything right. gould also said, campaigning is about message, people think that message means just a few words, often repeated, but message is much more: it is the rationale that underlies your campaign (gould, 1998). also in the indonesian thesaurus dictionary interpretation is the definition, explanation, exposition, clarification, paraphrase, understanding, reading, arrest, explanation, version, translation, interpreting, associating, paraphrasing, clarifying, clarifying, defining, and formulating (pusat bahasa departemen pendidikan nasional, 2008). furthermore, (arifin, 2003) adds that, there are several forms of political communication carried out by political communicators to achieve their political goals, such as: (a) political agitation, (b) public relations (pr), (c) political campaigns, (d) political lobbying. the language functions conveyed by arifin and josep are in line with words of wisdom once conveyed by such as, george eliot, english novelist "elections are coming again, universal peace is echoed, and the fox (coyote) shows a sincere interest in extending the life of birds that are became his meal, "even saul bellow, us men of letters, nobel laureate, revealed" look at our politicians: they are a group of yo-yo, seizing the current presidential position like a cross between popularity contests and high school children's debates, with encyclopedias containing cliches ", not much different nikita khrushchev, the prime minister of the soviet, even more scattered sentences responding to politicians "politicians are the same everywhere, they promised to build bridges even in places where there are no rivers”. with the explanation above and the description of such conditions, language and politics are very closely related to perpetuating power. incorrect language use will be fatal for the seat of power and electability of a politician in the eyes of the people who will ultimately be left behind by the voters in the next contestations of political struggle. the purpose of political communication the ultimate goal of the form of political communication above will be conical to the function of the achievement of communication by political communicators to political communicants, in the hope of having a significant effect and getting positive specimens. however, scientists specifically set explicit limits on the objectives of political communication as: (a) political imagery, (b) general opinion, (c) political participation, (d) political socialization, (e) political ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 256 education, (f) political recruitment, (arifin, 2003). political talk is an informal mode of political engagement that ultimately promotes participatory democracy. political talk may not only induce subsequent campaign participation but also may involve a level of psychological engagement such as political self-efficacy, which in turn results in a greater activity in campaign (kim & baek, 2018). to achieve all forms of political communication or political goals mentioned earlier, candidates or politicians must see, understand and consider things that are developing at the grassroots, such as, (1) understanding what voters are looking for, (2) building and marketing relationships emotional with the community, (3) producing images of candidates, (4) using one main vision to connect with candidates 'problems and personalities, (5) talking about voters' problems, not your own, (6) voters constantly want change, (7) ) getting support from party elites, (8) marketing yourself to the media (kaid, 2004). political communication media current developments such as the information era are encouraging the use of television, radio, internet, social media, online media, print media and advertisement media in conducting political communication. one of the political communication media that is currently effective and with relatively inexpensive promotion costs from other media in taking the public's attention to send messages and political objectives is to use outdoor advertising media (billboards). indeed, advertising billboards are highly conspicuous due to their size, colouration, and location usually near major roads. the outdoor advertising industry promotes billboards as attention-grabbing, for example: out-of-home advertising provides visual impact that commands complete attention, and offers total cut-through, it might therefore be expected that they would distract attention from the driving task (edquist, horberry, hosking, & johnston, 2011; eyecorp, 2004). billboards are outdoor signs or posters that are usually seen on highways, busy streets. billboards lately are widely used in sending advertising messages related to political campaigns, product marketing, and for non-profit purposes. in use there are four types of billboards, namely traditional billboards, mechanical billboards and newer types including digital and mobile billboards (filiquarian, 2008). how to self-introduction through this advertising medium is relatively able to hypnotize the audience and readers to capture the message and the intent to be conveyed properly. other advantages in using billboards according to textbook authors and academic researchers have identified (e.g,. charles, george and haekyong, 2013; kelley and jugenheimer 2004; sissors and baron, 2002; taylor, 1997; vanden bergh and katz, 1999; woodside, 1990). the advantages of using billboards include, among other things: (1) potential placement of the advertisement close to the point of sale, (2) high frequency of exposure to regular commuters, (3) high reach, (4) 24-hour presence, (5) geographic flexibility for local advertisers, (6) economic efficiency in terms of low production costs and low cost per thousand exposures, (7) visual impact from advertisement size and message creativity, and (8) brand awareness. pragmatics pragmatics is a branch of linguistics studies, according to (thomas, 1995:2) suggested that some pragmaticians take “a broadly cognitive approach” studying constraints on the interpretation of relevant meaning by the receiver of the message, while others take “a broadly social view of the discipline” focusing on ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 257 social constraints on speaker meaning. her own definition highlights the dynamic nature of the process of meaning-making in context: she defines pragmatics as the study of “meaning in interaction” (1995: 22). in any even, point out pragmatics explains how individuals use linguistic resources to produce and interpret meaning in interaction, and sometimes to change relationships (holmes, 2018). indeed, pragmatics is a branch of semiotics that studies the origin, usage, impact of symbols and signs. according to leech and thomas (in kasper, 2001) pragmatics classified into two elements, they are: (1) pragmalinguistics refers to the resources or pragmatic strategies such as “directness and indirectness, routines, and other range of linguistic forms which can soften or intensify communicative acts” for conveying communicative acts and relational on interpersonal meanings. (2) sociopragmatics described by (leech, 1991: 10) as the sociological interface of pragmatics, referring to the social perceptions underlying participant’s interpretation and performance of communicative action. the previous explanation is in line with yule, he gives a view in many ways, one of which is pragmatics is the study of the meaning of "invisible", or how we recognize what intentions and goals are in communication interactions even when they are not explicitly said or written by speakers (yule, 1996). yule's explanation is actually something that is commonly experienced in daily life, because in communication itself many things that actually do not need to be said or written clearly, but can provide a sign that provides the same interpretation and understanding by the listener with the context of communication delivered speaker in social interaction, and the goals in the act of communication is mutual understanding of the meaning discussed. speech acts actions taken or actions delivered through speech, speech action comes from interpreting an utterance in speech act activities. according to (huang, 2007: 93), the principle of speech act theory is when a sentence is spoken then it is part of the action within the framework of agreement in society, or it can be said that saying is (part of) doing, or words are (part of) deeds. in 1962 austin introduced the modern study of speech acts with the thesis how to do things with words, published at harvard in 1955 by william james lectures version. in the study of theory (austin, 1962: 101; 1975: 94) speech act consists of (1) locutionary (locution), (2) illocution/force (3) perlocutionary. locutionary (locution): the meaning contained in the utterance according to syntax. illocution/force: speech act that contains the intent by the speaker to whom, where, and when the speech acts were carried out, and perlocutionary: means speech acts whose speech is intended to influence the speech partners. he illustrates the distinction between these kinds of acts with the (now politically incorrect) example of saying “shoot her!,” which he trisects as follows: speech act (1) or locution he said to me “shoot her!” meaning by shoot “shoot” and referring by her to “her.” speech act (2) or illocution he urged (or advised, ordered, etc.) me to shoot her. speech act (3) or perlocutionary he persuaded me to shoot her. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 258 to enrich our understanding the different types of classifications of speech acts by expert opinions from time to time, such as austin (1962) mention classifications of speech acts are (expositives, commissives, exercitives, verdictives, behabitives), vendler (1972) (expositives, commissives, interrogatives, exercitives, operatives, verdictives, behabitives), searle (1975) (representatives, commissives, directives, declarations, expressives), bach & harnish (1979) (constatives, commissives, directives, effectives, verdictives, acknowledgements), allan (1994) classify the speech act into (statements, invitationals, authoritatives, expressives) (allan, 1998: 11). whereas (may, 2001: 117) explain speech acts classification. a) directives are attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something. they express what the speaker wants; typical representatives are commands, orders, requests, suggestions, etc., such as i warn you to stay away from my house!; mum, can i have a cookie, two please? b) representatives commit the speaker to something’s being the case, to the truth of the expressed proposition, typically statements, assertions, conclusions, descriptions, etc., such as the earth is flat; it’s cold here; chomsky didn’t like butterflies. c) expressives are used to express the psychological state of the speaker. they state what the speaker feels and can be statements of joy, pain, sorrow etc., but also expressions of thanking, apologizing, welcoming, congratulating, etc., such as i congratulate you on winning the race; i’m really sorry; yesss! d) declarations effect immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs, i.e., they change the world via the utterance. the speaker has to have a special institutional role, in a specific context, in order to be able to perform a declaration appropriately; typical examples include excommunicating, declaring war, marrying, firing from employment, nominating, etc. e) commissives commit the speaker to some future course of action. they express what the speaker intends: typically, promises, threats, refusals, offerings, etc., such as i promise that i’ll be home at six; i’ll be back; i will not marry you. method this research uses descriptive qualitative method. the approach taken to the subject is a pragmatic approach. in the pragmatic approach, what is examined is the form of speech acts in the context of speaker’s utterances in self-introduction (branding) in the 2018 simultaneous local election campaign in aceh. language research in the pragmatic implicature is basically divided into three stages, namely: (1) the stage of providing data, (2) the stage of data analysis, and (3) the stage of presenting the results of data analysis. the study was conducted in the aceh pidie area, south aceh and the city of subulussalam. research time is not limited, but the time of data collection is done for 30 days because of the limitations of manpower and available material. the data source is utterances of the election participants in outdoor aids (billboards). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 259 findings and discussion regarding the total data of 32 billboards, political ads are taken respectively 2 from 16 candidate pairs of regional head candidates who competed in the 2018 simultaneous local elections in aceh. language approach in political branding in the 2018 elections in aceh a. language implications candidates in pidie jaya 1. yusri yusuf-saifullah adil, sejahtera, bermartabat mewujudkan kejayaan pidie jaya in the above discourse the speaker wants to convey a message about himself, such as having a person who will be fair from various things. this candidate also tells that to achieve regional welfare must be fair and in dignified ways. in the implicature speech act study, the text above is called assertive/collaborative illocutionary speech acts, where the speaker expresses a message, for example; states, informs, suggests, boasts, complains, demands, reports. bersatu berjuang insyaallah menang the above discourse is a form of utterance that implies asking the community to be with the speaker and notifying the public to participate in supporting and assisting speakers in winning the elections. the conversational implicature above is an assertive/collaborative illocution. 2. aiyub abbas-said mulyadi (asli) pilih no 2, asli lanjutkan the words in the text above are directive illocutionary acts, the hidden meaning behind the text is ordering, asking, suggesting, encouraging, advising the person reading to have some effect through the actual actions of the person reading, thus dropping political choices on the speaker. the text above also has a saved meaning, that is, the speaker is the regional leader at this time and there is a desire of this candidate to continue his leadership for the next period. this action is called assertive illocutionary expression of desire to state, inform, suggest, boast, complain, demand, report. bersama kita bisa membangun pidie jaya the above discourse is a form of utterance that contains the intention of informing the public to work together with speakers to build pidie jaya, and to demand the community to participate in supporting and assisting speakers in the election. the conversational implicature above is an assertive/collaborative illocution. 3. muhibbudin m husen m yusuf ibrahim pilih no 3 utterance in the text above is a directive illocution, the folded meaning behind the text is ordering, ordering, asking, asking, suggesting, encouraging, advising the person reading to have an effect through the real actions of the person reading, thus dropping political choices on the speaker. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 260 coblos no 3 the speech in this text is a directive illocution. 4. muhammad yusuf-anwar ishak yusar selera rakyat the hidden meaning in the discourse above contains the message that the speaker is building himself up in a society that does not know this couple. the speaker conveys that he is the person expected and in accordance with the expectations of the pidie jaya community at this time. this expression is an assertive illocution which involves the speaker in the truth of the proposition expressed, for example stating, telling, suggesting, boasting, complaining, demanding, reporting. menuju pidie jaya yang islami adil, bersih dan merata from this text, the speech act used by the speaker to the speech partner is assertive illocution. its function is to convey information and expect the speech partner to take concrete actions to make choices to the speaker. the message sent by the speaker is that the speaker supports pidie jaya which is more islamic, personal and government that will be clean or free of corruption, and that all people will get equitable development and services. judging from the form of speech acts in outdoor advertising in the pidie jaya area is dominated by assertive/collaborative illocutionary utterances. found assertion illocution utterances as many as 5 utterances, then acts of directive illocutionary acts is 3 actions, and there is 1 outdoor advertisement whose contents are a mixture of assertive illocution and directive illocution. b. language implications of candidates in south aceh 1. tgk husen yusuf spd i – dr mustafril msi humus harapan kita semua the speech acts in this text are called assertive illocutionary speech acts, where a message informs and states that the candidate is an option for the people of south aceh for the next five years. humus numor 1 this text is an assertive illocutionary utterance, with a message stating, informing, and reporting that the couple got number 1 in the south aceh elections. 2. h, azwir s.sos – tgk amran azam aceh selatan hebat! this text gives a message in the form of a statement, if south aceh wants better and leads to a greater direction, it must join and make a choice on the candidate in the south aceh elections. this action is called assertive illocutionary action. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 261 mohon doa dan dukungan pilkada aceh selatan 2018 the words in the text above are directive illocutionary, the hidden meaning behind the text is ordering, pleading, asking, suggesting, encouraging, and advising the community who read the aid to impose political choices on the speaker. 3. drs. zulkarnaini m.si m jasa coblos no 3 the statement in the text above is a directive illocution. pilih no 3 the speech act above is a directive illocution. 4. darman sp mm – baital makmur se aceh selatan mandiri this text gives a message in the form of a speaker's statement to bring south aceh into a stronger situation and have regional independence that has not yet been reached. speakers demand to join and make choices on this candidate. this action is called assertive illocutionary action. sahabat samba no 4 this statement is called assertive illocution, seen from the act of notifying. 5. ht sama indra sh – drs h harmaini msi mohon doa dan dukungan coplos no 5 the text above is a directive illocution, behind the text is ordering, asking, asking, suggesting, encouraging, advising people who read. pasangan putih (pilihan utama teuku sama indra – harmaini) this statement is called assertive illocution. 6. h mirwan ms se – zirhan sp salam perubahan aceh selatan periode 2018-2023 this text is an assertive illocution. menuju aceh selatan sejahtera the speech act in outdoor advertising is assertive illocution. 7. h karman ba se – afdhal yasin maju bersama rakyat this text is an assertive or collaborative illocutionary speech act "stating, informing, suggesting, boasting, complaining, demanding, reporting", the folded message of this speech is that the speaker reminds the speech partner as a family, so it is obliged to unite, help each other, care for each other in this political celebration to achieve the goal of winning the election together with speakers. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 262 coblos pilihan rakyat 7 the words in the text above are directive illocution, ordering, asking, suggesting, encouraging, and advising people who read to make political choices on the speaker. the pattern of speech acts in outdoor advertising political campaigns in the south aceh region is almost the same as in the pidie jaya area. the assertive illocutionary/collaborative form of speech dominates, it is found that the assertion of illocutionary speech is 9 utterances, and the directive illocutionary acts is 5 utterances. c. language implications of candidates in subulussalam city 1. drh. jalaluddin wagiman (jawara) pilih no 1 the statement in the text above is a directive illocution. coblos no 1 the statement in the text above is a directive illocution. 2. hj. sartina na, se msi dedi anwar bancin se (mesada) kita mesada membangun kota subulussalam this speech act is assertive illocutionary utterance. munuju subulussalam hebat!! from this text, the speaker's message to the speech partner is subulussalam will be great if led by the speaker, this speech act is called a collaborative or assertive illocution, the purpose of this illocution for propositions submitted, such as: stating, informing, suggesting, complaining, demanding, reporting, and reporting. 3. h. asmauddin se hj. asmidar s pd (hamas) hamas salam perjuangan this statement contains assertive illocution. pilih no 3 the statement in the text above is a directive illocution. 4. h. anasri st mt ustaz sabaruddin s pd i coblos no 4 the statement in the text above is a directive illocution. adil & amanah the text of speech acts above uses collaborative or assertive illocutionary acts, evidenced by speech characteristics such as, stating, informing, suggesting, boasting, complaining, demanding, and reporting. so the message sent by the speaker is to state that the speaker is an individual who is fair in life, and is a trustworthy person. the characteristics conveyed are the candidates for leaders needed. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 251-265 263 5. h. affan alfian bintang se drs salmaza map pilih no 5 the statement in the text above is a directive illocution. bisa bintang salmaza this speech act is assertive illocutionary utterance. political campaign speech acts found in outdoor advertising in the subulussalam area, there are an equal number of assertive/collaborative illocutionary utterances and directive utterances. present 5 assertion illocution utterances, and exist directive illocutionary acts used as many as 5 utterances. the message of speech act in the billboards text used has an implicit meaning behind it. in summary we can see the existence of the illocution act in the table below. table 1. types of speech acts in outdoor advertising in aceh area illocutionary acts assertive directive mix assertive and directive pidie jaya 5 3 1 south aceh 9 5 subulussalam 5 5 judging from the form of speech acts in outdoor advertising in the pidie jaya area is dominated by assertive/collaborative illocutionary utterances. found 5 assertive illocution utterances, then acts of directive illocutionary is 3 actions, and there is 1 outdoor advertisement whose contents are a mixture of assertive and directive illocution. in the south aceh area, it is almost the same as in the pidie jaya area, the assertive illocutionary/collaborative form of utterances dominates, it is found 9 utterances, and 5 utterances in the form of directive illocution. furthermore, in the subulussalam area there are an equal number of assertive/collaborative illocutionary utterances and directive utterances, each of which uses 5 speech acts. conclusion political languages of the 2018 simultaneously election in aceh clearly uses pragmatic study. the speech act in the billboards text used has an implicit meaning, advertising text on political branding puts the power of language as a tool of rhetoric, propaganda, and interpretation to build a self-image that aims to attract voters/public. public understanding of the implicative speech act meaning in political campaign advertising is very supportive in making smart political choices from the discourse of politicians that we consider relevant to the situation. of course, with other information and the support of the candidate's track record so far is a shared responsibility in making choices. the people are expected not to be trapped as insinuation by charles de gaulle, president of the republic of france "politicians never believe in their own words, they are actually surprised if people believe it". 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(1996). pragmatics. oxford: oxford university press. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 132-133 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 132 book review title : beyond borders: notes on the colonial and post-colonial dynamics in the americas, europe and indonesia isbn : 978-602-6369-66-6 author : baskara t. wardaya, s.j. publisher : yogyakarta, sanata dharma university press, 2017 page : 230 pages novita dewi graduate program of english language studies sanata dharma university novitadewi@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010114 received 19 june 2017; revised 10 july 2017; accepted 5 august 2017 beyond border is an inside look of what people across the globe have done for a long time. they all find themselves constantly engaged in action, reaction and interaction. the book answers the question of what colonial and postcolonial society has in common, i.e. crossing border. baskara t. wardaya, the author of the book, is an ordained jesuit priest and recognized historian and writer specializing in american history with an emphasis on democracy. in addition to teaching history, religion and politics, and development of cultural studies in sanata dharma university, he also serves as the director of pusdema (centre for democracy and human rights studies) at the same university. earning both masters and doctorate degrees from marquette university, the recipient of numerous scholarships and other research accomplishments has given us assurance that he had conducted thorough research for beyond borders. in 2011-12 he was granted a fulbright scholarship to teach history at the university of california-riverside. in 2014, he conducted archival research on us-indonesian relations during president nixon’s administration (1969-74) in the us with the generous grant from aifis (american institute for indonesian studies). beyond borders is his second book written in english after cold war shadow: united states policy toward indonesia 1953‐1963 (2007). among his best-sellers are bung karno menggugat! [sukarno accuses] published 7 times since 2006, and membongkar supersemar [dismantling “supersemar”] (2007) that has seen its fourth printing. beyond borders delivers an entertaining account and perspective on history of colonialism and postcolonialism all over the world. this book is an excellent resource to students of american history, specifically, and history enthusiasts in general, to say nothing of those interested in (post)coloniality. mailto:novitadewi@usd.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 132-133 133 the introduction of the book is very helpful. unusually placed before the “acknowledgements” page, it helps navigate readers as to see that living in a deeply interconnected world, people cannot help but move from place to place and influence each other. citing the top four border crossers being the romans, genghis khan, christopher colombus and the cia, wardaya sets out to remind us that border-crossing has been done since times of yore and is now even more important. placed in today’s postcolonial context, the book helps to underline that borderless society is real and necessary because people need to interact and work with diverse communities beyond borders to solve world issues such as human rights abuses, gender inequity, ecological damage, poverty, and radicalism. the book comprises of 13 chapters, 9 of which mainly talk about america beginning from the colonial times to the end of world war ii. regrettably, in chapter 11, beyond border stops short of where it should ideally begin. as shown in the title of the book, europe is the area of coverage. but here we see that uk integration/disintegration is taken as the only example of european border crossing included in the book. it is, however, a comprehensive account of the history of britain’s participation and lack thereof in eu. the next two chapters on indonesia are well-written, although the author says that these chapters are “a bit different” (xi). one may ask what the different is. if the book is addressed to international, beyond-border-readers, no othering is necessary. what does the author mean when saying “while chapter one to eleven talk about other places, especially the americas and europe, chapter 12 and 13 will focus on indonesia” (xi)? does it mean that the target readers are indonesians? nonetheless, beyond borders is important to non-specialists as well. to take but one example is the puritan history section. salem witch trials are dark history in america that remains puzzling to date. but are not slandering, bigotry, and injustice political cards we are keen to play even today? chapter 2 is a mustread for students of american literature. it provides us with some historical context for reading puritan-themed novels from nathaniel hawthorne to arthur miller. throughout the book, wardaya presents topics that can be read against and relevant to international politics of today. media supremacy and sectarianism that give colours and shapes to the u.s. policy are among the topics that also ring true in current’s indonesian politics. almost every chapter is filled with pictures to illustrate the discussion. but what picked out for praise are the pertinent quotes from famous people. the epigraph shown in each chapter is aptly chosen. not only does it show the author’s enthusiasm for the topic, but it also prepares readers to feel the thrills inside the chapter. the bibliography is well-referenced, making clear division of first and secondary sources which will be useful for snow-ball reading to obtain more information. finally, paratextual comments are like mini-reviews. while illustrations and pictures are helpful, the quality thereof is quite poor. internet sources are often not satisfactory. editing errors are also hard to hide. spelling, punctuation, lower case/capitalization and typos are plagues that will likely be lightened by later editions. these shortcomings are only a minor distraction to the narratives; they do not take away from the border-crossing story being told. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 288-300 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 288 she thinks, he says: the voice of the other in nobel laureates’ gendered literature regie panadero amamio mindanao state university, philippines silliman university, philippines correspondence: rui101519@yahoo.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5426 received 27 november 2022; accepted 1 march 2023 abstract the gendered language system is often used in literary works to present distinct character perspectives however, the issue of representation is accentuated when a writer presents a perspective of a different gender. kawabata yasunari and gabriel garcia marquez who depicted female perspectives in their stories, have to face the issue of reliability of representation: theirs is argued as a patriarchal perception of a female’s perspective. employing spivak’s argument in can the subaltern speak?, this paper positioned her statement as “through the perspective of the west (men), subaltern (women) become/s dependent on them (men) to speak for their condition rather than allowing them to speak for themselves.” this paper discussed the gendered language by examining the characters’ uncertain finitude utilizing ashergreve’s established gender markers to identify gender associations. with the stories of the two nobel laureates, this paper has established that through exploring the narrators’ usage of gendered language, both writers have inadvertently revealed their own male biases. the narrators of both writers turned out to be the voice of the other not because they have truthfully and successfully spoken for the marginalized; instead, they have become estranged voices of the subjects they are supposed to represent. hence, the voices that cry for connection and understanding. keywords: asher-greve’s gender markers, gendered language, spivak’s subaltern introduction gender refers to the socially-constructed characteristics of women and men, such as norms, roles, and relationships of and between groups of women and men (who in newman, 2021). as butler (2004) puts it, gender is a kind of doing, an incessant activity, a practice of improvisation within a scene of constraint. as such, it takes shape through interactions with others – a gendered dimension to interactions emerges rather than being assumed at the outset. moreover, gender is not an attribute of individuals but a way of making sense of transactions. therefore, it exists not in persons but in transactions; that is why, it is conceptualized as a verb, not a noun (crawford, 1995). since the concept of gender is believed to vary from society to society and can be changed, it is then viewed as a potential site of struggle over mailto:rui101519@yahoo.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5426 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 288-300 289 preconceived constraints in roles. it is seen as being infused with the characteristics of the wider social milieu rather than as a variable that needs to be studied in isolation. it is mainly through interaction that one’s sense of self is shaped since individuals understand how masculinity or femininity is constituted within a specific context. thus, gender is not part of one’s essence (what one is) but rather, an achievement (what one does) as claimed by eckert and mcconnell-ginet (2003). with this, gender is not only understood as a set of practices through which people construct and claim identities but is also about managing social relations. moreover, institutional and contextual constraints determine the type and form of identity and linguistic routines which an individual considers possible within interaction and that others feel are available (mills and mullany, 2011). language is inclusive in this particular context. feminists have long argued that the use of language (that produced sexist language) can have real-world consequences for gender relations and the relative status of men and women. recent researches suggest that grammatical gender can shape how people interpret the world around them along gender lines (boroditsky, 2009). therefore, as long as language exists, the distinction between male and female is ever present within it. stahlberg, braun, irmen and sczesny (2007) presuppose that there are no languages which do not distinguish between or among genders at all, directing linguists and psychologists to believe that gender may be so fundamental to social organization and social structure that linguistic means to this category are indispensable for speech communities. this suggests that language not only reflects the conventions of culture and a particular pattern of thoughts, but systems of language can shape one’s cognitive understanding of the world (boroditsky, 2009). given recent research tying gender in language to gendered perceptions of the world (boroditsky, schmidt and phillips, 2003), one could infer that when language constantly calls attention to gender distinctions by discriminating between masculine and feminine nouns and pronouns—as is the case in gendered languages—that individuals may be more apt to draw distinctions between men and women. if language plays a role in how people organize their beliefs about gender, then this gendered language system also plays a role in making a distinction in attitudes, and behavioural practices about the role and status of men and women (prewitt-freilino, caswell, and laakso, 2011) which are often used in many literary works especially when writers try to present their character’s perspective. gendered language is a language which according to loland (2010) of which awakens associations to gender and thus constructs ideas of gender. for it to be identified as gendered language gender must however be part of the source domain, if not, no association is possible. the list of gender markers takes its point of departure in julia asher-greve’s observations on representations of the human body in written and pictorial documents in mesopotamian culture and differentiates three concepts of a human body (sexed, gendered and ambiguous or asexual) in her article, the essential body: mesopotamian conceptions of the gendered body (2002). the use of asher-greve’s gender markers is essential to bridge what jakobson (1959) states in his article that the genders of nouns have deeper meanings in specific contexts such as mythologies or similar literary genres where this grammatical feature assumes a communicative function. say, helen benedict in her fictional work, sand queen (2011). her employment of the first-person pronoun ‘i’ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 288-300 290 creates ambiguity for it does not reveal the gender of the character-narrator. it is only then in the succeeding parts of the story does the reader find out that it refers to brady when the narrator-character denotatively reveals her female gender by describing how the sight of a female soldier will win hearts and minds. here, benedict allows gender to be produced through narrative processes (moosavi, ghandeharion and sabbagh, 2019). the presence of the ambiguity of gender through the use of the pronoun ‘i’ is then removed with the use of gender markers. in presenting the character’s perspective and gendered language at the fore, the issue of representation is accentuated (dogan, 2018). for instance, a male writer presents perspectives for his male and female characters. one may question the truthfulness of representation he may provide especially in presenting the voice of women. here enters spivak’s argument in her essay, can the subaltern speak? (2010) that a scholar (man) cannot speak for a female (subaltern/of inferior rank) since the actual voice is missing and his representation is from his perspective; this so-called female’s representation only conveys the teller’s vision rather than the real version of the story. therefore, the metaphorical meaning obtained from the literature written by male writers is claimed to be a patriarchal perception of a female’s perspective not true to women’s experience and filtered through a male perspective to lift male standards and emphasize male importance. williamson (2001) denounces feminist stereotyping stating that feminist criticism has felt the need to emphasize how hard it is for men really to imagine what women experience. it is quick to smell pre-emption rather than legitimate empathy whenever male writers attempt to present a female point of view. they fear male writers will perpetuate stereotypes, offer up straw men or rather straw women, so that the patriarchal side can have the last word, or at best, steal insights from women writers who deserve the chance to express themselves. male writers and nobel laureates, kawabata yasunari (1899-1972) and gabriel garcia marquez (1927-2014) are some of those who attempted to write female perspectives in their stories. besides the local acknowledgement of their ingenuity in their countries of origin, japan and colombia respectively, are internationally recognized for their ability to depict sensitively complex and at times controversial aspects of their societies, which are often perceived as strongly patriarchal and traditional cultures. these make their stories and characters of special interest, specifically their depiction of female heroes. both kawabata and marquez as male writers have to face and answer the challenge and issue of the reliability of the representation of their female characters. therefore, this paper has explored the argument of the truthfulness of the representation of males against female thoughts coming from male writers who have a male perspective. since both writers depict sensitive and complex subject matters in their stories, this paper discussed the gendered language by examining the characters’ uncertain finitude and the shadows of loneliness utilizing asher-greve’s established gender markers to identify gender associations. in the end, with kawabata’s stories, the mole (1940) and one arm (1963) and marquez’ eva is inside her cat (1948) and the woman who came at six o’clock (1950), this paper has either agreed or refuted spivak’s concept. method ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 288-300 291 this is a qualitative study that utilizes content analysis based on spivak’s (2010) argument in her essay, can the subaltern speak? she positioned her concept of the “subaltern,” which was first coined by antonio gramsci in his prison notebooks (1971) to depict “social groups on the margins of history.” her concept challenges the western perspective and knowledge as they tend to construct identities for third-world people. her argument stands on the idea that this subaltern does not have a voice and those with the power to speak (west), speak for those who cannot (morton, 2003). spivak’s argument is crucial in this paper since her depiction of the subaltern has become a generic term for those considered as the voices of the other (marginalized) especially the depiction of women in history. spivak states that through the perspective of the west, subaltern becomes dependent on them (2010). metaphorically in this study, her statement is positioned as “through the perspective of the west (men), subaltern (women) become/s dependent on them (men) to speak for their condition rather than allowing them to speak for themselves.” in this metaphor as well affirms spivak’s claim that if the subaltern is placed as female, she is even more deeply in the shadow because in the context of colonial production (metaphor of patriarchy), she has no history and has little voice or no voice at all. asher-greve’s established gender markers categorized into three: explicit or sexed – physiological sex markers; implicit or gendered – socio-cultural gender elements; and, non-gender specifics, are also used to identify gender associations. findings and discussion the works of nobel laureates, kawabata and marquez, present and depict perspectives of female characters in which the appropriateness of portrayal and depiction is challenged in this study given that both writers are males. women and beauty in kawabata’s stories in kawabata’s stories, as he tries to present his narrator’s perspective, gender markers are explicitly employed to reveal the gender of the narrator-character as well as the phantoms of human relationships and connection that haunts him/her. in one arm (1963), a story that begins with a young woman who removes her right arm and gives it to a man (narrator-character) to keep for the night, revolves around the thoughts and actions of the narrator-character as he takes it home. what happens thereafter expresses the narrator’s thoughts as well as his perceived thoughts of the young woman (the one who lent him the arm). the story uses associations or certain markers to construct ideas of gender. the narrator is revealed as a male through his own implied description, for instance when he said, “she had sensed that i thought her beautiful, and so she lent me her right arm for the roundness there at the shoulder (p.105).” the ‘she’ he refers to is a prostitute. this implies that the man frequents a pleasure house (as many masculine men do which is a socio-cultural construction) and has taken a different interest in a young beauty. the prostitute senses this particular interest and resolves to lend her arm instead. she is young but the narrator knows that she is far more mature in her experience with men. this keen observation of the narrator bespeaks the extent of his experience with women. further, the narrator himself uses signifiers to exact ideas of gender. he illustrates the girl’s arm to belong to a beautiful occidental girl, rare in japan, and the roundness of her arm makes him ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 288-300 292 feel the roundness of her body. her fingernails possess strange beauty as if they belonged to no human creature. thus, he stresses that her features are comparable to nothing else. the narrator’s further description of the arm treats it as an entire individual – a woman. for instance, when he successfully took the arm home, he regards the arm as that girl who watches him change. he was coy believing he is being watched by a real person, “never before had a woman watched me undress in my room (p.116).” the ‘permission’ given by the arm to change the arm for his own, he reckons as the voice of a woman who had decided to give herself to him and when the arm sleeps peacefully beside him, he thinks of it as a woman who sleeps peacefully beside her man/husband. the narrator is occupied in both expressing himself and at the same time in interpreting a woman’s possible reaction, making visible his uncertain finitude. he tries to present himself as masculine but being the man he is (who has slept with many women), looms a shadow of loneliness. his encounter with the prostitute gives readers access to explore the narrator’s uncertainties and loneliness. when she lent her arm to him, it gives him the joy (of companionship) that he longs to feel. at first, the narrator tried his gentlest ways to assure the arm is cared for. he thought of having connected to the girl’s longing as well. he and the girl may have understood each other’s longing but, the enticement of his fantasy to have a union with the arm overpowers him. in a trance, he removes his right arm and substituted it with the girl’s. with his concern for the arm’s welfare, he even worries if there would not be unpleasantness when the arm was returned to the girl, with the dirty male blood flowing through it. but, his fantasy is momentary and he is awakened to something repulsive – his arm is back on his shoulder. he awoke screaming. the act he thought was like ‘murder upon a sudden, diabolic impulse.’ the narrator finds the girl’s arm lying at the foot of the bed, flung palm up into the heap of the blanket. the outstretched fingers are not moving and are faintly white in the dim light. this suggests that what he thought the night before foreshadows the tragedy of the young woman (as an arm) or an arm (as a woman), “her arm, nails, fingers – more translucent than delicate shell, than a thin petal seemed to hold a dew of tragedy (p.110).” he mourns this tragic event, embracing the arm “as would a child from whom life was going.” he tries to revive it but it seems that he had killed the beauty he thought he possessed. the events night the narrator has expressed he has no memory of speaking of his unconscious, the sense of otherness he has for the young woman. he is conscious of the affective feeling he has for the arm (woman) but the repulsive one is hidden and only manifests after he tries to have a union with her arm (her body). in his conscious mind, he tries to show respect but, he has not connected to her perhaps because the woman is the voice of the other. therefore, the narrator has never reached her longings. he wants all the more to touch her fingertips (through his association, he might mean to touch her body) but he said himself that he held back because of his solitude. this means that even with the presence of the arm (the young woman), it has not quenched his longing for company. after all his tender gestures toward the arm, comes the revolting feeling towards her as she is a prostitute, “she was a woman on whose body few tender spots could be expected to remain (p.111).” kawabata often depicts beauty through his women subjects. he ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 288-300 293 always depicts them akin to dolls (ornaments that exist to be looked at) – apprehending beauty. any attempt to possess the beauty encapsulated in an individual (in this case, the arm of the beautiful prostitute) leads to disastrous consequences (williams, 2016). moreover, he speaks of his conviction through his narrator-character that communication and connection between people – especially between men and women are ultimately unattainable. thus, this conviction only brings feelings of resignation and sadness to man. in the mole (1940), the narrator-character is revealed as a woman named sayoko, in particular, a wife. the manner she narrates her story is in epistolary form, a letter to her husband asking and pleading with him to understand her love and suffering brought by a misunderstanding of her mole. she gives the readers access to her thoughts, her inner feelings, her sadness, and her longing for her husband’s love and acceptance. everything the readers see and learn about the other characters is filtered through the point of view of sayoko. the mole plays a vital role in the couple’s relationship as she believes it represents her sense of otherness – the wall that stands against her and her husband’s love. she said, her habit of touching the mole particularly, the manner in which she touches it, precipitates this issue. she narrates, “i brought my left arm around it was as though i was warding you off, as though i was embracing myself. i have never been cruel to him (p.17).” this issue about her mole took a toll on her as far as she narrates what her mother had told her, “you’re not as good-looking as you once were…and that mole used to be rather attractive (p20); and when she looks at her mother, she was as she had always been, plump and fresh-skinned. the narrator, on the other hand, has aged fast after getting married. in her narration, she recalls the times she touches her mole and laments that what she can clearly remember was the cold tears in her eyes because every time she touches it, all she thought was her (estranged) husband. when touching her mole gets the nerve of her husband, she suggests ways he must do to help her curb the habit. she suggests that the next time he sees her doing it, he should slap her hand, slap her face even. in turn, she allows herself to become an object of violence. with her approval, he then starts to beat and kick her all because of touching her mole. the narrator-character only guesses her husband’s thoughts about her – how they fell apart and how he ended up becoming violent toward her. she is not even sure of her knowledge about her husband and the whole story (in a form of a letter to him) wishes her to know him better and his thoughts on her. at one point, sayoko’s narration hints at justifying her husband’s violence as only the result of her failure to connect to his feelings. at first, she thinks that his hitting has brought her a sudden feeling of release. she seems happy to see the look in his eyes as he watches her try to smooth her hair with her bound hands (to avoid fingering her mole). she blames her failure that destroyed their marriage, “over and over i ask myself whether the gesture you so disliked might not have been a confession of a love that i could not put into words (p.23).” sayoko until the end of her letter laments that she has never captured what her husband might wholly think of her and what he truly feels about her. sayoko as a female narrator-character has as well, failed to narrate what she wants her husband to understand about her. is it only about her mole or about her as a woman who has forgotten the warmth of her husband’s love? their desired ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 288-300 294 relationship, (at least from her perspective, is unrealized) suggests what williams (2016) points out that in kawabata’s stories, there is always something missing or incomplete in human relationships that call for withdrawal and retreat. in contrast to the narrator-character in the former story that takes pleasure in the arm lent to him and takes it as a representation of a woman, here, the female narrator takes the mole as a symbol of her husband whom she has failed to touch and connect her feelings to. it may be implicit, but the mole used as a gender marker (particularly, non-gender specific) associates it to the physical man, the man she marries, the man she physically has a union with and what makes her be identified as a wife. her entire narration suggests the loss of the other part of her, the part she has given to her husband – the part that is dependent on a man. the relationships depicted in the stories may seem to represent the relationship between the writer (male) and his narrators (female and male). in the first story, his narrator (male) has filtered the perspective of another character, the young woman who lent him the arm. his female character is almost passive and it is through being seen and written about by the male narrator that this character has come to possess an unusual consciousness. his male narrator has instead presented an object-like woman, a different kind of beauty and a bit different from real women. the narrator presents somewhat believable inner feelings of himself (male narrator) but has a bit unrealistic presentation of the female character. in turn, his narrator does quite a monologue where the things he presents are things he experiences alone. in the latter story, kawabata’s narrator is a woman. he tries to create an image of a woman’s devastation but with a hint of masculine explanation that inadvertently gives a bit of justification for the husband’s violence. the violence stems from the narrator’s habit of absentmindedly touching her mole which results in misunderstanding (at least from the perspective of the narrator). throughout the story (in an epistolary form), the wife attempts to reflect on her so-called ‘bad habit.’ she tries to find out the reason for her pain and suffering from a happy-turnedestranged marriage with her husband. the gravity of the violence that sprang from her bad habit seems to be emphasized as a normal consequence of this misunderstanding and this seems to present that the writer himself has understood the husband better than the female narrator who tells the story. nonetheless, because of unreachable ends, both narrator-characters get pleasure not from realizing their desire but pursuing the object of it in surrogates (the arm and the mole). marquez’s detached voices: sympathy or apathy marquez presents the narrators in the two short stories as uninvolved by the protagonists. as such, he did not use as many gender markers to create association but the way he makes his narrators tell their stories revealed biases on the voices they tried to represent. in eva is inside her cat (1948), a story that examines and details the journey of a woman in the physical to the metaphysical plane, the narrator is presented as a detached person (voice) who seems to have private knowledge of the protagonist, eva. since this narrator here has no gender marker, he is considered a ‘he’ for convenience. he appears to have known her but at the same time, he or his knowledge may deem unreliable since there is no trace of his relationship with the female protagonist. he claims that eva has inherited the solitude, curse of sadness, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 288-300 295 and pain from her family and has suffered alone; her suffering revolves around her desire to be a happy woman and this has something to do with her physical attribute (not because she is ugly but beautiful). does a woman suffer because of her beautiful face and body that most women can only imagine having? the narrator emphasizes this matter which includes the protagonist’s burden to carry it and suffer even in her metaphysical consciousness. notice also how the narrator has made his position regarding her (eva’s) supposed claim of her beauty as useless virtue. he states, “maybe she would have been happy if she had had the same lack of grace that same desolate ugliness as her czechoslovakian friend. she would have better off ugly, so that she could sleep peacefully like any other christian.” this detestation of her beauty leads eva to find a vessel that would go beyond the physical world and transcend toward an environment that is devoid of time – her choice is a cat. in the end, she cannot achieve it since it is past many years and all of her has been forgotten even in her own time. the depiction of eva filtered through the narrator’s perspective reveals biases of the narrator’s knowledge and even discrepancies in his familiarity with eva’s or a woman’s thoughts in general. it is highly possible that in this story, marquez tried to explore the developing feminist ideas of his time guided by his magical realism conundrum. for instance, his portrayal of eva as a woman is ambiguous. eva described as beautiful, has never celebrated her beauty instead, treats it as her curse and disease. this particular issue may relate to beauvoir’s (2010) account of the way in which women live their bodies in such an objectified way and as a consequence of a process of internalizing the view of it under the gaze of others. the narrator claims that eva’s beauty is not enhanced but inherited. eva’s hatred toward her appearance is in contrast to the concept that ‘women’s cultural preoccupation with appearance is a source of wasted effort and expense, a threat to physical and psychological well-being (rhode, 2016).’ eva has not suffered being forced to the male standard which is what second-wave feminism has tried to dispute ‘women as enslaved by ludicrous beauty standards that they are conditioned to take seriously (brownmiller, 1984).’ as such, the narrator must have meant that what triggered eva’s hatred is her sense of self which freud argued is, one’s bodily ego that dictates the affective and sensory significance with which different parts are invested (freud, 1923). this means that eva must have exploited her beauty in the past to try to achieve her advances but these have not given her happiness. therefore, the hatred she must have felt is probably the result of her offended ego which is not specified by the narrator. throughout the story, she, again and again, recalls her fear but cannot specify what it is. she only states that it was a strange and unknown fear that comes to her from time to time. the story, the woman who came at six o’clock (1950) illustrates the gap of understanding between a man and a woman. jose, the bar owner who constantly gives a woman he called a queen-free dinner, admits to loving her. queen, who always receives jose’s kindness tries to make use of this opportunity to free herself from a murder she committed. convincing jose to bend his routine by lying about the time she arrives at his bar, jose is revealed to be rigid to agree with her request, thus, is seen as ultimately undependable to the woman he claimed he loves and cares about. the narrator here (like how marquez has presented in the former short story) is unnamed and is depicted as someone who seems to be knowledgeable of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 288-300 296 the two characters. for the convenience of presenting this narrator, he is male in this analysis. he depicts the two characters with an emphasis on the distinction between a male and a female portrayal. at some point, he takes an effort to balance his information of the two. however, no matter how he tries to make it appear that way, the two always end up in a misunderstanding. the naivety of the man, jose and the overstated idea of the woman, the queen create friction that ended in the untold real message. when the narrator starts to speak about the story, he immediately draws a line that separates the two characters (queen, experienced and shrewd; and jose, calm and naive). when she arrives at the bar, the queen has immediately gone down to business and leads jose to be inquisitive as evident in their exchange of dialogue, “i didn’t notice, jose said…you still haven’t learned to notice anything, said the woman.” since jose’s life is like a routine, he sees every day as the same, he states, “every day the clock says six, then you come in and say you’re hungry as a dog and then i fix you something good. the only difference is this: today you didn’t say you were as hungry as a dog but today is different…it’s true, jose. today is different. i didn’t come at six today, that is why it’s different, jose (p.59).” what transpires in this conversation is the contrasting presentation of an image of a woman – a somewhat misplaced marker to be described as ‘as hungry as a dog’ and a rough description from a man who claimed to have loved her. furthermore, the queen persistently pushes him to understand her circumstance, however, only reveals his vacuous nature as depicted in this exchange of dialogue: “i’ll cut off my off my arm if that clock is one minute slow, he said. that’s not it, jose. i didn’t come at six o’clock today…i’ve got a quarter of an hour that says i’ve been here, the woman said (p.60).” jose insists that the queen arrives exactly at six o’clock without even trying to think about the reason behind her insistence. instead, he becomes annoyed and lets her believe what she wants to, “well, if that’s the way you want it, you’ve got a quarter of an hour that says you’ve been here…after all, what difference does it make, ten minutes this way, ten minutes that way? (p.61).” jose professes his love to the queen in an awkward manner, “i love you so much that i wouldn’t go to bed with you…i love you so much that every night i’d kill the man who goes with you…the fact is i love you so much that i don’t like your doing it (p.62).” to him, love is about caring for the queen, and wishing to make sure she does not get hurt by men she goes out with (although the succeeding conversation reveals that jose is far too naive even to envisage the despicable ways men treat her). but to the queen, perhaps because she has only experienced men lusting after her, jose’s love makes no sense. it is also apparent that the narrator through the dialogues with the queen that he is genteel in describing her circumstance. she is a prostitute but the narrator has never directly a used marker associating her with that term instead, the term queen, an irony of both her true nature and the way jose might deem her (his queen but not in capital letters). when jose expresses his desire to kill the man who sleeps with her, the queen bursts into mocking laughter, a tone that seems to despise jose’s (empty) concern but at the same time, a realization of her crime. as she tries to hide her crime using jose, she becomes hopeless as the man fails to connect with her. queen killed one of the men she sleeps with, an offence coupled with heavy punishment but at the same, she tried to justify her action, “don’t you think they ought to lay off a woman ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 288-300 297 who kills a man because after she’s been with him she feels disgust with him and everyone who’s been with her?... you’re savage, jose. you don’t understand anything. come on, tell me that the woman should kill him (p.67).” in the end, the narrator settles that jose has never really understood queen though she for the last time insists jose remember she came to his bar at five-thirty. on spivak’s concept and the voice of the other marquez is known as one of the leading writers of the latin american boom, a male-dominated literary period in which his acclaimed novels predominantly explored man’s (as patriarch) history, existence and identity depicting the grandness of power of men as makers of culture and as society’s founding father has also written works that deliberately or inadvertently portray women perspective. kawabata, another nobel laureate is known to have written and explored human sexuality in his acclaimed works and his chief representation of beauty in his oeuvre is women. in his portrayal of women, they are frequently seen and narrated from the perspective of a male protagonist. hence, it is noteworthy to explore these works using the above concept to examine the reliability and or truthfulness of representation of these women coming from known masculine writers. as asserted by lange (2008), men and women have different life experiences; therefore, their writings are as well different. therefore, there is no way that men can accurately represent the female perspective or present feminist ideals because they have not experienced life as women. this assertion by lange surely challenges kawabata’s narrators in his two stories. he presents male and female narrators respectively, inviting readers to compare two different perspectives on how both differently depict women. in the former story, the female character is filtered through the point of view of the male protagonist. readers do not see this female character from her perspective or hear her story in her own words. likewise, this kind of women representation coming from a male perspective creates friction between the narrator and the arm (whom he treats as the entire woman character and whom her perspective he also represents). it is evident in his narration that the narrator attempts to show his tenderness for this female character by treating her arm with care and respect but this inadvertently tires him and thus reveals his repulsion towards it. his female character is a prostitute whom he knew to have slept with many men and to have her arm lent to him is the narrator’s polite way if not a convenient way to refer to a prostitute having a night with her male client. perhaps, kawabata through his narrator tries to bridge miscommunication between the two characters when the narrator successfully replaced her arm with his but it ended up in tragedy when he unconsciously rips her arm from his shoulder and returned his. the narrator described his action as “murder…diabolic impulse,” grieving the fact that the connection between them (male and female) is after all unattainable. it seems like kawabata himself is guilty of the fact that truthfully representing female thoughts is impossible to realize. in the latter story where kawabata’s narrator is a woman, he likewise attempts to represent a woman’s pain and suffering. by doing so, however, he reveals partiality towards the male character and thus seems to present that kawabata has a better understanding and familiarity of the husband rather than the wife who narrates the story. his impartiality here establishes spivak’s claim that ‘men never encounter the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 288-300 298 testimony of the women’s voice-consciousness’ therefore, what he narrates are merely representations, produced and structured by the male perspective. conversely, kawabata has revealed his sympathy towards both female characters in the two stories by one, depicting the wife in the mole to have mustered her courage in searching for the meaning of her life independent from his male character and two, depicting his male character (narrator) in one arm as remorseful after learning of his roughness toward the arm when he rips it from his shoulder. kawabata seems to present misunderstanding and disconnection of male and female with an attempt to understand them that is why he treats the obsessions of a dysfunctional protagonist with compassion. marquez uses detached narrators to depict his characters, especially the women whom he seems to have shown his sympathy with. his representation of female thoughts challenges his understanding of female ideals. the issue raised in the first story is the female character’s (eva) suffering that is caused by her beauty. beauty is a virtue but the narrator spells it on behalf of eva as sickness. if indeed, marquez explored the ideas of feminism during his time, he must have made the justification for his narrator’s claim; instead, he only invited speculation that would question his knowledge of women’s ideals. in the latter story, marquez presents two active characters; one is complex, and the other is naive; one is a woman and the other is a man. his narrator serves as a bridge for the two characters to have a middle ground and should therefore understand each other. unlike the passive female character of kawabata in one arm, the female character that jose calls queen is a very active character who attempts to use her charm and jose’s favour to get away from her crime. marquez has almost created a femme fatale character but the problem with the success of this manifestation lies in his structured male character. jose is slow-witted to connect with the queen’s narrative. throughout their conversation, jose has shown nothing but misinterpretation of the queen’s cry for help. his claim to have loved the queen has only become a shallow tale – like those painful stories the queen had with the men she has slept with. with marquez’ attempt to represent a female perspective, he was able to create a battered woman forced by the circumstance of her time but also a woman who endeavours to overcome her fate. unlike eva who tries to get away from her life and live in an animal’s body to end her suffering, the queen is a strong woman who masters a man and who challenges the power of men forced upon her. spivak’s warning to male writers who attempt to represent women with their male perspective is indeed a sound argument. she stated that by prohibiting indian widows (women in general) to practice sati, men are only prohibiting their freedom to choose (ross, 2009). similarly, male writers who write about women from their own (male) perspective, therefore, silence the women by claiming to stand for and to speak for her/their experience. their attempts to write for women only revealed many biases from these male writers. through kawabata’s stories, he has revealed his feelings of resignation and sadness. his is a complicated narrative of wandering and powerless souls. what looms in his stories is the strange way of depicting love as something that is experienced alone (the male narrator in one arm and the wife, sayoko in the mole). for kawabata, this is love not as dialogue (communicated by both a man and a woman), but as a monologue (filtered thoughts of the woman through the narrator’s perspective and sayoko’s epistolary-style narrative). his stories revealed ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 288-300 299 japanese’ pervading subject of ‘broken individualism’ symbolized by the pronoun ‘i’ or watakushi stories develop into an obsession of self-negation where the mono no aware or ‘sadness of things passing away’ becomes a standard for kawabata’s stories. marquez’s stories revealed the subject of masculinity shared by writers of the latin american boom of which he is an integral part. he shows an attempt to sympathize with eva’s struggle and offered her a way to escape her predicament but in the end, it was a struggle for his narrator to connect and justify the pain of his female character. however, even if marquez is known to portray his male characters with grandness and power, his male character in the latter story becomes a metaphor for men who struggle to fully express their feelings. conclusion the narrators of both writers turn out to be the voice of the other not because they have truthfully and successfully spoken for the marginalized; 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(2001). introduction. almost a girl: male writers and female identification. charlottesville, va: the university press of virginia ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 315-325 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 315 on the examination of balinese cultures upon animal and plant lexicons in balinese songs: an eco-linguistics study *putu wahyu widiatmika1, ida bagus made ari segara2, i made netra3 1,2,3udayana university, indonesia wahyuw.9b@gmail.com1, arisegaraib@gmail.com2, and imadenetra@unud.ac.id3 *correspondence: wahyuw.9b@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5894 received 10 february 2023; accepted 2 march 2023 abstract this study aims to know the relation of balinese cultures with the animal and plant lexicons in balinese songs from the perspective of eco-linguistics. the data from this study were collected from youtube. listening and documentation methods along with transcription techniques were applied to collect the data. the animal and plant lexicons found were subsequently analyzed using the method of descriptivequalitative with the help of bang and døør’s theory of dialectical eco-linguistics and the eco-linguistics parameters from fill and muhlhausler. the result of this study shows that the animal and plant lexicons used resulted from the co-existence of balinese people and other species in their environment. the lexicons are inserted into the songs through the concept of metaphor. the co-existence makes balinese people able to give meanings towards the animal and plant in the song based on their cultures and beliefs. keywords: animal, balinese culture, eco-linguistics, lexicon, plant introduction balinese culture is closely related to the environment, including animals and plants. every six months, balinese people, who are hindu, celebrate tumpek wariga (sudarsana, 2017). it is a religious ceremony to show gratitude to god for his blessings of creating plants that can be utilized to support the lives of the people. according to the sundari gama (suarka, 2014, p. 62), tumpek wariga is held every saturday kliwon during wariga week, a week based on the traditional method of dating in balinese culture. people celebrate it to praise sang hyang sangkara, a manifestation of god, who creates all kinds of plants. through this ceremony, balinese people hope for the plants to be lush and beneficial for the people (suandra, 1992, p. 15). there is also tumpek kandang that falls on saturday kliwon during uye week. this religious day is similar to tumpek wariga, but it is celebrated to praise sang hyang siwa pasupati, the shepherd of all creatures in the world. during this day, balinese people conduct a ceremony to praise god for creating animals that are instrumental for them. both of the religious days are aimed as reminders for people to always behave well and preserve the environment, thus mailto:wahyuw.9b@gmail.com mailto:arisegaraib@gmail.com mailto:imadenetra@unud.ac.id mailto:wahyuw.9b@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5894 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 315-325 316 harmony can be sustained. realizing the existence of these beliefs and ceremonies, the people of bali have shown their connection with the environment. going further on balinese cultures, people have consistently used animals and plants in conducting ceremonies (anom, 2019, p. 1). the animals and plants that they use represent certain symbols, therefore, not any animal nor plant can be incorporated freely into a ceremony. an example is the use of fully husked coconut in daksina, one of the offerings in balinese ceremonies (raras, 2006, p. 9). fully husked coconut is the only allowed fruit to be placed in the offering. people are prohibited to use other kinds of coconut. fully husked coconut is a symbol of the lower and upper world. each layer of the coconut shell represents the seven levels of the world according to the hindu belief of balinese people. as stated in the yadnya prakerti manuscript, daksina offering is presented as a symbol of gratitude and love to god, therefore, what is offered should be as clean as possible. the cleanest state is shown by the fully husked coconut because it represents the highest upper world, the world where a soul can be one with the god, the satya loka. as time and people develop, the connection between balinese people and the environment is not only seen in ceremonial activities but is reflected in the language of the people. animals or plants that are written in balinese manuscripts or hindu religious texts, such as bhagavad gita, are taken as tools to conceptualize particular meanings. an example taken from an animal is a mythical animal-like creature called garuda or a giant eagle. garuda is the mount of vishnu (wulandari & untara, 2020), god’s supreme manifestation as the protector of the lives and world. as an animal-like creature, the concept of garuda has been translated into the balinese people’s minds as a divine and glorious creature. therefore, it becomes a symbol of a higher-level entity. this is shown by one of the balinese proverbs that says awak beduda nagih madain garuda. balinese people believe that the proverb has the meaning of a poor man who is no one and has nothing tries to compete with a person from a higher level of social status who is wealthy or has an established job. this proverb is based on the concept given by garuda. the beduda, a ground beetle, is an animal used by balinese people as a comparison to garuda. as garuda is a mount to vishnu, it soars high in the sky and is glorious because it is related to god, whereas a beduda is only an insect which lives among rocks on earth, a dirty place full of dirt. the culture of the balinese people also develops as time evolves. people in bali have been running a pig farm business. this business might be influenced by the belief of balinese people that cows are considered holy because a cow is the mount of siva (kardika, 2020, p. 81). therefore, the cow farm business is very rare in bali compared to a pig farm. as pig farm becomes a livelihood of most of the rural balinese people, it has been a culture. during working, the people get familiar with the characteristics of a pig. balinese people then create a saying such as care celeng, or in english is translated as like a pig. the saying is intended for people whose activities are only eating and sleeping. this intention is based on how a pig behaves. this condition portrays the relationship of a culture that influences how people communicate. the use of animal and plant lexicons in the language of balinese people begins to enter the field of an artistic side. people have attempted to use them in their songs. one example of this is the song from a balinese artist named nanoe biru whose song is called manusa panak manusa. the song incorporates the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 315-325 317 animal lexicon of beduda, the animal mentioned in the previous paragraph, to represent a poor man who does not receive blessings from his lover’s parents. the representation of the animal is adapted from the concept given by the proverb. this shows how a culture of people touches the language. as belief and religion are components of a culture (koentjaraningrat, 1990, p. 186) shown by the use of garuda as a mount of vishnu, they activate the cognitive ability of balinese people to use another animal, in this case, beduda, as a comparison. therefore, it can be said that the language of the balinese people is influenced by the culture they live and learn. balinese songs are products of the cognitive ability of balinese people. they are products of creativity. creativity is very much related to inspiration. what the songs tell, the words of the songs, and the melody of the songs, all can have inspirations by anything, including balinese culture. many songs in balinese use animal and plant lexicons, but do not tell literal stories about animals and plants. two examples of balinese songs are punyan biu and bangkung ngamah gula from dek ulik. both of the songs are considered contemporary pop songs. looking at the titles of the songs, the use of animal and plant lexicons is vividly seen. punyan biu is banana tree. bangkung is a female pig. although the titles are about animals and plants, the meaning of the songs is mainly about love and relationship. there must be a connection between the two species with the cognitive perspective of balinese people related to love. other balinese songs may also have a similar situation. some songs perhaps adapted the animal and plant lexicons from balinese proverbs like the use of beduda in manusa panak manusa song by nanoe biru and maybe some songs insert animal and plant lexicons based on pure cognitive creativity. based on the above background, this study is determined to find the relation between balinese cultures and the animal and plant lexicons used in balinese songs and their meaning representation from an eco-linguistics approach. eco-linguistics, according to stibbe (2015, p. 8), is a branch of linguistics that studies language interaction and diversity in the environment. the study of eco-linguistics involves how words in a language relate to objects in the local environment and the relationship of language with the physical environment to uphold the norm of preserving sustainable nature. halliday (2001) in his writing entitled new ways of meaning stated that language in its relation to the environment can show or influence the speaker’s behaviour or treatment towards the environment. language and environment are two corresponding objects. language is influenced by the condition and change of environment, either from a natural or cultural perspective. the environment can affect the lexicons and the grammatical structures of a language. halliday further stated that the treatment of the environment exhibited by humans is also affected by the way they use language. related to balinese lexicons, a study was written by budiarta & kasni (2017) entitled the concept of animals in balinese proverbs. the study was published in the international journal of linguistics, literature, and culture volume 3(1). they analyzed the syntactic structure of balinese proverbs, the relation of meaning between the name of the animals and the meaning of the proverbs, and how the meanings are constructed in a logical dimension. the result of the study showed that the use of animal lexicons is based on the characteristics of the animals. the characteristics are adapted and processed by humans’ cognitive ability by ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 315-325 318 conceptualizing them into expressions thought by the balinese speech community. this study used the theory of three dimensions of social praxis by bang and door and the semantic triangle by odgen and richard. the article from budiarta & kasni was able to provide information about the connection between animals and the balinese proverbs based on the characteristics of animals. however, the analysis of each data is not consistent. several data do not have the social praxis description. as the connection of animals and balinese proverbs in this article is mainly based on how people perceive the characters of animals, the current study attempts to provide a different perspective of how animals are used in the balinese speech community, which is from a cultural point of view. based on this review, the current study provides a piece of new information. indriyanto (2021) and isodarus (2022), and nurdiyanto et al (2022) stated in their study that a word has a connection with the environment, a word contains certain meanings that refer to the environment. indriyanto (2021) believed the environmental crisis was portrayed in the data source. these connections are analyzed by the theory of eco-linguistic stated by stibbe. this study is used to see the interaction between culture and nature. in line with yuniawan (2018) who used eco-linguistics as an idea to identify the relationships between words, nature, and environment that join forces with biotic and abiotic lexicons. a study by mahayana et al (2019) and yani et al (2022) found that eco-linguistic parameters made the formation of metaphorical lexicons contained in language. the eco-linguistic study also found in beblabadan or balinese metaphor (rejistha, 2017) found flora and fauna lexicons who has a metaphorical meaning that correlated to an eco-linguistic lexicon. thus, eco-linguistics also happened in metaphor. this study is relevant to be conducted because the object in this study can provide a picture of how the environment around people contributes to the use of language. as this study is limited to discussing only balinese culture represented through animal and plant lexicons, this study is essential as a record of balinese people’s lives. furthermore, this study is expected to help people to understand the balinese songs with animal and plant lexicons that may have different meanings from their literal use. related to the cultural field, this study may give a contribution to knowing the value of certain balinese cultures as represented by the lexicons. method the data of this study were taken from balinese songs that have animal and plant lexicons in their lyrics. the songs were taken from youtube. the balinese songs selected for this study were those with cultural themes because the use of animal and plant lexicons could be the media of cultural representation. listening and documentation methods were used to collect the data along with transcription and note-taking techniques. the animal and plant lexicons found were highlighted and analyzed based on their connection with balinese cultures. after collecting the data, they were analyzed using a descriptive-qualitative method with the application of bang and døør’s three dimensions of social praxis (1993). bang and døør (1993) developed a theory specifically designed for ecolinguistics called the dialectical eco-linguistics theory. this theory is based on the concept of social praxis in three different dimensions, namely ideological, sociological, and biological. according to this theory, language is a social product of human activities, but at the same time language changes or modifies human ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 315-325 319 activity and the social praxis. this means that there is a dialectical relation between language and social praxis. the concept of social praxis in this theory includes human activity in relation to the surrounding nature and environment. the ideological dimension is about the mental, cognitive, ideological and psychic systems of an individual or group of people. the sociological dimension is about the ways people organize their interrelations in order to maintain a social relationship of individuals. the biological dimension is about people's biological collectivity and their co-existence with other species, such as animals and plants. this study incorporated the three dimensions of social praxis proposed by bang and door with three eco-linguistics parameters from fill and mühlhäusler (2001). the three parameters were interrelationship, environment, and diversity. the diversity parameter explains that the diversity of lexicons in a language is affected by the physical, social, and cultural environment of people (fill & mühlhäusler, 2001, p. 2) the environment contributes to shaping the perspective and behaviour of the people. the interrelationship parameter shows the connection between the natural environment and the people in terms of using the language. fill and mühlhäusler (2001, p. 104) stated that the connection can be seen from the use of metaphorical language that compares nature to another object based on the sociocultural and cognitive aspects of the people. environment parameter shows concern about how people perform activities based on their view of biotic objects surrounding them. an example is how people see animals affects how people treat them, like chickens, cows, and pigs. the analysis of the data was performed by the following steps. first, the animal and plant lexicons were identified based on their biological dimension. the biological dimension provided the identification of the species' characteristics. the analysis of this dimension was also combined with the diversity parameter. second, the meaning and the use of the lexicons were analyzed based on the context of the songs. in order to do this, an analysis of the ideological dimension was conducted as the dimension is closely related to how people perceive the lexicons. this part was combined with the interrelationship parameter. the last step was an analysis of the sociological dimension. in this dimension, this study tried to provide an analysis of how the lexicons of animals and plants in balinese songs organize the way balinese people treat the environment and others. this part of the analysis also applied environment parameters. the use of the lexicons was connected to balinese cultures that correspond to each other to see the relation between the meaning of the lexicons with the existence of the animals and plants in balinese cultures. the analysis presented an informal method. the description of the connection between balinese cultures and the animal and plant lexicons and the meaning representations was provided in the form of sentences. the analysis was arranged in a sequence of data, biological dimension, ideological dimension, and sociological dimension. findings and discussion the study found that certain animal and plant lexicons in balinese songs are used as representations of social messages. the message is constructed from the cultures of the balinese people. the analysis below provides a further elaborated explanation concerning each animal and plant lexicon and its relation to balinese cultures from an eco-linguistics perspective. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 315-325 320 a balinese song entitled tunjung putih sung by lyra is a cultural song. the lyrics were written by dr netra. the song is about the environment of the white lotus. the use of the lexicon of tunjung putih or white lotus in this song resembles a message and a balinese culture. the analysis below unpacks the message and the culture behind the lexicon. lotus is an aquatic flower. having the scientific name nelumbo nucifera, lotus has broad floating leaves and bright fragrant flowers. lotuses are generally seen in white and pink and they grow in shallow and murky waters. the leaves and flowers float and have long stems that contain air spaces. it has many petals overlapping in a symmetrical pattern. the root functions of the lotus are carried out by rhizomes that fan out horizontally through the mud below the water. the round leaves are up to 50 cm in diameter. according to budiwati and kriswiyanti (2014), there are 11 kinds of lotus in bali based on their research in sumampan village, gianyar regency, bali. they are sudamala lotus with white colour and smaller size petals compared to the others, yellow lotus, dark blue lotus, pink lotus, dark purple lotus, white lotus, light blue lotus, tutur lotus with dark red colour, dedari lotus that changes colour every week, and brumbun lotus with white petals. based on the above explanations, an analysis of the biological dimension of this song from the use of tunjung putih lexicon is that people of bali acknowledge the existence of different kinds of lotus, including the white lotus. as proven from past research about lotus in bali above, the naming system of lotus in bali is mainly based on their colour. therefore, the diversity of lexicons in the balinese language regarding lotus is affected by the physical environment. the diverse kinds of lotus that affect the lexicons of the lotus plant in the balinese language can also provide a portrayal that the people of bali have close contact with the plant. the close contact makes them able to identify which is which and thus gives the naming system. as a flower with bright petals, the white lotus is seen as beautiful in the mind of balinese people. this is shown by the lyrics of tunjung putih song. bungan ipun putih mekenyih, sarin ipun kuning makenying 'the flower is shining white, the pistils are sparkling yellow' daun ipun kebat ngelebat, jegjeg mentik kembang ring toyane ening 'the leaves are wide, supporting flowers that bloom in clear water' bungane suci tur nirmala ‘the flower is pure and clean' in addition to the beauty of the flower, balinese people create a concept in their mind that shares similar characteristics with the white lotus. this song asks listeners to follow tunjung putih. therefore, based on the ideological dimension and interrelationship parameter, this song exhibits the cognitive ability of balinese people by applying the metaphorical expression of the white lotus as a leader. ngiring tulad i tunjung putih 'let's take the example of the white lotus' ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 315-325 321 the lyric above is a conceptual metaphor with the source domain being the white lotus and the target domain being human behaviour. through the characteristics of the white lotus described in the song, several behaviours of humans are conceptualized. the white petals symbolize a clean and kind heart. although the habitat of the lotus is dirty, the flower is not affected. it still shines in its white colour. the habitat of the lotus represents the unkind environment that may give ill-treatment to people, however, such treatment shall not turn people to be unkind. instead, be like the white lotus, be kind without a desire to revenge. the ideological dimension provides an explanation that the white lotus is not merely a flower in this song, it is a role model. therefore, the lexicon of white lotus and its characteristics mentioned in the biological dimension have influenced the cognitive ability of balinese people. not only using the white lotus lexicon as a source domain in metaphorical expression, but this song also provides another identity of the flower which is as an offering to god. ngiring margian petapan i bungan tunjung ‘let’s take the white lotus’ becik ke-anggen serana upakara ‘good to be used as a part of offering’ bantang kayun bhakti ring hyang widhi ‘to show devotion to god’ the lyrics above show the relationship between the people of bali and the white lotus. the use of white lotus in this part provides the cultures of balinese people of praying using flowers. this culture is written in bhagavad gita, chapter 9, verse 29. the verse tells that whoever devotes himself to god with the offering of leaves, flowers, fruits, and water will be accepted by god as a form of devotion from a sincere person. furthermore, the exclusivity of using the lotus in this song as part of an offering to god is because the lotus symbolizes the place and the throne of the nine gods (dewata nawa sanga) (supartha, 1998). in kidung aji kembang, a traditional song, the lexicon of lotus also appears to show which lotus resembles which god according to the directions. white lotus in aji kembang is used as an offering for isvara who rules the east. according to the cultural scripts above, the white lotus as a flower is a medium for the cultural activity of balinese people. in relation to the cognitive ability of balinese people displayed in the ideological dimension analysis above that interprets the white lotus as clean and holy, the selection of the white lotus as a plant to be exclusively used in this song perhaps is influenced by a ceremonial activity of balinese people named penglukatan. the activity of penglukatan is believed to clean the energy of oneself. based on the penglukatan tradition in dalem pengembak temple, the activity is performed by people to neutralize the energy of oneself in order to feel comfortable and serene (seniwati & ngurah, 2020, p. 169). furthermore, in the offering of penglukatan ceremony, balinese people use tunjung putih or white lotus. this is shown in the mantra of penglukatan. om gangga muncar saking purwa, tiningalana telaga noja jambangan nira selaka, tinanceban tunjung petak ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 315-325 322 padyusan nira bhatara iswara, pangilanganing papa klesa moksah hilang, om sang ya namah. the mantra above has the phrase tunjung petak which means white lotus. petak is white. therefore, white lotus is a part of balinese culture. based on this culture of balinese people, the relationship between the people and white lotus is very close. as the white lotus is used in the ceremonial offering, balinese people treat the flower in a positive manner. this is the sociological dimension of this song. through this positive manner and the use of white lotus, it is expected that balinese people may cultivate white lotus in order to support ceremonial activities and perform a social relationship that is based on kindness. above analysis has discussed the lexicon of plants in balinese songs. below is provided the analysis of the animal lexicon related to balinese culture. the song chosen is called crukcuk kuning sung by yan mus, yan srikandi, ngurah adi, dika swara, and putu bejo. from the title itself, the animal lexicon is known. the song itself tells a famous short story of the balinese people called i bawang teken i kesuna. the short story shares a few similarities to the indonesian short story bawang merah bawang putih and the international story cinderella. crukcuk kuning or in its scientific name called pycnonotus goiavier analis is a yellow-vented bulbul in southeast asia. it is included as a songster bird. the body consists of brown feathers above and whitish with a bright yellow vent at below. there is a thick black line between its bill and eyes. the bird usually produces rolling, variable, and bubbly sounds. santoso et al. (2019), sumardika et al. (2017), and zuhra (2022) recorded that crukcuk kuning or yellow-vented bulbul in bali is a species of bird that can be found close to the community. sumardika et al. (2017) stated that the bird is found near the city of denpasar around serangan island. he also showed that the habitats of the bird include beaches, mangroves, lagoons, plantation forests, and residential areas. based on his research, he estimated around six to ten numbers yellow-vented bulbul were seen. santoso et al. (2019) stated that the bird is also found in buleleng regency. around 20 numbers of birds are recorded. the numbers of these research on different locations show a significant point that crukcuk kuning lives close to the balinese community. therefore, balinese people acknowledge the existence of the bird. this is the biological dimension of the use of the animal lexicon in this song. the ideological dimension of this song is shown by how the bird is used as a symbol of god as the saviour, thus crukcuk kuning is metaphorical. as this song is adapted from the story i bawang teken i kesuna, the use of this lexicon in this song is closely related to the short story that tells about two girls with opposite personalities. from this song, it is known that i bawang is a good and diligent girl, whereas i kesuna is lazy and does not want to help with the housework. one time i bawang felt the anger of her mother, so she ran to the forest and cried. there she said the following lyrics. crukcuk kuning dong tulungin je titiang ‘yellow-vented bulbul, please help me’ titiang lara hidupe sengsara ‘i was miserable in life’ katundungin tekening i meme ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 315-325 323 ‘i got kicked out by my mother’ ulian pisuna tekening i kesuna ‘because of the slander said by my sister i kesuna’ i bawang called crukcuk kuning asking for help. the use of the bird may be derived from the myth that by having the bird as a pet, the owner will receive luck and wealth. the choice of colour is perhaps affected by the belief in the hindu religion balinese people. kuningan is a religious day for balinese people symbolising the winning of dharma (goodness) from adharma (evil) and praising the gods and goddesses. during kuningan day, the colour yellow is mainly used. in sundarigama manuscript, it is said that the gods and goddesses come to the earth to receive all the offerings from the people and give blessings before going back to heaven. based on this belief, crukcuk kuning is a metaphor for gods and goddesses as the saviours of people from evil. the blessings from the crukcuk kuning are shown from the lyrics below. gotol di limane melingker misi gelang ‘pecked her hands, there is a bracelet’ gotol jerijine perjani misi bungkung ‘pecked her finger, there is a ring’ gotol di kupingne ngelanting misi anting ‘pecked her ears, there are earrings’ gotol di baongne mekilit misi kalung ‘pecked her neck, there is a necklace’ the blessings of the gods and goddesses are symbolized in gold and pieces of jewellery that are related to the colour yellow. therefore, the animal lexicon is used because of the cognitive ability of the balinese people to make crukcuk kuning as the representation of gods and goddesses. aside from the bird, bawang and kesuna are included as plants. bawang is a shallot in its literal translation, whereas kesuna is garlic. if in the story of bawang merah bawang putih, the antagonist is bawang merah, the shallot. however, in the balinese version of i bawang teken i kesuna, i kesuna, the garlic, is the antagonist. this different character is affected by the existence of the balinese proverb, mabawang putih. the proverb means pisuna, a slander or a false statement that damages the reputation of a person. because of the meaning of the verb that rhymes with the plant of garlic in the balinese language, the characters of the story are different compared to the indonesian version. the sociological dimension of crukcuk kuning in this song is derived from the ideological dimension. as the bird represents the deities, therefore people should always devote themselves and obey righteousness and goodness. those who do so shall receive blessings from the deities. however, those who do not will receive punishment. this is how the lexicon functions to organize the relationship of balinese people. furthermore, related to the environmental parameter, the use of the animal lexicon in this song makes people aware of the existence of the bird and shall protect it to prevent extinction. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 1, september 2019, pp. 315-325 324 conclusion the use of animal and plant lexicons in balinese songs is not merely an involvement of creativity, but it reflects the cultures of the balinese people. the animal and plant lexicons in balinese songs are used in literal and metaphorical manners. the animal and plant used in the songs have resulted from the awareness of the people of the surrounding environment, and the existence of the animal and plant. their existence of them influences the cognition of the people. balinese people connect their cultures and make them represented by the lexicons of animals and plants. the cultures represented by them are varied from religious beliefs, stories, legends, and proverbs. from the lexicons used in balinese songs, the perspective of balinese people towards animals and plants is known to be positive. references 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(2022). keanekaragaman jenis burung di hutan kota banda aceh. prosiding seminar nasional biotik, 10(2), 211–216. http://dx.doi.org/10.22373/pbio.v10i2.14563 https://doi.org/10.22225/jr.2.1.50.79-94 https://publikasiilmiah.ums.ac.id/bitstream/handle/11617/11344/p.390%20-%20401.pdf?sequence=1 https://publikasiilmiah.ums.ac.id/bitstream/handle/11617/11344/p.390%20-%20401.pdf?sequence=1 https://ejournal.unhi.ac.id/index.php/vidyawertta/article/view/1184 https://doi.org/10.15575/rjsalb.v2i1.1934 https://doi.org/10.24843/jbiounud.2017.vol21.i02.p04 http://journal.peradaban.ac.id/index.php/jdpbsi/article/view/1204/808 https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v1i2.686 http://dx.doi.org/10.22373/pbio.v10i2.14563 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 114-122 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 114 novel and refiguring life f. wawan setyadi centre sèvres, paris wawan.setyadi@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.020201 received 18 december 2018; revised 20 january 2019; accepted 20 february 2019 abstract this article explores the confluence between a novel and the life of its reader in two phases. firstly, this article examines the theory of mimesis of paul ricœur in time and narrative i to arrive at the importance of the reading act where the reader does his own appropriation of the novel read. the novel itself is a creative composition based on the daily human actions. secondly, this article deciphers the work of milan kundera, especially his concept of existential code, found in the novel the unbearable lightness of being and sharpened by his concept of writing novels in the art of the novel. this second phase gives another articulation of the first phase, which is more philosophically theoretical. based on these two phases of exploration, this article uncovers the refigured man who comes to understand both himself and the world he lives in better and who has new different propositions and possibilities to live better as well. keywords: mimesis, prefiguration, configuration, refiguration, existential code introduction why do people write novels and why do we continue to read them? these are the main questions of this essay. behind these questions, there is a subtler problematic concern about the relation between novel or arts in general and life itself. is novel enclosed in itself, for its own sake, and therefore it has nothing to do with life of its readers? or, does it go beyond itself and points out the life of its readers? to help our reflection, firstly, we will examine the mimesis theory by paul ricœur (1913-2005), a french philosopher known for his work on philosophical hermeneutic. his mimesis theory which is placed in milieu of his hermeneutic of text will serve as theoretical or philosophical foundation for this article. afterward, it is important to listen to the novelist himself. milan kundera will illumine us when he explains about the existential codes of the characters in his novels. this will be the second section of this essay. the encounter between ricœur and kundera will be the backbone of the essay which will give us sufficient understanding about the relation between novels and life. understanding of texts and life by means of mimesis theory or the narrativity theory by ricœur is helpful in, in this case, literature analysis. the wealth of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 114–122 115 literature studies has made use of ricœur’s theory. young (2014), for instance, owes to ricœur in reading james joyce’s short story “evelyne” and tóibín’s novel brooklyn (2014). the theory is also useful in fiction studies as done systematically by ferguson (2014). novel and refiguration of life becomes an important concept from the ricœurian hermeneutical philosophy, that is, the concept of narrative identity. the discussion that follows therefore will examine the structure of ricœur’s narrativity. the threefold mimesis in his trilogy concerning human time and narrative theory, temps et récit, paul ricœur develops his mimesis theory. it is found in the third chapter of the first volume, right after his analysis of time, based on the book xi of confessiones of augustin, in the first chapter and the analysis of muthos (emplotment), based on the poetics by aristotle, in the second chapter. later, in his intellectual autobiography, réflexion faite, ricœur affirms that the intersection between these two books is the foundation of his theory in this trilogy. while the analysis of augustinian time does not include the narrative theory, the aristotelian analysis of the muthos tragic does not speak in particularly about time. indeed, the analysis of time in this trilogy extends to the reflection concerning time from aristotle, husserl, and heidegger alongside the critique that ricœur gives to them as comprehensively discussed by, for example, tengelyi (2011) and dastur (2011). this article however limits itself in discussing the originality of this trilogy whereby ricœur develops mediation between time and narrativity. to understand the mediation between time and narrative, it is important to look at ricœur’s trilogy that he states briefly as follows, “time becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of a narrative; narrative, in turn, is meaningful to the extent that it portrays the features of temporal experience.” (ricœur, 1984, p. 3, 52). this single theme will serve as leitmotiv of this trilogy and thus will permeate the very vast studies in these three volumes. since the theory of threefold mimesis lays in the core of the mediation of these two independent analyses: time and muthos tragic, the point of gravity of the mediation between time and narrative moves, thus, to the dynamic between these three mimesis, which calls mimesis1, mimesis2, and mimesis3. in this threefold mimesis, ricœur himself states that mimesis2 functions as the pivot of the other two mimesis. what follows is elaboration of each mimesis. to begin with, what is mimesis according to ricœur? it is a creative imitation; a mimetic activity of human action in three phases (cf. ricœur, 1984, p.31ss). it is creative since this imitation has a new form in the narrative composition. in this sense, it is a new creation, thanks to the new semantic innovation in the employment. in the preface of the time and narrative i he has this to say: “plot, says aristotle, is the mimesis of an action. when the time comes, i shall distinguish at least three senses of this term mimesis: a reference back to the familiar pre-understanding we have of the order of action; an entry into the realm of poetic composition; and finally a new configuration by means of this poetic refiguring of the pre-understood order of action.” (ricœur, 1984, p. xi). in other words, this mimetic activity of human action for ricœur consists in three ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 114–122 116 phases: pre-figuration in mimesis1, con-figuration in mimesis2, and re-figuration in mimesis3. to understand better, elaboration of each is important herein. mimesis1 in this prefiguration phase, ricœur, attempts to show that the daily human activities have already a narrative structure and that this world of action is the departure points of the composition narrative in the next phase of mimesis. in his elaboration, ricœur mentions three characteristics of the world of action: its meaningful structure, its symbolic resources, and its temporal character. by its meaningful structure, ricœur elucidates the semantic of human actions. briefly, in this semantic, human actions always contain goals, motif, and agent. to these three factors, he adds that human actions are always an action with others, which can take form as cooperation or competition. in the end, these actions will terminate in change of fortune, either toward happiness or toward misfortune. (ricœur, 1984, p. 55ss) the symbolic mediation as the second features of mimesis1 serves, firstly, as a sign that make an action readable. a symbol of waving hand, for example, makes the action of saying goodbye understood. secondly, it serves as a kind of rule to interpret an action. by symbolic mediation as a rule of interpretation, a waving hand is understood as a gesture of saying goodbye. thirdly, the symbolic mediation serves as a norm of conduct. if someone wants to say goodbye politely, then he can wave his hand (ricœur, 1984, p. 57ss). after elaborating this symbolic mediation, ricœur elucidates the temporal character of human actions, approaching himself to the heidegerian concept of within-time-ness (innerzeitigkeit). one important thing to underline in this part is that time means time to do something. it is not just the linear time which passes, but time existential in which whenever someone says “now...” it means “right now that (i do...)” (ricœur, 1984, p. 59ss). mimesis2 this is the configuration phase, where the emplotment takes place. based on what is received from the mimesis1, it is time now to arrange the new semantic innovation. the heterogeneity of temporal human actions is synthetized and transformed in a new plot. the human experiences become a new text or a new composition, thanks to this plot creative. in this phase, we find the meaning of mimesis in its strict sense. nonetheless, this configuration phase, as the pivot of the threefold mimesis, does not only mediate the human experiences in the mimesis1, but it also prepares what ricœur, explains in the next phase of the mimesis (ricœur, 1984, p. 64ss). mimesis3 this refiguration phase is activated in the act of reading. thus, it will not be possible without the composition narrative which takes place in the configuration phase of mimesis2. what is important here is that the act of reading will decipher different propositions from the text read. ricœur specifically underlines here that what a narrative composition proposes is a new possibility to live better in the world. in other words, this narrative composition refers to a second degree of reality or a new hypothetic world, where there are possibilities to live better. in fact, in the rule of metaphor published in 1975, ricœur earlier on mentions this referential status of the text in his study of metaphor. the metaphor is not enclosed in himself; it is not made for his own sake, but it bursts out to refer to a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 114–122 117 world, to a new reality, thanks to the new semantic pertinence (ricœur, 1984, p. x-xi). this proposition can only be activated and actualized by the act of reading. the world of the text and the world of the readers will interact in this phase. by this act of reading, the narrative composition will be complete since the reader will complete the lacuna, the indetermination in the text he read by his appropriation. by doing so, the text will be his and will have impact to his personal life. this act of reading will end in the application of what has been read and appropriated in the concrete action in life. the narrative composition sends the reader back to his daily, but this time, being different from the world action in the mimesis1, he will appear in a new way, thanks to appropriation that leads into refiguration (ricœur, 1984, p. 76ss). it is also important to note that this act of reading is what ricœur did not elaborate when working on the rule of metaphor. by the time he wrote the vast study of metaphor, he underlined only the referential status of metaphor, what in this present work is called as the reality of second degree or the hypothetic world. the act of reading was just supposed. it is only around ten years after, in the time and narrative, which he arrives to elucidate this act of reading as the ultimate vector of mimesis (ricœur, 1984, p. 77ss). thus, to resume, the temporal experience of human being is worked in this narrative functions, as ricœur himself states, “we are following therefore the destiny of a prefigured time that becomes a refigured time through the mediation of a configured time.” (ricœur, 1984, p. 54). the moment of reading becomes a precious moment. at this particular time, the current of our temporal experiences in the daily life is suspended for being recharged by the novel we read, as also claimed by prammer (2013) about the fruitful experience of reading. in his book, jean grondin (2013, p.103 [my translation]) puts this threefold mimesis in a schema of narrative arc that may help our understanding. table 1. narrative arc mimèsis i ← mimèsis ii → mimèsis iii prefiguration narrative understanding of the already narrative life and temporal experience configuration narrative emplotment narrative in a muthos creative refiguration narrative appropriation of the plot by the reader and the application of this plot in his existence method this qualitative descriptive study examines a novel, time and narrative i, the unbearable lightness, and the art of the novel from the theory of mimesis by paul ricœur. after collecting the data, narrativity theory by ricœur is used in examining the texts in the novel. the interpretations of the data are seen in the ricœurian hermeneutical philosophy, that is, the concept of narrative identity. the structure of ricœur’s narrativity will further be investigated. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 114–122 118 findings and discussion the novel and the existential code having explored the theory of threefold mimesis that depicts life, the discussion now turns to the side of the novelist. for this purpose, we shall see how milan kundera conceives the creation of the characters in his novel. in particular, the discussion is to extract the characters in his celebrated novel the unbearable lightness of being (henceforth ulb) and try to understand the concept of existential code in his characters. this step will enrich our understanding on how the mimesis theory has specific articulation in kundera’s writing process, especially the way he develops the characters of his novels. additionally, this part of the article is also to underline kundera’s claim on the difference between novel and philosophy. in his book the art of the novel, kundera notes that philosophy develops its thought in abstract realm, while novel always builds its characters from a concrete situation. he says the following: “i find the word ‘philosophical’ inappropriate. philosophy develops its thought in an abstract realm, without characters, without situations […] the reflection introduces directly, from the very first line of the novel, the fundamental situation of a character— tomas; it sets out his problem: the lightness in a world where there is no eternal return.” (kundera, 1988, p. 29). in the interview about the publication of the unbearable lightness of being with france culture radio in france, kundera further mentions that he is not a philosopher; he does not create a philosophical system, but he inserts philosophical interrogation in his novel. (https://www.franceculture.fr/litterature/milan-kundera-souffre-par-linsignifiance-de-toutce-que-nous-vivons). mentioned must be made here that kundera’s philosophical interrogation is useful here despite the non-exhaustive exposition of the richness of this novel, as shown by numerous studies on kundera that explore the richness of his œuvres (e.g. mai, 2014; češka & thirouin, 2011; vibert, 2014). now, to begin our exploration in kunderian world of developing characters, it is interesting to note that one feature of kunderian novels is the apparition of the author in his novels. for example, kundera comes across as giving his personal comments about the characters he creates. in his study on the works of kundera, françois ricard states the significance of the presence of the author in the novel. ricard divides the kunderian into several cycles. he notes that the unbearable lightness of being belongs to the second cycle of kunderian novels, written in the span about ten years, together with the book of laughter and forgetting finished in 1978, and immortality in 1988. he says: “[the author] is another feature of the kunderian novel, what i would call the non-obliteration of the author and his assertion in the very midst of the narration through a clearly identified voice and thought that fear neither to indicate their presence nor to declare their position concerning the depicted universe, yet not removing its autonomy or its own reality.” (ricard, 2003, pp. 123-124). here we see that the the unbearable lightness of being is contemporary to ricœur’s time and narrative 1. we shall now examine kundera’s assertion as the author in the unbearable lightness of being. kundera firstly says the following in this novel: “it would be senseless for the author to try to convince the reader that his characters once actually lived. they were not born of a mother’s womb; they were born of a stimulating phrase or two or from a basic situation...” (ulb, p. 39). next, he repeats this idea again: “as i have pointed out before, characters are not born like ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 114–122 119 people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.” (ulb, p. 221). at this point, where kundera states that his characters were born from a metaphor or from fictional situation in his novel to manifest and to open human possibilities, we will discover the rapprochement between kunderian way of creating characters and the ricœurian concept of metaphor and referential status of a narrative text as explained in the previous section. furthermore, in the case of kundera, he even adds clearly that these new possibility surpasses what he himself has undergone. indeed, the way his characters is going beyond his own reality as their author, is what he himself is most attracted, as he says: “the characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities...each one has crossed a border that i myself have circumvented. it is that crossed border…which attracts me most.” (ulb, 221). we can still give another comment for this citation. by stating the correlation between his life as an author and the characters in his novel, we find another accentuation of what ricœur states that the narrative configuration (mimesis2) has its sources in the ordinary life pre-narrative (prefiguration phase or mimesis1). we can imagine that his life in the socio-political context of czech of the day, for example is that of the totalitarian regime. that context gave him abundant sources for the unbearable lightness of being. behind this effort to manifest the different new possibilities in his characters, it is clear that in the art of the novel, kundera gives us the key to enjoy, to explore, to understand, and to benefit from the characters in his novels by the act of reading. it is what kundera calls existential code. the existential code of his characters as imaginary being is built by certain key words. he said in this book, “to apprehend the self in my novels means to grasp the essence of its existential problem. to grasp its existential code. as i was writing the unbearable lightness of being, i realized that the code of this or that character is made up of certain key words…each of these words has a different meaning in the other person’s existential code” (kundera, 1988, p. 142). this so-called existential code is the main theme shown by his characters. for kundera, the novel is a great prose where he can explore different existential problems: lightness-weight for tomas, body and soul for tereza, for example. again in his interview with france culture radio, he mentioned one existential question: the lightness and the weight in the unbearable lightness of being, and he asked whether we are suffered from the insignificance of the life or from the dramatic burden of our life (https://www.franceculture.fr/litterature/milankundera-souffre-par-linsignifiance-de-tout-ce-que-nous-vivons). this question, as all fundamental questions about existence, cannot be resolved. thus, it is clear here that his novel does not offer solutions to different existential codes explored in the novel. it is instead a thorough exploration of different existential codes, different existential questions, and different new possibilities from this point of departure. considering this argument, i think that these new possibilities become a way to work on such existential question, rather than a direct solution to the problem. the existential problems are always there, but there is some new ways to work on it. further, it is therefore the task of the readers to take some new directions in their act of reading as proposed by mimesis3. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 114–122 120 now, more question surface as to whether the existential codes and the new possibilities opened by the characters are limited in some sense by the presence of the author, even in the midst of the novel. in other words, is not the presence of the author a sort of omnipresent which in the narrative level can be regarded as a method that puts the limit of the new possibilities of the characters? in the end, does this omniscient presence of the author limit the freedom of the characters? if so, then what is the aim of stressing that the characters stimulate these new possibilities? is it not that attempt is so paradoxical with the presence of the author himself in this novel? the analyses of françois ricard cited above give immediate answer as well as more series of questions. he states clearly that the presence of the author does not remove the autonomy of the universe of the novel. however, does kundera himself manifest this aspect in his novel? how can kundera reconcile his presence and the freedom of his characters? to answer to this question, it is interesting to note that in many occasions, kundera limits himself as being ignorant to what his characters are doing or thinking. kundera shows his difficulty to understand what tereza thinks when she compares her photos on the russian invasion to the nude photos in the beach: “…even i find it difficult to explain what she had in mind when she compared a nude beach to the russian invasion.” (ulb, 69). in another comment, kundera will only give his opinion or his speculation about the reason why franz asks sabina to go to palermo for their love affair and not in geneva as desired by sabina. kundera says this: “the only explanation i can suggest is that for franz, love was not an extension of public life but its antithesis.” (ulb, 83). another example of this can be found when he asks whether there is a kind of es muss sein in tomas’ life or not. he shows only his opinion about that, saying “in my opinion, it did have one. but it was not love, it was his profession.” (ulb, 193). kundera’s technique of characterization limits himself; he does not manifest the omniscience feature of a narrator. as hana pichova puts it, the characters may be his creation, but they have their own universe. this universe, even the author himself does not have the power to intrude (1992, p. 222). in the narrative level, by using such technique, kundera brilliantly avoids the danger of the omniscient presence of the author that could be interpreted paradoxically as an obstacle to the freedom and thus the new possibilities brought by the characters; the new possibilities sought by the very author. in so doing, kundera successfully restrains himself from the intrusion to the psychological conditions of his characters. as such, he lets his characters decide and free themselves. refusal to enter into the depth of the psychological realm of his characters, gives the chance to the characters to build their own possibilities in maximum. we may assume here that this is a creative configuration from what kundera perceived from the ambience of socio-politically totalitarian czech he found in his daily context. we can grasp this, by what he points out in the art of novel, when asked why there is a complete absence of interior monologue in his novel, kundera clearly says that he cannot use the espionage method for it (1988, p. 29). he wanted to show human freedom, the new possibilities to live better, amidst the totalitarian regime that he sought to confront. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 114–122 121 conclusion this article has elucidated the mimesis theory by ricœur and the existential code in the kunderian novels. it has demonstrated why people must continue writing novels and why people must also continue reading it. novel, thanks to its creative imagination in the emplotment process, imitates creatively the world of human actions. its configuration opens some existential questions of human being and proposes some new possibilities to live better in the world. the decisive moment of refiguring life happens when someone reads the novel and makes his own appropriation about different propositions to re-work those existential questions. the novel and the appropriation we made upon it will send us back to the current, now as a person refigured by the novel. this article has also shown that man tries unceasingly to understand both him and the world he lives in along his journey between his birth and his death. he is always in search of meaning of his temporal experiences. thanks to the mediation of what he has read, this new person, the refigured one, then, is the person who understands better both himself and the world he lives in. he will be sent back to the place he left before his reading, but now with a better understanding, with new possibilities and meanings as beautifully indicated by t.s. eliot in his poem “the little gidding” thus: we shall not cease from exploration. and the end of all our exploration will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. references amalric, j-l. 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(winter 2014). brooklyn as the “untold story” of “eveline”: reading joyce and tóibín with ricœur. journal of modern literature, 37(2), 123-140. jstor access 21/02/2019. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 14 discourse analysis on taylor swift’s you need to calm down music video: semiotic approach jonathan irene sartika dewi max and aries utomo mulawarman university, indonesia irenesartika@gmail.com; aries.utomo91@fib.unmul.ac.id correspondence: irenesartika@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v5i1.3634 received 27 august 2021; accepted 23 september 2021 abstract as a mode of expression, music video involves the process of meaning making. its unique method of assembling symbolic codes should be apprehended differently from film even though some film technical terms are found applicable. this research takes taylor swift’s music video for her song you need to calm down (yntcd) which won two mtv vma as video of the year and video for good in 2019. barthes’s theory of semiotics is firstly applied to scrutinise the music video which are done by answering how the denotation and connotation meaning is made to respond these issues. discourse analysis is then applied to study what discourses are influential in the signification system of the music video. as a response to issues of hate speech, lgbtq, and media toxic contestation, meaning in this video is built by (1) the objects symbolising personal experiences, (2) borrowing meaning from iconic show, (3) cameos demonstrating social conflict, (4) stage-setting exemplifying media toxic contestation, and (5) the painting indicating historical context. thus, yntcd music video symbolically voices a counter discourse to the mentioned social problems. keywords: discourse, music video, semiotics, connotation, denotation introduction launched for the first time was an ironic music video entitled video killed the radio star by the buggles on mtv channel aired on 1 august 1981 in the us (business insider, 2015). this was a game changer in the music world. having both audio and visual representation of the musical art, singers now have limitless possibility of demonstrating the meaning of the songs even though the lyric itself has been already condensed with meaning. the visual representation on music video to a song is a tool of meaning making where visual images are encoded to shift the experience of enjoying the lyrical music. thus, the birth of music video is considered as cultural phenomena. you need to calm down (yntcd) music video won two awards in both categories of video of the year and video for good. having viewed by more than 240 million youtube audiences throughout the world, this music video is mainly conversed on its power to picture the issues of hate speech, lgbtq, and toxic media ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 15 contestation. taylor swift points out how mass media addressing the hatred toward lgbtq people and throwing shades among female artists. she breaks the record as the first female singer with three grammy awards for album of the year nomination following two other male singers like frank sinatra and stevie wonder. she is also the only woman ever rewarded the brit global 2021 icon so far joining elton john and david bowie. her own experience becomes the source of her creativity in lyric creation accompanied by her outstanding musical performance. this research, furthermore, wants to uncover the discourse that are influential in the making of the music video as an artistic yet critical work as a response to the society’s attitude on hate speech, lgbtq, and toxic media contestation. when music is muted, music videos principally work as silent short films in which the visual story is emanated from the central idea in the lyric (morrow, 2020). if music video, then, may borrowed the montage of cinema by how (moving) images are linearly arranged to form a story, then it must work like ‘language’. because metz argued that, cinema is seen as language because of its capability to tell story (metz, 1974). however, a story in music video does not have to be causally plotted in a narrative way since as vernallis pointed out, “videos follow the song’s form, which tends to be cyclical and episodic rather than sequentially directed” (2004). he added that an image works through a symbolic, indexical, or iconic resemblance; which is placed in a metaphorical relation (vernallis, 2013). the resourceful attempt on music video making can be called as a form of writing that results in ‘text’ (in general term). to understand the ‘writing’ of videos, as roland barthes suggested is to see it as the expression of an ideological commitment of the author so that one may start to scrutinize how the producer of the text is responding to social and the political reality by making choice of unique form of expression (allen, 2003). roland barthes borrowed the notion from hjelmslev about different orders of signification where denotation is on the first level while connotation is a second order of signification. the emphasis is on the connotation since he argued that the separation between the ideological and the literal is no longer an easy thing to do (1977). berger noted that “denotation involves a literal and detailed description of the meaning of a word or the measurements of objects. connotation, involves the cultural meanings while myths connected to words and to things (2010). the similar way of looking at visual representation as language may still question the division of word and image. van leeuwen, quoting berger (1972), stated that word gives explanation to the facts while image furnishes the interpretation, ideologically coloured angles that is done implicitly by connotation (2008). therefore, images are discursive. they are constructed to develop signification enabling the production of intended meaning upon reality they try to picture. thus, this research is derived from such perspective to look for what commitment is chosen in the making of yntcd video in responding the indicated issues in the light of discourse analysis with semiotic approach. method the object of the study in this research as mentioned in the title is the music video of taylor swift’s song entitled you need to calm down. it was published on youtube platform on 17 june 2019 from the respective artist channel. taylor swift, the singer and the songwriter, and drew kirsch directed the music video. the music ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 16 video is portraying the response to those issues above with a colourful yet symbolic visualization. it is symbolic since it raises the images in which meaning is interpreted not only for the denotation, they inherently bring but also for the connotation given by the cultural society. therefore, the semiotics of roland barthes is considered as the best approach to demystifying the denotative and the connotative meaning that builds the discourse of the music video. this study applies qualitative research. shank (shank,1995) argues that qualitative investigation is a systematic empirical inquest into meaning. it is then foundationally dependent upon the concepts and implications of semiotics. in collecting data, the researcher uses several steps, namely: (1) watching the music video several times and (2) collecting the important scene by taking screenshots to isolate the video into individually meaningful images. then, an additional step to have the secondary data is taken by (3) conducting a literature study by gathering data from various sources like books, scientific journals, and the internet. in analysing data, barthes’s level of signification is used where it displays directly the denotative and the connotative meaning as well as the produced sign supported by the secondary data. findings and discussion this part gives the result of the analysis of the yntcd music video scenes. the figures are put as orderly as the sequence of appearance in the music video. it starts with displaying the images as the denotation level as it works as an icon and the connotative meaning is then described. after that, the connotative meaning is described as the second level. then, the surrounding discourses supporting the meaning making are explored. figure 1: denotation of a waking up connotation: this overall framing suggests an interpretation of someone being comfortable in her sleep as the sunrise from the east touches her face. the pinkish colour scheme gives a calming ambiance. the camera angle with bird view shows the vulnerability of the person in the scene but as the whole situation is calm, there is nothing to be worried about. this is strengthened by the embroidered phrase ‘calm down’ that is quite imperative. discourse: the shape of the sleeping mask is like the blue one audrey hepburn was wearing in a waking-up scene of the film entitled breakfast at tiffany's (1961). the film talks about an independent woman, holly golightly, who has trouble being attached to somebody and tends to live on her own. her disdain for commitment and fixed identity is figuratively told by the way she does not give her cat a pet name since she believes she cannot have a settled relationship with anything and call him “a poor slob without a name” (anglis, 2019). however, in the end, she is encouraged to believe in herself by the right person who understands her. the whole sense of this ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 17 film presents in only one sleeping mask, but the audiences who share the pretext somehow spontaneously relate its meaning to taylor swift’s personal story. figure 2. denotation of a wall painting connotation: the flower pattern, pink paint, and lace ribbon give the impression that this room belongs to a woman. in the beginning, it is like a contradiction looking at the phrase ‘a man’ in the quote inside the frame. the perspective used in this scene is a statement saying that a woman can be as rich as a man can. discourse: there is something special in the line “mom, i am a rich man”. in the american music industry, this line is an iconic word from a singer named cher (cherilyn sarkisian) born may 20, 1946, el centro, california, u.s. (britannica.com). in 1996, “the goddess of the music industry” was interviewed by jane paul and this line is the highlight of her story. she talked about how men were not a necessity for women where they could have the same success as men did (lobanova, 2016). therefore, again, by borrowing this line, taylor swift brings the legacy of successful women of the us music industry. figure 3. denotation of a wristwatch connotation: the number 7 and the light in this scene imply that the setting is early in the morning. it is the time where most people are just getting ready for the day. the red color symbolizes a cautious yet energetic sense. discourse: as it is a close shot, the number 13 is displayed clearly. it is known too as taylor swift’s birthday. the cat printed on the dial is also known as benjamin button, swift’s third kitten, a ragdoll breed, that formerly appeared in lover music video. thus, this is a personally customized watch that gives an impression of how the person in the video taylor swift could do anything that she loves for her career. the glance of red lace, for the fans, recalls the theme of red, her fourth album, which statistically was not as successful as her other albums, yet she wears it proudly as part of her career growth. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 18 figure 4. denotation of morning activity connotation: if this picture tells part of a kitchen table where some of the stuff on it is kind of out of its place, like the shoe and the cocktail glass, which commonly place separately from the other daily utensils. cotton candy and other types of sweets are also uncommon for breakfast. again, this unusual placement of things implies that everyone can have his or her own typical day-to-day living without being dictated on being normal. discourse: the ankle-strap shoe on the table is one of the pairs she wore in her video music for the single entitled our song (fearless album) with more or less themed in the same colour palate. it implies her bringing a piece of her music career history. fearless, her second album, in 2009 brought her the first award for album of the year in 52nd grammy. figure 5. denotation of swimming in pool connotation: with a bird view angle, the artist seems small and vulnerable to the open surrounding. the burning caravan behind her pool suggests a sense of danger but the way she floats on the buoy looks uninterrupted, calm, and steady in the middle of the pool. she does not swim facing the caravan or turn her head to see the condition and this means she just does not care about the way she lives being destroyed. small parts of the other two dwellings give an indication that she lives in a community, surrounded by other people that share the same environment. it implies that she is not alone though still maintaining privacy as indicated by the fence around her. discourse: the style that taylor swift wears in the pool gives a remark to her video clip for her song entitled look what you made me do (lwymmd) that can be implied from the familiar style of her fur coat, sunglasses, and hairdo. it may not be familiar for everyone and that is why this fact-checking is important. the video music for lwymmd also suggests an important story of her recreated reputation ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 19 after experiencing severe media criticism of her changing of music genres. bringing the same look, taylor appears more colourful and calmer in this video suggests that she is now in peace with whatever she is identified with. figure 6. denotation of caravan blocks connotation: the long shot with a slight tilt angle shows the whole surrounding that was only partially seen in the pool scene. it implies that taylor swift lives as part of a community. the morning view indicates that the happenings last at the same timing as the previous scene discussing. it means that those people are starting their day just as taylor is. this implies that everyone has his or her own way to start the morning routines and live them throughout the day. discourse: in addition, a community that lives in caravans and trailer boxes provide a sense of insecurity in a term of stabile living hood but at the same time deliver the idea of being free and dynamic. the festive rainbow flags are the cultural symbol of the lgbtq community, called as pride flag. figure 7. denotation of protesters connotation: after several scenes that show us the peaceful neighbourhood, there some sporadic people held some protest movement in that environment. they are clearly from outside the community as implied by how different they dress. the small circle movement indicates that they just hold on to some issued that is being addressed by only a small amount of people. the dress they wear evokes a muter colour scheme related to those citizens who are strict, traditional, and conservative. the timing of protesting just right before noon implies how they come uninvited in the middle of people’s lives. discourse: the way the poster is misspelled is a kind of sarcastic critic to them as they should be more literate about the idea of homosexuality before they act to reject it. the word sin written in red shows how they relate their protest to a certain religious belief. in june 2019, glaad’s survey found that there is a notable decline in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 20 lgbtq acceptance among american youngsters (harvey, 2019). glaad survey learns that even youngsters are now more aware of worldwide issues such as global warming and climate change, there are still not enough discourses as a way to get them more acknowledge to the existence and the rights of lbgtq people. figure 8. denotation of a same-sex wedding connotation: this scene appears after the scene of the protesters who reject the idea of homosexuality. in a logic of filmic shot, the happenings are going on at the same time. thus, the protesters’ act does not bother the same-sex couple’s wedding and the rest of the attendances are celebrating it in a joyful ambiance. discourse: the point of interest in this video is the cameos. the same-sex couple in the scene is jesse tyler ferguson and justin mikita. they are a real-life celebrity couple who officially married in july 2013. ciara maguire, on the other hand, is seen in the scene to officiate the wedding. she is a lesbian feminist activist, the chair of free pride, where she said that the organization is accessible for everyone in glasgow (the young women's movement, 2017). several other cameos are in real life the activists or celebrities that belong to the lgbtq community such as adam lambert from american idol 2009, ellen degeneres, billy porter, dexter mayfield, and so on (grady, 2019). taylor swift is considering them as allies to voice her political statement, which was not much heard from her before. figure 9. denotation of the protesters’ close up connotation: the middle shot does the job to indicate a look that is almost intimate in the term of space closeness. this scene, then, implies the resistance of the protesters that are getting intense to the community who live in the caravans and trailers area. the sign they bring shows how their hatred toward same-sex marriage as they only accept the heterosexual marriage. the house displayed in the background shows a more solid building structure that infers more settlement on the conservative belief. the protesters stand on the side of having not many choices, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 21 refuse the new ways of living, lack of dynamic to maintain the social standard which is no longer applicable to be forced on everyone. discourse: the woman’s shirt with the american flag printed on it reveals their act on the behalf of american nationalists. meanwhile, the couple in the background is the representation of what is acceptable for the normal marriage system. the contrastive look of the way the protesters dress has now suggested a contrastive view on the society on lgbtq. the disapproval sent to the lgbtq community leads to persecution embedded homophobia for ages and also alerted entire populations to the existence of difference (morris, 2019). this condition is caused by a belief that homosexual activity or any deviance from established gender roles/dress was not aligned to the law or traditional custom. figure 10. denotation of the couple buying ice cream connotation: the couple seems to be heterosexual who are enjoying the ice cream that implies the way the situation is cooling down as they want to get into the lgbtq environment. there, the seller is pictured to be one of the members of the community that lives in the caravan as well. this shot is significant to say that even the lgbtq community has no problem accepting the heterosexual people who have the will to know more about them and they just can live in peace side by side. discourse: an openly gay olympics athlete, the figure skater named adam rippon, stars the ice cream vendor. once the audience knows more about him, it gives an open chance to acknowledge that those of the lgbtq community can have their position to score a valuable achievement in the various arena including sports. he once said in the interview that being in the olympics had given him a platform to resonate his success story with the young kids all over the country (perez, 2018). it is just a liberating act to stay true to oneself and this message is tight to well in the music video as well. figure 11. denotation of the protesters’ confrontation to the lgbtq ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 22 connotation: this long shot seems to have an imaginary separation between the left and the right side as inferred by the different colours of the ground. the lgbtq community is having a peaceful time minding their own business while the protesters are coming with their protest posters shouting and judging the people in front of them. the woman walks in the middle walks elegantly and looks like that she about to stop the confrontation, but the scene just stops there. discourse: the lgbtq movements through years were once ignited by a riot such as the repressive police act in the stonewall more than 50 years ago that dehumanized their dignity as humans. however, the way this community presents its voice today is always by nonviolent approaches like peaceful long-march or oral speeches and artistic works. the cameo in this scene is known as billy porter, a transgender figure who also actively voices the need for equal treatment that he sees as the underlying value of the us constitution (noveck, 2020). figure 12. denotation of women contest stage connotation: this frame suggests a situation of a pageant contest where the participants are all women. the iconic looks brought by the cameos can be identified as (from left to right): ariana grande, lady gaga, adele, katy perry, taylor swift, beyoncé, nicki minaj, and cardi b. these names are real-life female popstars, which often being compared to each other in term of their skin colours, body shapes, performance, success, and lifestyle. the media that is represented by the cameos under the stage are looking for the information that can fill the news feed. the people enjoying the show are presented by one cameo facing the laptop consuming the online feed. discourse: for young teenage taylor, she was not aware of the negativity in the music industry. however, later in her early 30s, she achieved an award as billboard’s woman of the decade in december 2019. in her acceptance speech, she voiced how women in the music industry are condemned and assessed up to each other for their romantic lives, their fashion, or several other vocabularies that never appears when it is about to discuss male musicians (schiller, 2019). moreover, to get to the top of their achievement, women must accelerate to prove that they deserve it too. she also talked about the struggle to advocate for women behind the scenes of the music industry to have a chance to be recognizable as the men are. this issue is also raised in her music video for the song the man. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 23 figure 13. denotation of the painting connotation: the male cameo is somehow pictured as getting inspiration by looking at the rustic trailer box. the rustic trailer box indicated that the dwelling is getting old and abandoned but it might mean a lot to people who once lived there as it was their only shelter. but he is drawing something else than the thing in front of him. it means that the male cameo is inspired by the trailer box that just invites him to paint something else. discourse: in the scene, the cameo is known as ryan reynolds, a canadian american actor who is famous for his leading role in the superhero film deadpool. in that film, he played an openly gay hero character although he is straight. so, in this scene, he takes his contribution to supporting the issue. what he paints is the stonewall building. stonewall inn was the most well-known gay bar in nyc that accepted drag queens and was a shelter for runaway and homeless lgbtq adolescence. it was in june of 1969 when the police brutally pulled employees and patrons out of the bar. it results in a series of demonstrations and clashes against the cops for six days (borge, 2020). this was the moment of catalyst for the next lgbtq rights movements in the us and the world. figure 14. denotation of the protesters’ calming down connotation: this scene appears almost at the end of the video where it comes like a resolution to what has happened since the beginning. the face of the boy and the girl in the front line of the protesters are saying that they are done with all the protests. the boy now doubts himself and is no longer confident in the words he puts on the signboard. the girl in the plaid shirt is throwing away her sign. both the boy and the girl are presenting some of the people who realize that no matter how hard they resist the existence of the lgbtq community. if the rest of the protesters are still on fire to reject the community’s existence, it connotes that there is a divided voice among themselves. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 24 discourse: in the context of american’s view on lgbtq, the more conservative citizens and part of the republicans have now shown some acceptance of the rights of lgbtq for some reasons. cited from freedom, there are several reasons they finally accept them. first is that conservatives avoid discrimination for all americans because it is part of american values that promise individual liberty, hard work, and freedom for all. so that, protection for the lgbtq is called a reflection of those values. second is the economic reason which points out that discrimination is bad for the industry since a healthy company is those who can value the workers with dignity and respect. lgbtq people are also known to be highly educated, innovative, and creative which are good for the work environment. the third reason is related to faith itself where people are taught to treat others as they want to be treated. so that, to safeguard religious freedom is not the opposite of protecting lgbtq people from discrimination (freedom for all americans, 2021). it was in the way trump held his running for the presidency in 2016 that the heated discussion of lgbtq rights caused a divided view from his party republican. as lerer (2020) notes, republican voters have expressed support for lbgtq people to the supreme court. however, the attitude change could not erase the fact that transgender americans are still the target of hate crimes, violence, and discrimination. taylor swift as today’s generation is one of us to be aware of the use of internet platforms such as youtube to reach wider audiences to spread ideas with her music videos. any deed like painting, writing, or video making is an act of representation. it means it turns meaning into form. the internet has made it possible for individuals to create their own representation of meaning. the internet has become an essential, if not critical, means of aligning with others and maintaining a sense of identity and community for many lesbians, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals, especially those located in remote or small settlements (alexander and losh, 2010: 39). the music video can elevate inquiries of causal relation, that it becomes the engine to mobilize people, objects, and environments (vernallis, 2013). here, in her music video of the song you need to calm down, taylor swift manages several ways to develop the discourse that voice three main issues which are hate speech, lgbtq, and toxic media contestation. that means she encodes the meaning into visual images, equally seen as text, which is needed to be decoded for the audience to grasp the idea. decoding such enveloped meanings relies heavily on semiotics. in semiotics, denotation is presented only to reveal the connotation it brings to construct the messages. the connotation is raised by the ideological preference which means other discourses are needed to be the pretext. so, the interpretation of yntcd music video as text must not only stop on the connotation raised in the eyes of the audiences but must be understood in the discourse where the text is produced. it is because discourse is only evoked for, they are never openly articulated (gunther and van leeuwen, 2001). here are the methods she employs to construct the meaning on the related issues mentioned above. personal experiences are signified by the objects in the scenes. experiences are complex, but to make it into a statement, some objects could be useful to evoke them. they appear in scenes such as the waking up, the wristwatch, the morning activity, and the pool scene. it means the audiences that have sufficient information about her career journey can explore more relations of meaning from the music videos. for example, there is an association of some objects to her previous ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 25 music albums. she uses the technique to mainly respond to the issue of hate speech she has been received on her musical ability and personal life. clues from other iconic shows are presented to borrow the meaning in the scenes like the waking up and the wall painting, she settles some meaning by associate some iconic clues from a classic film and an interview with a female musician. the film is clued by the use of sleeping wear and the interview by the wall painting. both of these external sources are lending her a specific meaning to the characterization she has for the public which is about being independent and that she could not be defeated by the social standard that is forced on women of her age. social conflicts are signified by cameos she chooses cameos intentionally to present her ideas. there are not only people who dress up differently as a separated community. the famous faces she chooses to be in her music video are known to be the most open lgbtq public figures that have a reputation in each of their arenas. they can be seen in scenes like the caravan blocks, the wedding, the ice cream couple, the painting. to be provided with some information about these people, the audience can relate to the issue and have a positive outlook on the lgbtq individuals. meanwhile, for the protesters, she does not choose any famous figures to show that some protests on lgbtq are mostly anonymous. most of the time the rejection is done behind certain belief which has no authoritative command so they cannot be justified to a specific part of society, but she highlights the way those cameos appear to be lack of literary knowledge of lgbtq history. they appear in the scenes like the protester’s circle, the protester’s close up, and the calming down. media toxic contestation is signified by setting a stage the stage she puts in the music video is not only to denote the beauty contest reality show. she asks the cameos to dress like other female popstars to make people aware of how media frames them in the news, compares their achievements and personal preferences. in a complete scene of the women’s contest, there is a crown thrown up in front of the female pop stars in the wish that they are going to wrest for it. but the scene stops where the crown is in the sky and no one is fighting for it since they know they all have their achievements. this is the way taylor swift responds to the issue of gender equality in media and even the equality for women of races. historical context is signified by the painting the biggest issue she responds to in the music video is the discrimination toward the lgbtq community. it is all packed in the way she puts the stonewall inn building on the canvas being painted by a cameo. she does not only put the building image as a reference to the real place but the historicity of the place to the struggle of the lbgtq people for equal rights. having no awareness about the historical events surrounding this issue are causing people to not understand why it is so important to the community to have proper law that protects their rights as human being and part of american society. the video itself was released in june, the month of pride celebrated by the lgbtq movement and 2019 is the year of the 50-year commemoration of the stone wall riot as the result of the oppression act toward the lgbtq community. thus, taylor swift sends the message by having enough ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 14-28 26 consideration of time, place, and events to give a solid context of the meaningmaking in her music video. conclusion barthes’s semiotic has been applied as an approach that works mainly to seek meaning under the relation of the signified/signifier of the presence of the objects to the idea that is being presented by the denotative and the connotative meaning. while foucault and van dijk’s view on discourse is applied to see the social-historical context that surrounds the production of meaning. the result shows that taylor swift creates a music video that does not only put iconic image but also is sensible in a cultural context so that the sign can discursively signify its message. she develops the message through meaning-making from denotation and the connotation but it takes related discourse to understand the complexity of the meaning. by firstly takes some objects to represent personal experiences, she responds to the hate speech on social media. secondly, she borrows clues from film and another female musician to associate her story to some underlying meaning related to woman identity in society. thirdly, she uses cameos to point out the group she is on behalf of. fourth, she signifies the media’s toxic contestation by setting up a stage for women’s contests. then, she puts also another object like the painting that evokes the historical context of the lgbtq struggle. though the composition mainly addresses the issue of lgbtq struggle to fit in the society, she also signifies her personal experiences as a female celebrity surrounded by toxic media. thus, by yntcd music video, taylor swift asks the audiences and the media, in general, to not alienate the lgbtq community and to let women have their highest achievement in the music industry without interfering with rumours or unfair comparison. this is why discourse such as media treatment of women in the music industry, especially in the u.s., and also the social-historical context of lgbtq is needed to understand the music video deeper than just some mode of 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(2021, march 1). retrieved june 28, 2021, from website: https://freedomforallamericans.org/why-conservatives-support-nondiscrimination-protections-for-lgbt-americans/ https://doi.org/10.46743/21603715/1995 https://freedomforallamericans.org/why-conservatives-support-non-discrimination-protections-for-lgbt-americans/ https://freedomforallamericans.org/why-conservatives-support-non-discrimination-protections-for-lgbt-americans/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 134 diaspora literary works of indonesian immigrants in america in the 2010s peni adji, a.b. sri mulyani, and ni luh putu rosiandani sanata dharma university, indonesia peni@usd.ac.id, srimulyani@usd.ac.id, and puturosi@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010201 received 8 december 2017; revised 19 january 2018; accepted 21 february 2018 abstract diaspora literary studies have been extensively conducted in the world of literature. however, indonesian diaspora literature has not been conducted widely in the indonesian literature studies. to begin with, this study examines the diaspora literature written by indonesian immigrants in america in the 2010s. the first genre of indonesian diaspora literature by indonesian immigrants in america in the 2010s includes the history novel, only a girl: menantang phoenix (by lian gouw) which talks about the history of chinese society in the dutch-indonesian era until the indonesian independence and candik ala 1965 (by tinuk r. yampolsky) which tells the history of g/30/s/pki. the second is the short story genre, which is mantra maia (by sofie dewayani) and the third are memory stories, which is this is america, beibeh (by dian nugraheni) both of which raise the issue of indonesian migrant communities in america. diaspora problems are always related to the identity construction. the identity in only a girl: menantang phoenix is the migratory tendency and avoidance of racial conflicts inherent chinese people, who migrated to indonesia, and who eventually migrated to america. the identity in candik ala 1965 is the indonesian political migrants in america who position themselves as the victims of violence in the suharto regime. the identity contained in the mantra maia short stories collection is a new world (america) that makes the migrants experience the psychological tension between success and failure of adaptation. the identity depicted in the memory stories of this is america, beibeh is the identity of the indonesian migrants who are able to adapt positively, by always comparing their new experiences with their old experiences in indonesia. keywords: diaspora, indonesian diaspora literature, genre, identity introduction diaspora literary studies have been conducted extensively in the world of literature. however, indonesian diaspora literature has not been much conducted in the indonesian literature studies. the emergence of indonesian diaspora literature was triggered by the political imbalance in indonesia in 1965 which caused indonesians to migrate abroad. in the future, the indonesian migration abroad, especially to america, is mailto:peni@usd.ac.id, mailto:srimulyani@usd.ac.id, mailto:puturosi@usd.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 135 strongly influenced by various factors, including economics, education, marriage, and others. the indonesian immigrants abroad will produce diaspora cultures, including diaspora literature. this literary work is closely related to the problems of the community identity. in this case, identity is understood as "the process of becoming," a dynamic entity as a result of the construction of the old and present cultural root negotiations, and the result of dialectics among entities, races, and nations. in the year 2010s, there is a phenomenon of indonesian diaspora literature written by indonesian immigrants in america. the researchers assume that this phenomenon is important and interesting to be studied to enrich the knowledge of indonesian literature history. the main purpose of this study is to describe and to study the indonesian diaspora literature produced by the indonesian immigrants in america, which was published in 2010s. this study will look at the publishing process, literature genre, and community identity that is constructed in the diaspora literature. in this study, the indonesian diaspora literature is focused on (1) literary works whose original version are in indonesian language, (2) literary works whose original version are not in indonesian language, but have been translated into indonesian language. for this second type, the focus of the study is the literary works that have been translated into indonesian language. this study of diaspora literature in america is a part of a major study on the fundamental issues pertaining to function and position of diaspora literature in the discourse of modern indonesian literature history. this paper is a result of a preliminary study in tracing and explaining various diaspora literature, which includes genres (poetry, prose, drama), language, publishing process, and the authors beginning with the most recent literature, published in the 2010s. comprehensive articles and research on indonesian diaspora literature have never been conducted. this is evident from the entry on the online wikipedia encyclopedia, which does not mention the existence of indonesian diaspora literature entries. meanwhile, the idea of diaspora in the context of world of literature has been widely written. some of them are "peranakan self as a diasporic palimpset: shirley geok-lin lim torn between diaspora and nostalgia" written by yu-te (tom) kuo and published in colloquim on diaspora and asian fiction diaspora in literature and uploaded on www.zephyr-edu.tw ../diaspora% 2002. the paper shows that shirley geok-lin lim torn's works are classified as malaysian diaspora literature. shirley lim was born and raised in malaysia and has long since moved to live in america. her works are about the problems in malaysia. another study on chinese diaspora literature was recorded by wang ling-chi & wang gungwu in the chinese diaspora (2003). the idea of indonesian diaspora literature was written by amir (2009) entitled "membaca realitas sosial di indonesia melalui sastra diaspora". the article is a recession of the indonesian version of the collection of cerpen mini yin hua. originally, the work was written in chinese by the chinese writers spread across indonesia. the short stories raised the problems of indonesian people in indonesian territory. this collection of short stories is translated into indonesian language by wilson tjandranegara. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 136 the idea of diaspora was also written by holid (2006) entitled "diaspora orang indonesia di amerika serikat". this article is also in the form of book reviews of sofyan dewayani's short story mantra maira. the short story is written in indonesian language and tells the story of indonesian women living in america with various backgrounds and reasons. the work was written by sofie who lives in illinois, united states. the existing research only examines the "exil literature" of indonesia, which is the beginning of the literature of indonesian diaspora. specifically, exil literature refers to the notion of literary works of indonesian authors who migrate abroad or cannot or were not allowed to return home after the 1965 g/30/s/pki political incident. this scientific paper on indonesian exile literature has been conducted by hersri setiawan entitled "sastra eksil indonesia", which was presented at a workshop on "indonesian exiles: crossing cultural, political and religious border", in march 2009, canberra, australia. the study which specifically discussed the indonesian diaspora literature works was conducted by the researcher in 2015 and funded by lppm usd, entitled "identitas tionghoa dalam sastra diaspora indonesia: studi kasus novel only a girl karya lian gouw". this is commencement study of indonesian diaspora literature mapping. diaspora human tendency to communicate and interact is not a phenomenon that emerges recently. these symptoms appear in line with the development of human civilization. whether for the motive of developing power, politics, survival, and slavery; it has been a long time since humans are out of their closest social environment. this is what leads to the movement of people from one region to another, both in the form of individuals/families and in large waves. it is this migration that generates the term immigrants. cohen (2008) notes that human immigration has occurred since the babylonian era of jews, immigration of african slaves to america, as well as immigration of chinese to southeast asia and europe. the immigrants who have long lived in new areas form a new culture which is called diaspora. diaspora generally refers to the society's lives in foreign lands far from their homeland. culturally, they still have a bond with the identity of their ancestors in their homeland. usually, diaspora is associated with colonialism, oppression, and slavery, causing collective trauma to the society. this causes them longing to go home. however, that cannot be done because they have to live in exile (cohen, 2008, p.2). brown (via aji, 2014, pp.50-51) reveals that the phenomenon of the diaspora that occurred during these two centuries, has led to the displacement of the population which later changed the face of the earth; among them, the transfer of slaves from africa across the atlantic, the merchants and workers from china, europeans who migrated to north america, south africa, australia and new zealand, as well as indians who are spread throughout the world in a large number. migration of indonesian population abroad is triggered by the unstable political situation in indonesia. in the context of modern indonesian literature, it has begun since the incident of g/30/s/pki. these migrating populations form a diaspora culture, and the resulting literary work is called indonesian diaspora ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 137 literature. in this study, the literary works studied are (1) the literary works whose original version is in indonesian language, (2) the literary works whose original version did not initially use indonesian language, but have been translated into indonesian language. for this second type, the focus of the study is the literary works that have been translated into indonesian language. post-colonial the term post-colonial is used to interpret the whole culture in a region that was once colonized by the western (european) power from the beginning of colonialism history until present time. the post-colonial study in literary work is intended to be a study of the conditions of the world throughout and after the dominance of european colonizers and the various effects emerged in the contemporary literature (ashcrot, bill, 2003, p.22). meanwhile, bandel (2013: 139) explains that the word post-colonial is used to refer to the realization that colonialism, especially european colonialism since the 16th century has substantially changed the world. although formally the colonialism had ended with the independence of the former colonies, the relation of global power remained in line with what had begun in colonial times. european countries and new superpowers (especially the united states) remain economically and culturally (neo-colonialism) dominant. post-colonialism is an attempt to understand the reality of the present-both in the post-colonial state, as well as in the (former) colonial country-by focusing on the relation of global power and its history. tony day and keith foulcher (2002, p.8) say that post-colonial studies and post-colonial literary criticisms specifically look at how literature presents various post-colonial themes such as identity issues, hybridity, identity negotiation, immigration, mimicry, central and peripheral contestation and various other symptoms. post-colonial studies on literary works should not be associated with the author's intention (ratna, 2004 & 2016). instead, it is important to reveal how these post-colonial themes are presented aesthetically in literary works. the themes in the post-colonial approach include diaspora and identity. identity issues of community identity, are very closely attached in diaspora literature. identity in this case, is understood as "the process of becoming". identity is a dynamic entity as a result of the construction of old and current cultural root negotiations, as well as the result of dialectics among entities, races, and nations. the concept of identity in this study is reinforced by the idea of mercer that identity is often a crucial issue when it is on the verge of a crisis, where identity is assumed to be stable and certain replaced by doubt and uncertainty (in wedon, 2004, p.1). conditions of uncertainty always make people try to find a new identity. and in fact, this uncertainty is caused by the variety of identity-forming elements that do not merely come from one cultural aspect; especially in the postcolonial and global era when people of different races and ethnicity are interconnected. furthermore, wedon asserts that identity is formed socially, culturally and institutionally (2014, p.6). socially, the construction of identity is influenced by inter-human relations. culturally, the construction of identity is related to the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 138 roots and dynamics of the culture. institutionally, identity is often constructed and formalized by a particular institution such as a country that provides its identity to its citizens. the theory of identity will be used by the researchers to achieve the third research objective, namely the formulation of community identity constructed in the literary work using post-colonial approach. method in order to obtain a comprehensive overview of the research problem, this study utilizes a post-colonial approach. this approach embodies literary works about indonesia written by people who have experienced the migration process. the cultural product of this migratory person is diaspora culture, one of which is diaspora literature. diaspora culture and literature are very intense in constructing the identity of society. the data required for this study were obtained from two sources, namely: primary data source and secondary data source. primary sources are obtained directly from indonesian diaspora literature figures. secondary data source is the source of writing the data obtained from libraries, both literary works and literary reviews on indonesian diaspora literature. these secondary sources can also be subdivided into online sources (internet) and offline sources (library). the data collected through the stages of data collection will be classified according to the common genres, namely prose, poetry, and drama. this genre will be seen from the early versions of the language, its publishing process, and its author. in order to examine the identity of the society contained in the literature, the main method of data analysis, namely the method of thick description was employed. in conducting a thick description, the method of intertextuality was also employed to reveal the relationship or conflict of meaning between one cultural product with other cultural products. the thick description method was originally presented by geertz (1998, pp. 1253-1278) to examine the cultural ideas behind a cultural phenomenon. this method is used to compensate for the close reading method developed by new criticism by linking the cultural codes in the text analyzed by reconstructing the various practical and socio-cultural structures surrounding the text, which are not explicitly referred to by the text (budianta, 2006, pp.10-11). the "thick description" method is a method for understanding a cultural product by detailing its complex layers of meaning in the underlying cultural codes. geertz himself in his article entitled "thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture?" (1973, p.25) explains the meaning of "thick" as an action to constantly explore the same thing. geertz compares this method with the method of manuscript analysis which is conducted by sorting out the structure of meaning, codes, and determining its social basis or value (budianta, 2006, pp.10-11). the "thick description" method focuses on things that seem unimportant but have many details in certain cultural praxis. by focusing on the details, it is expected that the interaction of various discourses with institutions, societies, and other cultural elements can be studied and revealed (bressler, 2007, pp.221, 364). it can also be expressed in contradictory forces inherent in various discourses within a culture. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 139 analysis of research data is also reinforced by the hermeneutic method, especially as developed by paul ricoeur (klemm, 1983, pp.74-108). in ricoeur’s hermeneutic theory, what is needed in interpretation is to understand the nature of the discourse, the aspects relating to the text, the process of textual understanding, and the subjective conditions in the understanding of the text. with regard to these points, interpretation can be done by achieving results that can be called adequate. findings and discussion in this study, indonesian diaspora literature in the united states is focused on (1) the literary works whose original version is in indonesian language, (2) the literary works whose original version did not use the indonesian language, but have been translated into the indonesian language. for this second type, the focus of the study is the literary works that have been translated into the indonesian language. the authors, literary works, languages, and also the process of publishing the indonesian diaspora literature written by indonesian immigrants in america were found from the searches on the internet, studies to several publishers and also the libraries. lian gouw in only a girl: menantang phoenix lian gouw was born in jakarta in 1942 from a father who owned a weaving factory and a mother who was a housewife. the political situation in indonesia around the 1960s made her and her family, as chinese descendants, depressed. this condition made her, her husband and two children migrate to america (precisely in 1962). at the beginning of her life in america, she did a lot of work, such as working at the hotel at night because she had to take turns taking care of the children with her husband, dealing with the apartment property, leasing agent, etc. after the children were married, she began to develop herself with informal learning such as creative writing, critical reading, and literary reading. currently, she focuses on handling dalang publishing whose field of work translates indonesian literary works into english and publishes them (correspondence of the researcher with lian gouw (2015). dalang pubslihing published my name is mata hari by remy sylado (original title of namaku mata hari), potions and paper cranes by lan fang (original title of perempuan kembang jepung), kei by erni aladjai, daughters of papua by anindita s. thayf (original title of tanah tabu), the red bekisar by ahmad tohari (original title of bekisar merah), love, death, and revolution by mochtar lubis (original title of maut dan cinta), cloves for kolosia by hanna rambe (original title of aimuna dan sobori) . lian gouw's first novel was only a girl in english in 2009 which is published by publishamerica publisher, lllp, baltimore. in 2010 this work was published by gramedia pustaka utama with the title only a girl: menantang phoenix. this novel revolves around three generations of chinese descents who live in indonesia in the fast changing era (1932 1953), namely the netherlands, japan, and the independent indonesia. the identity of the chinese diaspora in indonesia is also strongly illustrated in this novel which is constructed through the values, attitudes, choice of life, and political orientation of the three generations of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 140 nana and ocho (grandmothers), caroline, chip, ting, po han (children) and jenny and edie (grandchildren). the chinese identity in this novel includes social and cultural identity, politics, economy, and women. the first three identities are closely related to the dutch political policy to the privileged status of chinese citizens who place their positions under the dutch and above the natives. this identity is not an absolute being, but a dynamic, a "process of becoming" as a result of the old and present cultural constructions, and the result of interethnic dialectics. chinese social identity shows that the main characters in the second and third generation have dutch nicknames, even though they have chinese names. they have the courage to determine their marriage in dutch. they use dutch and feel strange and reluctant to use malay. after the indonesian independence, they were less amenable to chinese and indigenous marriage. they prefer to marry fellow chinese. while for the first generation, they still maintain the chinese tradition: ancestral worship, cooking cuisine, and prioritizing in group marriage to chinese. the chinese political identity shows that the second and third generations are oriented towards the dutch. they even joined the dutch underground struggle. after indonesia gained its independence, the third generation left indonesia to live in the netherlands and america. they tend to avoid the anti-chinese racial issues in indonesia that were very strong at that time. the first generation of the upper classes tends to be ambivalent in responding to the political tendencies. they were more inclined to behave that the chinese were neither dutch nor natives. they considered the dutch-oriented political option to take many casualties. however, the first generation of the lower classes' political identity is not depicted. however, if seen from the language, culture, and education; they are more inclined to the chinese. the chinese economic identity is depicted higher and better than the natives. the lower classes of the chinese were also depicted to have native servants. the identity of chinese women shows that the older generation is subordinated because they cannot give birth to a son. the second generation has more freedom in determining their marriage, work, and children. they are no longer subordinated due to gender. even the third generation has the freedom to set their goal as high as possible, that is to go to america. the overall identity of the chinese in only a girl boils down to one identity, namely migration and the avoidance of racial issues. the first to the third generation of chinese in indonesia is the result of chinese migration to indonesia; they form a new culture, the diaspora culture. the third generation who were indonesian migrated again, to the netherlands and america. the main figures in this generation choose to migrate to america because there are fewer racial issues there. it is linear with the choice of the author, lian gouw, who also migrated to america in 1962. tinuk r. yampolsky in candik ala 1965 tinuk r. yampolsky was previously known as a short story writer by the name of tinuk rosalia. she grew up in solo and was active in the arts and culture community in the city. since she was married to philip yampolsky in 1987, she moved to america to champaign illionis to be precise until now. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 141 the candik ala 1965 novel was published in 2011 by kata kita publisher. the decision to choose kata kita publisher was because tinuk did not have much time to offer the novel to a more established publisher. she also revealed that jurnal perempuan was also willing to publish the novel. (researcher's interview with yampolsky on july 29 th , 2016. tinuk admitted that the novel is based on the fact of her experience of g30/s/pki when she was a child to when she was an adult. therefore, it is not exagerating if the researcher assumes that the experience of nik (the main character of this novel) is not much different from the author's experience. the novel is set place in solo, written when tinuk was in america. it was from that distant place that she remembered, constructed, and wrote down the very dark history of 1965 that she saw and felt when she was a child. thus, the embryo of this novel is already in tinuk's mind when she was a child. in addition, she was able to finish it when she has migrated to america since 1987, a time when the new order was at the peak of their power. in america, she teaches indonesian at yale university. on that occasion, she had the time to do research at the sterling library (the main library at yale) which stores a collection of newspapers and magazines about indonesia from the 60-70-80s (the researcher's interview with tinuk on 29/07/2016). that fact results in this work having historical truth as well as comparison with similar situations and era in cambodia. this novel serves as an answer to the question of little tinuk (9 years old at that time) against the incident of g/30/s/pki which back then she should not respond to or ask about. structurally, this novel revolves around the main character of 7-year-old nik who became the witness to the turbulent times of 1965. she is the youngest child, with four older brothers who are already in their adulthood. her mother is an elementary school teacher who treats her like a child and does not allow her to ask questions and know many things. likewise, when she asks about the reason for his older brother mas tok who suddenly moved to her home in solo with his son and his wife. mas tok's mother-in-law even comes to their house late at night, weeping, and telling her that her other children are gone. then, for many days mas tok's mother-in-law also stays at her house. after a shootout in the afternoon, the next morning mas tok burns all his books. meanwhile, her three older brothers are rarely home. they are active in political activities in a chaotic turbulent era. the next day two erpekad people ransack nik's house. they make sure whether there are lekra people in the house. fortunately, mas tok's books were burned two days earlier. for the sake of security, because mas tok is regarded as a pki sympathizer, mas tok moves to another island with his family. little nik develops her dancing hobby until she meets a young man named kun who invites her to a dance show in political activities, especially to prepare for the 1974 elections. the relationship between nik and kun is getting closer, and they are dating even without the blessing from their parents. finally, the parents do not allow nik to dance anymore, not because they are afraid of nik getting closer to kun, but they are traumatized by the art (dancing) activities used for political activities. afterward, there is a leap of time into the 80s when nik is an adult. in this part, nik is positioned by the author as a speaker who talks about the people she ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 142 meets; she does not talk about herself. nik meets the poets and tells about the poet's poignancy about the central versus the margin literary power, about the manikebu that dominates the literary system in indonesia. she also meets with tris, her childhood friend who is now an amateur singer in a nightclub. she also meets the stuttered poet who pretends to be insane to protest the madness of the times. this novel ends with nik's account of the people who become the victims of 1965 politics in indonesia as well as the political victims in cambodia. it seems that the author wants to align the trauma and fate of the victims of mass punishment in these two countries. the story is overtaken by nik's attempt to seal the condition of her oldest brother mas tok who is separated from his family for being a pki symphatizer. nik's encounter with bu sul, a figure from gerwani pusat becomes the end of nik's story. from the information from bu sul, nik finds out the information about bu arum, her late mother's friend in solo. mrs. arum used to be a tender and a beautiful woman, but she was arrested for being alleged as a lekra follower. from bu sul, nik knows that bu arum has passed away. keempat wanita itu diambil lewat tengah malam. dalam truk yang tertutup, derumnya menembusi senyap jam-malam menuju ke timur kota….. tak ada yang bertanya-tanya. mereka dijajar di mulut jurang. gemeresak air terjun itu dekat benar kedengaran di bawah kaki. beku gulita malam, teriakan yang tak terpahamkan, dan dor! dor! dor! (tinuk, 2011: 220-221). from the reading of the novel candik ala 1965 and the interview with tinuk, it can be concluded that the character of nik and tinuk are the figures who cannot be separated from the dark trauma against the 1965 dark incident in indonesia. the trauma was the cruelty of the new order government against her closest people, namely her brother, her mother's friend, and other artist groups. this trauma in her childhood is so attached to her that she carried it until her adulthood and migrated to america. the identity depicted here is the political identity of indonesian migrants in america to see the political condition of the nation. she places herself on the side of the victims who are traumatized by the violence of the suharto regime that could be voiced when the author becomes a migrant in america. this work serves as a defensive and critical form towards the violence and oppression by the new order government to its political opponents, as well as to the innocent people. sofie dewayani in mantra maira sofie dewayani studied at itb. now she decides to abandon all that she had learned and moves on to the field of literature and humanities by pursuing a doctorate program in literacy education at the university of illinois, usa. she also identifies herself as the author of children's books and children's literature researcher (media indonesia, 23 november 2015). mantra maira was published in 2010 by jalasutra publisher. this work is a short story anthology consisting of 11 works that have previously been published in tempo newspaper, femina magazine, and republika newspaper. these eleven short stories are divided into 3 sub-sections, namely "teks dan internalisasi individu" consisting of 4 short stories, "modernitas dan identitas" consisting of 4 short stories, and "kelas dan literasi" consisting of 3 short stories. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 143 because of the sub-sections that seem like a scientific paper that anwar holid (2010) suggests that the look of this anthology is serious. according to him, the seriousness has started from the preface of the book which is written by prof. faruk h. entitled "keluar dari tulisan: sebuah ujicoba untuk sastra pascaaksara". using the saussurean approach, faruk argues that the short stories in this mantra maia clash the writing with the world of experience, so that it seems to simply reproduce the old tension, the tension between language and the world of experience (p. 11). sofie dewayanti herself also gives an introduction to her short story anthology entitled "catatan kecil: tentang aksara dan kita". based on the thoughts of jack goody, walter j. ong, shirley brice heath, both faruk and sofie wrap this eleven short stories with a literacy theme. of the eleven short stories in this anthology, three short stories tell the story of indonesian migrant women living in the united states for various conditions and reasons. the women figures migrated to the united states for continuing their studies and some were working as illegal laborers. this new world makes them experience the tension between the idealism of adaptability and the failure of adaptation. the tension between success and failure in adapting to the world around them, is the most prominent theme in this anthology work, until it produces psychological problems for the characters in the stories. the first short story of mantra maira, is about an indo teenage girl named maira who has difficulty in facing her mother (indonesian migrant). maira is more familiar with english than indonesian. she does not know who her father is, while she watches robbie, his mother's boyfriend, living in the same house with her. during a big fight before robbie leaves home, her mom demands robbie to marry her. however, "robbie says, her mother just pretends to love her. that her mother only wants a fake marriage for getting the american citizenship document" (dewayani, 2010, p.5). when ninin, her grandmother, comes from indonesia, maira asks her mother to make up a story that robbie is her late father and that her mother works as a secretary in a law firm, not as a cashier at a chinese restaurant (a job that in this context is illegal for migrants). this is a portrait of the failure of the migrants to adapt to their new world. the short story of "jalan bata" tells the character of i, alia, who befriends lateef, a man who was born and grew up in california. this man makes alia's heart beat fast. although actually alia is already married and her husband lives in jakarta. lateef's parents from pakistan come to america as doctoral students. other things about lateef are known by alia via internet. when talking of a novel for multicultural literature class assignment, lateef cynically comments "typical female novel ... of course i hope that the multicultural turbulence after the nine eleven tragedy is raised more. but, of course ali wants to talk about personal upheaval in women migrants. cultural conflict has always been a universal theme" (dewayani, 2010, p.36). a month passes, and lateef moves to california without telling her. alia only knows about lateef's moving through lateef's blog. this condition describes america as a place where people from different countries meet, get acquainted easily, and go easily as well. there is no personal closeness. at the same time, there is a cynical representation of a male from pakistan to the issue of female migrants. the short story of "dialog dua nama" (dewayani, 2010, pp.61-74) raises the story of sri prihatini, a middle-aged javanese woman who changes her name ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 144 to fabiana martinez. she changes her age and actualizes herself as a hispanic descendant to be able to easily work as a shopkeeper in america to support the family. she falls in love with a middle-aged man who becomes a supplier in her shop. there is a dialogue in her heart between herself as sri prihatini and herself as fabiana martinez. the short story of "ketika tuhan berjubah putih" (dewayani, 2010, pp.7580) begins with a background picture as follows. "our mosque is like a grim cave that is estranged from the excitement of christmas cheerfulness. only in this mosque are people running quickly to save their bodies from the bite of cold naughty wind. the mosque is an occasional shelter, while the shops and malls are out there in colorful decorations." then, it is continued by the story of a muslim family in america that is tempted to buy sale goods at christmas. the mother wants a purple coat and the husband wants a camera. while the wishes of the children are muffled with the advice, "we are not celebrating christmas". the child mumbles, why do muslims not have santa claus in red who always smiles and gives presents? why do muslims have a god dressed in white? during the trip to the store, their car stalls. the money which is planned to buy the coat and the camera is eventually used to repair the car. in the midst of panic repairing the car, the youngest child goes missing. she is reunited to her parents by a native iraqi mosque imam in white cloak. the boy says that he has been helped by the god in white cloak. through that event, this muslim family has regained their original identity. the identity depicted in these short stories is the tension of american migrants in facing a new world. this new world makes them experience the tension between the idealism of the success in adaptation and the failure of adaptation. dian nugraheni in this is america, beibeh dian nugraheni was born in purworejo, central java, december 7, 1969. after finishing her study at the faculty of law of gadjah mada university in 1994, she worked for several companies in jakarta. she also lived for two years in purwokerto before leaving for america. she left with her two daughters to america for winning the green card from the indonesian embassy following her husband who lived there first. not long after living in america, she got divorced from her husband. because of her move in america with this green card, she has the facilities to be an official resident and can work legally. however, she does not have the right to vote in the general election. in order to survive, she financed her two children by working as an employee at one of the sandwich stores in the university of george washington (washington dc, us) complex. she currently lives in virginia, about 15 minutes from washington dc. reading this is america, beibeh which was published in 2013 by kompas publisher, is like reading the memories of n.h. dini’s padang ilalang di belakang rumah. the difference is that dian's book contains a collection of short memorable stories. dian originally wrote these stories on her facebook account, telling the stories of dian's memories of her daily life in a new environment with her two children, in america. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 145 the collection of writings in the book this is america, beibeh is divided into 6 chapters and each chapter consists of several writings as follows: (1) ge supermarket, consisting of 7 writings, (2) deli, kedai sanwich, consisting of 6 writings, (3) orang amerika, consisting of 10 writings, (4) alam amerika, consisting of 5 writings, (5) budaya amerika, consisting of 11 writings, and (6) sekolah di amerika, consisting of 11 writings. the division of the chapters is based on dian nugraheni's experiences in relation to those matters. the first writing in this book, entitled 'betapa' begins with a clear phrase indicating the beginning of dian's life as a migrant in america, "this is the art of living in a foreign country, all things are new, all things are different, we always have to learn and adapt" (nugraheni, 2013, p.3). that positive expression colors dian's following writings. eventhough adapting and surviving in america is difficult and hard, dian is able to live it well using her experiences in indonesia and the javanese values embedded in her life. there are features in dian's writings that construct a migrant identity in this work, (1) adaptation as a migrant viewed from a positive point of view (2) comparing her experience in america using her life experience in indonesia (java), (3) america is a good country, (4) her love of indonesia and indonesian language, and (5) education in america is more humane and fun. quite often, dian always compares her past experiences in a humorous way. when she was assigned as a cashier at the deli sandwich shop at the university of washington, she initially had a hard time getting to know american coins. si pemilik menjawab dengan sangat tenang. “dalam dua minggu, kamu akan terbiasa dan hafal luar kepala harga-harga barang di sini…” aku sama sekali tidak percaya. memang butir-butir pancasila yang segitu-gitunya saja jumlah butirnya. itu saja susahnya minta ampun untuk menghafalnya, apalagi barang-barang kecil sebanyak ini…? sekarang masalahnya aku tak kenal mata uang amerika yang recehan, penny (satu sen), nickel (lima sen), dime (10 sen). repotya lagi, mesin kasirnya kuno, kemampuan si mesin hitung ini cuma menjumlah, tak ada item bayar dengan uang berapa, kembaliannya berapa. (nugraheni, 2013, p.39). positively, the note ends with "it's been the fourth week i work as a cashier. it's getting better and running well.... okay my friends, let's keep the spirit. do not be afraid to try." (nugraheni 2013, p.41) likewise, when she has to first adapt to become a sandwich maker in a small kitchen in deli outlets, the following is her expression: dapur ala amerika tentu sangat asing bagiku, berbagai macam daging, dressing (saus), keju, roti, dan semua bahan makanan yang sangat banyak jumlahnya itu, masing-masing punya namanya sendiri, dan harus dicocokkan dengan jenis sandwich yang dipesan. seminggu pertama, pastilah masih banyak trunak-trunuk, bingung… (nugraheni, 2013, pp.68-69). with a positive tone, she ends her writings by the words, "ha ha ha, wherever it is, life is full of color ... so even though i'm in the kitchen which is narrow and hot, i always want to be happy" (nugraheni, 2013, p.74). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 146 by the time she had to adapt to the seasons in america, she welcomed them well even though dian's anxiety was also depicted. she illustrated that in america there are many channels or bureaus explaining about the weather in a single day or even in a week. thus, americans will prepare well when going out of the house. however, she was very anxious to keep protecting her two children, when strong winds and rain hit her apartment until the tree in front of her apartment collapsed. she was very happy and comfortable to enjoy the winter with the snow falling and spring that displays many flowers. like any migrant anywhere, there is an attempt to always compare the experiences she encounters in america with the experiences she has experienced in indonesia. when she served as a cashier with the consequences of memorizing rapidly the shards of american money, she compared it with her difficulty in memorizing the pancasila items. when dian encounters the process of making sandwiches every day, she compares it with her experience of buying gudeg when she studied in yogyakarta. according to her, sandwiches and gudeg are both mixed. gudeg was mixed by the seller with bare hands while taking the chicken claws, tempe, tofu, vegetable jackfruit, etc. the sandwich maker tucks vegetables, cuts of meat by hands that are coated with rubber gloves by the maker. when migrant children start studying in america, they undergo the "high intensive language training" program. after about three months, they are tested and if they pass, they can directly study together with other children. this is very different from that in indonesia; according to dian ... "i imagine in indonesia which in fact has a lot of other regional languages, this regional language problem is often a scourge for the children themselves as well as their parents. they do not get the new regional language with an intensive program, but still have to follow the test and even the examination. (nugraheni, 2013, pp.265-267). the characteristics of migrants' identity are her positive views of america. according to dian, human rights are highly respected in america. this is evident from the school appeal letter to the parents of the students. there is no impression of coercion, it seems to be an appreciation of the difference of the nation. education in america is very good; this is seen through (1) attention to the importance of respecting parents and teachers, (2) the us government acts that education is the right of all children in the world so that they free all the children education in public schools for all nations, (3) curriculum by using appropriate english learning methods and techniques that are easy for migrant children, (4) develops and greatly appreciates children expression, (5) there is a special training for teenage girls. however, other than her admiration for america, this text describes the love of migrants to the nation and their homeland, indonesia. through the writing entitled "berbahasa", dian's effort to keep talking using the indonesian language with her children when at home can be seen. though her youngest son often feels it is difficult to understand the meaning of his mother's words. (nugraheni, 2013, pp.191-195). through the writing entitled "sebuah surat untuk anak-anakku", the full love of the homeland is reflected. the letter was written during the anniversary of the indonesia's independence on august 17, 1945. "remember your nation, striving to uphold the dignity of the indonesian people. do not despair when you hear bad news about indonesia. please pray for blessing so that ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 147 the children of indonesia in america, smoothly carry the task of the nation to raise the red and white flag (nugraheni 2013, pp.196-198). likewise, through the writing entitled "pentas angklung kolosal di washington", the love of the national anthem of indonesia raya is reflected (nugraheni, 2013, pp.207-213). the writing ends with "tears are unbearable when i put my right hand on the left chest, following, voicing the song of indonesia raya .... whatever, my indonesia, you are mine, and i am yours." this book also illustrated the negative things about living in america, that is the existence of homeless people who live in the city park, the forecasters on the roadside, the people asking for money by lying, the people making money by forecasting, and the condition of the nature that in many ways is not friendly, that is often in the form of rain accompanied by lightning and wind and hot air but humid so that it feels like living in a sauna. interestingly, dian can accept the negative things the way she is, she anticipates them with pleasure and with carefree attitude. even for things that were initially judged negatively, dian was able to take the lesson, and she finally followed that attitude and made it an identity. this is seen in the writing "bule itu pelit". at first she judged that americans were stingy because they were not ashamed to pick up coins that fell nearby, which did not belong to them; they also never miss a change of money that might only be two penny be it famous lawyers, soldiers, or even professors; americans are diligent in picking up shopping vouchers; young people who are dating will pay for their own snacks. finally, after a long time in america, she concluded that the attitude is a picture of a careful, meticulous and appreciation of money, no matter how small. this is because people in america have to work hard to earn money. then, dian realized that she also ended up following the "stingy" behavior of the americans. conclusion the studies on indonesian-diaspora literature written by indonesian immigrants in america in the 2010s include only a girl: menantang phoenix by lian gouw, candik ala 1965 by tinuk r. yampolsky, mantra maia by sofie dewayani, and this is america, beibeh by dian nugraheni. based on the genre, the literary works consists of firstly the history novel of only a girl: menantang phoenix and candik ala 1965. these two diaspora novels raise the issue of history in indonesia. the second is short story genre, which is mantra maia that talks about the indonesian migrants’ problems in america. the third is a memory story, which is this is america, beibeh, that also tells about the indonesian migrants’ story in america. in the form of a table, the american-diaspora literature genre is described as follows. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 148 tabel 1: american-diaspora literature genre fiction/ non-fiction type title of work problems of the story fiction history novel only a girl: menantang phoenix historical events in indonesia candik ala 1965 short story mantra maia indonesian migrants in america non-fiction memory story this is america, beibeh the identity constructed in indonesian diaspora literature written by indonesian migrants in america is as follows. the history novel only a girl: menantang phoenix by lian gouw reveals chinese identity in their migration in indonesia which includes social and cultural identity, politics, economy, and women. the first three identities are closely related to the dutch political policy to the privileged status of chinese citizens who place their positions under the dutch and above the natives. the overall identity of the chinese leads to one identity, namely migration and avoidance of racial issues. the first to third generation of chinese in indonesia is the result of chinese migration to indonesia; they form a new culture, which is the diaspora culture. the third generation in indonesia migrated again to the netherlands and america. the main figures in this generation choose to migrate to america because there are fewer racial issues. this is linear with the author's choice, lian gouw, who also migrated to america in 1962. in addition, in this work, there are two layers of diaspora, which are the identity of chinese diaspora in indonesia written by the indonesian diaspora in america. history novel candik ala 1965 by tinuk r. yampolsky reveals the political identity of indonesian migrants in america to see the political condition of the nation. this politics puts itself on the side of the victims who were traumatized by the violence of the suharto regime that can be voiced when the author is in america. this work serves as a defensive and critical form towards violence and oppression by the new order government to its political opponents, as well as to the innocent people. sofie dewayani's mantra maia short story collection reveals a new world (america) identity that makes the migrants experience a tense between the idealism of successful adaptation and the failure of adaptation. this tension of success and failure produces a psychological problem for indonesian migrants in america. the memory stories in this is america, beibeh by dian nugraheni reveals the identity of indonesian migrants in america as follows: (1) adaptation as migrants viewed from a positive point of view (2) comparing migrant experiences in america based on the experience in indonesia (java), (3) america is a good nation, (4) love of indonesia and indonesian language, and (5) education in america is more humane and fun. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 149 references aji, g. & sasmita, f. 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(1984). dilema minoritas tionghoa. jakarta: grafiti press. https://badaruddinamir.wordpress.com/2009/10/12 http://halamanganjil.blogspot.com/2010/06/diaspora-orang-indonesia-di ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 150 suryadinata, l.(1985). politik tionghoa peranakan di jawa. jakarta: pustaka sinar harapan. vasanty, p. (1988). manusia dan kebudayaan di indonesia (koentjaraningrat, ed.). jakarta: djambatan. weedon, c. (2004). identity and culture. new york: open university press. widjajanti, d. (2011). only a girl: menantang phoenix. bijdragen tot de tall, land, en volkenkunde, 167(1), 106-108. wijayanti, d. & mirahayuni, n.k. (2014). an analysis of translation strategies for non-equivalence used in lian gouw’s novel only a girl. parafrase, 14(1), 31-37. yu-te, k. (n.d). peranakan self as a diasporic palimpset: shirley geok-lin lim torn between diaspora and nostalgia. retrieved from http//:zephyr.edu.tw../diaspora%2002 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 63-70 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 63 current trend in naming babies in javanese community carla sih prabandari sanata dharma university carla@dosen.usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010107 received 9 may 2016; revised 28 march 2017; accepted 27 july 2017 abstract the process of naming newborn babies is inseparable from the culture where they belong. among javanese people, there is a change of trends in naming babies. as western, noble, and religion associated names, such as amelia, gupita, arsyad, gain popularity, modest and old-fashioned names, such as tugino and pariyem disappear. this paper discusses the trend in the naming of babies in javanese community at the present time. three theories are employed in the analysis. i will apply saussurean semiology and bathesian semiology and try to relate them to stuart hall's theory of identity. as a name is just an element of cultural identities, changing trends in naming in javanese culture does not entirely change their identity as javanese people. keywords: naming tradition, javanese community, identity introduction naming a baby is a unique culural phenomenon in the history of humankind. zwebner, sellier, rosenfeld, goldenberg & mayo (2017, p 550) say that “we are subject to social structuring from the minute we are born, not only by our gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, but also by the simple choice that others make in giving us our name.” it suggests that naming processes cannot be separated from one’s culture. this is in line with what pina-cabral (2008, p. 5) say that naming processes carry with them implications concerning what is a person and how he or she is placed in the world. further, he believes that the way a person is socially constructed to some extent depends on the way the person is named. usually, the name of a baby can be derived from many inspirations. “instead of personal criteria, specific rules for naming a child are more prevalent in, for example, asian societies” (watzlawik, pizarroso, guimarães, doria, han, ma & jung, 2012, p. 1164). such rules may be based on events that happened before or after the baby is born, the totems and families trees, or the date and time of birth of the baby. alternatively, if a name of a baby arouses spontaneously in mind, still, it needs a thoughtful consideration to give meaning to that name. proper names or first name can refer to many things, such as public figures, heroes or heroines, religious figures, name of a place, name of a time (calendar), mailto:carla@dosen.usd.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 63-70 64 clan, characteristics of the nature (weather, climate), characteristics of animals (showing strength, bravery), and so on. in this paper, i will discuss the naming of babies in javanese community at the present time. three theories are employed in the analysis. i will apply saussurean semiology and bathesian semiology and try to relate them to stuart hall's theory of identity. i refer javanese community to those who were born in the specific areas of java, namely yogyakarta province. the people in this area are heterogeneous; they come from various places, various ethnic, and they hold various religions and faith. they live in cities, suburban, and rural areas. discussion nowadays, there is a change of trend in naming babies. if we pay a visit to newly born babies in hospitals around the yogyakarta, we will rarely find babies under the names of tukinem, miyatun, partini, sutiyem, paijo, martorejo, tugino, pardimin, and the likes. instead, on the list of the babies' names, we will read yenny, merry, tamara, diska, amelia, reysha, beny, dino, sony and other similar names; or other kinds of name such as muhammad, arsyad, ikhsanuddin, afifah, choiriyah, abdullah, al ma'ruf, salsabilla, siska, josef, johana, maria, nikolas and the likes. in the rural area of panggang, district of gunung kidul, there is a young couple named supriyatno mujimin and wartinem. last year, they had a baby and named her amelia ayu lestari. another couple in the rural area in ngaglik, sleman district, named their baby dicky raharja, whose faher’s name is sukiyono. another family in the same area, whose father's name is tugino warto sentono and whose mother's name sukinem binti sumodirejo, have three sons named denny cahyono, deddy wijaya, and benny priyadi. it is not wrong, of course, to name their baby in such way. however, the question is why they should give names like amelia, dicky, deny, deddy and benny. why do they leave the old-fashioned names? names: first names, surnames, middle names and nicknames there are some terms related to names, i.e. first names, surnames, middle names, and nicknames. in western cultures, a person’s name usually consists of two parts or two words. the first word of the name is called the first name,or given name, or forename; and the second element is the surname, or family name. surnames refer to the father’s name in patriarchal culture. surnames often carry “impressions of ethnicity, personality, intelligence, and physical attractiveness” (kasof, 1993: 151). sociolinguistically, the use of first name sociolinguistically signals informal and intimate relationship, showing high solidarity. in contrast, the use of last name indicates formal relation and low solidarity. in some cases, a married woman can still use her father’s name before the husband’s name. in such cases, the father’s name becomes the middle name, and her husband’s name becomes her surname. sometimes, a person is called by his or her nickname to show affection, ridicule, or familiarity. a nickname is a substitute for or an addtion to the proper name of a familiar person, place, or thing, for affection. naming in javanese tradition the naming system above – the use of first name and surname – does not apply in javanese culture. even though in majority, javanese people’s names consist of two words, they do not follow the western system. in javanese, the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 63-70 65 second element of a person’s name does not necessarily refer to the name of the father or the husband for a married woman. thus, names such as sri rahayu, or joko rahmanto are just given names. however, the use of nicknames among the javanese are quite common, and still they are only used to show high solidarity. boulin and weeks (2005, p. 17) argue that “different names can be used to emphasize different aspects of personality, degrees of warmth, and technical competence.” thus, calling someone by his nickname gepeng, which means very skinny, for example, is only acceptable when we know the person very well, and the context is informal and intimate. so far, there has not been any standard for naming babies in javanese tradition. nevertheless, it has commonly been advised that in naming a baby, we should consider some aspects concerning the situation and the condition of the baby and of the life of the parents. one of the parents’s considerations in choosing first names for their newborns is the popularity. parents tend to avoid using popular names due to overexposure (hargreaves, colman and sluckin, 1983). in general, the basic considerations in giving a name to the baby are, among others: a. the sex of the baby (gender, biological aspect); b. what, how, where, and when the baby was born; c. the physical aspect of the baby's body d. the hope for the baby's future; and e. the family background these five aspects are not the standard ones but they are commonly used by javanese people in naming babies. sex or biological aspect is of course the primary consideration in naming a baby because there is a division of names based on the sexual properties. the name bagus, for instance, is given to a baby boy who has handsome face (physical aspect); or he is expected to behave manly. if the baby is a baby girl, we can use the name ayu, which means beautiful. it is hardly possible to give a first name like suharto to a baby girl since the last vowel in the last syllable '-to' refers to males. instead, we can give the baby girl a name like suharti because the last syllable '-ti' is for females. there many other signs in naming babies based on these sexual properties. the examples below are the last sounds or syllables of names which usually indicate the sex. table 1: name ending in javanese culture male female -a. -o, -in, -an, -min, -man -wo, -wa, -wan -i, -ah, -inah, -nah, -yah, -em, -inem, -yah, -wati the list above is only meant to show the example of the division of names. there are other techniques to differentiate between baby girls and boys such as bambang-endang, dimasajeng, bagus-ayu. of course, there many neutral names in javanese tradition such as chandra, puspa, kusuma, sri, praba, and so on. however, these neutral names need to be combined with a gender specific name endings to clarify whether the baby is a girl or a boy. hence, we can find the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 63-70 66 names prabawati (female) prabawa (male), kusumaningrum (female) – kusumanto (male), sriyati (female) sriyono (male) etc. gender property is a very important aspect in naming a baby. there are other considerations for naming a baby which are all used in accordance with the importance. for example, if the parents want to show that the baby girl was born in the fasting month of ramadhan, they can use, for example, ramadhani. if they want to use the family name, they can put it after the first name. categorization of names actually, we can categorize javanese baby names into four groups. the first group belongs to what the so-called old-fashioned villagers (javanese: ndeso) which refer to babies who were born in the rural areas. this can be found in the beginning of this paper (see paragraph 2), which includes tukiyem, miyatun, etc. the second group is the ones from the noble family (educated or aristocratic) such as danutirto, margayasa, gupita, harjuna, nirmala, kusumo, kesawa, brata, narayana, and many others. the third group belongs to the 'new-fashioned' or modern ones such as amelia, denny, etc. the fourth group is the names originated from the religious figures; whether they are moslems or christians (also in paragraph 2 page 1), which includes muhammad, arsyad, afifah, siska, josef, etc. this categorization is not the standard one but it can show that there are different types of baby names in javanese community. it is important to make this categorization since we will discuss which (not all) names are not used by the parents nowadays. however, if we observe the real condition and situation of the present javanese community, we rarely find parents who call their children who might be below ten years of age by names such as ponimin, miyatun, ponijan, etc. we hardly hear parents shouting, “min, come here!" or, "tun, help your mother." the same condition will be found if we are in an elementary school. those kinds of names are hardly found in the class attendance list. it is very likely, when we are living in a densely-populated residence that we hear somebody calling, "denny, come into the house!" or, "alsa, finish your work!" these kinds of name are now easily found in javanese community. new generation parents now do not give their babies names which are considered 'old-fashioned'. they prefer to use other kinds of name. is that modern or... ? in many places where different cultures come into contact, the naming tradition may change. an obvious example can be found in hong kong, where the eastern hierarchical culture meets the western egalitarian culture. many chinese hongkongers use english names along with their chinese names (watzlawik et al., 2012). in macau, “it is common for portuguese people to have a chinese name and for chinese people to have a portuguese or english first name” (pina-cabral & lourenço, 1994, p. 126). compared to the other ethnic group in indonesia, for example balinese or batak, javanese parents are not proud anymore to use typical javanese names such as tugino, painah, wakijan, tuminem, etc. unlike the javanese, people of bali or batak still use their typical names. in bali, we still hear the names kadek, wayan, made, etc. or in batak, we can still hear many people call tobing, butet, poltak, etc. the reason why the javanese parents leave those names is simply that ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 63-70 67 they are old-fashioned, not modern as they live in the modern world. they feel embarrassed to give such names to their children whilst at the same time there are still many other new-fashioned names. what is in a name! a name is not simply a name. it has a meaning. a name is not just a word of a language. a name, in saussure's semiology, is a sign. paijo signifies something or it refers exactly to a person; and so do the other names, sumiyatun, tukijan, sarjimin, painah, etc., refer to certain people who belong to certain group of a culture, namely javanese community. if we mention pariyem, in our mind we have made an object of a javanese woman. it might include the description of how she looks like, what kind of dress she wears, how tall she is, how she speak, and so forth. using the signification model proposed by saussure (easthope & mcgowan, 1992, p. 9), we can describe it into the diagram below. figure 1: personal name in saussure’s semiology the relation between a personal name, pariyem, and a javanese woman (it can be a pictorial object) creates the sign of a name. in other words, we can also use many diagrams to show that certain words such as paijo, sukinem, tugimin, wakijan, etc refer to javanese persons, in many diagram because every name is a signification of different objects. however, we can categorize them into a value that is javanese name. although the diagram concerns with the language, saussure said, it can also show the other social fact (or the culture) of certain community, which is different form one community to another. (easthope & mcgowan, 1992, p. 68; see also lehtonen, 2000, p. 36). the signification of pariyem, paijo, sukinem, etc. is not the representation of the facts; they construct the facts, as the language does. thus, name contains a social fact that is about person with his or her attributes. a name becomes an identity. name as a myth saussure, by creating a diagram of signification or semiological system, has shown how a word of language could produce the social fact. yet, he just discussed it in terms of the language plane. this level is called the linguistic semiology. barthes develops this concept of signification and extends it to the plane of myth in the semiological system. in barthes' semiology, there are two levels of signification: the first is the language and the second is the myth itself. myth, according to rolland barthes (1975), is a type of speech. it exists in every culture in the forms oral speech. it consists of modes writing of or representation. (easthope & mcgowan, 1992, p. 15). therefore, barthesian semiology is called cultural semiology. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 63-70 68 the development of the signification is shown in the diagram below. the result of the signification (the correlation between the signifier and the signified) in the first level is considered as the signifier of the second level that is the level of myth. this signifier, then, is used to signify something (the signified of the second level). the result of signification in the second level is called the second sign. the following diagram explains barthes' semiology, which is based on saussure's semiology. figure 2: barthes’ semiology and saussure’s semiology in elements of semiology (1967, p. 89), barthes, borrowing hjemselv's terminology, called the first level of semiological system (language plane) the denotation system and the second level (the myth level) the connotation system. this clarification, therefore, can help us understand and use barthes's semiological system. as in the case of pariyem in saussure's model of signification, it signifies a name or an identity of a javanese woman. this signification – the identity – becomes the signifier in the second level of the connotation system. it signifies the javanese people. applying it into the diagram of barthes's semilogical system, we find the correlation between the identity and the javanese community, which means the identity of the javanese. 1. signifier 2. signified pariyem personal (proper name) object of a javanese woman 3. s i g n javanese people name = identity i. signifier ii. signified iii. sign pariyem is the identity of javanese people language plane / dennotation system myth plane / connotation system figure 3: pariyem in barthes's semilogical system from the result of signification in the myth planes, we can differentiate this identity from the identity of other community, such as those of balinese and batak. we can also make the differentiation between that identities – being an old-fashioned name – with those of the new-fashioned or modern name. the signification process using the connotation system has created the myth, that pariyem, wakijan, tukiran, sutinah, etc. are the identities of javanese people, especially those who lived in the past generation in the rural areas. this myth has 1. signifier 2. signified 3. s i g n i. signifier ii. signified iii. sign language plane / dennotation system myth plane / connotation system ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 63-70 69 existed in the area of yogyakarta since a long time ago. the parents in this area gave their babies such names. they thought that these were common names, which differentiated their community from others. losing the cultural identity parents, including javanese parents, still believe that a name given to a child is a prayer. it carries expectation from the parents and a wish about the child’s future. as as also stated by windt-val, (2012, p. 273) that “the parents’ choice of name for their child will have an influence on the development of the personality of the child.” let's return to the question, "why do they leave the oldfashioned names?" the new generation of parents is likely to say that those names, such as paijo, waginem, and so on, are out of date. if they gave such names to their babies, they would feel embarrassed. they think that their neighbours would stigmatize their children as traditional or old-fashioned boys or girls (javanese: ndeso). they believe that using religious and modern names would prevent them from this stigmatization. moreover, they are not worried about losing their identity. we have discussed that a name produces an identity of person. furthermore, in the myth system, we have also signified that the name represents the cultural identity, in this case, the javanese people. talking about identity, we cannot separate it from the discussion of a discourse. stuart hall (1996) says that identities are constructed through, not outside, difference; it is only through the relation to the other. identities are not natural possessions; they are constructed in a social discourse in order to emphasize the differences among the members. in javanese community, as we have discussed in the early sections, there are groups of names. each of them shows their own characteristics: the old-fashioned, the noble, the religious, and the modern ones. all of them construct different identities among the javanese people. however, the old-fashioned ones raise the problem among the javanese people. many of them, now, do not want to use them. they think that those names construct traditional values, not modern and not noble or not religius. using the names, such as merry, tamara, diska, amelia, reysha, beny, dino, sony and the likes, will construct modern values. these names are not of the javanese identities; they are assumed as the names of metropolitan citizens. giving the babies names like muhammad, arsyad, ikhsanuddin, afifah, choiriyah, abdullah, al ma'ruf, salsabilla, siska, josef, johana, maria, nikolas, etc., will construct religious values. if they give such kinds of name to their babies, people will think that they and their children hold the faith to god, being religious persons. giving the names such as danutirto, margayasa, gupita, harjuna, nirmala, kusumo, kesawa, to the babies will construct the noble values. people will think that children with this kind of names come from the respectable families. proper name is a discourse, and so is cultural identity. name is just one part of the cultural identities. there are many other things that show cultural identities such as fashions, housings, rites, traditions, and so on. however, they are all constructed in a discourse. leaving the old-fashioned names out of the new generation does not mean that they lose their cultural identities. it just constructs new discourse of identity. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 63-70 70 conclusion language is not the representation of social facts but it produces social fact. this can be shown by using saussurean semiology, which is the basis for all significations of social and cultural phenomena. however, it refers mainly to the linguistic aspect; it denotes things or persons. the correlation between the signifier and the signified is positive and explicit. hence, the result of signification is just one meaning. using saussure's semiological system, barthes has expanded this kind of signification. he added another order of signification so that we can find two levels of signification: first in the level of language and the other in the level of myth. the first one is the denotation system and the other is the connotation system. barthes's semiological system has more tools to analyze cultural and social phenomena that are the myth, the result of signification process. in this myth, the correlation between the signifier and the signified can be both negative and positive, and usually it is implicit. since a name is just an element of cultural identities, the change of trend in naming children in javanese community, therefore, does not entirely change the javanese people identities. references barthes, r. (1967). elements of semiolog. (annette lavers & colin smith, trans.). new york: hill and wang. bolin, a. u. & weeks, n. (2005). the effects of first name stereotypes on ratings of job applicants: is there a difference between bill and william? american journal of psychological research, 1(1), 11-20. easthope, a. & mcgowan, k. (eds.). (1992). a critical and cultural theory reader. toronto: university of toronto press. hall, s. (ed.). (1996). questions of cultural identity. london: sage publications. hargreaves, d.j., colman, a.m. and sluckin, w. (1983). the attractiveness of names. human relations, 36(4), 393-402. kasof, j. (1993) sex bias in the naming of stimulus persons. psychological bulletin, 113(1), 140-163. lehtonen, m. (2000). cultural analysis of texts. london: sage publications. pina-cabral, j. (2008). what's in a name: personal identity and linguistic diversity in a cosmopolitan world. paper presented at the symposium on multilingualism and intercultural dialogue in globalization, new delhi. watzlawik, m., pizarroso, n., guimarães, d.s., doria, n.g., han, m., ma, c. & jung, a.j. (2012). proceedings of the 10th world congress of iass: first names as signs of personal identity: an intercultural comparison. proceedings of the 10th world congress of iass. (pp. 1159-1176). windt-val, b. (2012). personal names and identity in literary contexts: names and identities. oslo studies in language 4(2), 273–284. zwebner, y., sellier, a., rosenfeld, n., goldenberg , j. & mayo, r. (2017). we look like our names: the manifestation of name stereotypes in facial appearance. journal of personality and social psychology, 112(4), 527– 554. doi: 10.1037/pspa0000076 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 15-27 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 15 social actor representation of indonesian migrant workers’ executions in saudi arabia *gina nanda utama1, rosaria mita amalia2 and susi yuliawati3 padjadjaran university, indonesia ginananda07@gmail.com, amelsasing@gmail.com, susi.yuliawati@unpad.ac.id *correspondence: ginananda07@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i1.2170 received 19 october 2019; accepted 8 august 2020 abstract this study aims to describe how the middle east media represent the indonesian government and the executed indonesian migrant workers in the case of indonesian migrant workers’ executions in saudi arabia. the data are analyzed through critical discourse analysis focuses on the representation of social actors by van leeuwen (2008). this theory examines how the social actors are presented or excluded in the representation. in addition, the analysis of this study is also supported by the lexical analysis based on richardson’s theory (2007) of analyzing news text: level of analysis. this study uses descriptive analysis method since the data are analyzed based on the indicators, categories or strategies in the theories which are used to analyze the data. this study found that the indonesian government is represented as the party who has done many efforts to save indonesian migrant workers from the executions abroad but on the other side, indonesian government is also represented as hypocritical party since middle east media nominate the indonesian government as the party that still implement the death penalty. generally, the lexical analysis show that the executed indonesian migrant workers are represented as the cruel killers although several media present another information which show their reasons to do the crimes such as self-defense and suffering mental-illness. keyword: representation, media, discourse, execution, indonesian workers introduction the text producers (media) have great power to influence the audiences for having the similar argument or attitude with them through language as their main instrument. it is in line with van dijk (1995) who describes that the power of media is symbolic and persuasive so that it enables the text producers to influence the audiences’ mind and thought. the power of media especially news articles to influence the readers is caused by its one-sided communicative event. consequently, it gives them great power and control to serve the news (phenomenon) or to shape particular depiction of the actors involved based on their interest and their own point of view. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 15-27 16 this power has encouraged many researchers to analyze how the media represent the actors involved in particular cases since it also enables the media to lead the audiences to have the similar depiction of actors with them. since this study focuses on how the media represent the migrant workers’ cases, there are several researchers who have investigated how the media represent the migrant workers. first, citraresmana et.al (2018) found that the indonesian migrant workers are represented as the weak party or the victim, meanwhile the indonesian government is represented negatively in inference level. second, suganda et.al (2006) found that indonesian and malaysian daily newspapers represent the female indonesian migrant workers as marginal, powerless, uneducated, poor, stupid etc. meanwhile the government is frequently excluded in the representation. in addition, razzaq (2012), silveira (2015), castello (2015) and cheng (2016) revealed that the media represent the migrant workers as the threat to social security of the house countries. in this study, the writers interested in investigating how the middle east media (as the house countries of indonesian migrant workers) represent the indonesian migrant workers who have been executed in saudi arabia since there are many countries against the death penalty. moreover, the indonesian government under president joko widodo has done the executions although at the same time the indonesian government tried very hard to save the indonesian migrant workers from death penalty abroad. this study uses the representation of social actors framework from van leeuwen (2008), analyzing news texts: levels of analysis theory from richardson (2007) and the theory of transitivity from halliday and matthiessen (2004). van leeuwen (2008) emphasizes that a single phenomenon/event can be represented into various versions of it. related to this study, the executions of indonesian migrant worker (a phenomenon) can be represented into several versions of representation since it can be influenced by each text producer’s adopted ideology and their interest on this case. therefore, there are many researchers of critical discourse analysis (cda) use this theory to disclose the ideology and power behind the representation of social actors in english discourse. in this study, the writer investigates how the text producers use the sociological categories (analytical tool which is grounded on linguistics) in the representation of social actors framework from van leeuwen (2008) to represent the actors in news report and to disclose the text producers’ goals in representing the social actors (indonesian government and the executed indonesian migrant workers). van leeuwen (2008) describes that exclusion and inclusion are two main sociological categories which can be used to analyze the representation of social actors. exclusion simply means excluding social actors in the representation meanwhile inclusion means presenting the social actor(s) in the representation. exclusion is divided into suppression and backgrounding. suppression is called as radical exclusion since it excludes the social actors and/or their activity so that it does not leave traces in the representation meanwhile backgrounding is considered as the exclusion category which leaves the trace in representation. on the other hand, there are several subcategories of inclusion such as role allocation: activation-passivation, personalization – impersonalization, genericization – specification, indetermination – determination, association – dissociation, differentiation, nomination – categorization, overdetermination, abstraction – objectivation. role allocation describes the roles of social actors in a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 15-27 17 representation which are divided into activation and passivation. activation can be realized by the grammatical participant roles in transitivity structure where the activated social actor is labeled as actor in material process etc. meanwhile, passivation occurs when the social actor being “at the receiving end of it” (van leeuwen, 2008, p.33). personalization or personalizing social actors means representing the social actors as human being which can be realized by using personal/possessive pronouns, proper names or nouns/adjectives which can be categorized to human features. impersonalization is the opposite of personalization which can be realized by abstract noun or concrete nouns (which are not categorized into semantic feature of human). generalization can be realized by: 1) plural without article, 2) singular with definite article, 3) singular with indefinite articles. van leeuwen (2008) states that determination occurs when the social actors' identity is specified. meanwhile, indetermination occurs when the social actors are represented as unspecific or anonym. indetermination enables the text producers to anonymize a social actor. according to van leeuwen (2008), indetermination can be realized by indefinite pronouns such as “somebody”, “someone”, generalized exophoric reference and it can also be aggregated, such as by using, “many believe”, “some say”, etc. association simply means the social actors are represented in groups. association can be realized through circumstances of accompaniment and parataxis. this category focuses on how a social actor is differed from another social actor. van leeuwen (2008) explaines differentiation explicitly distinguished individual social actor or groups of social actors with other similar social actors, creating the difference between “self” and “others”, or between “us” and “them”. van leeuwen (2008) describes nomination occurs when the social actors are represented by highlighting their unique identity. on the contrary, categorization represents the social actors in terms of their common identities and function. van leeuwen (2008) who describes that overdetermination occurs when the text producers represent the social actors who participate in more than one social practice at the same time. van leeuwen (2008) explains that abstraction occurs when the social actors are represented by showing their assigned quality in a representation. the representation of social actors theory is supported by the analyzing news text: levels of analysis theory from richardson (2007). this theory is divided into lexical analysis (words/lexis level) and sentence construction (sentence level). lexical analysis focuses on the text producers’ word selection such as naming and reference (the way social actors are named in the news discourse). therefore, this analysis is very important since it can influence the audiences’/readers’ depiction of social actors which are represented in the news report. for example, the news releases concerning the indonesian migrant worker’s (siti zainab) execution in saudi arabia. when a text producer decides to represent zainab positively, she is referred to ‘ri woman’ in “shock as saudis behead ri woman” or ‘mentally ill indonesian maid’ in “saudi arabia has been criticized worldwide for suddenly executing an indonesian maid believed to have been suffering from a mental illness”. on the other side, when another text producer decides to represent zainab negatively, she is referred to ‘brutal killer housemaid’ in “housemaid who brutally killed the saudi employer put to death” or in “the court also found that she (zainab) had struck al-maroubi on the head with a water heater, poured hot water on her and sprayed insecticide on her face’. last, the writer also uses the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 15-27 18 theory of transitivity from halliday and matthiesen (2004). this theory is used as one of tools to help the writer in classifying the data such as in classifying the role allocation of the social actors etc. moreover, this theory can also be used to disclose the text producers’ point of view and ideology concerning this issue. it is in line with fowler (1991) who explains that the text producers’ choices in transitivity system can reflect the ideology which is shared through language in the news text. in conclusion, the theory of transitivity can also be used to support the representation of social actors theory to disclose the ideology behind the representation of social actors in the case of indonesian migrant workers’ executions in saudi arabia. methodology this study investigates four middle east media (arab news, arabian business, al-jazeera and middle east eye) in representing indonesian government and the executed indonesian migrant workers in saudi arabia from 2015 to 2018. there are six articles which have been published by all the four media related to the executions of indonesian migrant workers in saudi arabia. there are several steps in analyzing the data in this study: 1) identifying the exclusion and inclusion categories in the data by using the representation of social actors theory from van leeuwen (2008); 2) analyzing the lexical choice of every data (exclusion and inclusion) by using the theory of lexical analysis: the choice of meaning of words from richardson (2007); 3) describing how the text producers represent the social actors and also reveal the text producers’ aim to do particular representation based on the analysis of exclusion and inclusion categories and lexical analysis. the research design of this study is qualitative since this study focuses on descriptive data on how the text producers represent indonesian government and the in addition, this study uses descriptive analysis method since the data are analyzed based on the indicators, categories or strategies in the theories which are used to analyze the data. the data were obtained from the websites of each media such as arabnews.com, arabianbusiness.com, aljazeera.com, and themiddleeasteye.com. the followings are the titles of the articles housemaid who brutally killed saudi employer put to death (april 15, 2015), saudi arabia slammed for executing 'mentally ill' maid (april 16, 2015), indonesia angry over sudden execution of second maid in saudi arabia (april 19, 2015), indonesia bans expats working to 21 middle east countries (may 7, 2015), indonesia protests saudi execution of domestic worker (october 31, 2018) and saudi arabia executes indonesian maid who killed man she says assaulted her (november 1, 2018). findings and discussion based on the data in all the articles, the writers classified the realizations which were used by the middle east media to represent executed indonesian migrant workers, indonesian government and saudis government. from all the media, the writer found that most middle east media have used exclusion and inclusion category to represent the social actors. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 15-27 19 the representation of indonesian government the middle east media’s articles tend to present the indonesian government by using inclusion categories instead of exclusion categories. indonesian government is represented as the party that protest and feel disappointed towards the executions of indonesian migrant cases. it can be seen by the use of the following sociological categories: 1. categorization-functionalization category. van leeuwen (2008) describes that categorization in types of functionalization is the representation of social actors which referred to their activity or something they do. in this data, indonesian government is also represented as the activated social actor with the verbs ‘criticize’ and ‘sparked anger’ as can be seen in the following data data 1: president joko widodocat1 criticised the decision on wednesday, saying the governmentcat2 has officially protested to riyadh and demanded better protection of indonesian workers in the country. exmi_alj_31_10_'18 data 2: the execution of tuti tursilawati has sparked anger from the indonesian governmentcat1, with the gulf kingdom implementing the death penalty without prior notice. exmi_mee_01_11_'18 all those data above are categorized as categorization-functionalization category since all the terms which are used to refer to indonesian government refers to particular roles or jobs. for example the noun ‘president’ means ‘the person in charge of a republic’ and the word ‘government’ means ‘the group of people who are responsible for controlling the country or a state’. the use of these jobs and roles in the representation will lead the readers to think that indonesian government is really prioritize and pay very serious attention to this case especially there are a lot of roles and jobs which are mentioned by the middle east media. 2. objectivation. according to van leeuwen (2008) objectivation occurs when the social actors are represented by means of reference to a place or thing which closely relate to person or action. actually there are several types of objectivations, such as spatialization, utterance autonomization, instrumentalization and somatization. but in this data, the writer can only find objectivation-spatialization. van leeuwen (2008) describes that this type is a form of objectivation in which the social actors are represented by means of reference to a place with which closely relate to person or action represented. as realized by the following sociological categories which can be seen in the following data by the verbs ‘angry’ and ‘protest’ data 3: indonesiaobject1 has summoned saudi arabia's ambassador in jakarta to protest against the beheading of siti zainab in the holy city of medina ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 15-27 20 on tuesday, 15 years after she was convicted of stabbing and beating to death her employer, noura al morobei. exmi_arb_16_04_'15 data 4: indonesiaobject1 angry over sudden execution of second maid in saudi arabia exmi_arb_19_04_'15 data 5: indonesiaobject1 protests saudi execution of domestic worker. exmi_alj_31_10_'18 data 6: jakartaobject1 has filed an official protest after saudi arabia executed tuti tursilawati without notifying consular staff. exmi_alj_31_10_'18 from the data above, it can be seen that the indonesian government is represented by using the name of the country ‘indonesia’ and the capital city of the country ‘jakarta’. in addition, the text producers uses the verbs ‘protest’ , ‘angry’ to activate the indonesian government, which means that the indonesian government is represented as the actor/ doer in the representation. according to online oxford advanced learner’s dictionary the verb ‘protest’ means ‘to say or do something that you are disagree of something publicly’ and the adjective ‘angry’ means ‘having strong feelings about something you dislike very much or about unfair situation’. therefore, the data above show that indonesian government is represented as the party who strongly against the death penalty publicly since it is considered as unfair situation. 3. abstraction the following is the data which is realized by using abstraction category data 7: the largest muslim country in the worldabstr1 also is angry over saudi arabia’s recent execution of two indonesian maids, without warning. exmi_arb_07_05_'15 according to van leeuwen (2008) abstraction occurs when the social actors are represented by showing their assigned quality in a representation. in this strategy, arabian business foregrounds indonesian government as ‘the largest muslim country in the world’. the use of this strategy seems to offend saudis government as the center of islam which is criticized by the country which has the largest population of muslim in the world. in terms of lexical analysis, arabian business uses the verb ‘angry’ and ‘without warning’. according to online oxford advanced learner’s dictionary the word ‘angry’ means ‘having strong feelings about something that you dislike very much or about an unfair situation’. meanwhile the noun ‘warning’ means ‘telling or showing somebody that something bad or unpleasant may happen’. therefore, ‘without warning’ means ‘it did not tell that something unpleasant is about to happen’. therefore, it can be seen that arabian business tries to foreground that the country with the largest population of muslim in the world feels very unpleasant towards the executions which were done by the center country of islam towards two indonesian migrant workers without giving prior information. in addition, the use of ‘…two indonesian maids..’ in the data above also can drive the readers’ point of view to think that it is natural for indonesian government to be disappointed towards saudis government since saudis government has executed –not one-but two indonesian workers without any prior notification. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 15-27 21 indonesian government is also represented as the party that do many efforts to protect and to save the indonesian migrant workers abroad it can be seen by the use of the following sociological categories: 1. nomination it is realized by using nomination once in the following data as the activated social actor by ‘stopping the indonesian migrant workers abroad’ data 8: minister of manpower hanif dhakirinom1 told media the decision was in line with president joko widodo’s order in february to eventually stop sending indonesian women abroad to work as domestic helpers. exmi_arb_07_05_'15 according to van leeuwen (2008) nomination occurs when the social actors are represented by highlighting their unique identity. ‘minister of manpower hanif dhakiri’ is categorized as unique identity since it just refers to one specific person. this data highlights the indonesian government as the party who try to protect the citizens by ‘stop sending indonesian women abroad to work as domestic helpers’. 2. objectivation it is realized by using objectivation categories as the activated social actor by ‘banning new maids’ to middle east countries as can be seen in the following data data 9: indonesiaobject1 bans expats working to 21 middle east countries exmi_arb_07_05_'15 data 10: indonesiaobject1 has banned new maids from working in 21 middle eastern countries including the uae and saudi arabia in protest over working conditions it claims are prone to violations of legal and human rights. exmi_arb_07_05_'15 data 11: indonesiaobject1 has previously temporarily banned its women from working in some gulf states amid controversy over their contracts and salaries. exmi_arb_07_05_'15 data 12:it said indonesiaobject1 should reverse its recent decision to allow a limited number of indonesian migrant workers to saudi arabia despite a 2015 moratorium banning new domestic workers from entering 21 middle eastern countries. exmi_alj_31_10_'18 data 13:indonesiaobject1 introduced the ban following the execution of two other indonesian maids by saudi arabia the same year. exmi_alj_31_10_'18 data 14:indonesiaobject1, however, placed a moratorium on any indonesian workers going to saudi arabia in 2011, after a female worker was beheaded for killing her employer. exmi_mee_01_11_'18 according to online oxford advanced learner’s dictionary the verb ‘ban’ means ‘to decide or say officially that something is not allowed’. the ban is done by indonesian government to protect the indonesian citizens from various kinds of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 15-27 22 ‘dangerous’ to work in the particular countries, such as ‘over working conditions’ in data 10, ‘following the execution of two other indonesian maids’ in data 13 etc. besides representing indonesian government as the party that is really pay attention on this case, middle east media also represented it as hypocritical party, since indonesian government protested other countries when its citizen is executed, but the indonesian government itself still uses the death penalty, as realized by the following inclusion categories 1. objectivation. according to van leeuwen (2008) objectivation occurs when the social actors are represented by means of reference to a place or thing which closely related to person or action. actually there are several types of objectivations, such as spatialization, utterance autonomization, instrumentalization and somatization. but in this data, the writer can only find objectivation-spatialization. van leeuwen (2008) describes that this type is a form of objectivation in which the social actors are represented by means of reference to a place with which closely relate to person or action represented. the followings are the data which show the indonesian government is realized by using objectivation-spatialization data 15: under the new president jokowi widodo, indonesiaobject1 has carried out at least six executions since november and is expected to carry out more any day after it transferred several prisoners to the island where it carries out the shootings. exmi_arb_19_04_'15 data 16: dhakiri said the execution of indonesian maids siti zaenab and karni in saudi arabia last month was one of the factors taken into consideration while making the policy decision, despite the fact indonesiaobject1 executed seven foreigners against their countries protests. exmi_arb_07_05_'15 from the data above, it can be seen that the middle east media foreground the number of executions which have done by indonesian government (as can be seen in data 15). moreover, in data 16 arabian business compares the executions which were done by saudis government (by mentioning two executed indonesian migrant workers) but on the other clause this middle east media foregrounds that indonesian government has executed seven foreigners who also did protest to indonesian government. indonesian government is realized twice by nominating it as the hypocritical social actor which can be seen in the following data data 17:they include the current president joko widodonom1, who himself has been criticised for refusing to reduce the sentences of dozens of people on death row in his country. exmi_arb_16_04_'15 data 18:under the new president jokowi widodonom1, indonesia has carried out at least six executions since november and is expected to carry out more any day after it transferred several prisoners to the island where it carries out the shootings. exmi_arb_19_04_'15 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 15-27 23 the data above foreground the death penalty policy in indonesia which can drive the readers’/audiences to think that indonesian government has great concerns towards its own citizens but it does not want to care the other countries’ efforts to free their citizens from the executions in indonesia. in other words, middle east media also represents the indonesian government as ‘hypocricital party’ which is defined by online oxford advanced learner’s dictionary as ‘behavior in which somebody pretends to have moral standards or opinions that they do not actually have’. the representation of the executed indonesian migrant workers in middle east media middle east media foreground the executed indonesian migrant workers’ criminal cases and collocate them with the verbs ‘stab’, ‘kill’, ‘knife’ etc. as can be seen in the following inclusion categories. 1. categorization indonesian migrant workers are represented by using this strategy eleven times by using categorization in types of identification-classification. according to van leeuwen (2008) categorization-identification occurs when the social actors are defined in terms of what they are. in the case of classification, social actors are referred to in terms of the major categories by means of which a given society or institution differentiates between classes of people. it can include race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, age, gender, etc. in addition, the middle east media uses the verbs ‘stab’, ‘kill’, ‘knife’ to foreground the criminal status of the executed indonesian migrant workers. in addition, data 19:an indonesian housemaidcat1 was beheaded in madinah on tuesday for killing her saudi employer, according to the ministry of interior. exmi_arn_15_04_'15 data 20:saudi arabia executes indonesian maidcat1 who killed man she says assaulted her. exmi_mee_01_11_'18 data 21:indonesia, however, placed a moratorium on any indonesian workers going to saudi arabia in 2011, after a female workercat1 was beheaded for killing her employer. exmi_mee_01_11_'18 the data 19 to 21 are categorized as the identification-classification category since the executed indonesian migrant workers are realized by using their ‘identity’ as indonesian citizen and gender (female). as previously mentioned, the data above also uses the verb ‘kill’ to describe them. according to online oxford advanced learners dictionary, the verb ‘kill’ means ‘to make somebody or something die’. 2. nomination the executed indonesian migrant workers are nominated by using the semiformal pattern which is using given name and surname such as ‘siti zainab rouba’,‘tuti tursilawati’ etc. according to van leeuwen (2008) nomination occurs when the social actors are represented by highlighting their unique identity. overall, in this category, the middle east media represent the executed ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 15-27 24 indonesian migrant workers four times as activated social actors and seven times as the passivated social actors. data 22: sitti zainab roubanom1 was found guilty by the general court here of stabbing norah bint abdullah al-maroubi to death with a knife in september 1999. exmi_arn_15_04_'15 data 23: roubanom1 then placed the body in a bag and dragged it into a bathroom. exmi_arn_15_04_'15 data 24: amnesty international said zainabnom1 had confessed to the killing but during police interrogation. exmi_arb_16_04_'15 data 25: sitinom1 was sentenced to death in 1999 for the killing of her employer’s wife. exmi_arb_19_04_'15 the data above realized the executed indonesian migrant workers as a unique identity (refers to one person) since they are realized by using their name. from the lexical analysis, the text producers use the verbs which have negative meanings to describe the executed indonesian migrant workers with the verbs 1)‘kill’ which is defined by online oxford advanced learner’s dictionary as ‘to make somebody or something die’; 2) ‘stab’ means ‘to push a sharp, pointed object, especially a knife into somebody, killing or injuring them’ etc. 3. suppression the middle east media exclude the saudis government as the executor so that it will drive the readers/audiences’ attention to the criminal cases which were done by the indonesian migrant workers, as follow data 26: she had been convictedexc1 of killing her employer's four-year-old child. exmi_arb_19_04_'15 data 27: tuti tursilawati was sentencedexc1 to death in 2011 for killing her saudi employer. exmi_mee_01_11_'18 the data above foreground the criminal cases that were done by the executed indonesian migrant workers. the following data foreground the executed indonesian migrant workers’ reasons or excuses for doing the criminal cases such as by foregrounding the indonesian migrant worker’s mental health and foreground it as a self-defense action which can be seen in the following categories. data 28:tuti tursilawatinom1 was executed on monday in the city of taif, indonesia's foreign ministry said, seven years after she was sentenced to death for killing her employer in an act she claimed was self-defence from sexual abuse. exmi_alj_31_10_'18 data 29:tursilawatinom1 claimed she was acting in self-defence when she killed her employer in 2010 after he tried to rape her. exmi_alj_31_10_'18 data 30:tursilawatinom1 said she acted in "self-defence" and that she killed her saudi boss after he attempted to abuse her sexually. exmi_mee_01_11_'18 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 15-27 25 the data above are categorized as nomination category since the actor is represented by using their unique identity. the above data show that al jazeera and middle east eye show another information of the executed indonesian migrant workers which is the act of ‘self-defense’. according to oxford advanced learner’s dictionary ‘self-defense’ means ‘something you say or do in order to protect yourself when you are being attacked, criticized etc’. therefore the data above show the executed indonesian migrant workers’ reason and defense for their crime. beside the act of self-defence , the middle east media also show another excuse of the indonesian migrant workers as follow, data 70: indonesia has summoned the saudi ambassador after the kingdom suddenly beheaded an indonesian maidcat1 believed to have a mental illness. exmi_arb_16_04_'15 data 71: saudi arabia has been criticised worldwide for suddenly executing an indonesian maidcat1 believed to have been suffering from a mental illness. exmi_arb_16_04_'15 data 72: saudi arabia executes indonesian maidcat1 who killed man she says assaulted her exmi_mee_01_11_'18 data 73: saudi arabia slammed for executing 'mentally ill' maidcat1 exmi_arb_16_04_'15 the data above use the categorization category since the actor is represented by using their identity (nationality). in addition, the data above also describe that one of the executed indonesian migrant workers is suffering ‘mental ill’ which means that she is not fully realize what she is doing. although one of executed indonesian migrant workers are represented as the one who did self-defense, and the mental-illness condition. the executed indonesian migrant workers generally are represented negatively in middle east media since middle east media tend to foreground more information related to the executed indonesian migrant workers’ criminal cases in the representation by using the verbs which have negative meaning. conclusion after analyzing the middle east media articles concerning the executions of indonesian migrant workers’ executions in saudi arabia, it can be concluded that the text producers present the negative representation of indonesian government and the executed indonesian migrant workers. it can be seen from the negative lexical choices which are used by the writers to describe all the actors such as activated the saudis government with the verbs ‘execute’, ‘behead’ , ‘kill’ ‘execute a mentally-ill indonesian workers’ etc. and also presented the executed indonesian migrant workers’ criminal cases by collocating them with the verbs ‘stab’, ‘knife to death’, etc. in addition, the middle east media also represents the indonesian government as the hypocritical party since indonesian government also still implement the death penalty. references al-jazeera. 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http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 203 how helpful the writers are: a corpus-assisted discourse study of online reviews of tourist attractions rika mutiara esa unggul university rika.mutiara@esaunggul.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010206 received 11 october 2017; revised 31 january 2018; accepted 21 february 2017 abstract the use of corpus methods that combines both quantitative and qualitative aspects has benefited the field of discourse analysis. it is a corpus-assisted discourse study. the study focuses on the ways the writers of online reviews of tourist attractions in tripadvisor website interact and how they position themselves and the readers. the study employed lextutor online to get the keywords and antconc to find the collocations and scrutinize the concordance lines. in the interaction, the writers evaluated the tourist attractions, gave advice and instructions, recounted, reported what the others said, thanked, and encouraged the readers to imagine. the writers tried to provide the information as much as possible and put themselves as the ones that have wider knowledge than the readers. they did it to help the readers make the right decision and anticipate particular conditions. a particular language structure such as prepositional phrases becomes the salient features of this text type. keywords: corpus, discourse, review, phraseology introduction the use of the internet as a media of communication enables people to spread their writings fast. some websites provide opportunities to review particular things such as books, movies, hotels, tourist attractions, etc. such writing can be called as an online review. online review is considered as a new way of communication as a result of technology development. this study deals with discourse analysis of online reviews. doing discourse analysis gives the opportunities to see how the writers treat the readers, evoke particular feelings and attitude, and construct the way of thought (gee, 2011). strauss and feiz (2014) pointed out several items to be observed in the discourse namely verb, adjective, adverb, and deixis. through the verbs, power, intention, and spontaneousness can be known. in studying the adjectives, essential details can be revealed. in observing the adverb, writers’ attitudes and point of view can be uncovered. in examining the deixis, the way the writers get readers’ attention can be seen. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 203-213 204 discourse can be studied by applying corpus methods. the benefit is to see meanings that are difficult to see through non-corpus methods (partington, duguid, & taylor, 2010). it, moreover, enables the researchers to study the language patterns. the existence of such patterns reveals elements that become the features of the texts. baker (2004) suggested studying concordance lines manually besides observing the keywords and the collocations to see the patterns in the texts. it helps the researchers to shed light on the use of the patterns. those patterns might form larger language chunks (n-gram) such as three and four words lexical bundles. lexical bundles were defined as “basic building blocks for constructing spoken and written discourse” (biber & conrad, 1999, p. 188). there are several elements that can be the starting points of discourse analysis. one of them is a keyword. a keyword is an important element in discourse. to get keywords, there must be two corpora. one corpus plays a role as a study corpus and the other functions as a reference corpus. statistical analysis counts what words become the keywords. according to scott and tribble (2006, p.73), keyness is “a quality words may have in a given text or set of texts, suggesting that they are important, [that] they reflect what the text is really about”. studying concordance lines of those words might reveal writers’ main intention in the texts. in some studies, particular words that are considered as the main topics of the corpora were set up as the starting point. one of the studies was done by baker, gabrielatos, khosravinik, krzyzanowski, mcenery, and wodak (2008). they conducted collocation analysis and concordance study of the selected words. the texts discussed the issues of refugee, asylum seeker, immigrant, and migrant in the uk newspapers. it discovered the topics related to the issues and the strategies on how the issues were presented. it led to the study of semantic preference and semantic prosody. besides, it explored the differences that exist in each type of newspapers. text comparison also can be done by using this technique. jaworska & krishnamurthy (2012) compared how feminism is represented in the uk and german society based on newspapers corpora through collocation analysis. the collocates cover both content and function words. it did not examine the patterns that tend to occur with the keywords. in the uk, it was seen as socio-political movement while in germany, it was considered as a part of intellectual. in using selected word, the word may have two different word class (hamilton, adolphs, & nerlich, 2007). risk as a noun and a verb was chosen because it was considered as a word that does not have clear meaning. the contexts of the words were categorized into health, finance, interpersonal relation, and others. the occurrences of the words were split into intimate, socio-cultural, professional, transactional, and pedagogic categories. it revealed what the language users conveyed in each category. all studies mentioned above used non-compound words as the starting points of analysis. koteyko (2012) focused on carbon compound. the word carbon is the centre of compound words. the heads of the compound nouns derived from the word carbon were classified into scientific terms, lexis of finance and accounting, a variety of lexical items, and religious words. in the scientific terms, it has a neutral sense. while in the other categories, both positive and negative senses can be found. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 203-213 205 the analysis of similar keywords in two corpora has been conducted by fitzsimmons-doolan (2009) to attest a belief that the language policy was influenced by immigration issues. the corpora have two different topics, i.e. language policy and immigration. there are only 6 percents keywords that appear in the corpora of language policy and immigration and no remarkable patterns were found. therefore, immigration does not give much effect on language policy. another possible starting point is hapax legomena which is a word that only occurs once in a corpus (king, 2015). the hapax legomena in the chatrooms were categorized to see the purposes of communication. the main purpose is for socializing. establishing key semantic tag list can be the initial procedure in doing corpus-assisted discourse study. the words were categorized based on the usas (ucrel semantic analysis system) to find the key semantic. then, the words on the list were set up as the starting points (sheryl, 2010). it compared the specialized corpus to reference corpus. it reveals what the strategies used in the texts to portray the issue of national identity on the texts discussing scottish independence. concgram is the other element that has been used in discourse analysis (cheng & lam, 2012). in concgram, two words can co-occur with different variations of positions. then, the collocates of the concgram were found. the collocates were classified to see semantic preference. finally, semantic prosody was decided. they used this technique to examine how western and chinese media represented hong kong when it was handed over and ten years after that. there are some changes on how those media see the issue. the studies discussed above used the principles of phraseology to examine specific discourse. studying patterns in the previous studies focuses on the topics or the issues in the texts. the present study aims at exploring the way the writers established interaction in online reviews of tourist attractions by observing the keywords. this study enlarges the scope of studying the patterns in discourse by examining patterns in particular collocations. it also reveals how the writers position themselves and the readers. the previous studies have not deal with this issue. method this study belongs to a corpus-assisted discourse study that covers quantitative and qualitative aspects. considering quantitative aspects reduces researcher’s subjectivity in analyzing. it was done by making lexis and patterns that were measured and judged as significant elements as the basis of analysis. the patterns build the discourse itself and each discourse has its own patterns that make it unique from the others. furthermore, studying the patterns can reveal text structure, main ideas, or grammatical features that become the characteristics of the discourse. the data was taken from a specialized corpus of 95,694 words. the texts in the corpus are online reviews taken from tripadvisor website. it is a website where the writers can write the reviews of tourist attractions. the reviews were published on the website and can be read by everyone. the reviews were written ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 203-213 206 in 2015-2016. the focus of the reviews is the tourist attractions in lombok, indonesia. the study corpus was compared to a reference corpus which is brown corpus by using lextutor online to obtain the keywords. brown corpus is a written corpus. therefore, the study and reference corpora have the characteristics of written language. keywords were chosen as the starting points of analysis because there is no assumption what the main topics in the corpus are. therefore, obtaining keywords gives information about the main topics in the discourse. the keywords selected for analysis must fulfill three criteria. first, the keywords were the first-one hundred keywords. second, the minimum frequency is 40. third, the keywords have at least 1 collocate and the minimum frequency of the collocation is 5. the collocates of the keywords are 4 words to the left and right. concordance studies of the keyword collocation and distinguished patterns were done to see how the writers interact and position themselves. the keywords and the collocates that are adjectives were classified through usas (ucrel semantic analysis system) to know the senses of the words. the senses are positive, neutral, and negative. some senses were marked with +, ++, or +++ to intensify the adjectives. the more symbol + that the word has, the stronger the sense is (archer, 2002). in the concordance analysis, it is necessary to pay attention whether some words belong to same class of words such as pronouns, adjectives and adverbs to get more understanding of discourse (feiz, 2014). findings and discussion twenty one keywords were used as the basis of analysis. they appear in the base forms. the base forms might consist of several word types. some keywords represent the objects such as waterfall and sand. some keywords show the activities such as hike and climb. the following table shows the information about the word types. table 1: the keywords and their word types keywords word types waterfall waterfall, waterfalls trek trek, treks, trekking surf surf, surfing snorkel snorkel, snorkeling, snorkelling amaze amazing stun stunning hike hike rubbish rubbish turtle turtle, turtles beach beach, beaches swim swim, swam, swimming coral coral, corals indonesia indonesia guide guide, guides, guided sunset sunset, sunsets recommend recommend, recommended locate located ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 203-213 207 based on the concordance investigation of the keywords, there are several ways of writers’ preferences in conveying their ideas in their reviews i.e. evaluating, giving advice and instruction, recounting, reporting, thanking, and encouraging to imagine. evaluating covers both good and negative aspects of the objects. one of the ways is by using adjectives. giving advice and instruction includes several topics and related issues that the writers concern. they do it based on their experiences. in this case, they showed that they are more knowledgeable than the readers. they tried to be the reliable sources of information by giving evidence. narrating sequences of events that they did or what they observed becomes one part of their reviews. another way to give information is by reporting. reporting means the writers reported what others told to them. they give information from trusted sources to the readers. in the review, they did not only share knowledge and experiences but also emotions. it appears in expressions of gratitude. thanking is writers’ way to express their gratitude. in addition, the writers promoted the tourist attractions by encouraging the readers to imagine. in the next sub-sections, the patterns of language such as collocations and lexical bundles that were formed by using the keywords were described. they represent writers’ way to interact. evaluating evaluating was done by modifying the objects with the adjectives. the adjectives are the collocates of the objects. there are 18 adjectives that function as the collocates of the keywords as can be seen in the table 2. the adjectives were checked in the usas semantic categorization to know their senses. ten out of eighteen adjectives have positive senses. one of the ten adjectives, best was marked with +++. there are no adjectives with negative senses. the adjectives and the senses can be seen in table 2. table 2: the senses of the adjectives summit summit sand sand, sands tour tour, tours climb climb, climbing adjectives positive sense neutral sense nice + beautiful + worth  great + good + amazing + stunning + safe + best +++ sharp  local friendly white  soft  ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 203-213 208 the writers evaluated the objects by using the adjectives with positive sense such as nice, beautiful, and worth. the adjectives are the collocates of the objects evaluated. in several cases, they also used conjunctions that show contrary such as though, although, and but in the level of a sentence as can be seen in the following examples. 1. we quite stunning with the view as the waterfall keep their beautiful flow although it was raining at that time. 2. the next waterfall is nice, but the last one is amazing. 3. after enjoying the waterfall and the nice view, the 25 minutes walk uphill back to the meeting point was really tiring … but worth it. 4. beautiful waterfalls but surely not unique. in example (1) the writers gave evaluation that carries positive sense towards the use of the word beautiful even though unexpected events occurred. they tried to ensure the readers that they enjoyed the trip. in examples (2), the writers contrasted the waterfall with others. the objects contrasted were evaluated by using positive senses (nice and amazing). in example (3), the writers evaluated and also encouraged the readers to try. in the example (4), the writer mentioned two characteristics, i.e. beautiful and not unique to give clear picture to the readers. from all examples, the writers tried to be factual by mentioning both positive and negative aspects of the objects. another way to evaluate is providing detailed information by mentioning several characteristics of the object of evaluation by using adjectives as in the following examples. 5. our guide, sultan, was friendly, warm, and definitely very experienced. 6. … the guide is friendly, but not supportive … . there are 2-3 adjectives which were used to evaluate guides in each sentence. in the example (6), the writer used but to contrast two ideas. it also can be done by giving the details in preposition phrase with ... as in the examples below. 7. clean white sand beach, with a near perfect, small, beginner surf break for those learning to surf. the writer put himself as the one that knows a lot about the object in particular area as in the example (8) by mentioning in southeast asia. 8. this is really worthy but really difficult trek in southeast asia. he created the image that he knows other treks in southeast asia. it is a strategy to convince the readers that what they told is true and the readers can trust them. it also occurs in the example (9). the writers gave detailed information about maldives and bora-bora to prove that he has wide knowledge. therefore, the readers can trust their evaluation. the phrase in the world increased the positive value of the object as can be seen bellow. clear + blue  clean + black  ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 203-213 209 9. one of the best diving/snorkeling in the world (i would rate as third after maldives and bora-bora). the occurrences of collocation of hike and but tend to appear with tough and worth as can be found in the concordance lines below. 10. the hike might be tough but it’s totally worth it. 11. this was a tough hikebut the view at the top was worth it! the writers told the truth that it was tough based on their experience did the hike. after that, they contrasted this condition with their impression at the end of the hiking. the use of the word tough might give impacts to the readers therefore the readers prepare all the necessary things for this tough trek. the use of the word worth shows they have positive attitude. this positive attitude might play a role as a supporting factor to encourage the readers to try. evaluating two or more objects in one sentence is also possible. amazing tends to occur with beautiful at the sentence level as in the following sentences. 12. amazing beach, just beautiful white sand, turquoise water. 13. it was an amazing adventure with beautiful mountain view. one object was evaluated with the adjective amazing and the other one was evaluated with beautiful. both adjectives have positive senses. the co-occurences of amazing and beautiful in one sentence makes the positive sense becomes stronger. the writers give positive portrayal to the readers. the occurrences of perfect and great have been followed by prepositional phrases with for and to in order to give information as detailed as possible. in this case, the writers found the suitability. the writers expected the readers to get the best experience of visiting particular tourist attraction. they mentioned the most suitable activities. they do not want the readers to waste their time by missing the most suitable activities. some of the examples can be seen below. 14. great beach for those who want to learn how to surf … . 15. … making a perfect place for a beginner to learn how to surf … . writers’ effort to find suitability of the objects can be found in the collocations of see and sunset that form to see sunset. before these bundles, there is information about the place that shows the suitable point to see sunset. this is writer’s attempt to be informative and make the readers get the best of it as in the following examples. 16. this is one of the best point to see sunset in lombok. 17. for me this is the best place to see sunset with extraordinary view …. showing suitability can be realized through for and to as in the collocations of beach and great and beach and good. the writers tried to be detailed as in the examples below. 18. great beach for paddling … . 19. this beach is so good to walk along … . they presented suitability of the particular place and the activities. the suitability might include the issue of participants. it shows what kind of participants that are suitable for the place as in the following examples. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 203-213 210 20. the wave is quite small in this beach, making a perfect place for a beginner to learn how to surf …. 21. this beach is perfect for people that want to learn how to surf (beginners) … discussing objects might raise an issue that makes the readers worry. the writers realized it and tried to calm down by providing but … as in the following examples. 22. there is some dead coral at the beach but no problem. 23. you’ll find more coral on the beach but it’s not really an issue. anticipating specific conditions that the readers might face can be done by using if clause. collocations of visit and worth and visit and place tend to appear with if clause as in the following examples. 24. worth to visit if you don’t have time to visit tiu kelep … . 25. you must visit this place if you want to feel the warm weather … . giving advice and instruction a lexical feature that commonly used is recommend as can be seen in the examples below. 26. thank trekking company “dewell trekker” for his team were very nice and we would recommend at a friend … 27. we highly recommend this hike as the views are spectacular! 28. i would definitely recommend gilli air rather than … . 29. it’s totally recommended to visit and come … . adverbs highly, definitely, and totally in examples strengthen the recommendation. before giving recommendation, the writer in example (26) thank the trekking company. it reveals writers’ satisfaction. for his satisfaction, he gave recommendation. the writer also gave a reason when giving advice as in example (26). comparing also happens in example (28). using modals i.e. should, can, must, and need is another way to give advice. need might appear in the negative sentences. the following are the examples. 30. you should have a tour guide to have the story behind … . 31. if you want to see the sunset, you must be at that beach around 5.30 pm. 32. you need to have local guide to get in … . 33. although there is no need to have a guide, you can hire a guide just before the entrance who can carry your luggage and toddler. the occurrence of the phrase no need before the clause you can hire … in the example (31) shows that it is only an advice. there is no obligation. in some sentences, the writers stated the purposes after giving advice through the realization of to clause as in examples (30) and (32). some advice tends to be a command as it occurs in imperative sentences as in the following examples. 34. there is some dead coral and rocks so best wear booties … . 35. but take a local guide, because they can explain very well the history of this village … . 36. get a tour guide. 37. … i suggest you abandon your shoes, try some snorkeling or diving in the turtle … . making sure that their advice is a way to get the most comfortable experience, the writer used the word best as in example (34). to prove that their advice is reasonable, the writers mentioned the reason in example (35). to soften the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 203-213 211 command, the writer used i suggest … before the imperative clause such as in example (37). giving particular conditions by using if you before giving advice and command is writers’ attempt to provide the suitability as in the examples below. 38. if you are beach lover, you have to visit this beautiful beach. 39. if you want a beach holiday, stay in bali. from the way the writers address the readers directly by using you, the writers consider issues related to the readers seriously. reporting reporting what the others said becomes the writer’s concern. the writers shared any information that they got from the guides. the writer contrasted what the guide told and what they saw. it enriches the information to the readers. reporting can be seen in the examples below. 40. our guide said everyone weaved in their houses but we looked in the houses and didn’t see any anywhere! 41. our guide said many accidents happen there … . recounting the writers told their stories. they mostly play roles as the actors. it was shown by the use of subject i and we. the writers mentioned the purposes by using to infinitive and used some linking words i.e. and and after (examples 42 and 43) to connect two events. after also shows the sequence of events. another possibility to act as the actor is guide because guide is a person who accompanies them (example 44). the writers observed the surroundings including what other people did (example 45). it was used in relation to evaluate the tourist attraction (beach). the writers act as the story tellers that told every important events and persons in the journeys as in the following examples. 42. we took the island hopping snorkeling and went to see the corals. 43. after doing trekking program, my guide took me to explore this waterfall. 44. our guide simply took us along the path. 45. it is clean and they always clean the beach … . telling what the writers did might inspire the readers what should be done in the tourist attractions. providing the sequences of activities might give portrayal to the readers about the rundown of the trips. the readers might follow what the writers did. thanking thanking shows writers’ attitudes. the writers mentioned specifically the persons to whom they thanked to emphasize the roles of the persons in their trips as in the following examples. 46. special thanks to our guide and the porters … . 47. my great thanks to guide ary trekking once again ary thank ary trekking. 48. thank trekking company “dewell trekker” for his team were very nice … . the use of adjectives special and great represents how thankful they are (examples 46 and 47). specific reason of thanking was given in example (48). writers’ enjoyable experiences can be separated from the help of those persons. the writers indirectly promoted them to the readers. it is also seen as their ways to make the readers get the best experience. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 203-213 212 encouraging to imagine the writers encouraged the readers to imagine what they will experience in their visit based on their experiences. the phrase you will were used to mention possible activities to be done by the readers. it also gives ideas to the readers what they will do in the tourist attractions. using if you makes them as active participants that shows they have positions in the reviews. the reviews are not only about the writers and their experiences but it is also about the readers as the prospective tourists. the readers are not the passive outsiders that listen to the stories. the examples below show how the readers were involved. 49. … a local guide will welcome and offer you a tour of the village. 50. you will see a lot of turtles. feeling that what they read is about their own experiences will make them keep reading the reviews. conclusion in interaction, the writers evaluated, gave advice and instructions, reported, recounted, thanked, and encouraged to imagine. the keywords tend to collocate with particular word(s) or phrase(s) that build particular meanings and language functions. some adjectives as collocates carry positive senses. even, some contain stronger positive senses that influence the meaning in the discourse. contrastive conjunctions, time connectives, prepositional phrases with, for, and to, if clause and to clause becomes the features of the texts. the writers used these structures to convey their ideas to help the readers. they gave their best effort to be as informative as possible. a number of detailed information was given to the readers to help them make choices, get the best experiences, and anticipate situations. getting trust from the readers is done by mentioning the facts whether they are positive and negative aspects and giving reasons when they gave advice. interaction with the readers was built by addressing them directly, especially in the phrase if you. the writers were involved in this aspect and their suitability and enjoyment were considered. this study is restricted on the analysis of online reviews of tourist attractions. further studies can use other types of online reviews such as movie reviews to see whether similar features can be found. the study gives contribution to the field of the internet-based communication. it gives a description of language use and characteristics of interaction in online reviews. writing a review is not only about examining objects. it is intended to help the readers make decisions. references anthony, l. 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(n.d.). retrieved on 25 october 2016 from http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/usas/tagger.html. http://www.lextutor.ca/key/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 201-210 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 201 roald dahl’s ingenious language play in the use of figurative language trisnowati tanto universitas kristen maranatha trisnowati.tanto@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030206 received 9 october 2019; accepted 15 february 2020 abstract roald dahl is widely known for being one of the most creative writers, both in the ideas of the stories and the language use. his use of language is exceptional and tends to show some playfulness which makes the writing even more attractive. this play on language is in fact considered his writing style. what is worth noticing further is that playfulness can also be seen in the use of figurative language. this paper specifically focuses on the figurative language such as similes, metaphors, and personification in dahl’s novels for children: the bfg, charlie and the great glass elevator, and the witches. since this paper reveals dahl’s use of language play as his writing style, it belongs to stylistics, the study of style. the paper uses a descriptive qualitative method. the data of similes and personification are collected and then analysed in terms of how they show the ingenious side of the writer in using language. the findings show that the figurative language used in the novels indeed makes optimal use of sound play and word play. besides, the figurative language is also closely associated with the fact that the novels are intended for children. keywords: language play, figurative language, style introduction playing with language is something common for people to do on daily basis, and it is possibly done unintentionally. in daily life, everyone plays with language or at least gives responses to the use of language play. this can be so because, as in crystal’s (1998, p. 1; playing with words/language, n.d.) opinion, language play is an activity that becomes a source of enjoyment. people definitely enjoy playing, including playing with language. playing with language involves language manipulation, by bending as well as breaking the language rules. by language, what is referred to here is all features that exist in language, such as “… a word, a phrase, a sentence, a part of a word, a group of sounds, a series of letters…” (crystal, 1998, p. 1). someone is said to break or bend the language rule when he or she takes a language feature and makes it do things which are not in accordance with what the rules say. however, since this is a play, the only reason for doing this is basically for fun. mailto:trisnowati.tanto@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 201-210 202 there are various texts in which language play can be found, for example in daily conversation, campaigns and advertisement slogans or taglines, newspaper articles, comics, literary works such as poems, drama, and novels. language play forms are even often found in second language teaching materials as well as in supposedly serious texts like sermons and speeches. language play is often used in newspaper article headlines, most probably with the intention of attracting readers, as shown in the following the jakarta post headline, “pakistan’s free lampoons “mush and bush””. the last two words in the headline, mush and bush, will most likely attract readers’ attention since they are a form of minimal pairs which creates a pleasant sound effect. the word mush refers to the former pakistan president, pervez musharraf. it is not the normal short name of the former president’s name obviously, but morphologically speaking, it follows the rule of forming a word, that is through the clipping process. this is cleverly intended to sound similar to the name bush, which refers to the former us president, george bush. language play forms have actually been detected since a long time ago. julius caesar’s victory slogan, veni vidi vici (“i came, i saw, i conquered”) for instance, is undoubtedly easy to remember and attractive, not only because it is short, but also because the three words have the same number of syllables with the same initial consonant sound /v/ and the same final vowel sound /ɪ/ so that when the slogan is read aloud, the rhyme and rhythm are beautiful. another example is dwight d. eisenhower’s well known presidential campaign slogan, i like ike. this slogan is a very effective form of language play as it contains the same diphthong sound [aɪ] in each of the three words. besides, they are all one-syllable words with the last two words perfectly rhyming (like ~ ike). in this case, there is a form of exploitation of a particular thing, which is in this case a sound repetition. all the examples above show how language play is used in everyday life. if connected with the purpose of making the messages appear more beautiful and attractive, an advertisement or a campaign slogan containing language play is expected to make people who receive the messages attracted and hopefully persuaded more to agree with the idea or the service or product sold. if the text containing language play is a newspaper headline, it is expected that many people will be interested in reading the article. thus, roughly concluded, it can be said that the functions of language play found in texts in everyday life are those related to aesthetics and persuasion. besides in everyday life, language play forms can also be found in literary texts, such as novels or poems. this means that the writer has to be able to manipulate the language in such a way that the writing can be creatively interesting. to be able to achieve this, leech (1991, p. 23) mentions that a writer has to “escape from banality”. in this case, a writer needs to exploit language in an outstanding way, by using it in ways that are different from how other people use it so much so that readers will be able to detect that there is something “wrong” with it, or what is known in stylistics as “foregrounding” (wales, 2001, pp. 181–182). this shows that language play demands a high language competence level from a writer; a writer is required to have a good level of creativity. the use of language play shows creativity, which then proves a higher competence level than ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 201-210 203 just using the language accurately according to the rules. they have to first fully understand how the linguistic features work or what the linguistic rules are before trying to exploit the rules in terms of breaking or bending them in order to make them look more interesting. this is for sure not a simple thing to do; that’s why writers with this skill deserve high appreciation (wijana, 2004; tanto, 2010). roald dahl (1916-1990) is a british writer is one of the few writers who are witty with the language use, in which he often deviates from the norms. this makes his works unique, attractive and liked by many people. another reason for his popularity is because his works are indeed good and able to explore children’s imagination and creativity (nodelman & reimer, 2003, p. 124). this paper will focus more on dahl’s use of figurative language in his three children’s novels, the bfg, charlie and the great glass elevator, and the witches which can also be regarded as dahl’s style of writing. the analysis belongs to stylistics, which is “the study of style … defined as the analysis of distinctive expressions in language and the description of its purpose and effect” (verdonk, 2002, p. 4; mcarthur, 1996, p. 914; chapman in fakuade, 1998; turner, 1988; widdowson, 2000, p. 4). style is further defined as “linguistic characteristics of a particular text” (leech, 1981, p. 12; crystal & davy, 1980, p. 54). in analyzing a text, what needs to be paid attention to are the type, the way in which language is used in the text, and the writer’s intention or reason for choosing a certain style. moreover, stylistics deals with literary appreciation and linguistic description in order to get the aesthetic function as well as linguistic evidence (leech, 1981, p. 13). verdonk (2002, p. 6) comments that in making a stylistic analysis, the focus will not be on every form and structure in the text, but more on those elements which stand out in it. this is due to the fact that those elements “hold a promise of stylistic relevance with the reader’s or listener’s interest or emotions” (verdonk, 2002, p. 6). in stylistics the psychological effect is called foregrounding, a term which is borrowed from the visual arts. foregrounded elements often include “a patterning of parallelism in a text’s typography, sounds, word choices, and grammar or sentence structure” (verdonk, 2002, p. 6). other potential markers are repetitions of “some linguistic element, and deviations from the rules of language in general or from the style we expect in a particular text type or content” (verdonk, 2002, p. 6). the research is significant as it can elevate the value of language play, which at the moment is probably not considered serious enough to deserve people’s attention. it can also encourage people to appreciate the writers more as language play requires an ingenious and creative skill. besides, the research will describe another function of language which many people are not aware of yet; it is not only a communication function, but language also has a ludic or playful function (crystal, 1998, p. 1). the research has some limitations as it only analyses the use of language play in roald dahl’s three novels for children, the bfg, charlie and the great glass elevator, and the witches. it will be better if the research can be extended and have more data sources so as to get dahl’s writing style more accurately. it will even be much better if the research is expanded to more various writers who use ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 201-210 204 language play in the writings so that the ludic function originating from the use of language play can be elaborated more thoroughly as well. language play play is generally understood to be a very broad subject and there are so many kinds of play spanning over time and place. play can be rule-free, but it can also be governed by complicated rules. there are five basic criteria of play: purposeless, voluntary, outside the ordinary, fun, and focused by rules (eberle, 2013, p. 214; warner, 2004). interestingly, these criteria can be applied in language play as well, confirming the notion that language play is indeed a kind of play in the normal sense. crystal (1998, p. 1) straightforwardly states that the only purpose of doing language play is for fun. as for the rules of doing language play, he describes it in his definition of language play, that playing with language should involve manipulation of the language rules by bending and breaking them. the definition also informs us that all features of language – from letters, sounds, words, phrases, sentences, parts of words – can be the source of the language manipulation (crystal, 1998, p. 1). furthermore, despite its chief goal of enjoyment, language play can actually be applied to something as serious as language learning for children, which is said to be a kind of applied ludic linguistics (crystal, 1998, p. 218). another linguist, cook (2000, p. 5) complements crystal’s definition of language play by stating that playing with language can also mean exploiting the language and that language play is to be exploited to our advantage in many areas of human activity, including language learning. this particular opinion is in line with crystal’s that language play is effective for children in learning a language. besides, both linguists agree that language play equals to linguistic creativity. a writer can be said to use language creatively if all possibilities existing in language are used in an original way and if all other possibilities in language which do not exist before are invented (leech, 1991, p. 24). these two types of creativity are called originality and inventiveness. this kind of creativity makes it possible for writers to have everything a language has, whether it is connected with phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, graphology, and also typography (crystal, 1998, p. 1). a similar topic on the use of figures of speech is done by suarez-toste in his article “a slightly obscene wine: premodification and personification in roald dahl’s taste”. this article discusses the style of character portrayal in dahl’s story, taste. he puts his focus on the style of personification of the object that is the central of the story—a bottle of wine—and the portrayal of the human characters. suarez-toste asserts that the process of personification of the wine has a reversal effect on the portrayal of the human characters, which he describes as being objectified throughout the story. since the focus is the description of both the wine and the characters, suareztoste observes the use of adjectives and adverbs in the story, which he describes as having been used “mischievously” by dahl. according to suarez-toste, it is common for a real wine-taster to use personification when describing the wine that they taste; therefore, what dahl does in his story reflects real life. in addition to this, suarez-toste mentions that the personification of the wine follows a general metaphorical schema that treats wine as a living creature. from his ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 201-210 205 analysis, it is found that when describing the wine, dahl uses various adjectives that have positive meaning. a different tone is used in dahl’s description of the human character. suareztoste points out that while dahl keeps the wine in a positive light by using adjectives with positive meaning, his depiction of the human characters, especially the character named richard pratt, is quite the opposite. the character is portrayed through his physical appearance as well as gestures, from which it can be drawn that the character is not a nice person. suarez-toste asserts that dahl manages to create a vivid image of the character without having to use many adjectives. the conclusion part of this analysis aims to make a connection between the portrayal of the wine and that of the characters. suarez-toste also draws a connection from the story to real life and culture by mentioning that the narrator of the story helps to make the act of wine-tasting more acceptable for people in general instead of something that can only be enjoyed by affluent people. even though suarez-toste manages to describe the different portrayals by analyzing the diction of the story, he does not utilize other stylistic devices that may help deepen his analysis. the article is a very good read for people who want to understand more about how different choices of words affect the portrayal of something or someone in the readers’ minds; however, for those who are looking for a deeper understanding on how linguistic aspects bring forth the style of the writer this article may not satisfy their curiosity. the strongest part of the analysis is the examination of the wine portrayal as suarez-toste is very thorough in describing everything; meanwhile, the weakest part of the analysis is actually the conclusion, since until the end there is no clear statement on the style of dahl’s writing. while suarez-toste’s paper discusses how some linguistic aspects of the story support the portrayal of the important points of the story, this paper focuses more on the use of language play in the figurative language found in dahl’s novels, which leads to dahl’s signature as a writer. figurative language itself is interesting to analyze as it is an indirect way of communicating something which might have been communicated directly. consequently, according to sadock (1993, p. 47), there must be something more in the effect that the writer intends to convey through this nonliteral form. figurative language figurative language is language in which figures of speech such as metaphors, similes, and personification occur (figurative language, n.d.). furthermore, figurative language contains figurative meaning, which is the extension of the meaning of a word, or sometimes called metaphorical meaning (wales, 2001, p. 175). in language play, the words used in the phrase can be replaced so as to produce something creatively uncommon. for example, in the bfg, the idiom disappearing into thin air, which figuratively means disappearing mysteriously, is changed into disappearing into thick ear, making it have a literal meaning as it refers to the big friendly giant’s gigantic ear. a simile is a figure of speech in which “… two concepts are imaginatively and descriptively compared: e.g. as white as a sheet” (wales, 2001, p. 421). the definition is made more complete by harris (2013), who states that a simile is a form of comparison between two things that are not the same but similar. in the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 201-210 206 construction a simile is usually introduced by such conjunctions as like, as, as though, as if, as … as, so … as. besides, a simile can also use words like resembling and suggesting (leech & short, 1994, p. 88). for example, in the simile the lamb is as white as snow, there are two concepts involved: a lamb and snow, which are connected with the conjunction as … as. a simile which is a form of language play can be seen for example in the sermon titled god is beautiful, man, written by carl burke, when it compares two unusual things like man and hamburger filling. according to burke, if the filling already gets rotten, it cannot be made to taste good again: you are like the stuff you put on hamburgers. if it tastes rotten, you can’t make it taste good again. so it’s no good and gets thrown in the junk bucket and the city dump guys haul it away (crystal, 1998, p. 155). another example is when a writer, in describing the moustache of a man, says: the driver was an oldish man with a thick black drooping moustache. the moustache hung over his mouth like the roots of some plant (dahl, 2007, p. 182). another figure of speech found in the novels is personification, which is also a comparison form between two things, in which “...an inanimate object, animate non-human, or abstract quality is given human attributes (wales, 2001, p. 349), for example i can't get the fuel pump back on because this bolt is being uncooperative (harris, 2013). when uncommon things are used in the personification, language play occurs, for example the whiskers of a mouse are described to be jumping up and down like crazy as the mouse speaks (dahl, 2007, p. 52). method this paper will focus on dahl’s use of figurative language in his three novels for children, the bfg, charlie and the great glass elevator, and the witches. it particularly done to show how unique and special it is, which later also forms dahl’s style of writing and at the same time proves dahl’s being an outstanding writer. the research uses a qualitative descriptive method. it starts with collecting and selecting the data of figurative language containing language play which are found in the novels. then they are analyzed in terms of the linguistic processes involved in the forms of language play. the data are then connected with the context of the story in order to interpret their purposes and functions, especially their connection with children as the target readers. findings and discussion in the three novels that are analysed, dahl’s similes obviously deserve much attention. they are unique, funny as well as attractive. dahl obviously chooses to use uncommon words in the comparisons, as seen in the following table: table 1. similes with sound play data number utterances (1) …the president turned white as the white house. (2) “he’s cracked as a crab!” (3) you’re dotty as a doughnut! ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 201-210 207 (4) “we’re safe as sausages in here!” shouted mr. wonka. (5) “he’s batty as a bullfrog!” cried grandma georgina. (6) “he’s cracked as a crayfish!” cried grandma georgina. (7) “he’s bogged as a beetle!” (8) “he’s dotty as a dingbat!” (9) “bald as a boiled egg,” my grandmother said. (10) “frrrizzled like a frrritter,” said the grand high witch. (11) ‘nothing hots a cold giant up like a hot hottentot,’ the bfg said. (12) ‘dreams,’ he said, ‘is very mysterious things. they is floating around in the air like wispy-misty bubbles. all the time they is searching for sleeping people.’ (13) ‘you mean you can hear things i can’t hear?’ sophie asked. ‘you is deaf as a dumpling compared with me!’ cried the bfg. (14) ‘and you is dotty as a dogswoggler!’ cried the bloodbottler. (15) ‘please be still as a starfish now.’ (16) ‘we is helpless as horsefeathers.’ it is interesting to notice that all the similes in table 1 use uncommon words as comparisons. similes like (2) cracked as a crab or (6) cracked as a crayfish, for example, are uncommon as what is usually more familiar are expressions like “as crazy as a loon” or “as crazy as a coot”. the use of uncommon words in the similes is already considered a form of language play as there is a manipulation of language. in table 1 above it can be observed that all the similes use uncommon words, which definitely contributes a lot to the big attraction of the novels. in addition, this uncommon choice of words is intentionally done so that dahl can also play with sounds. many of the similes play with the sounds as they contain words having repetitive sounds. in data (2) cracked as a crab and (6) cracked as a crayfish above, the sound /kr/ is repeated in the words cracked, crab, and crayfish and thus, it can be said that the similes also have an alliteration. this is the same in the other data in table 1 that they all contain repetitions, whether it is a word repetition or sound repetition. data (1) white as the white house shows a word repetition in the word white. other data show repetition of consonant sounds in the initial position of the words or alliteration: (3) dotty as a doughnut (/d/), (4) safe as a sausage (/s/), (5) batty as a bullfrog (/b/), (7) bogged as a beetle (/b/), (8) dotty as a dingbat (/d/), (9) bald as a boiled egg, (10) frizzled as a fritter (/fr/), (13) deaf as a dumpling (/d/), (14) dotty as a dogswoggler (/d/), (15) still as a starfish (/st/), (16) helpless as horsefeathers (/h/). as a whole, these similes are funny and at the same time pleasant to the ears. moreover, in data (12) …like wispy-misty bubbles, the reduplication wispymisty is also uncommon to describe bubbles. furthermore, these two words are pleasant in the ears as they repeat the vowel sound /ɪ/ four times and make it a great assonance. the same thing can be seen in data (11) nothing hots a cold giant up like a hot hottentot …, in which an assonance /ɒ/ is created through the words hots, hot, and hottentot. playing with word choice and sounds at the same time clearly uncovers dahl’s wittiness as a novelist. in table 1 it is clear that quite a lot of the similes describe the condition of losing sanity or not being normal. dahl uses various words to refer to this condition: cracked (used twice), dotty (used twice), batty, and bogged. considering the target readers, which are children, this use of synonymous words ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 201-210 208 definitely is good for children as they can have richer vocabulary. this also means that dahl concerns a lot about who his target readers are and this, once again, proves dahl’s smartness as a novelist. the similes in table 2 below still show the novelist’s choice of uncommon words in the comparisons. unlike the similes in table 1, these words are chosen not for the purpose of creating a sound play. however, these similes are also special and funny because there is an exaggerated or hyperbolic sense. in describing the hoarse voice of the witch, it is compared to a throat full of drawingpins; the condition when a giant drops a small girl is depicted as a rasher of bacon in some gigantic frying-pan sizzling with fat. furthermore, the giant’s teeth are described to be like huge slice of white bread and his ear to be as big as the wheel of a truck. when a little girl is frightened, she is illustrated to be trembling just like a leaf in the wind. the humorous effect is definitely something that can be resulted from these similes, which shows dahl’s outstanding resourcefulness. table 2. similes with uncommon comparisons data number utterances (1) her voice had a curious rasping quality. it made a sort of metallic sound, as though her throat was full of drawing-pins. (2) he will drop me like a rasher of bacon into some gigantic frying-pan sizzling with fat. (3) the teeth were very white and very square and they sat in his mouth like huge slice of white bread. (4) he had truly enormous ears. each one was as big as the wheel of a truck … (5) she was trembling like a leaf in the wind, … another ingenious point from roald dahl in the use of similes in the three novels is that, despite the uncommon comparisons, dahl actually chooses the words wisely by considering children as the target readers of the novels. words like crab, doughnut, sausages, boiled eggs, fritter, bullfrog, white bread, bacon, frying pan, bubbles, starfish, truck wheel, leaf, wind etc. are familiar for children. this is essential because in using similes, a writer in a way is asking the readers to imagine something that is similar to the thing he or she is trying to describe to the readers. hence, when children as the target readers know the things used in the similes quite well, it is indeed very helpful. the following table contains data of personification found in the three novels: table 3. personification data number utterances (1) his black moustache was jumping up and down like crazy as he spoke. (2) his whiskers twitch with excitement. the two data of personification show how someone’s moustache and whiskers are described in a funny way. readers are asked to imagine how the moustache is jumping up and down and how the whiskers twitch or give a sudden jerking movement. when children as the target readers can imagine this ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 201-210 209 condition, they will find these two data of personification very funny and they will most probably be amused. conclusion all in all, it can be said that roald dahl is proven to be very witty in playing with words, especially in the use of figures of speech, such as similes and personification. these figures are not only unusual, but also funny and beautiful at the same time. in addition, the findings also show that dahl consistently plays with language in his novels, which confirms that this can be regarded as one of his signatures in writing children’s novels. this is definitely not a simple thing to do and thus, dahl does deserve more acclaim. another point that is worth noticing is dahl’s smartness in always connecting himself a writer with the target readers of the three novels discussed, who are children. this, together with the language play in the use of similes and personification, undoubtedly adds to dahl’s ingenuity. for these reasons, readers should also be demanded to appreciate writers of this great quality. when this quality level fails to be detected by readers, it will be a great loss both for the writers and readers. simply put, writers’ ingenuity should be balanced with readers’ sensitivity in detecting that ingenuity. references cook, g. (2000). language play, language learning. oxford: oxford university press. crystal, d. (1998). language play. london: penguin books ltd. crystal, d and davy, d. (1980). investigating english style. new york: longman inc. dahl, r. (1982). the bfg. london: penguin books. dahl, r. (1983). the witches. london: jonathan cape. dahl, r. (2001). charlie and the great glass elevator. new york: alfred a. knopf. eberle, s. g. (2013). the elements of play toward a philosophy and a definition of play. journal of play, 6, 214–233. fakuade, g. (ed). (1998). studies in stylistics and discourse analysis (vol. i). yola: paraclete publishers. figurative language. (n.d.). concise oxford companion to the english language. retrieved on august 27, 2019 from https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacstranscripts-and-maps/figurative-language harris, r. a. (2013). a handbook of rhetorical devices. retrieved on august 27, 2019, from https://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric5.htm#personification leech, g. (1991). a linguistic guide to english poetry. essex: longman group ltd. leech, g. & short, m. (1994). style in fiction. london and new york: longman group, inc. mc arthur, t. (ed). (1996). the oxford companion to the english language. new york: oxford university press inc. nodelman, p. & reimer, m. (2003). the pleasures of children’s literature. edinburgh: pearson education. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/figurative-language https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/figurative-language https://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric5.htm#personification ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 201-210 210 playing with words/language. (n.d.). concise oxford companion to the english language. retrieved on february 11, 2020, from https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/play%20with%20words%2flanguage sadock, j. m. (1993). figurative speech and linguistics. in a. ortony (ed.). metaphor and thought (pp. 46-63). cambridge: the press syndicate of the university of cambridge. suarez-toste, e. (2006). a slightly obscene wine: premodification and personification in roald dah’s taste. retrieved on september 15, 2016, from http://www.academia.edu/5069072/_a_slightly_obscene_wine_premodific ation_and_personification_in_roald_dahl_s_taste_ tanto, t. (2010). implikasi pragmatis dari permainan bahasa dalam fiksi berbahasa inggris untuk anak-anak. (unpublished doctoral dissertation). universitas padjadjaran, bandung, indonesia. turner, g. w. (1988). stylistics. london: penguin books limited. verdonk, p. (2002). stylistics. oxford: oxford university press. wales, k. (2001). a dictionary of stylistics. harlow: pearson education limited. warner, c. n. (2004). “it’s just a game, right? types of play in foreign language cmc”. language learning and technology, 8, 69-87. retrieved on february 1, 2019, from http://llt.msu.edu/vol8num2/pdf/warner/pdf widdowson, h. g. (2000). practical stylistics. oxford: oxford university press. wijana, i dewa putu. (2004). kartun: studi tentang permainan bahasa. yogyakarta: penerbit ombak. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/play%20with%20words%2flanguage https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/play%20with%20words%2flanguage http://llt.msu.edu/vol8num2/pdf/warner/pdf ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 17–28 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 17 negotiating the path of fame: tradition and modernity in the public persona of roekiah (1917–1945) christopher allen woodrich international indonesia forum/ gadjah mada university chris_woodrich@hotmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010102 received 4 july 2016; revised 6 april 2017; accepted 10 july 2017 abstract the first great dame of the indonesian cinema, roekiah, rose to fame just as the medium of film came into its own. born in 1917, she, as with many of her contemporaries, had a background in stage and was renowned for her vocal abilities. her first filmic role, in albert balink's terang boelan (1937), catapulted her to stardom. over the next five years she appeared in a further eight films, first opposite rd. mochtar then ismail djoemala, becoming one of the colony's bestloved stars. in her personal life, roekiah was married to kartolo, and would often defer to him when speaking to reporters. the couple had five children. this paper examines how the damsel-in-distress roles played by roekiah and her public persona as a demure and obedient wife positioned her between two ideals: the traditional woman and the modern woman. it argues that, by negotiating between these two ideals and emphasizing her traditional attributes, roekiah was able to capitalize on the patriarchal society's views of women, thus enabling her to reach a level of success unattained by such contemporary actresses as fifi young, hadidjah, and ratna asmara. keywords: tradition, modernity, roekiah, public persona introduction one's identity is not monolithic, but best described as a grouping of identities, multiple understandings of the self which are manifested in different contexts. these can include, but are not limited to, sexual identities, gender identities, societal identities, and personal identities, all of which are given a varying degree of emphasis depending on contextual necessities. one individual, for instance, may be identified as a teacher while at school, a husband and father at home, a customer at a shop, a client at an office, a motorcyclist on the road, and a student at a tai-chi center. these identities bring with them their own rights and obligations, which are enjoyed and practiced as required by the social context. in performance media such as the cinema, performers have an additional layer of identities through the characters they portray. in more extreme cases, these "assumed" identities are imprinted by the audiences onto performers; actors and actresses are identified with and defined by their characters' traits. as such, persons known for playing villains may be greeted with hostility when in public, mailto:chris_woodrich@hotmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 17–28 18 and those who portray pitiful or sorrowful characters may receive offers of assistance. less severely, actors and actresses may be identified with certain character types – as having a certain set of traits – from repeatedly taking similar roles, even if the actors themselves do not have such personalities. even where this does not affect performers' personal lives, such typecasting drastically limits their opportunities for professional development, and as such is avoided when possible. based on the above discussion, it is necessary for individuals – particularly public figures – to manage their identities and thus present a certain public persona, one which may differ from their private persona. for those in the public sphere, a poorly managed public persona can be disastrous, and failure to hide identities considered improper by general society can potentially lead to ostracism and the end of one's career. however, if their public identities are properly managed, such individuals can gain enough popular support to rise to unrivalled levels of success. such an experience was had by roekiah, the first grand dame of indonesian cinema. this paper explores the public persona created by roekiah in its relation to the "modern" and "traditional" ideals held by her audiences, who were mostly lower-class native indonesian filmgoers. it argues that, by negotiating between modern and traditional ideals in her public persona, both through the characters she portrayed and her press appearances, roekiah was able to find wide acceptance in the society of the dutch east indies, reaching levels of popularity which had never been seen before and thus cementing her cinematic legacy. to support this argument, this article uses library research and a historical method to descriptively trace both roekiah's life as well as her public portrayal. it is divided into five sections. following this introduction, this article provides background on the cinema of the dutch east indies (modern-day indonesia), with particular emphasis on the position of modernity and tradition. it then provides a biography of roekiah, drawing on both contemporary sources as well as materials published after her death, before segueing into discussion of how roekiah was depicted in film and in the popular press. this article closes by drawing some conclusions about roekiah's negotiation of tradition and modernity and its contribution to her celebrity. theory at the turn of the twentieth century, as the cinema was entering the dutch east indies, the colony was in a state of flux. the strict traditional systems of the indigenous and migrant ethnic groups in the colony, who were forced into a fixed hierarchy (and its corresponding cultural symbols) by colonial law, began to lose power after the dutch enacted the ethical policy in the 1900s. as the colonies' laws began to liberalize and the colony's society increasingly urbanized, the nobility – holders of great power traditional power – began to receive a greater degree of europeanized education. through this education, these men and women learned not only factual information, but internalized (to varying degrees) european values which were not always in-line with traditional ones. though for the common individual – particularly those in the lower class, who had little access to education – the relative positions of modernity and tradition were of little import, for the intelligentsia it was one of the colony's foremost issues. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 17–28 19 when these educated nobles began to play a role in national discourse, european culture was identified as modern culture, whereas the culture held by the different indigenous ethnic groups in the indies was identified as eastern. owing in part to its highly political nature, discussion of the proper balance between the two drew heated polemics from both sides. in general, proponents of european culture argued that it offered greater fluidity and the possibility for development than traditional culture, which they considered to be too stagnant to serve as the basis for a new, independent country. meanwhile, proponents of eastern culture disapproved of the individualistic and secular "modernity", preferring instead traditional communalism and spirituality. such cultural debates continued among the intellectual elite through the 1930s and until the japanese occupation of the colony in 1942. the fledgling colonial film industry was not immune to this discourse. it exhibited an extraordinary degree of dualism, of negotiation between tradition and modernity, in its stories, production practices, and treatment of performers. traditional stories, particularly those already popular on the stage, were a staple of the early indies cinema. the first domestic film was based on a frequently staged legend, loetoeng kasaroeng (1926). popular stories from lenong, a semitraditional form of theatre in batavia, were likewise adapted to film, including the bandit films si ronda (1930) and si pitoeng (1931). even the novels adapted to film were those which had previously been brought to the stage (author, 2014). during the first decade of indies cinema, films based on original stories – such as resia boroboedoer (1928) – were the exception, rather than the norm. production aspects likewise contributed to this duality between tradition and westernized modernity in the cinema. in the earliest productions, films' directors and producers were the same individuals, and retained total control over a production. the director/producer likely provided oral guidance to actors and actresses – most of whom were illiterate – during rehearsals (author, 2014); no shooting scripts were not used until njai dasima in 1932. interior scenes in these films were shot on fixed set-pieces and from angles similar to what one would see on stage, while beautiful landscapes were a favourite for exterior scenes. the latter took advantage of the camera's portability, lending the medium unprecedented potential to present a variety of breathtaking locations. as with the traditional stage, the early indies cinema gave individual performers less emphasis than the performance itself. advertisements for early productions, such as loetoeng kasaroeng and eulis atjih (1927), emphasized the technical achievement of producing a film locally. the former boasted itself as the "first showing of the first netherlands indies film," original eerste vertooningen van de eerste ned. indie speel film (biran, 2009), while the later claimed to be a "film of the time of progress," original film djaman kemadjoean (biran, 2009). with the advent of the talkie in the indies in the early 1930s, the technical aspects of films became their key selling point. with indonesia malaise (1931), for instance, halimoen film offered audiences a clear listening experience or their money back, while tan's film plugged their second adaptation of njai dasima (1932) as a "speaking – singing – dancing and musical talkie"; all aspects which prioritized the technical abilities available with the advent of sound (de indische courant 1932). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 17–28 20 reviews were similar in their lack of discussion of named individuals. for instance, in kwee tek hoay's discussion of such films as njai dasima (1929) and melati van agam (1930/31), he refers to actors as "the one holding the role of dasima" or "the one who is edward," original "jang pegang rol dasima" and "jang djadi edward" (kwee, 1929), or avoids discussing them altogether, mentioning only their characters (kwee, 1930). in his reviews, it is the roles that actors fill, and the quality of their performances, which must be identified and discussed. the actors themselves, as individuals, are of little concern, and kwee firmly rejects the idea that a single performer can save a poor production, writing "bad meat, lacking in spices, cannot be made delicious just by adding worcester sauce, [and] an actress cannot make a film's plot interesting if it's been misdirected, shot poorly, and everything else is chaos" (kwee, 1929). technical aspects of the productions, though not positioned as centrally as in advertising, were never left out of reviews. for the first decade indies cinema, there was a simultaneous emphasis of technical marvels and progress – the modernity of the cinema – and marginalization of the (predominantly lower-class) performers. this duality only began to change in the mid-1930s, when terang boelan (1937) was released to massive commercial success and revitalized the flailing indies cinema industry. directed by albert balink and starring rd. mochtar and roekiah, the film drew new audiences and received an international release, earning 200,000 straits dollars in british malaya and the straits settlement. with their widespread recognition for the film, the cast toured the archipelago as the terang boelan troupe before joining tan's film and producing another commercial blockbuster, fatima (1938). roekiah, the film's leading lady, thus became the indies first bankable female star, helping to ensure that individual film actors would gain wide recognition while (inadvertently) requiring that performers would require carefully maintained public personas in order to further develop their popularity. theory application roekiah, the first grand dame of indonesian cinema born in 1917, roekiah was the daughter of mohammad ali and ningsih, actors with the opera poesi indra bangsawan. though their marriage crossed ethnic lines – mohammad ali was of belitung, while ningsih was sundanese – they were united in their love of the stage. roekiah was immersed in the world of acting from a young age, travelling around java with her parents as they went from troupe to troupe and venue to venue. this lifestyle of constant touring and her lower-class background meant that roekiah had no time for the formal schooling which could have otherwise been available. rather, roekiah studied acting, observing her parents and their fellow performers, intent on entering the field despite her parents' protests. to satisfy her daughter's desire, in 1924, while the family was with the opera rochani, ningsih agreed to let roekiah attempt a single performance, after which the seven-yearold would not be allowed on stage again. with this condition, roekiah went onstage and began to sing – having inherited the vocal talents of her mother – to the great appreciation of the crowd. however, mohammad ali was unaware of his daughter's agreement with her mother, and rushed onto the stage and pulled roekiah aside. the aspiring actress spent the next several days refusing to eat ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 17–28 21 until her parents relented and gave their blessings for roekiah to begin a stage career. over the next several years, roekiah performed regularly with a number of troupes, gaining a reputation as a beautiful and talented songstress. in 1932 she joined the palestina opera of batavia, where she met the man who was to become her husband, kartolo, a javanese priyayi several years her elder who wrote and played music for the troupe. roekiah, aged fifteen at the time of her marriage, later stated that she had not fallen in love with kartolo on first sight, but rather grew closer to him as she found that his playing complemented her singing well, and that he was skilled in writing songs which worked well with her voice. their partnership continued on the stage and screen until roekiah's death. after several years with the farokah troupe, with whom they reached singapore, roekiah and kartolo returned to the indies in 1936 and decided to stop their acting careers and focus on their two children, a number which would increase to five over the following years. however, with no income, they were not long afterwards in dire financial straits. by this time, the algemeen nederlandsch indisch filmsyndicaat (anif) was casting for the film terang boelan, to be directed by albert balink and shot by joshua and othniel wong. roekiah was brought on as the leading lady, portraying rohaya, while kartolo received a supporting role as dullah. the film was an unprecedented success, and set a box office record which would not be broken by a domestic production until krisis in 1953 (anwar, 2004). after filming wrapped and anif shut down its fiction film division, roekiah fell into a depression. kartolo then took her on a tour of the indies and singapore together with the cast of terang boelan, billing themselves the terang boelan troupe. this cured roekiah's depression, and upon returning to batavia the cast – including roekiah, kartolo, rd mochtar, and the wong brothers – was hired by tan's film for fatima (1938), the company's first production since njai dasima in 1932. this new film's plot closely followed that of terang boelan; both featured roekiah and mochtar as lovers who come from an island and succeed in capturing a wanted criminal. fatima's success mirrored its predecessor's, though on a smaller scale. for the rest of her feature film career, roekiah stayed with tan's, and the studio paid her 150 gulden a month, with another 50 for kartolo (imanjaya, 2006); this figure, exorbitant at the time, reflected roekiah's rising popularity. over the next two years roekiah appeared as mochtar's romantic interest in two further films: gagak item (1939) and siti akbari (1940). their partnership was recognized throughout the colony, and they were compared to the on-screen hollywood couple of janet gaynor and charles farrell. when mochtar left the company following a payment dispute, kartolo asked his friend ismail djoemala – a tailor by trade – to become his wife's on-screen partner; djoemala and roekiah were paired for four films (sorga ka toedjoe [1940], roekihati [1940], poesaka terpendam [1941], and koeda sembrani [1941]) and continued to draw viewers fig. 1: roekiah in 1941 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 17–28 22 in droves, though none of these productions reached the same level of success as roekiah's first two films. her career was cut short by war. in march 1942, the dutch colonial government capitulated to the japanese empire, and during the ensuing three year occupation, domestic cinema ground to a halt; only six shorts are recorded, all propaganda, and only one of those, ke seberang (1944), involved roekiah. most of roekiah's time was spent travelling through java and performing on stage for the japanese troops. the tight schedule which she was forced to keep gave her little time to rest, and her health began to suffer. she fell ill in february 1945, but the occupation government forced her to travel from jakarta to surabaya for a performance. her health never recovered, and after several months of treatment she died on september 2, 1945 ("roekiah meninggal doenia"). the path to fame: negotiations between modernity and tradition roekiah's public persona consisted of two elements, namely the characters she portrayed – which led viewers to attribute the characteristics shown in these roles to the actress – and the public face presented, by herself or others, in other media, including photographs, reviews, and media interviews. though for the purposes of this discussion these traits have been categorized based on whether they were presented on screen or in other media, it is important to remember that all of these traits were presented contemporaneously, through the different media, and in their interactions offered balances and counterbalances between modernity and tradition which were central to the development of roekiah's public persona. in her eight feature-length films, roekiah frequently portrayed young women who fall in love with young men who are not rich (rd mochtar's character in fatima, idris, was a fisherman), are kindly and loving, willing to protect them. her characters spurned advances from rich but immoral men, even when their families preferred the pairing; in terang boelan, for instance, roekiah's character rohaya rejects her father's demands that she marry musa, who is (unbeknownst to his fellow villagers) an opium smuggler. in all cases the despicable and immoral acts of her characters' parents' selection are revealed, and roekiah's characters receive their family's support to marry for love. even in cases where her characters are not faced with their families' rejection, roekiah's characters consistently gives consideration to their families' feelings, to the point that sorga ka toedjoe's rasminah refused to marry hoesin (djoemala) unless her aunt hadidjah is reunited with her husband first. only in two of roekiah's films, siti akbari and roekihati (both 1940), does the courtship process not take central stage. however, the relationship between the characters portrayed by roekiah and the male lead remained key to the story. in both instances, the central conflict of these films is not the romantic attraction of two young people, but a young wife's suffering as her husband goes astray. in both films, roekiah portrays a woman who remains faithful, patiently waiting for her husband to realize that the woman he has left her for (and, in the case of roekihati, wanted to take as a second wife) is lacking. never do roekiah's characters commit adultery, or find replacements for their husbands. their virtue is, in both instances, rewarded by the character's husband returning, and their relationship continuing more strongly than before. when these films were released in the late 1930s and early 1940s, marriage for love – considered a european, or "modern", ideal – had begun to gain popular ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 17–28 23 approval, while the tradition of parents arranging marriages for their own financial or social benefits (often over their own children's protests), was still practiced, but had received considerable condemnation. however, the idea of a child marrying a person for love over their parents' protests, something perceived as often happening in european culture, was firmly rejected; even though children were allowed to choose their own spouses, parents' blessings were still required. after marriage, women were expected to remain faithful to their husbands no matter what challenges they faced; a woman who was spurned by her husband and began entertaining other men, or abandoned what were considered her household duties, faced social ostracism. though polygamy was allowed for men (a situation which had, however, begun to be condemned by the general populace), women were expected to remain patiently monogamous. these negotiations of modernity and tradition were reflected in roekiah's characters, who embraced aspects of european "modernity" with widespread support, but avoided "modern" ideals which were still controversial. as will be seen, this "modern yet not too modern" form of negotiations dominated the construction of roekiah's public persona, both on screen and in the media. beginning with terang boelan, roekiah consistently portrayed women from villages (representative of tradition) rather than cities (representative of modernity), and their personalities are reflective of this origin. the women portrayed by roekiah are respectful and timid, soft-spoken and deferential to men and their elders. although they can assert themselves, this is only done rarely, and never in a physical manner; in the face of danger, they are the stereotypical "damsels in distress", needing to be rescued by male characters. this is particularly evident in sorga ka toedjoe. roekiah's character, rasminah, is consistently polite, even to people she dislikes intensely, addressing the manipulating and greedy son of a landlord, parta, as "tuan" (sir). later, she asserts herself by insisting that she can only marry hoesin after her aunt is reunited with her former husband. however, when she is pursued by parta and his stooge doel, she can only flee; hoesin must fight parta to ensure her safety. such timidity and meekness in roekiah's characters upheld the patriarchal ideal that a woman should not be brash or outspoken, that women should be deferential to men – even those whom they disliked – owing to their different social stations. the characters' lack of physical assertiveness, and the need for them to be rescued by men, likewise reinforced traditional gender roles; men were obligated to protect women from danger, as they were considered intrinsically weaker and thus less able to defend themselves. the characters reinforced patriarchal constructs, portraying women as the traditional patriarchy in java expected women to act; this ensured that they were considered positive examples by conservative lower--class viewers, and thus received greater empathy and acceptance. the studios also benefited, as greater success with audiences offered greater commercial performance. patriarchal expectations are also present in the employment taken by roekiah's characters. her first two characters, rohaya in terang boelan and fatima in fatima, are unemployed, staying at home while their husbands or lovers work. later characters, such as roekihati in roekihati and rasminah in sorga ka toedjoe, take up employment, but in fields considered socially acceptable for women. rasminah, who goes to batavia to support her blind aunt, becomes a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 17–28 24 weaver, while roekihati, who works to support her ailing mother and father, becomes a maid before working as a singer at a restaurant. in the subsequent film koeda sembrani, roekiah's character is again unemployed, though in this case her financial situation is sound as she is a middle-eastern princess. although the women of the indies in the 1940s could work, the traditional patriarchal construct limited the fields open to them. only rarely did women become doctors, engineers, or lawyers. generally, they were limited to manual labor: sewing, factory work, or farming; women could also become singers – many of the colony's most popular vocal artists were women – but there was still the stigma of promiscuity and unladylike behaviour attached to such employment. significantly, in both of these cases where roekiah's characters find employment, they do not do so to cover their own living costs, but rather to support sick or disabled family members; they do not look for work when other individuals can support them, but only when nobody could help them or their families. this combination of factors – of "gender-appropriate" jobs and of working only out of necessity – meant that roekiah's characters were in line with the patriarchal expectations of women in the workforce; again, by not challenging expectations, she and the studio were able to ensure that the lower-class audiences they targeted would not reject the story or actress, thus giving them a greater chance at popular and financial success. off the screen, roekiah's identity as a film actress and keroncong singer was central to the construction of her public persona. as a keroncong singer and film actress, roekiah was in a profession which embraced modernity in technical aspects. the contents of songs, the melodies used, the dialogue spoken, the recording technology used to spread singers' and actresses' talents throughout the colony – all these modern aspects received wide praise, and similarity to older media such as the stage was condemned by critics. however, in participating in such a medium, roekiah also invited the possibility of social stigma. since the beginning of the stage, actresses in the indies were often seen as salacious and promiscuous; keroncong singers were viewed with similar disdain. though film had become increasingly popular, by continuously appearing in romantic roles with men who were not her husband (first rd mochtar, and later djoemala), roekiah would have been open to similar accusations; however, none were made in the media. the reason for this can be found in media coverage, which did not show her relations with her co-stars, but rather focused on her relationship with kartolo and fig. 2: emphasis of family roles in media depictions of roekiah ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 17–28 25 her role as a mother. for readers of the print media, roekiah's family life was never far from the forefront. photographs of the artist (fig. 2), when not showing her on her own or in a role, showed her smiling happily with her husband (right, which accompanied an article titled "film dan radio") or with her five children (left, from "riwayat roekiah–kartolo"). in interviews, meanwhile, she presented herself as an attentive mother who was submissive to her husband; both were expected of contemporary women. in pertjatoeran doenia dan film, kamadjaja described interviewing roekiah: [after being escorted by kartolo,] i was introduced to roekiah. as a timid person does, she shook my hand while nodding sweetly. it was true; roekiah's smile could light up a man's heart. but while smiling, looking at me, she glanced at her husband, mas kartolo, a sign she was a wife who truly loved her husband. … [after the interview], mas kartolo stayed behind to play billiards, while roekiah went home to prepare her household needs and care for her children (kamadjaja, 1941: 18). this sidelong glance, described as a sign that the actress truly loved kartolo, would have allowed roekiah to judge whether or not her husband approved of her answering the other man's questions. kartolo, though supportive of his wife's career, for his part asserted a degree of control in public; it was he who escorted kamadjaja to the interview (and, thus, could judge whether or not the journalist was trustworthy). he also chose djoemala to replace rd mochtar as roekiah's love interest on screen, presumably after deciding that the tailor could be trusted in romantic scenes. this assertion of control likely relieved any tensions created by the disparity of kartolo and roekiah's wages; though roekiah earned more money, publicly kartolo remained the dominant decision maker, and thus upheld traditional gender roles. roekiah's publicly submissive and timid nature was frequently subject to commentary. as such, journalists participated in the construction of her public persona. kamadjaja, in his interview, emphasized her meekness: he described her as softspoken, used the term "maloe-maloe" (timid) several times, and found her upon their first fig. 3: sketch of roekiah, described by kamadjaja as showing her timid nature fig. 4: roekiah (left) in a promotional still from sorga ka toedjoe, showing her characteristic fashion style ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 17–28 26 meeting to be "almost as if she were hiding". an accompanying sketch, by the artist sofianzo (fig. 3), was labelled "her face shows her timidity, sometimes [it's] almost as if she is frightened." in another instance, a reviewer for the bataviaasch nieuwsblad emphasized her "demure" demeanour in a review of the film gagak item ("filmaankondiging cinema palace"). this public exhibition of timidity and meekness, as well as the continued press coverage of this personality, allowed roekiah to be presented as a shrinking violet, upholding the patriarchal ideal that a woman should not be brash or outspoken. through her publicly meek demeanour and regular depictions with her family, roekiah set herself apart from fellow actresses such as ratna asmara, whose public personas significantly deviated from those traditionally expected of women. by publicly embracing the traditional, patriarchal construct of how a woman should act, even though she was an actress in the most modern medium available and a singer of a modern music genre, roekiah ensured that she would not alienate the conservative lowerand middle-class viewers. this guaranteed her acceptance by audiences, as she remained true to traditional values despite the intrinsic modernity of movie stardom. roekiah's physical appearance complemented her personality, and thus assisted her in developing a successful public persona. her clothing, both on stage and in public, was inspired by traditional attire; she avoided the luxurious gowns borne by hollywood celebrities. generally, she wore simple v-neck blouses (often with a floral pattern), sometimes with a shawl around her shoulder, and a batik sarong (fig. 4). her hair was usually tied in a knot, or otherwise worn short. unlike fifi young, who wore a frilly and revealing dress when promoting her film zoebaida, roekiah rarely bared her shoulder or legs, thus showing a degree of modesty which resonated with conservative audiences. this did not detract from her frequently remarked upon beauty, but rather added to it. roekiah, in her appearance as with her actions, embodied traditional patriarchal expectations of a woman: that she be beautiful, yet modest; fashionable, but not wasteful. it must be emphasized that the above elements were mutually influential; the public face presented by roekiah had an impact on the characters written for her, while the roles she took influenced how she presented herself and was presented to the public. for instance, her demure characters helped make demureness a desirable public trait, while her public appearance as a submissive and humble wife correlated with humble and submissive female characters being written for her. had roekiah's public persona been one of a self-reliant and daring woman, a modern woman of the city, the viewing public would not have accepted her portrayal of simple village women such as roekihati or rasminah. in the negotiation between modernity and tradition, roekiah's public persona put greater emphasis on traditional expectations of women. on screen, roekiah's characters married for love and rejected individuals deemed unsuitable, at times over their parents' protests, but in all cases her characters remained faithful to their chosen men and eventually received their parents' blessings. though her characters may have found work outside of the household, these were never in male-dominant fields, but in fields considered by the patriarchy to be suitable for women. roekiah's public presentation, meanwhile, focused on her talent and beauty. though she was a keroncong singer and actress – professions popularly perceived as being full of salacious women – roekiah's morality was ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 17–28 27 never questioned, for her public persona emphasized her relationship with her husband and their children. this emphasis on tradition ensured both roekiah's performances and public persona had greater resonance with the majority of filmgoers, who were of the lower and lower-middle classes and upheld traditional gender roles. she did not explicitly challenge patriarchal constructs, instead conforming to them in a way that allowed audiences to consider her a good representative of "modern yet not too modern" women. those modern aspects which she embraced, including her chosen medium and genre, had already been internalized within indies popular culture and thus had wide acceptance. as such, roekiah's public persona was a relatively conservative one, particularly in comparison to fellow artists such as fifi young (who, in her first two roles, depicted women who married men without their parents' approval), hadidjah (whose screen debut was as a self-reliant jungle princess in alang-alang), and ratna asmara (whose first film role was as a nurse who explicitly rejected tradition in kartinah, and was haughty in public). her conservative public persona enabled roekiah to gain greater popularity than her contemporaries, and thus helped cement her reputation as the first grand dame of indonesian cinema. conclusion the cinema of the dutch east indies developed as a dualistic entity, promoting the modern technological marvel of film while simultaneously concretizing traditional biases in the arts and society. though some of the more traditional aspects, such as the emphasis on roles over actors, faded over time, the colonial film industry never abandoned these cultural roots. it continued embody a clear duality within a society which was itself negotiating a path between tradition and modernity. in this context, roekiah emerged as the first bankable leading lady of the indies. trained as a stage actress, she and her husband kartolo embraced film upon their entry and massive success in the industry in 1937. over the next five years, before the japanese occupation drained her of her health, roekiah started in seven further films, acting as the romantic interest to two different men – neither of whom was her husband – and drawing thousands of fans. she earned a significant income, greater than her husband's, and her every action was the subject of the movie-going public's curiosity. to mediate the non-traditional position in which she found herself, through her characters roekiah reflected a blend of tradition and modernity, a fusion which could be accepted by the patriarchal society of the indies. she wore semitraditional, feminine clothing, and portrayed women who were polite and demure in facing men and their families. her characters became housewives and weavers, taking positions which would not challenge male authority. even when she was not acting on film, roekiah presented a public persona – a separate role, as it were – serving as a demure wife who provided her husband with many children and remained faithful and submissive. roekiah's public persona embodied both a modern ideal of entertainment, as she sang keroncong and acted in films, but also appeared unthreatening to the traditional social hierarchy. this public persona helped her become the first grand dame of indonesian cinema, popular with audiences of all creeds, ages, and backgrounds, and surpass her contemporaries. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 17–28 28 references anonymous. (1932). njai dasima advertisement: de indische courant. retrieved on april 24, 2015, from http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/view?identifier=ddd:010283820:mpeg21:a 0072&coll=ddd anonymous. (1939). filmaankondiging cinema palace: gagak item. bataviaasch nieuwsblad. retrieved on may 13, 2015, from http://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=ddd:011123019:mpeg21:a0235 anonymous. (1945). roekiah meninggal doenia. tjahaja, 2. anonymous. (1969). miss roekiah: artis telada. moderna, 1(6), 30–34. anonymous. (1977). miss roekiah: perintis bintang film indonesia. keluarga, 4, 4–7. anonymous. (1982). roekiah kartolo: primadona opera 'palestina' dan pelopor dunia layar perak. berita minggu film, 5(9). anwar, r. (2004). sejarah kecil "petite histoire" indonesia, 2. jakarta: kompas. biran, m. y. (1979). apa siapa orang film indonesia 1926–1978. jakarta: sinematek indonesia. biran, m. y. (2009). sejarah film 1900–1950: bikin film di jawa. jakarta: komunitas bamboo working with the jakarta art council. dewantara, k. h. (1941). film dan radio. pertjatoeran doenia dan film, 1(1), 7–8. djokdjasche causerieen. (1926). de indische courant. retrieved on april 25, 2015, from http://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=ddd:010278153:mpeg21:a0124 imanjaya, e. (2006). a to z about indonesian film. bandung: mizan. imong, w. (1941). riwayat roekiah–kartolo. pertjatoeran doenia dan film, 1(2), 20–22. kamadjaja. (1941). studio reporter. pertjatoeran doenia dan film, 1(4), 18–19. kwee, t. h. (1929). film njaie dasima, productie dari tan's film company. panorama, 3(153), 1199–1201. kwee, t. h. (1930). pemandangan film melati van agam: productie paling baroe dari tan's film company. panorama, 4(181), 27–28. suryadinata, l. (1995). prominent indonesian chinese: biographical sketches. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. tal-or, n. & papirman, y. (2007). the fundamental attribution error in attributing fictional figures' characteristics to the actors. media psychology, 9(2), 33145. retrieved on april 8, 2015, from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p13476_index.html ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 84-92 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 84 pragmatic phenomena constellation in specific culture dimension language study r. kunjana rahardi masters program in the indonesian language and literature education sanata dharma university yogyakarta kunjana.rahardi@gmail.com; kunjana@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010109 received 14 april 2016; revised 15 february 2017; accepted 25 june 2017 abstract the linguistic phenomena studied in pragmatics evolve over time. among the pragmatic phenomena that can be mentioned here are: implicature, deixis, presupposition, entailment, language politeness, language impoliteness and language phatic. there are certainly other pragmatic phenomena outside the phenomena mentioned above. in the future, other new pragmatic phenomena are expected to arise, along with the better development of pragmatic studies. among those pragmatic phenomena, the phenomenon of language impoliteness can be regarded as a new phenomenon. how the constellation of pragmatic phenomena in the language study with the specific culture perspective becomes the main issue discussed in this short article. the benefit obtained by understanding the constellation of this new pragmatic phenomenon is that the interpretation of the pragmatic intent or meaning of language impoliteness becomes increasingly sharp, profound and comprehensive because its association with other pragmatic phenomena is sometimes an inevitable fact. keywords: phatic language, linguistic impoliteness, pragmatic phenomenon, specific culture introduction pragmatics is a branch of language science that is 'context bound' or 'context dependent' in nature. that is, in pragmatics, the intent of the speaker or the pragmatic meaning can only be interpreted by taking the context into account. pragmatics differs from linguistics in terms of contextual obsolescence used as a basis in the analysis process. therefore, the meaning in pragmatics can also be said to be triadic, while the meaning in linguistics is said to be dyadic. the meaning in pragmatics is triadic because of the existence of the context. leech (1983) mentions that the context in pragmatics differs from the context in linguistics. the context in linguistics is called co-text, while the context in pragmatics is called speech situational context. over time, along with the development of science and technology, the context in pragmatics has become more varied and complex. along with the development of such varied and complex contexts, pragmatics as a branch of language science evolved as well as its complexity. the linguistic phenomena mailto:kunjana.rahardi@gmail.com mailto:kunjana@usd.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 84-92 85 studied in pragmatics evolve over time. among those pragmatic phenomena, the phenomenon of language impoliteness can be regarded as a new phenomenon. how the constellation of pragmatic phenomena in the language study with specific culture dimension becomes the main issue discussed in this article. the benefit obtained by understanding the constellation of this pragmatic phenomenon is that the interpretation of the pragmatic intent or meaning of each pragmatic phenomenon will become increasingly sharp, profound and comprehensive because the relation between pragmatic phenomena is sometimes inevitable. method data collection methods used in this study were listening method and speaking method (sudaryanto, 2015). some techniques used in the implementation of the two methods above were the taking notes technique, recording technique, and fishing technique. there were two kinds of data analysis methods used in this study, which were distributional analysis method and equivalent analysis method (sudaryanto, 2015). the distributional analysis method was used to describe the linguistic dimensions of language studies in the specific culture perspective. the equivalent analysis method was used to reach the pragmatic dimensions of this linguistic study. furthermore, each method used for analyzing the data was detailed by both basic techniques and advanced techniques. since this study was of pragmatic dimension, it had to be emphasized that the equivalent method applied was the extralingual equivalent method. what were paired were nonlinguistic entities that were essentially outside the language, or which in linguistic studies are commonly referred to as extralinguistic factors. the distributional method was applied by using dividing technique for both dividing technique which was direct in nature and dividing technique which was indirect in nature towards the elements of speech that contained language phatic as the object of the study (rahardi et al, 2015). findings and discussion on several occasions, the researcher has conveyed the idea that as a new pragmatic phenomenon, language impoliteness must continue to be inflated. the findings of language studies pragmatically on a certain specific culture basis must be communicated to the public so that this linguistic phenomenon is increasingly understood by the public. the phenomenon of language impoliteness can be said to have only begun since bousfield et al. (2008) wrote a book entitled 'impoliteness in language'. the researcher believes that the presence of the book was a milestone in the emergence of the studies of language impoliteness. the incredible passion in the study of language politeness emerged since fraser (1994) presented four views to assess politeness, and the study of language impoliteness by bousfiled et al. (2008) was the milestone. in a book written by bousfield et al. (2008), a number of views on language impoliteness are described in detail as follows. the view of locher (2008) which asserts that language impoliteness is '... behaviour that is face-aggravating in a particular context.' essentially, language impoliteness refers to face-aggravating attitudes and behaviors. face-aggravating behavior is different from face-threatening behavior as offered in various definitions of classic language politeness, such as leech (1983), brown and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 84-92 86 levinson (1987), or earlier studies in 1978 that tend to be influenced by the face concept of goffman (cf. rahardi, 2009). the difference is that in faceaggravation, there is a dimension of insult and/or humiliation against one's face. another interpretation that is related to locher's (2008) definition of the phenomenon of language impoliteness is that the actions are not just the attitudes and behaviors that make a person's face aggravated, but a behavior that 'plays someone’s face'. in the view of bousfield (2008), language impoliteness is understood as, 'the issuing of intentionally gratuitous and conflictive face-threatening acts (ftas) that are purposefully perfomed.' bousfield (2008) emphasizes the dimension of 'gratuitous' in the practice of impolite language. therefore, if a person's language behavior is face-threatening, and the threat to the face is done gratuitously, until the gratuitous category action brings conflict, or even quarrel, and the action is done in purpose, then the act of language is a reality of language impoliteness. culpeper's (2008) understanding on language impoliteness is described as follows, 'impoliteness, as i would define it, involves communicative behavior intending to cause the "face loss" of a target or perceived by the target to be so.' he gives emphasis to the fact of 'face loss' if in javanese it may be close to the concept of 'ilang raine' [losing the face], or 'ra duwe rai' [no face], or 'kelangan rai' [loss of face]. therefore, impoliteness in language is a communicative behavior that is intentionally tuned to make a person really experiences face loss, or at least the person 'feels' losing his or her face. terjourafi (2008) considers impoliteness as, 'impoliteness occurs when the expression is not conventionalized relative to the context of occurrence; it threatens the addressee's face but no face-threatening intention is attributed to the speaker by the hearer.' thus, the language behavior is said to be impolite when the addressee feels a threat of face threatening act, and the speaker does not get the face threat intention from the addressee. they argue that impolite behavior is the negatively marked behavior, because it violates the social norms prevailing in the society. in addition, they assert that impoliteness is a means to negotiate meaning. furthermore, their views on language impoliteness are presented as follow, '... impolite behavior and face-aggravating behavior more generally is as much as this negation as polite versions of behavior.' (cf. lohcer & watts, 2008, p.5). as mentioned earlier, in the pragmatic studies that have developed so far, the study of impoliteness is not one of the phenomena to be studied. one of the reasons underlying the absence of impoliteness as a pragmatic phenomenon is that the study of language impoliteness is considered to be paired with politeness. like a natural phenomenon, what happens is bipolar in nature, the good is paired with the bad, the natural is paired with the unnatural, and so on. the same thing is applied in the pragmatic context, the advantageous is paired with the disadvantageous. leech also has the same argument, the polite is paired with the impolite, the advantageous is paired with the disadvantageous. therefore, such a bipolar reason is one of the reasons why language impoliteness is not a phenomenon in the pragmatic study. another reason that causes language impoliteness not being made a separate phenomenon in pragmatics is because the society is always oriented to what is polite in behaving in the society, not the impolite one. thus, what is important for them to learn is something polite, not ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 84-92 87 something that is impolite. in other words, there is a kind of assumption that the study of impoliteness is not really necessary in the society because the society certainly will not commit impoliteness practices in communicating with others. in the context of pragmatic developments and this may be the third reason, impoliteness is recently emerged after the study of politeness. if the phenomenon of politeness has been born since the erving goffman era in the 1970s, impoliteness has just begun to be widely studied in the 2000s. it was natural for the birth of this new pragmatic phenomenon that has just emerged to be manifesting a very early development. a number of studies on language impoliteness conducted so far, especially in indonesian language, are still very early studies of language impoliteness. furthermore, the concept of implicature was first presented by grice (1975) in his article entitled 'logic and conversation'. one of the impacts of grice's thought on implicature is the one that eventually leads to a view of language politeness which is based on implied meanings. rahardi (2012) mentions that the language politeness in the implicature basis was presented by grice as the 'gricean view of politeness'. thus, it can be emphasized that the view of politeness which is based on the principles of implicature points to the language politeness which was developed by grice. in relation to this implicature, wijana (1996) mentions that a speech can be said to imply a proposition or intention that is not part of the related speech. the implied proposition or intent is referred to as implicature. the relationship between the speech that implies and something that is implied is not an absolute consequence. therefore, it can be said that in fact the implicature is not really a part of the speech that is implying something. a further illustration of the implicature in pragmatics can be observed on the following speech snippet. (+) sendi di mana, ton? [where is sendi, ton?] (-) andi di rumah neneknya sekarang. [andi is at his grandmother’s house now.] at a glance it can be seen that the speech contained in (+) is not related to the speech (-), even it seems that the speech (-) is deviating from the speech (+). however, in fact the speech (-) contains implicature entities. something that is implied is that 'andi' is a close friend of 'sendi'. if 'andi' is at his grandmother's house, then the implication is that 'sendi' is also at the house of andi's grandmother. from the above speech example, it is obvious that something that is implied is not a part of the speech delivered. it even seems as if the speech which is the answer to the previous speech is apart from the form of speech. in the pragmatic study so far, the implicature in such language practice has been closely observed and studied. there are many studies on the preparation of theses in universities which also take this implicature as the object of their studies. therefore, it can be said that research and studies on implicature as a pragmatic phenomenon do not need to be re-inflated because that has in fact been done a lot. nevertheless, if new dimensions are found in the pragmatic implicature, research and studies on this pragmatic phenomenon can also be performed. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 84-92 88 the second pragmatic phenomenon, which has also been widely described, is presupposition. a speech will be said to presuppose another speech if the truth or untruth of a presupposed sentence leads to the truth or untruth that the presupposing sentence could do. the illustration of the statement can be observed through the following speeches. (-) anak kecil di rumah besar itu cerdas sekali. [the child in that big house is very brilliant.] (+) istri dosen muda itu cantik sekali. [the young lecturer’s wife is very beautiful.] what is presupposed in the speech (-) is that in the big house there is a very brilliant little boy. if there is no child in the house, or there may be a small child but that child is not very brilliant, then it can be said that what is presupposed in the speech is wrong. the study of language impoliteness is also closely related to the concept of this presupposition in pragmatics. the context used as the primary device for understanding pragmatic meaning or intent, has a primary substance in the form of assumptions. thus, it can be said that the study of language politeness is adjacent to the study of presupposition as one of the pragmatic phenomena. earlier, it is said that in the implicature, the relationship between something that is implied and a speech that implies something is unnecessary. it can even be said that in the implicature, something that is implied is not a part of the speech that implies something. however, there are times when the relationship between a speech with the other speech is absolutely necessary. in other words, one speech is an entailment of the previous speech. an example can be observed through the following speech. (-) kemarin terjadi gempa bumi lagi di aceh. [there was an earthquake again in aceh yesterday.] (+) beritanya, tidak lebih dari 10 rumah roboh. [according to the news, not more than 10 houses collapsed.] from the previous speech snippets, it can be explained that speech (+) is really a logical and absolute consequence of the speech (-). therefore, the relationship between the speeches can be said to be obligatory or absolute. that is, the presence of speech (+) is really a logical consequence of the presence of speech (-). thus, it can be emphasized that speech (+) is an entailment for speech (-), and not a speech that is implied by speech (-). the study of language impoliteness also cannot be separated from the entailment phenomenon as one of the pragmatic phenomena. in the various data of natural speeches that are analyzed to obtain a picture of the pragmatic meaning, there are many facts which have found that they contain this pragmatic phenomenon. therefore, it can be asserted that the study of language impoliteness cannot detach this other linguistic phenomenon in pragmatics which is commonly referred to as entailment. kridalaksana (1993) defines deixis as a thing or function of those points to something outside the language. meanwhile, alwi et al. (2003) explains that deixis is a semantic symptom contained in a word or a construction whose reference can only be interpreted by taking into account the situation of the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 84-92 89 conversation. for example the word 'now' can be interpreted as 'right now' or 'this moment'. people might even define that 'now' is this 'second'. however, in other speech, 'now' can be interpreted as merely something that points out time which is different from 'tomorrow' or 'the day after tomorrow'. thus, it can be said that in the second word 'now', the time period is different from the first 'now'. the difference in the pragmatic meaning or the intent that the word 'now' carries in that context of different speech is what is interpreted as a deictic phenomenon. it should be noted that deixis is not only related to time. deixis is in fact connected to place as well. in javanese, when people say 'wanten mrika', then the meaning can vary. the intent contained in the form of 'mrika' might turn out to be 'close' or even might be 'very not close'. similar with the form of 'di sini’ [here] or 'di sana’ [there] in indonesian language that turns out to point at different distances. although the form of 'here' or 'there' are equally used, different contexts will inevitably produce different meanings as well. in addition to the deixis of time and place as described previously, there is also deixis of pronoun. the use of the word 'you' can refer to a second person pronoun which only refers to one person. nevertheless, in a different context, the word 'you' can refer to a second person pronoun which is plural. the word 'you' which refers to a single entity and the word 'you' which refers to a non-singular entity is one example of the use of deixis of pronoun in indonesian language. for certain people, the form ‘kami’ [usexclusive] and the word ‘kita’ [usinclusive] mean differently. meanwhile, some other people refer to ‘kami’ [us-exclusive] as ‘kita’ [us-inclusive] and vice versa. for certain, the only entity that will be able to give meaning and determine the meaning precisely is context. therefore, it can be concluded as well that the phenomenon of deixis in the language is also cannot be separated from the entity of context in understanding it. it is clearly undeniable that the study of language impoliteness can never be detached from the phenomenon of deixis. in fact, sometimes, the form of language impoliteness is linguistically evident in the use of the deictic phenomenon. hence, it can be said that both of them are in fact closely correlated. the phenomenon of deixis cannot be separated from the phenomenon of language impoliteness, and vice versa. the concept of chit-chat in language is adjacent to the concept of 'phatic communion' or which is translated into 'fatist communication' conveyed by malinowski (1923). the word 'phatic' comes from a greek verb that means 'to speak'. the term 'communion' means the creation of 'ties of union', while 'phatic' is defined as 'by speech' or what is spoken (cf. mey, 1998, pp.672-673). the phenomenon of chit-chat, as well as the phenomenon of language politeness, is universal. that means, such linguistic phenomena can be found in every language. in indonesian language, for example, we would very easily find people saying the 'how are you' form of chit-chat, that is when a person is meeting his friend, then the person would easily use that linguistic form. when a colleague has just recovered from his illness and then entering the office, his colleagues would then quickly ask 'sudah sehat?' [okay already?] or maybe 'sehat?' [okay?] or 'sehatsehat?' [you okay?]. but in truth, the intent of the speech is not to first ask about the health condition, but only as a sort of chit-chat to ask about the health condition of his colleague. it seems odd that when someone obviously appears to go to a church or to a mosque for worship, someone asks 'where are you going?'. people, who do ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 84-92 90 not understand or do not comprehend the context, may find it very easy to get angry with the linguistic form that is spoken. however, for a person who understands the context, such a speech is simply used to express chit-chat. the main goal of people to chit-chat with each other is to maintain a relationship in the communication practice. whether people want to use the dimensions of chit-chat or not to use chit-chat in the greetings; it really depends on whether or not they want to be polite or on the contrary they want to express their impoliteness. in other words, the phenomenon of chit-chat is not detached from the phenomenon of language impoliteness. both can be said to be interrelated, one is present in the other one. one of the pragmatic phenonema that is now widely studied is the phenomenon of language politeness. speaking of the concept of language politeness, it is normally divided into two, namely the politeness that is based on the concept of face, and the politeness that is based on the concept of implicature. the first concept was defined by erving goffman which was later developed into 'goffmanian view of politeness'. the second concept was defined by grice with his concept of implicature, which then gave birth to 'gricean view of politess' (cf. rahardi, 2013). speaking of the phenomenon of language politeness, we cannot ignore the politeness principles that geoffrey n. leech has conveyed, dividing it into the maxims of politeness. the maxims of politeness of geoffrey n. leech can be mentioned one by one as follows. (1) tact maxim: minimize cost to other; maximize benefit to other, (2) generosity maxim: minimize benefit to self; maximize cost to self; (3) approbation maxim: minimize dispraise; maximize praise of other; (4) modesty maxim: minimize praise of self; maximize dispraise of self; (5) agreement maxim: minimize disagreement between self and other; maximize agreement between self and other; (6) sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy between self and other; maximize sympathy between self and other. (cf. leech, 1983, p.119). the principle of politeness can be said to be complementary to the principle of cooperation. if the principle of cooperation is widely used for textual pragmatic entities, the principle of politeness is more used with respect to pragmatic entities that are non-textual. thus, it can be said that the principle of language politeness is actually a complementary of the principle of cooperation. the principle of cooperation can be fully expressed in the following maxims: maxim of quantity, maxim of quality, maxim of relevance, maxim of implementation. (cf. rahardi, 2009, p.23). from the literature that the researcher can afford, it was found that the study of language politeness developed very quickly after fraser (1990) showed four models of politeness studies in language, namely (1) a politeness view that is related to social norm, (2) a view that sees politeness as a conversational maxim, (3) a politeness view that is related to the efforts to save the face, and (4) a politeness view that is related to a conversation contract. (cf. rahardi, 2005, p.38). the relation between the two phenomena in this pragmatic study is very clear and undeniable. even in the concept of politeness of a number of experts, the phenomenon of impoliteness is considered as a bipolar phenomenon with the phenomenon of language politeness. if there is a term of politeness on one side, it is certain that there will be a term of impoliteness on the other side. thus, it can be clearly stated that one cannot be separated from the other one that one is intertwining with the other one. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 84-92 91 conclusion as a conclusion, it can be reiterated that in fact the pragmatic phenomena cannot be separated from one another. one linguistic phenomenon is related to other linguistic phenomena. in fact, sometimes, one pragmatic phenomenon is an integral part of other pragmatic phenomena. in connection with that fact, to produce a comprehensive study, a study involving pragmatic phenomena as a whole and integratively is essential to be conducted immediately. with such a holistic and integrative study, the description of pragmatic phenomena in indonesian language will become more complete and not just fragmented. references anonymous. 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(1986). relevance: communication and cognition. oxford: basil blackwell ltd. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 84-92 92 stalnaker, r. c. (1973). pragmatic presupposition. in munitz, m.k. and d.k. unger (eds.), semantics and philosophy. new york: new york universitypress. terkourafi, m. (2008). toward a unified theory of politeness, impoliteness, and rudeness. in impoliteness in language: studies on its interplay with power in theory and practice. new york: mouton de gruyter. thomas, j. (1983). cross-cultural pragmatics failure. applied linguistics, 4(2), 91—112. verschueren, j. understanding pragmatics. london: arnold. watts, r. j. & miriam, a. l. (2008). relational work and impoliteness: negotiating norms of linguistics behavior. in impoliteness in language: studies on its interplay with power in theory and practice. new york: mouton de gruyter. watts, r. j., sachiko, i. & konrad, e. 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(1991). cross-cultural pragmatics: the semantics of human interaction. berlin: walter de gruyter. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 301-314 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 301 women participation in nigerian politics: challenges and prospects to nigerian democracy rashida adamu oyoru kwara state university, nigeria correspondence: rashida.adamu@kwasu.edu.ng https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5295 received 29 october 2022; accepted 2 march 2023 abstract the study examined the extent that nigerian women contributed to political participation in the country and also the factors that hinder them from participating fully. the issue of women in politics has dominated the political debate since nigeria gained its independence. nigerian women have not received the kind of representation that is required to enable them to influence the political space like their male counterparts as this makes it difficult for women to be part of the decision-making process. the study adopted liberal feminism theory to explain gradual improvements through advocating for equal rights for all, and legislation and policies that promote equality. the study adopted content analysis and the study relied on secondary sources of data. the study revealed that several impediments have been identified that limit the participation of women in politics. these barriers are cultural, economic, and legal amongst others that have affected the participation of women in politics. the study concluded that even though women may function at the greatest levels in both the public and private realms, a vicious loop of barriers frequently hinders their ability to lead. the success of these individuals as leaders has been significantly hampered by both internal and external obstacles, including societal and cultural prejudices, patriarchy, the challenge of juggling parental and professional commitments, and a lack of networking. the study recommended that to gain the necessary leadership qualities, women should choose to pursue positions of leadership in both the public and private sectors and should educate themselves to the highest levels. to reduce illiteracy and prepare female students for future leadership duties, parents, especially those in rural areas, should be urged to enroll their female children in school. the study also recommended that the current women empowerment policy be reviewed to reflect the actual situation and that government should also establish a network of women leaders so that women can share their leadership successes and challenges to inspire other women who aspire to be leaders. keywords: equality, liberal feminism theory, political participation, women introduction nigeria returned to full-fledged democracy in 1999 after recording 16 years of military dictatorship in the country. the periodic election has become part and mailto:rashida.adamu@kwasu.edu.ng https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5295 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 301-314 302 parcel of the features of the nigerian democratic dispensation after every four years. there is no doubt that the constitution does not place any restriction on any candidate based on gender as nigeria practices universal adult suffrage where adults from eighteen years of age can vote and be voted for irrespective of gender. the issue of women in politics has dominated the political debate since nigeria gained its independence in 1960. samuel and segun (2012) observed that in the first republic, nigeria only have four female lawmakers in the entire country and this negligible number failed to give nigerian women the kind of representation that is required to enable them to influence the political space like their male counterpart as this makes it difficult for women to be part of the decision-making process. luka (2012) has noted that the second republic and third republic recorded little progress concerning women's participation in politics and decision-making. he further observed that before 1999, the proportion of seats occupied by women never exceeded 3.1% and 5% for the national parliament and federal executive council respectively (luka, 2012). women find it challenging to participate in democratic politics due to the widespread issue of gender inequality. in world politics, very few women have ever attained the highest echelons of political office. gender inequality has been a fundamental problem that women have encountered in the political sphere around the world. there are few opportunities for women to participate in politics in nigeria, which has a patriarchal society (ojo, 2013). the political parochialism of nigerian society discouraged women from participating in politics, and the adversarial imbalance has continued to rage their political flourish. the patriarchal system of traditional and sociopolitical systems denigrates the role of women in politics and called for male dominance in nigerian democratic politics. women are completely excluded from democratic politics in nigeria because of the nature, customs, traditions, and cultural backgrounds of the political nomenclature, which completely limits their ability to survive in politics. in nigerian political situations, women are consistently viewed as second-class citizens in all of their numerous spheres (ojo, 2013). nigerian women have roughly the lowest participation in the national legislature, with 5.9%, when compared to the bulk of other african countries, including uganda (34.6%), south africa (43.2%), ethiopia (27.7%), cameroon (20%), niger (12.3%), and the democratic republic of the congo (8.0%). (18 may 2012, daily times). nigerian women in particular have not attained that level of political participation. women's participation in governance in nigeria remains incredibly low, ranking last in the world at barely 7% (onyegbula, 2013). women's participation in politics in nigeria over time has not precisely been positive. the political situation in the nation is extremely active. every day, more people declare their desire to run for office in the general election. similarly to this, ehaniredanjuma (2005) said that the low representation of women in political and decisionmaking structures is a result of the lack of recognition of the fact that the gender component of democracy makes the democratic process inclusive (ojo, 2013). nigeria's political and decision-making representation of women is still well below the global norm of 35% affirmative action (ngara, 2013). this for the most part accounted for the marginalization of women in public affairs and the exclusion of their interests in governance. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 301-314 303 the absence of women from party politics has a huge negative impact on nigeria's political and electoral process. their marginalization has hindered women's contributions, involvement, and influence in party politics and the nigerian political system. nigerian women first experienced marginalization in party politics and the political process during the colonial era. erunke and abdul (2013) correctly stated that "this gender bias in nigeria's political system is often tied to the beginning of colonialism in nigeria." thus, their encounters with nigeria strengthened the colonialism-based western cultural paradigm that is based on the superiority of men (erunke & abdul, 2013). due to the exclusion of women from party politics in nigeria, gender issues have also recently come to the attention of professionals in the field. this research paper adopted liberal feminist theory to analyze women in party politics and its impact on the political process to address the marginalization of women by their male counterparts concerning the appointment, selection, and election into various political posts in nigeria. problem statement the historically low representation of women in politics is frequently due to social marginalization rather than a lack of desire or motivation. in nigeria, women make up to 50% of the population and approximately 51% of the electorate, yet they are not afforded the same rights as men, who control the political landscape and occupy the great majority of the nation's decision-making positions (ogbogu, 2012). the national assembly has been overwhelmingly dominated by men since 1999 when democracy was reinstated in nigeria. in our political and socioeconomic lives, there is a patriarchal framework that, ojo (2013) affirmed that it limits the involvement of women in politics in favor of their male counterparts, creating an imbalance in political participation and representation. ojo (2013) went on to say that despite the necessity for gender balance in legislatures around the world, nigeria still has a very low rate of female representation in the country's parliament, which is exceedingly worrying. nigeria has accepted several international agreements that prohibit gender discrimination and advance equal access for men and women in governmental and other decision-making institutions. the 1948 universal declaration of human rights (udhr), which affirms that everyone has the right to vote and that men and women should enjoy equal rights, is one of them; the 1966 international covenant on civil and political rights, the 1966 international covenant on economic, social, and cultural rights, the 1979 convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (cedaw), which nigeria's government ratified without reservation in 1985, as well as its 2000 optional protocol, which nigeria ratified in 2004; and the 1995 un beijing declaration and platform for action, which urged member states to take action to enact laws prohibiting discrimination against women. the national assembly still has a sizable gender disparity, nevertheless. the majority of these documents have not been domesticated, despite the 1999 constitution of nigeria (as amended in section 12) providing that an international treaty must be done so for it to apply. to make matters worse, a measure introduced by senator biodun olujimi in 2016 that aimed to domesticate and include these instruments was voted down on second reading by both chambers of the national assembly (eniola, 2018 cited in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 301-314 304 okechukwu, 2022). in addition, the nigerian constitution of 1999 stipulates that to serve in the national assembly, a person must be chosen by a political party in that party's primary election. political parties are significant institutions in representative democracies, as stated by pierre, warren, and brand (2014) since they support candidates in elections. researchers frequently ignore the role of party politics in preserving gender disparity in nigeria's politics because they frequently concentrate on patriarchal, cultural, and religious factors as well as economic and educational factors that contribute to low women representation in representative democracy in nigeria. the paper tries to fill the knowledge gap by addressing the difficulties highlighted above and providing a response to the subsequent research questions: 1. to what extent have nigerian women contributed to political participation in the country? 2. what are the challenges restricting women's participation in politics in nigeria? literature review overview of women's political participation in 1999 – 2019 general elections an overview of women's political participation in general elections from 1999 to 2019. men and women are both present in society, thus it follows that both should participate equally in politics. this assumption is supported by the democratic ideal emphasizing the equal representation of all interest groups in the political sphere. the continual responsiveness of the government to the desires of its citizens, who are viewed as political equals, is cited by dahl (1971) in okeke (2015) as a key trait of a democracy. in nigeria, a democracy, the low representation of women in politics is viewed as a breach of this concept. according to oluyemi (2016), the restoration of democracy on may 29, 1999, inspired hope for a new beginning in the fight for greater gender equity in nigerian politics. even though the democratic transition has provided opportunities that enable equitable participation, statistics, and statistical data from 1999 to the present plainly show that women's involvement in nigerian politics is negligible. since nigeria transitioned to democracy in 1999, it has gone through six different administrations. since the return to democratic rule in 1999, omolara (2015) notes that nigerian women have tried to run for elective positions at various levels to access positions of political decision-making, but their efforts have not been very successful based on the outcomes of elections held since 1999. the general election participation of women in 2015 is examined by omolara (2015). given that there are fewer women than men in positions of leadership and decision-making, women continue to be disproportionately marginalized (omolara, 2015). for instance, in the political history of nigeria, neither a female president nor vice president has ever been elected. president obasanjo served in power from 1999 to 2007, which might be compared to the length of time between the restoration of democracy and the protracted era of military rule. president umaru musa yar'adua succeeded him as a leader in 2007, and president goodluck jonathan took over in 2010 after yar'adua's passing. jonathan remained in office until 2015. after the 2019 elections, president muhammadu buhari was still in office. he first came to power in 2015. the vice presidency in nigeria used the same aesthetic as the president. since democracy was restored in 1999, four men have occupied the job. in the history of nigeria, a woman has never been elected governor. the first and only female ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 301-314 305 governor in the country was mrs. virginia etiaba, who took office as governor of anambra state in 2006 after peter obi was removed from office. she only held the position for three months. the national assembly has also been dominated by men. only three women were among the 109 senators in the senate in 1999. that number increased to four by 2007, nine by 2011, seven by 2015, and seven by 2019 as well (ohaja et al., 2022). in the house of representatives in 1999, there were 12 women out of the 360 members. twenty-three were added in 2003, then twenty-six in 2007, twenty-six in 2011, and eleven in 2019 (ohaja et al., 2022). from the federal to the municipal levels of government, there is an unequal representation of women in elective positions. the table below provides information on the number of women who have been elected to public office from 1999-2019. table 1. number of women in elected positions from 1999-2019 seats available 1999 2003 2007 2011 2015 2019 office women women women women women women president 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 vice president 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 senate 109 3 4 9 7 7 7 house of rep. 360 12 23 27 26 20 11 governor 36 0 0 0 0 0 0 dep. governor 36 1 2 6 3 6 4 state ha 990 12 38 54 62 40 source: adopted from ohaja et al., 2022 according to afolabi and arogundade (2003), there are four ways to look at the challenges of women's political representation and engagement in politics and government. access, participation, representation, and change. the eventual consequence will be a social and political transformation in the polity as a result of access to political institutions, participation (which includes control of power within such institutions), and quantitative and qualitative representation. these four requirements must be met to increase the political empowerment of women. three things support the idea that women in politics are important: first of all, politics is a crucial setting for decision-making. the distribution of limited resources, such as tax money, is left to the discretion of those who occupy official positions in the government. politicians make choices that may benefit some individuals at the expense of others. politicians frequently take positions that encourage some behaviors while discouraging others, affecting the personal choices that people make. second, political clout is a valuable asset. the family is one example of a social institution that is impacted by politics. third, authority is necessary to engage in politics (paxton, 2010). women in positions of authority and leadership can improve the lives of other women by influencing decisions that influence them. igwe (2002) defined political participation as the degree and kind of public participation in governmental institutions and institutions that are linked to them, such as the economy and culture (cited in uwa, 2018). it includes voting in elections, taking part in political discussions and campaigns, going to party caucuses or strategy sessions, running for office, and holding elective office. okolie (2004) also incorporates the rights to social justice, associational freedom, free speech, and the free flow of information into his definition (cited in uwa, 2018). he contends that exercising one's rights ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 301-314 306 also includes fighting for better social and medical services, better working conditions, more income, and other things. as a core motivation for engaging in politics, all groups including those of women seek to influence the distribution of power following their expressed objectives. in recent years, women have become increasingly interested in changing the balance of power, resource allocation, and mentality in their favor. however, a thorough investigation has shown the degree of voting and latent support where women are most visible in nigerian politics. according to adeniyi (2003), the main obstacles to and inhibitors of women's active participation in nigerian politics include violence and other types of electoral disputes committed and promoted by men and male youths. arguments on the exact role that women should play in society are becoming more prevalent. there is disagreement about whether women should primarily focus on domestic duties or whether they should be allowed to participate in other socioeconomic and political activities like men. even though it is thought that a mother's inherent devotion to her child may limit and restrict her to sedentary hobbies, she should nonetheless contribute her fair bit to the development of her family and society as a whole. due to the ongoing marginalization of nigerian women, they are unable to perform these jobs. it's interesting to note that even while women are valued as voters in a democratic system, they nevertheless lack the acceptance to participate in power structures and reach positions of decisionmaking authority since they are seen as being underqualified. according to guzman (2004), this explains why women's access to leadership roles does not always lead to better coordination of women's interests overall. it also clarifies how women can have their actual needs overlooked in favor of those that are based on their racial heritage, socioeconomic class, or cultural upbringing (cited in uwa, 2018). female legislators can promote the objectives of "feminizing the political agenda," or the expression of women's concerns and opinions in public debate, as well as the desire for public policies to take into account how they affect women (dovi, 2006). in a male-dominated legislature, the majority of gender issues are either ignored or addressed primarily from a male perspective. the majority of the time, female legislators had to persuade their male colleagues that a certain gender measure should be passed. with the use of historical precedents, we may now advance the cultural beliefs of some pre-colonial nations to better comprehend the crucial and useful roles that women in those communities during that time played. this will assist us in establishing or disproving a connection between limited female political engagement and people's traditional cultural orientation. the question of finance is one of the primary elements, according to asase (2003), that limits and inhibits women's engagement in politics today. she also stated that some who oppose women in politics believe it is improper for a woman to make special efforts to lobby others. most likely does, for the fund. she might as well give up on her political aspirations right away. in response to the problem of women's empowerment, stacey (1993), "the minister of women affairs and social development," lamented the poor involvement and marginalization of women in the nigerian political system, attributing it to the unfavorable political atmosphere in the nation. she also attributed the problem to the male chauvinism and violence that permeate nigerian political environments, as well as a lack of funding, as some of the things preventing nigerian women from running in elections and resulting in a low proportion of women holding public office. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 301-314 307 35 percent affirmative action of women participation in government nigeria is a complex state, in contrast to other nations where things are often not done well. if caution is not immediately used, the 35% affirmative action could end up being a mirage. the reality is that no level of administration showed any sincerity in achieving the 35% affirmation of women's participation in active government. according to oham (2011), the future administration's zoning plan would have a low percentage of women. in the last general elections that were held in 2011, reports show that among the 36 states of the federation, only seven (7) women were elected to the senate, twelve (12) to the house of representatives, and one (1) deputy governor. the women claimed that for the situation to normalize and gender parity to be achieved in the nation, they must be given 35% of the appointments in the new government. additionally, according to statistics, 218 women ran for house of representatives seats, and 88 women ran for senate seats in the 2011 elections. in the elections, there were only five (5) women standing for governor across the nation, but several male candidates for the position had female running mates (kolawole et al., 2012). comparatively, these numbers also show a drop in women's success when nigerian democracy was restored in 1999. the party primary was challenging for the approximately 631 women who were running for the over 1,900 slots in the 1999 elections. only 181 people were chosen to take office. compared to 2007 and 2003, 2011 saw a decline in the number and percentage of women elected to office. only 93 women nationwide were elected to government in the 2007 elections, despite winning 660 party primaries (kolawole et al., 2012). odebode (2011) argued that the incumbent government's pledge of 35% affirmative women participation may not be fully met, even though jonathan had during electioneering pledged to have 35% women representation in his administration and at the mentorship summit for african women, organized by the centre for african women leaders think-thank in abuja on may 3, reiterated his commitment to his campaign promise of 35%. in a similar vein, party statistics revealed that the only position reserved for women was women leader, out of over 40 positions, even though it was suggested that women should be given 20% representation in the formation of political parties, not in an elective position, not in any concrete position. for example, we suggested that the pdp give 20% representation to women in executive positions, but it was rejected (taiwo, 2010). liberal feminist theory giddens (2006) defines liberal feminism as a philosophy that holds that gender inequality is caused by women's lack of access to civil rights and specific social resources like education and employment. liberal feminists frequently turn to amending the legislation to find solutions and guarantee that people's rights are protected (giddens, 2006). liberal feminism, in the words of samkange (2015), is "gradual improvements through advocating for equal rights for all, and legislation and policies that promote equality.” this shows that women have an equal right to participate in politics, run for office without fear of backlash, and make politically relevant decisions for society. it is appropriate for men and women to have equal rights. through education or culture, they shouldn't be held back from actively engaging in societal activities. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 301-314 308 traditional notions of women's inferiority to men still rule in nigeria due to broad support for cultural practices that promote subordination. in terms of social, political, economic, and religious issues, men continue to dominate. women’s political endeavors, accomplishments, and societal achievements are hardly ever acknowledged. it is essential for women to actively participate in political decisionmaking so that they have the status, responsibilities, and rights that they are entitled to in light of these circumstances (kasomo as cited in okafor & akokuwebe, 2015). in terms of political participation, income, labor force participation, and the proportion of seats in parliament, women in nigeria continue to face less favorable conditions than men (azuh, egharevba, & azuh, 2014 cited in tama & maiwuya, 2022). for women to attain their right to equality in nigeria, liberal feminism must receive more emphasis. application of the theory it is undeniable that nigeria is a patriarchal society where men dominate women in all spheres because of the false belief that society holds that women are naturally less intelligent and physically capable than men. as a result, society tends to discriminate against women. the assumption is also made that female subordination is rooted in a set of customary and legal restrictions that prevent women from entering and succeeding in the so-called public world. since 1999, it has been against the law for political parties in the nation to nominate women on an equal basis for party offices and elected positions like those up for election to the national assembly. nevertheless, they benefitted from every measure taken to boost the number of men in parliament. two examples are the timing of political events, which usually occur after work hours when women are caring for domestic responsibilities at home, and the nation's political violence, which disproportionately affects women because of their sensitivity. women in nigeria face discrimination in appointive or elective positions where policies affecting them are formulated, based on the presumption that women's needs and interests are inadequately reflected in the fundamental conditions under which they live and that those conditions lack legitimacy because women are inadequately represented in the processes of democratic self-determination. due to the low representation of women in the national assembly, legislation that would assist nigerian women and the most vulnerable citizens does not pass. this pattern supports the supposition that the national assembly should have more women members. challenges against women’s active participation in politics several impediments have been identified as limiting the participation of women in the social, economic, and political scenes. these barriers are cultural, economic, and legal amongst others. this intervention would focus on some distinctly nigerian variants of these barriers. religious and socio-cultural factors the social, political, and economic constraints that these groups must contend with are actively supported by religion, which also works to promote gender stereotypes that are discriminatory against women. for instance, in some northern parts of nigeria, women are in purdahs out of reverence for islam. this suggests that they are segregated in their rooms and that only their spouses have full access ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 301-314 309 to them. the spouse is the only one who must satisfy their requirements. it is best to let rumors about how people are living since the majority of homes are below the poverty line. religion ensures that a significant majority of women are excluded from economic and political activities, including voting and running for office (luka, 2011). islamic edicts are frequently cited as justification for practices like the state's practice of keeping women in "purdah," giving girls away in early marriages, denying them an education, and limiting their ability to participate effectively in politics in general and when selecting candidates of their choice. the majority of muslim-populated states in the north observe "purdah," which involves excluding women from the public eye. in purdah, women must always have a male companion with them when they are out in public and are not permitted to leave their homes without their husbands' permission. further restricting the flexibility of attire for women under purdah is the requirement for muslim women to cover their faces in public. there is a cultural presumption that women are abominable when they lead men and cannot lead but must be guided. many women are unable to be found in high-hierarchy positions due to religious and cultural philosophies that work against gender equality and employment prospects for men and women (abdu, 2002). violence and threat political violence is another element that lowers women's political participation in nigeria. due to the involvement of thugs before, during, and after elections (kolawale et al., 2012) and the ensuing insecurity, which involves the loss of lives and property, politics is generally out of the question for women. female candidate dorathy nyone described her own experience by saying, "a ward chairman was shot dead; all the women and most of the males fled the scene." my partner picked me up and drove me home. i was afraid since, to determine the winners by hand, only men who were well equipped for the bloodshed remained behind (luka, 2011). even though this tale typically represents electoral violence in nigeria, many women now fear politics due to the recent spate of political murders, ongoing political intimidation, and other violent acts. cost of election in nigeria, both genders are equally affected, although women suffer more damage quickly. an important obstacle for women is the high expense of contributing to political parties and campaigns. the least expensive governor's campaign would probably cost 200 million nairas. how many men are capable of raising the same amount of money for women, and how many women are capable of raising such a sizeable amount of money? given that she would have had little impact on party funding and formation, which political party would select a woman for that position? (nda, 2003). in a system where lots of money is needed to purchase votes and compromise conscience, candidates without deep pockets and money bags as support cannot achieve their goals of running for public office. the majority of parties charge a hefty fee for nomination forms to run for elective positions. their average wealth can be partially blamed for nigerian women's reluctance to actively participate in politics. the high costs charged by political parties for candidates to run for office may be properly attributed to the cheerleader and clapper positions that women have chosen in these collectives. women's hopes ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 301-314 310 to participate are also dashed by their limited access to credit and money on the economic front (luka, 2011). few women have the financial means to sustain themselves in politics, which forces them to rely on their husbands or other immediate family members, which is not always simple. the average woman finds it expensive to buy nomination forms, rent campaign offices, engage staff, print posters, buy vehicles, outfit those vehicles with potent sound systems, buy fuel, etc. nigeria has a capital-intensive political system, which makes it difficult for average women to participate in politics. discriminatory customs and laws the customs of many modern countries are discriminatory because they devalue women and treat them as men's property. women feel generally inferior to men and are at a disadvantage in the socio-political environment, even in urban regions, as a result of gender stereotyping cultural norms, and behaviors. because of these socially constructed standards and stereotype roles, women overemphasize their "feminity" because they accept their status as "weaker sexes," overemphasize the sensitive element of their sex and equate high performance with men. for instance, most traditions place more value on sending the boy to a school than they do on the girl, who is expected to care for the siblings and find a husband. this makes it more difficult for women to compete with men in politics because there are a few more illiterate women than there used to be. (agbalajobi, 2010). women’s conception of politics there has been some broad consensus that the foundation of nigerian politics is high political virility; these are individuals with the skills to compete in an unstable environment, the capacity to take it by force when force is necessary, and the ability to march violence with violence. women are viewed as being too passive to participate in politics and governance, whereas men are viewed as being more competitive, strong, independent, and willing to battle in political undertakings. this consensus is also influenced by social conventions and ideas that, via socialization, defined various gender roles under biological distinctions. due to their perception of traditional politics as a filthy game and their dread of violence, women are more alienated from it. in nigeria, there seems to be a lack of critical understanding of the difference between a visible agenda for women and an agenda that has an impact on women (nkoyo, 2002). even though the importance of women's numbers has been underlined repeatedly, it has been difficult for women to rise to positions of power since, in contrast to their male counterparts, they are viewed as "supporters clubs, squads of cheerleaders and clappers." the majority of female politicians believe that to succeed, they must behave like males; they seek office under the impression that they are unique. furthermore, women's modesty does not help them during the political confrontation (agbalajobi, 2010). lack of interest by the women the majority of women have little interest in participating in politics. women's lack of interest in politics can sometimes be attributed to a variety of social factors, including their socialization, the idea that politics and leadership are not for them, their disinterest in political competition with men in any party, social stigma, socio-cultural issues, and religious beliefs, among others. according to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 301-314 311 abdu (2002), most women would appropriately prioritize their efforts if there were justice in the world by getting married, having children, and doing solely domestic duties rather than engaging in politics. prospects of women leadership in nigeria there was no gender parity on problems of leadership in the public and private sectors of the economy during the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial eras. there have always been problems with male domination in nigerian leadership, and the lack of female involvement in public affairs hurts the expansion of organizations. the beijing conference in 1995, also known as the fourth international conference on women, which emphasized equal participation of women in decision-making bodies, marked the beginning of the golden age of women. it also implied that difficulties facing society should be balanced between men and women. the main metrics for measuring effective leadership participatory leadership, accountability, and transparency call for gender parity in leadership opportunities (okafor & akokuwebe, 2015). to ensure that women have the chance to engage in leadership, nigeria has ratified a variety of international, regional, and national legislation; yet, these laws are only put into practice on paper. despite the 30% and 35% affirmative action offered to women in the national gender policy (2006) and the national women policy (2000), respectively, nigeria has not been able to show its commitment by electing women to leadership posts. the high level of poverty among women is a result of their lack of access to resources like microcredit programs, capital for large-scale investment, and land for agricultural pursuits. this can be lessened, though, by providing equitable access to resources, advancing technology, empowering women in their entrepreneurship, enlightening women about investment prospects, and assisting women in the development of small, medium, and large-scale businesses. campaigns have been undertaken to register women and girls in elementary, post-primary, and tertiary institutions. the percentage of women and girls enrolled in school varies by geopolitical zone, according to the 2013 nigeria demographic and health survey (64% in the north east, 69% in the north west, and 5% in the south-south and south east). according to the national bureau of statistics (2016), this is supported by the fact that 48.8% of girls enrolled in primary school and 45.7% in secondary school, and that the completion rates for these two levels of education are 48.3% and 47.9%, respectively. additionally, 43.7% of girls attended tertiary institutions, with a 38.4% completion rate (udom et al., 2022). taking leadership positions in private and public organizations becomes challenging when women and girls are not given equal opportunities and access to education. changing the perception of most nigerian parents, especially those in rural areas, on the role of women in society will help in achieving this (okafor & akokuwebe, 2016). conclusion and recommendations although women may function at the greatest levels in both the public and private realms, a vicious loop of barriers frequently hinders their ability to lead. the success of these individuals as leaders has been significantly hampered by both internal and external obstacles, including societal and cultural prejudices, patriarchy, the challenge of juggling parental and professional commitments, and a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 301-314 312 lack of networking. according to the study's conclusions, the following recommendations are made: i. it takes more than just a shift in mindsets to eliminate harmful sociocultural stereotypes, patriarchy, religiosity, and gender bias against women's participation in government. to gain the necessary leadership qualities, women should choose to pursue positions of leadership in both the public and private sectors and should educate themselves to the highest levels. to reduce illiteracy and prepare female students for future leadership duties, parents, especially those in rural areas, should be urged to enroll their female children in school. ii. it is not advised for a woman leader to strive to be more masculine to succeed, nor should she let her more "feminine" traits get in the way of getting things done. therefore, female leaders should maintain concentration on their departments' and organizations' objectives. to overcome self-doubt, it's crucial to urge people to disregard the inner voice that may keep them from making difficult decisions, speaking up, or venturing outside of their comfort zone. iii. the numerous rules and pieces of legislation that are in place to empower women in various facets of leadership positions have fallen short in addressing sociocultural stereotypes about women in leadership, hence limiting their access to and success in such opportunities. the study, therefore, suggests that the current women empowerment policy be reviewed to reflect the actual situation and that government should also establish a network of women leaders so that women can share their leadership successes and challenges to inspire other women who aspire to be leaders. references abdu, h. 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(2022). women and political participation in nigeria: a case study of taraba state. journal of positive school psychology, 6(8), 4975-4990. udom, c. a., willie, c. e., umanah, u. n., & ndoma, o.n. (2022). women leadership in nigeria: challenges and prospects for organizational growth. journal of humanities and social policy, 8(1), 28-41. http://www.nigeriabestforum.com/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 111-119 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 111 the types and the functions of the fillers used in barack obama’s speeches paulus yanuar kharismawan sanata dharma university yanuarkh@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010112 received 9 november 2016; revised 21 march 2017; accepted 28 june 2017 abstract this study deals with the production of fillers used in barack obama’s speeches. this study is to investigate the types and functions of fillers used by barack obama. the study seeks to answer two research questions: (1) what are the types of fillers in barack obama’s speeches? and (2) what are the functions of fillers in barack obama’s speeches? in order to answer these problems, the researcher applied rose’s (1998) theory on the types of fillers which combined with similar notions on the types and functions of fillers which taken from stenström (1994) and baalen (2001). this study adopted a descriptive qualitative approach which used a discourse analysis to conduct this study. this study aims to introduce the types and the functions of fillers and to increase the learners’ awareness of fillers when they hesitate in the foreign language, which is actually the very nature of speaking. keywords: filler, types of fillers, functions of filler, barack obama introduction language is a tool to have interaction in daily conversation. doing an interaction means that people should be able to communicate to others. the communication would be meaningful if they use language as the tool to communicate. bickerton (1945) stated, “language is a tool of communication while human intelligence is the result of the accelerated growth and unusual size of human brains” (p. 14). it means that communication and language are two components which cannot be separated from human being. learning to speak a second language (sl), especially foreign language (fl) is not simple as possible. it requires many efforts in understanding and applying the foreign language, commitment in learning, and developing the awareness as each language has its own rules (santos, alarcón, & pablo, 2016, p. 1). it is true when learning foreign language takes place in a context where the target language does not commonly use foreign language outside the foreign language classroom. according to holmes (2013) and chaika (2008), people need to develop not only the linguistic competence but also the appropriate communicative competence as well in communicating any foreign language. therefore, understanding how to mailto:yanuarkh@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 111-119 112 pronounce words correctly, use the appropriate grammar, and choose a proficient vocabulary does not guarantee the success to be able to speak a foreign language. since speaking foreign language is not easy, sometimes people make some pauses during speaking. in fact, many spontaneous speakers of various languages have pauses on their speaking which are taken when needed (erten, 2014, p. 1). this phenomenon is commonly called filler. fillers are a moment when someone pause their speaking to think what they want to say without give the impression if we finish our speaking. in daily conversation, people often use uh, er, um, ah, ehm, well, i mean, you know, or similar expressions. according to baalen (2001), these kinds of utterances are called fillers. he also describes the fillers as sounds or words or phrases that could appear anywhere in the utterance and could be deleted from the utterance without a change in content. clark and tree (2002) claim that fillers serve a communication function, having a place in the speakers’ vocabulary. fillers are not the main message; they just help to have a meaning in sentences. one of the ways of interactional communicating is by public speaking. hasling (2006) defines public speaking as a type of communication in which a person has the attention of many people for some period times (p. 8). the examples of public speaking are speech, lecture, and presentation. in this study, the researcher investigates the speech as one of the types of public speaking. in education field, filler is seen as a negative perception in speaking because it may decrease the fluency grade. dlugan (2011) claims that filler words can weaken our credibility and can indicate that we are lack of preparation. he also concludes that fillers are bad in speaking. however, some experts explain that fillers have a positive perception. fillers have types and functions. fillers have various functions which depend on the situation of the speaker (schiffrin, 1978, p. 154). therefore this study aims to investigate and initiate the types and functions of fillers in order to raise awareness of avoiding fillers in speaking. afterwards the researcher formulates two research problems: (1) what are the types of fillers used in barack obama’s speeches? and (2) what are the functions of fillers used in barack obama’s speeches? theory being a key concept, fillers are pause moments in speaking which the speaker produces some utterances or just silence. in this study, the researcher classifies the fillers into three types which are asilent pause filler, an unlexicalized filler, and a lexicalized filler. on the other hand, the researcher also describes the functions of fillers. the definition of filler according to tottie (2011), the first researchers who studied on fillers, specifically on uh and um, were psycholinguists. she also mentioned the other researcher, such as maclay & osgood (1959), goldman-eisler (1961), stenström (1990), kjellmer (2003), gilquin (2008), who conducted on the topic of filler. stenström (1994) defines the filler as lexically an empty item with uncertain discourse functions, except to fill a conversational gap (p. 222). it means that the fillers commonly occur to mark of hesitation or to hold control of a conversation while the speaker thinks what to say next. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 111-119 113 the types of fillers according to stenström (1994), fillers are categorized into two types; those are a silent pause and a filled pause (p. 1). on the other hand, rose (1998) also divides the filled pauses into two types. the first one is an unlexicalized filled pauses and the second is a lexicalized filled pause. silent pauses are pauses that appear in strategic places of the sentences (stenström, 1994, p. 7). according to wu (2001), silent pauses define as the unfilled pauses when they occur in the middle of phrases and words (p. 3). as in wu’s definition, matthei and roeper (1983) also argue that silent pauses tend to occur within phrases of the sentence (p. 164). this statement is also supported by brown and yule (1983) that silent pauses are pauses which usually precede the utterance and help the speaker to plan putting the words into the utterances (p. 129). they also define silent pauses as extended pauses because they usually extend between 3.2 to 16 seconds and cause the speakers to provide sufficient information to the hearers (p. 163). therefore, silent pauses are pauses which are not filled with any sound or utterance. filled pause is a hesitation in spontaneous speech partly or wholly taken up by a speech sound like ah, err, uh, et cetera (clark, 1977, p. 561). similarly, in 1983, brown and yule defined filled pauses as pauses which usually appear in the form of sounds or words and in some places of the sentence (p. 129). moreover, filled pauses are the gap between words and forward planning and thinking about what the speakers want to say (carter, goddard, reah, sanger, & bowring, 1997, p. 201). based on those definitions about filled pauses, the researcher concludes that filled pauses are any utterances produced by a speaker when she plans to say something. furthermore, rose (1998) categorizes filled pauses into two types; those are an unlexicalized filled pause and a lexicalized filled pause (p. 7). unlexicalized filled pauses are non-lexemes (non-words) filled pauses which speakers use to indicate hesitation while the speaker think what to say next utterances (rose, 1998; baalen, 2001). in addition, baalen (2001) also gives some examples of unlexicalized filled pauses, such as ehm, uh, err, ee, ah, um, and so on (para. 7). the definition of unlexicalized filled pauses is also supported by juan (2006), he says that ehm, uh, err, ee, ah, um and other vocalizations which belong to unlexicalized filled pauses are the easiest sounds which made while having a speaking. afterwards, he calls them as "neutral vowel sounds” (para. 1). according to rose (1998), claim that lexicalized filled pauses are fillers in the form of word or short phrases, such as like, well, yeah, sort of, you know, if you see what i mean, and so on (pp. 7-8). on the other hand, baalen (2001) also states a similar statement that lexicalized filled pauses consist of the phrases you know and i mean which are mostly used when a speaker is grouping for words but does not want to give up the claim to the floor (para. 1). furthermore, she suggests that one type of the fillers is like (when it is not used as verb or preposition) and well (not in the initial position). stenström (1994) also notes that one type of fillers, which is similar to the lexicalized fillers, is verbal fillers, such as well, i mean, and sort of. considering the types of fillers from rose (1998) and stenström (1994), the researcher summarized the types of fillers into three; they were a silent pause, an ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 111-119 114 unlexicalized filled pause, and a lexicalized pause. in order to investigate the filler words, the researcher just used the unlexicalized filled pause and lexical filled pause in this study. the functions of fillers actually, fillers have many functions. fillers have various functions which depend on the situation of the speaker (schiffrin, 1978, p. 154). in 2002, clark and fox tree claimed that fillers served a communicative function and had a place in the speaker’s vocabulary (p. 97). nevertheless, they do not define as primary message in a communication. in other words, the use of a filler only helps the way of speaking, not the meaning in the communication. however, corley and stewart (2008) describe that deliberating fillers in the sense of communication function is not certain (p. 592). therefore, fillers are used when the speaker is uncertain about his/her next utterance or he/she has choices to make in his utterance. there are at least five functions of fillers that will be explained further. they are hesitating, empathizing, mitigating, editing term, and time-creating devices. the researcher analyzed the productions of fillers and defined the functions by considering the context of situation from the utterances. in order to answer the second research problem, the researcher used the functions of fillers based on stenström (1994), foss and hakes (1978), wu (2001), and baalen (2001). fillers have the function as hesitation devices. stenström (1994) defines a mark of hesitation as one of the functions of fillers. foss and hakes (1978) hesitations are pauses which increase in the places of a sentence when a speaker has difficult decision in using the words (p. 184). matthei and roeper (1983) and wu (2001) clarify that these fillers occur when the speaker must stop and think about what he/she will say next and when he/she is putting a sentence together. most of filled pauses (ee, em, err, uhm, ah, hm, et cetera) are used as the breathing pauses, such pauses generally match semantic-syntactic boundaries (stenström, 1994, p. 7). therefore, filled pauses are used for the hesitation purposes. the speaker can use filler as an attention-getting device. it means that the speaker can check whether the listener pays attention or not. based on stenström (1994), fillers define as an invitation for the listener to be involved in what the speaker says (pp. 64-65). the examples of fillers as empathizing purposes are well, you know, right, hey and so on. they often appear at the beginning or at the end of a turn. therefore, jordan (2001) concludes that fillers can also be the indicators used by the listeners as a response in order to tell the speaker that the message is received, understood, or unclear, so the speaker knows that the listeners are giving response to what he/she says (p. 12). fillers can also serve as mitigating devices. baalen (2001) assumes that fillers can mitigate utterances in order not to hurt the addressee's feelings (para. 6). she also highlights the fillers as a solidarity marker or politeness device. she explains that protecting face needs is an important function of fillers because face needs are the need to feel liked (positive face needs) and the need to have one's personal space respected (negative face needs). fillers as like well, ehm, eer, and okay can be functioned as mitigating or politeness devices. the editing term is also one of the filler functions. according to baalen (2001), fillers are used to correct the speech errors in the utterances’ speakers. in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 111-119 115 the other word, the speaker is aware if he/she makes a speech error. then, he/she wants to correct it. i mean, um, ehm, uh, huh, ee, et cetera can indicate the speaker's awareness of the speech error followed by her/his attempt to correct it. in correcting the speech errors, the speakers replace certain old words with new ones, so it indicates that the old words have been misplanned. sometimes, the speaker also repeats the speech error directly. according to stenström (1994), fillers can also be used as time-creating devices. fillers give some time for the speaker to think about what to utter next. stenström (1994) argues that the common form of fillers used as the time-creating devices is the lexical repetition (pp. 77-78). moreover, lexical repetition consists of two types. the first is single words repetition. it means that the speaker repeats a single word in his/her turn. the second is clause partial repetition. it is the clause repetitions which appear in his/her turn. all repetitions in the utterances function as the fillers in order to give some time for the speaker to plan what to say next. method since the aim of this study was to investigate the types and functions of fillers used by barrac obama, this study was conducted by using descriptive qualitative approach. it was also reported in the form of description as bogdan and biklen (1982) suggested that the written word was very important in qualitative research to record data and disseminate the findings (p. 28).in this descriptive qualitative approach, the researcher conducted a discourse analysis. according to wood and kroger (2000), discourse analysis defines as a person’s perception that contains of methodological and conceptual elements (p. 3). furthermore, they also state that discourse data includes spoken and written texts. in the other hand, stark and trinidad (2007) add that discourse analysis concerns on the language use. therefore, the researcher conducted a discourse analysis to study the types and the functions of fillers in the utterances of barack obama’s speeches. the object of this research was barack obama’s speeches which were taken from youtube. there were three videos which used in this study. the first entitles indonesia's example to the world. the second is president obama on early childhood education. the last is the president delivers a statement on the attacks in paris. since this research conducted a discourse analysis, the researcher used the videos’ and the transcripts’ of barack obama’s speeches. to begin the study, the researcher described what fillers are according to several experts. then, the researcher looked for and chosen the videos which were used. after collecting the objects of this study, the researcher wrote the transcripts of the selected videos. in the next part of the research process, the videos and the transcripts were analyzed by using the theories already written in part 2. in this process, the researcher used three steps. first, the researcher looked for some videos about barack obama’s speeches, and then found the words or sentences containing fillers in his utterances. second, the findings were analyzed and classified into the types of fillers. third, the findings of classifications were defined and explained as the possible reasons why barack obama used those fillers in her speeches. those three steps were to answer the research questions in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 111-119 116 this study. finally, the researcher drew the conclusion based on the finding in this research. findings and discussion this part discusses the results of this study. it consists of two sections, namely the types of fillers and the functions of fillers occurrence in the utterances used in barack obama’s speeches. the types of fillers there are two types of fillers; those are a silent pause and a filled pause. since this study was to investigate the word fillers, the researcher just focused on the filled pause. this study classified the types of filled pauses based on rose’s theory. according to rose (1998), there are two types of filled pause; those are an unlexicalized filled pause and a lexicalized filled pause. according to rose (1998) and baalen (2001), unlexicalized filled pauses mean non-lexemes (non-words) filled pauses which speakers use to indicate hesitation while the speaker think what to say next utterances. here were some examples to represent the data:  bo: eeu pulang kampung nih. (applause.)  bo: the kids we saw today that i had a chance to spend time with in mary's classroom; um they're some of the lucky ones… in those two examples, there were eeu and um which classified as unlexicalized filled pauses. it was because those two utterances was not a word and did not have meaning. based on rose (1998), lexicalized filled pauses are fillers in the form of word or short phrases. here were some examples of lexicalized filled pauses:  bo: i still remember the call of the vendors. satay! right?  bo: i mean, some of the younger teachers who are here, …  bo: … i don’t want to speculate okay. there were right, i mean, and okay which appeared in obama’s speeches. right and okay were in the form of word and i mean was in the form of phrases. those three examples also had the meaning but they were still considered as lexicalized filled pauses because those words were not important as a part of their sentence. therefore, whether those words were in the sentence or not, they could not change the meaning of the sentence. the functions of fillers actually, fillers had many functions. schiffrin (1978) argues that fillers have various functions which depend on the situation of the speaker (p. 154). there were at least five functions of fillers which became the focus on this study. they were hesitating, empathizing, mitigating, editing term, and time-creating devices. the researcher analyzed the productions of fillers and defined the functions by considering the context of situation from the utterances. stenström (1994) defines a mark of hesitation as one of the functions of fillers. he also give some examples of fillers as a mark of hesitation, such as ee, em, err, uhm, ah, hm, et cetera. in this study, fillers as hesitation devices appeared the most in the selected videos. these were some example of fillers as hesitation devices: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 111-119 117  bo: most of them gave way to unpaved roads and ee the kampongs.  bo: … they’re well-equipped as citizens with the e e e critical thinking skills that they need …  bo: em we don’t yet know all the details of what has happened. based on the situation, ee, e e e, and em were said by adding a slight pause. it meant that those fillers appeared to give the speaker time to think about what he/she would say next. based on stenström (1994), fillers define as an invitation for the listener to be involved in what the speaker says (pp. 64-65). here were same sample of those fillers:  bo: … (applause) hey, some folks from menteng dalam right here.  bo: and what’s more, i don’t think you’ll find a working parent in america who wouldn’t appreciate the peace of mind that their child is in a safe, high-quality learning environment every single day. you know.  bo: this is not babysitting. right? based on the first example, barack obama wanted to invite the listeners to pay attention to him, so he said hey loudly. then, you know and right indicated that whether the message was received and understood or not. according to those three examples, the researcher concluded that fillers as empathizing purpose usually appeared at the beginning or at the end of a sentence. baalen (2001) highlights fillers as a solidarity marker or politeness device. it meant that fillers were used to make the speech more polite. here was an example of fillers as mitigating purposes:  bo: … we intend to be there with them in that same fashion uhm. in this situation, barack obama said the utterance of uhm by nodding his head. it meant that barack obama showed his respect. according to baalen (2001), fillers are used to correct the speech errors in the utterances’ speakers. i mean, um, ehm, uh, huh, ee, et cetera can indicate the speaker's awareness of the speech error followed by her/his attempt to correct it. sometimes, the speaker also repeats the speech error directly. here were some examples to represent the data:  bo: lot of people keep keeping flowers around.  bo: i mean, some of the younger teachers who are here, … in the first example, barack obama corrected his speech error directly. on the other hand, i mean referred to his previous sentence. by using i mean, barack obama would clarify his speech. according to stenström (1994), fillers can also be used as time-creating devices. he argues that the common form of fillers used as the time-creating devices is the lexical repetition. fillers as time-creating devices meant that fillers give some time for the speaker to think about what to utter next. here were some the examples of those filler:  bo: … that our children are are are are just sponges soaking stuff in …  bo: and as a young boy i was -as a young boy i was coming to a different world. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 111-119 118 the first examples indicated single words repetition. it meant that barack obma repeated a word (are) four times. the second example referred to clause partial repetition where barack obama repeated a clause (as a young boy i was). however, those two kinds of repetition were to get some times to think what to say next. fillers as time-creating devices were almost same with fillers as hesitating purpose. the different was fillers as hesitating purpose referred to unlexicalized filled pauses and time-creating devices referred to lexical filled pauses. conclusion the results of this study showed that there were two types of fillers; those were unlexicalized filled pause and lexical filled pause. furthermore, this study also showed five functions of fillers, namely hesitating, empathizing, mitigating, editing term, and time-creating devices. based on those findings, the researcher concludes that fillers are not always considered as distraction of speaking. as the learners of foreign language (fl), we should know the fillers not only as a distraction of speaking but also as the way to improve our interaction. the aims of this study are to introduce the types and the functions of fillers and to increase the learners’ awareness of fillers when they hesitate in the foreign language, which is actually the very nature of speaking. furthermore, the fl learners can learn and use fillers which are good to use. it is also help the fl learners to choose fillers which can bother our interaction. therefore, this study has revealed that how important the fillers are in the interaction, especially in speech. in addition, to a certain extent, the findings of this study will also be expected to provide contributions for the development of the theory, especially to sociolinguistics study since this study is based on sociolinguistics. references baalen, i. v. 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(2001). a quantitative comparison of disfluencies types between native and non-native english speaker in spontaneous speech. retrieved on october 10, 2016, from http://www.swarthmore.edu/socsci/linguistics/papers/ 2002/jeffwu.pdf ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 122 american dream in the eye of asian immigrants: a genetic structuralism analysis of kevin kwan’s rich people problems *galant nanta adhitya1 and apriliana hapsari2 1,2universitas respati yogyakarta, indonesia galant.nanta@respati.ac.id1 and apriliana.hapsari@respati.ac.id2 *correspondence: galant.nanta@respati.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.5197 received 27 september 2022; accepted 15 october 2022 abstract east, south, and southeast asians are often treated inferiorly in the u.s. aggregately, the covid-19 pandemic has brought racial issues against them to the surface. thus, literature on and/or about inferior minorities needs to be written by authors who belong to them. it is because literary works are not created in a vacuum. external factors have a hand in their creation. kwan’s rich people problems serves as the closure for the crazy rich asians trilogy. as a singaporean-born author who immigrated to the u.s., he is exposed to the american dream myth. this research then aims to discover how he internalizes it in the novel. employing goldmann’s genetic structuralism, it operates the structuralism approach through the marxist lens. it utilizes kwan’s social class to determine his worldview manifested in the structure of the novel. while the novel is the source of primary data, his biography collected from relevant sources becomes secondary data. his take on american dream crystalizes in form of the characterization and plot of the novel. he appends the characters with backstories and improvements. they are embedded with determination, perseverance, hard work, loyalty, and reinvention, revamping their poor beginnings into rich entrepreneurs, experts, employees, and trophy spouses. keywords: authorial biography, characterization, plot, social mobility, worldview introduction at the end of 2019, the world saw an epidemic outbreak in wuhan, china turned into a global pandemic. its spread affected people around the globe. the most affected ones are the chinese living in the united states. scientifically, the novel virus causing the pandemic is named sars-cov-2, while the disease it caused was called covid-19. however, the 45th president of the united states of america, donald trump, used “china virus” and “kung flu” when referring to the virus and its symptoms (bredemeier, 2020; lee, 2020). his rhetoric stigmatizes the chinese, in particular, and asian ethnicity, in general, as the carriers of the virus. it provoked an aggressive ‘asian hate’ reaction in many states. an 89-year-old chinese woman in new york city, which is famous as a cosmopolitan city (budiman & guiz, 2021), was slapped and burned by two harassers. meanwhile, in los angeles, california, the state with the most ethnically mailto:galant.nanta@respati.ac.id mailto:apriliana.hapsari@respati.ac.id mailto:galant.nanta@respati.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.5197 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 123 asian population (morfin, 2019), an 84-year-old thai immigrant, died after being violently pushed to the ground during a morning walk. another incident involved the only member of parliament of asian descent in the kansas legislature who was physically threatened for carrying the coronavirus (cabral, 2021). despite both immigrating from their respective continent, asian americans are seen as ‘the other’ by white americans. for example, the chinese have long become the targets of systemic discrimination. the chinese exclusion act, passed in 1882, barred chinese people from entering the u.s. this federal law greenlighted racism toward the chinese and other asian ethnicities (perry, 2014, p. 243). racist prejudice gets inevitable, which in turn creates social inequality and favoritism against asian immigrants. for instance, the success of european americans from rags-to-riches is dubbed the ‘american dream’. meanwhile, the same story achieved by east, south, and southeast asian immigrants is pinned as a ‘model minority’ (okihiro, 2014, p. 198). the term triggers tension and pits asian immigrants against other racial minorities, such as african americans and latin americans. besides, east, south, and southeast asian immigrants are both lacking representation and misrepresented in media, literature, and arts with ‘yellow face’ and ‘yellow peril’ stereotypes (london, 2014, p. 177; yeats, 2014, p. 268). this depiction undermines their position politically and culturally. it is thus imperative for east, south, and southeast asian stories to be told based on their own experiences and perspectives. palpably, asian americans are a crucial part of american history. however, the number of literary works written by asian-american authors as compulsory reading at schools is still scant (lew, 2014). their stories deserve to be categorized as canonical literature in the american anthology. as cultural artifacts, their works are as important as the puritan literature or the slave narratives. it is only in the last decade that the works of asian-american authors started getting recognition. viet thanh nguyen’s the sympathizer won the pulitzer in 2016. three years later, susan choi’s trust exercise won the national book award (yu, 2020). not only praised by critics but their works are also loved by readers, placing them on the ‘best seller’ lists. a best-selling novel written by an asian-american author is even adapted into a movie. it is kevin kwan’s crazy rich asians. published in 2013, the novel was then followed by china rich girlfriend in 2015 and rich people problems in 2017 (ho, 2018). the trilogy revolves around the young family with shang su yi as the matriarch. continuing the first two novels, the fate of the characters in the novel is settled in the third one. one characterization to easily see how far they have developed along the plot is regarding wealth. there seems to be an arc drawn in those characters as the story unfolds. this development is both interesting and important to analyze, especially concerning the characterization and plot, as intrinsic elements, with the author’s background, as an extrinsic element. before this article, there are three studies on rich people problems. dwijayanti, nababan, and wiratno (2021) studied assertive speech that represents bald on record politeness strategies. meanwhile, purnama and ningsih (2021) discuss family conflicts between characters using a sociological approach and social action theory. in addition, adhitya and wulandari (2021) analyze the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 124 representation of indonesia both as a nation and a state in the trilogy. the novelty of the article lies in its focus: analyzing kwan’s worldview reflected in the structure of the novel. to achieve this objective, it employs the theory of genetic structuralism. lucien goldmann’s genetic structuralism genetic structuralism is coined by lucien goldmann. according to faruk (in helaluddin, 2019, p. 4), the theory merges structuralism and marxism. structuralism considers literature as an autonomous structure consisting of elements that support each other systematically in creating meaning. this approach is contradicted by marxism which approaches literature through historical materialism, which structuralism ignores. to understand literature, genetic structuralism makes a linkage between the intrinsic element as a coherent entity to its author as the extrinsic structure (swingewood & laurenson in hafshah, 2016, p. 17). the theory uses six concepts: ‘human facts’, ‘collective subject’, ‘worldview’, ‘structuration’, ‘whole-part’, and ‘comprehension-explanation’ (faruk in nurhasanah, 2015, p. 138). on an ontological basis, ratna (in shinta, 2021, p. 3916) categorizes literature as a product of human facts that are social. every element that structures literature has a meaning deriving from an author’s goal. this goal is determined by the historical, social, and cultural situation of the society in which the author lives. authors are not secluded, independent individuals. they are a part of society. they represent their social group as collective subjects (faruk 2013, p. 63). goldmann (in faruk, 1999, p. 15) specifies the term as a social class in a marxist sense because it has been proven in history as a group that has created a complete and comprehensive view of life. it has also influenced the historical development of mankind. in creating their work, authors act as a trans-individual subject who transcends their capabilities as a member of society by raising the issue of their social class (goldmann in fernando, mulawarman, & rokhmansyah, 2018, p. 73). to comprehend a literary work thus needs to include its author. otherwise, comprehension will be absent of the characteristics of ideas and beliefs held by the social class. while in fact, these characteristics construct their collective worldview. worldview is the class consciousness that unites individuals into a class that has a collective identity (goldman in jayanti & mustofa, 2020, p. 25). according to goldmann (in faruk, 1999b, p. 33), literature, however, is not the reflection of a real and existing collective consciousness. instead, it is the culmination of a high level of coherence from tendencies specific to certain groups. it is a consciousness that must be understood as a dynamic reality directed to a certain form of balance. as class consciousness, worldview then unites individuals with the same historical background into a class that has a collective identity. it also distinguishes one social class from another (ridha, 2013, p. 3). it is because worldview forms the structure of the relationship among social classes with the era and society in which these sociocultural situations arise (goldman in jayanti & mustofa, 2020, p. 25). since worldview is abstract, one of the ways to see its concrete form is by way of literature. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 125 goldmann (in suciati, 2013, p. 69) believes that there is a homology between the structure of literature and the structure of the society in which it is created because both structures are the result of the same structuration. authors are not passive individuals whose existence follows the structure that grows in society. on the other hand, they play an active and creative role in self-actualizing their feeling and thinking. because the quintessence of literature is imaginative, comprehending literary works as an entity that reflects reality is disputable. the similarity of events and problems in the literary world with reality in the real world lies in the structure (kurniawan, 2012, p. 109). it is this structural homology that in genetic structuralism is mediated by the author’s worldview. the homology can be illustrated in the following figure. figure 1. the homology of genetic structuralism from those four concepts, goldmann (in kurniawan, 2012, p. 114-5) then developed a dialectical analysis with two complementary concepts: ‘whole-part’ and ‘comprehension-explanation’. the ‘whole’ as the totality of a literary structure is employed to understand its ‘parts’. on the other hand, they are also needed to be interpreted to achieve the ‘whole’ meaning. this dialectical concept does not only stop at the ‘part’ and the ‘whole’ of literature but also moves to the structure of society. at this stage, the ‘comprehension-explanation’ is used. while ‘comprehension’ is the attempt to comprehend the ‘part’, ‘explanation’ is the attempt to get the meaning of the ‘part’ by placing it in a larger context of the ‘whole’. which refers to the integration of the structure of the literature with the social structure of society (goldmann in yulianto et al., 2017, p. 715-6). intrinsic elements in the early stages of analysis, information about the author is utilized as a conceptual hypothesis to understand the coherence of the literary structure and the societal structure. it is thus necessary to build a worldview model to hypothesize the ‘whole’ structure of literature through intensive reading on the ‘part’ of a work, which is the intrinsic elements. according to james (in bennett & royce, 2004, p. 60), the intrinsic elements that define each other are character and plot. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 126 characters are individuals who both live in and give life to literary works (wicaksono in harun & biduri, 2019, p. 12). they are essential because they are the objects of identification for the readers to relate to and connect with. authors describe their characters physically, mentally, intellectually, morally, and historically. the characterization can also develop as the plot of the story unfolds (griffith in larasati 2012, p. 19). the plot is the arrangement of the sequential events in the story to trigger certain emotional and artistic effects. theoretically, the stages of a complete plot begin with an exposition, followed by rising actions, to then reach the climax, before turning to fall actions and ending with a resolution. however, plotting can be arranged in a linear, nonlinear, parallel, circular, and interactive sequence (layfield, 2022). based on their relation to the plot, characters are divided into main characters, who are at the center of the story that moves the plot, and supporting characters, who appear concerning the main character (nurgiyantoro, 2018, p. 259). moreover, characterization and plotting influence each other. because one event is caused and/or causes another event to occur, the causality of the plot drives the development of the character. simultaneously, the characterizations also contribute to the flow of the story (kurnianto, haryono, & kurniawan, 2019, p. 33). extrinsic elements genetic structuralism combines an objective study of the intrinsic elements with a historical study of its genetic determinants, that is the author. hence, it is crucial to know the author’s biography to identify the social class. rich people problems is written by kevin kwan, who was born in singapore in 1974. he was born into a wealthy chinese family. kwan’s great-grandfather, oh sian guan, was a director of the overseaschinese banking corporation (ocbc). his paternal grandfather, dr. arthur kwan pah chien, was an ophthalmologist who graduated from edinburgh university and was knighted by queen elizabeth ii. his maternal grandfather, rev. paul hang sing hon, was the founder of hinghwa methodist church. meanwhile, his father is an engineer, and his mother is a pianist (lundquist, 2017). while living in singapore, kwan attended the anglo-chinese school. as his family emigrated to texas, u.s., he enrolled at clear lake high school. he earned his b.a. in media studies from the university of houston-clear lake and b.f.a. in photography from parsons school of design (christensen, 2013). while visiting asia to meet relatives, he realized asians still view the world conservatively. this contestation shows the difference between asians living in their homelands and those who migrated abroad. living nearly four decades in the u.s. must have exposed kwan to the american way of thinking. the american dream myth, which emphasizes the opportunity for the poor to be rich, appears to have colored his works (adhitya, 2015, p. 25-7). method a descriptive, qualitative method was employed in this article. this method analyzes literary works without experimental manipulation (ahmadi & kartiwi 2020, p. 157). focusing on empirical evidence, the research data are language features, in form of words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. based on the source, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 127 the data were divided into primary and secondary data. the primary data was the intrinsic elements taken from kwan’s rich people problems published by doubleday in 2017 and the extrinsic elements in the author’s biography. meanwhile, the secondary data were taken from referential books, journal articles, and other publications on the theory of genetic structuralism and the sociocultural facts about asian immigrants in the u.s. the research instruments were the researchers themselves. researchers played a paramount role in all of the stages, from identifying the problems to concluding (sugiyono, 2017, p. 102). the data were collected by note-taking technique. the novel is read carefully and repeatedly. the collected data were then analyzed using content analysis. it was a systematic technique to parse the details of the content of a literary work in interpreting its meaning (darmasetiadi, 2021, p. 121). content analysis was applied objectively to the intrinsic elements so that the structure of the work could be revealed. the structure was interrelated with the extrinsic elements, which were approached historically, to formulate a structural homology between the two literary elements. from this in-depth explanation of the researcher’s interpretation, the worldview manifested in the novel can be revealed. to ensure the validity of this article, four tests were used, namely credibility, transferability, dependability, and conformability. for the data to be credible, the researchers ensured that the data collected were factually present in the novel. the transferability was high because the findings could prevail in other sociocultural contexts or situations. because this research had a clear analytical construct, dependability could be fulfilled because other researchers would be able to follow the stages in this article for their future research. meanwhile, conformability was achieved as this article was disseminated at an academic conference and published in an academic journal. it thus passed the editing and peer-review process strengthening the validity of this article (mekarisce, 2020, p. 147-51). findings and discussion the main goal of employing genetic structuralism is to discover the author’s worldview manifested in their work. the homologous relation between imaginative expressions in literature and real-life experience in society thus serves as the emphasis of analysis. the two entities are bridged by the author, who belongs to a certain social group. every social group has a collective consciousness rooted that can influence the way people in it think and behave (goldman, 1977, p. 17). rich people problems is written by kwan, who, despite being born in singapore to a wealthy chinese family, spends his adolescence in the u.s. both countries have fundamental differences in various aspects of life, most notably their racial demography and economic system. in singapore, chinese ethnicity is the majority. on the other hand, the chinese and other asian ethnicities are the minority in the u.s. besides, singapore is a state-capitalist country with a shared values philosophy. it puts communitarianism over individualism. meanwhile, the u.s. is a capitalist country with egalitarianism. the belief places all americans, regardless of their background, in an equal position. it then allows them to have the same opportunity in pursuing their dream and succeeding in life as long as they have determination (wyman, 2015, p. 2). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 128 it can be hypothesized that as an asian immigrant living in the u.s. kwan is profoundly exposed to the american dream myth. being in a different society with a distinct perspective on seeing the world during those formative years can give a lasting effect. how it affects him can be felt within the characterization and plot. as goldman (1980, pp. 11-12) states, there is a correlation between the author and the elements in the work they create. throughout the trilogy, kwan has created the main characters of chinese ethnicity imbued with the american dream characteristics. there are rachel chu, kerry chu, goh wye mun, and sophie khoo in the first novel (adhitya, 2015, p. 73). he continues this characterization in the second installment. it can be seen in both the recurring and newly-introduced characters, such as michael teo and bao gaoling, respectively (adhitya & kurnia, 2017, p. 25). in the third one, kwan extensively applies the american dream arc to the supporting characters as well. those characters, who are merely mentioned in passing in the first two novels, are given more storylines. by using flashbacks, he provides background stories ahead of them linked up with the main characters. they subsequently have more involvement and contribution to the plot. as the story is ending for good, he also elaborates on their destiny. the wu family are the characters that can be scrutinized to evince the american dream materialization. charlie wu is su yi’s future grandson-in-law, whom her granddaughter, astrid leong, marries at the end of the novel. however, her family disapproves of their relationship because their beginning is necessitous “wu hao lian’s father used to sell soy sauce on a bicycle!” (kwan, 2017, p. 39). meanwhile, his wife’s … entire childhood was spent at the endau concentration camp in malaysia. her family was forced to grow all their own food, and they almost starved to death. i’m sure that’s why my mother is the way she is now. she makes her cook save money by buying the discounted, three-day-old bread from the supermarket … (kwan, 2017, p. 381) charlie’s father, wu hao lian, “first made his fortune in the early 1980s” (kwan, 2017, p. 202), “took his tech company public” (kwan, 2013, p. 323), and at that point, the wu microsystems has been “built over the last thirty years” (kwan, 2015, p. 161). therefore, “the hong kong wus weren’t deemed worthy enough by those snooty singaporeans!” (kwan, 2017, p. 38) because they are perceived as the new money. the path kwan specifies for hao lian as a self-made man is through entrepreneurship. american dream urges entrepreneurial ideas. combined with the capitalist economy, those ideas are facilitated to grow as real businesses. when his son takes over, “charlie has created one of the most admired companies in the world” that every “new phone—the screen, the casing, i’m sure at least half the components are manufactured by wu microsystems!” (kwan, 2017, p. 39). for his success in “run asia’s biggest tech company!” (kwan, 2017, p. 13), the media dubbed him the “hong kong tech tycoon” (kwan, 2017, p. 155), “tech billionaire” (kwan, 2017, p. 37) “tech titan” (kwan, 2017, p. 130). kwan, as an immigrant himself, experiences firsthand leaving home in hope of a new and better life. he understands that both moving to a foreign country and starting a business involve taking risks. according to the u.s. small business ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 129 administration (kosten, 2018), this risk-taker quality prepares them for entrepreneurial challenges. in 2019, “44.6 percent, or 223 companies, in the fortune 500 were founded by immigrants or their children … brought in $6.1 trillion in revenue” (new american economy, 2022). moreover, american dream is rooted in the protestant faith. in his 1630 sermon, winthrop dictates, “when there is no other means whereby our christian brother may be relieved in his distress, we must help him beyond our ability” (heimert & delbanco, 2009, p. 84). this calvinist work ethic enables capitalism, where small businesses create entrepreneurs who then become employers opening job vacancies for others. in addition, kwan makes being an employee an equivalent for the characters to attain american dream. it is evident in dr. malcolm cheng. married to alexandra, malcolm is su yi’s son-in-law. one would have thought that he, being the husband to the youngest daughter of the most established family in singapore, must come from a similar upbringing. in contrast, he is defined to be “a complete nobody from hong kong”, who, unlike “an aakara or a leong”, was not born “with a respectable surname” (kwan, 2017, p. 164). malcolm and alexandra live in “a very basic three-bedroom flat”, where their youngest son, “alistair had to share a bedroom with his brother until he went to college” (kwan, 2013, p. 307), and “the cramped toilet” has “no lock” (kwan, 2013, p. 64). malcolm’s characterization embodies perseverance. it then enables his humble circumstance to be made improved. alix … said through gritted teeth, “i’m glad i married your father. he may not have inherited an empire or been born a prince, but for me, he is far more impressive. he built himself up from nothing to become one of the world’s leading cardiologists, and his hard work has sent you to the best schools and given us a lovely home.” (kwan, 2017, p. 164-5) his life advancement allows him to financially provide for his family with “a higher standard of living” (wolak & peterson, 2020, p. 968). it also grants him a great deal of reverence from his peers and relatives. malcolm cheng was one of asia’s most respected heart surgeons and had only recently retired as the chief of the cardiology centre at hong kong sanatorium. professor oon was one of his protégés, and he was keeping close tabs on su yi’s condition. (kwan, 2017, p. 161) kwan uses education as a catalyst for malcolm’s american dream. the majority of americans concur that higher educations are essential to equip them with the necessary knowledge and skill to improve their lives (lazerson, 2007, p. 1-3). while malcolm’s educational achievements earn him a white-collar profession, kwan also applies a similar success story to blue-collar workers. it can be exemplified by the character of lee ah ling. ah ling is one of su yi’s many servants. although she comes from an impecunious family in mainland china, she is described with the american dream trait. it is evident as she is determined to overcome hardship in her life. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 130 she had always dreamed of seeing the world beyond her village, and she didn’t care if it meant leaving her family. she was leaving a difficult home—a father who died when she was twelve and a mother who seemed to have resented her since the day she was born. (kwan, 2017, p. 57) kwan assigns her purpose as the drive to leave “her tiny village on the outskirts of ying tak when she was just sixteen, taking a boat from canton to an island far away in the nanyang, the southern seas” (kwan, 2017, p. 57). landed in singapore, she is “brokered to work for a family called the tays” which serves as “a training ground” for “some sort of unspecified test” (kwan, 2017, p. 58) before being sent to work for the youngs at tyersall park. furthermore, ah ling is portrayed as a hard worker. as a result, her position keeps increasing. over the next sixty-three years, she rose from being one of twelve junior maids to become one of the young family’s most trusted nannies—having helped raise su yi’s youngest children, victoria and alix, and then in the next generation, nick. now she was the head housekeeper, overseeing a staff that at its peak reached fifty-eight but for the past decade had remained at thirty-two. (kwan, 2017, p. 59) her hard work pays off because when su yi passed away, her name is included in her will. it reads, “$3,000,000 to my housekeeper lee ah ling, who has served my family with excellence and devotion since she was a teenager” (kwan, 2017, p. 258). the inheritance she receives changes the course of her life. “i think i will go back to china, for a year at least. i want to build a house in my old village, and spend a little time with my family. my brothers are getting older, i have so many new grandnephews and grandnieces who i have never met. now i can finally be the rich old auntie who spoils them.” (kwan, 2017, p. 118) kwan rationalizes the ‘from-zero-to-hero’ arc by highlighting ah ling’s “work ethic” sustaining her “to last long” (kwan, 2017, p. 61) working for su yi. reciprocally, american dream stresses how hard work can be the principal in acquiring future rewards (porter, 2010, p. 535). her life progress is synonymous with the rags-to-riches myth. from her destitute origin, she fled to be a servant to then winds up as a millionaire in her old days. nevertheless, the journey of social mobility does not necessarily involve menial work. a character named kitty pong arrives at her opulent destination in a glamorous fashion, even though her life begins from an arduous background. to think that pong li li, the daughter of sanitation workers in qinghai, had achieved such great heights at the relatively young age of thirty-four (although she told everyone she was thirty). not that any of this had been easy—she had worked nonstop her entire life to get to this place. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 131 her mother had come from an educated middle-class family, but she had been banished with her family to the countryside during mao’s great leap forward campaign. (kwan, 2017, p. 30) similar to what he does to ah ling, kwan also prescribes kitty escaping her birth land in mainland china as the ultimate way of escaping poverty. she originally sets her mind on education as a vehicle of escape. however, her educational voyage is a rough sail. but she had instilled in kitty that getting an education was the only way out. all through her youth, kitty studied extra hard to always be the top in her class, top in her school, top in her state exams, only to see her one chance at a higher education get snatched away when some boy with all the right connections was awarded the only slot to university in their entire district— the slot that was rightfully meant to be hers. (kwan, 2017, p. 30) kwan initially characterizes kitty as “the hong kong starlet” (kwan, 2013, p. 290), and “a soap-opera star who runs around in skimpy clothes” (kwan, 2013, p. 335) “that clung to her body like sausage casing” “with her engorged nipples clearly showing through” (kwan, 2013, p. 268). it is only in the last installment that another layer of her characterization is peeled. he provides flashbacks that intellectualize her character. he also enacts societal realities as an obstacle to kitty. china is a communist country with a confucian and patriarchal society (gilmartin, 1993, p. 240). this condition becomes adversity for women to thrive in life. she understands that she will not succeed via the traditional path. she pivots to exploiting her beauty and femininity. she gets involved with su yi through her grandson, alistair. she then dumps him for a “billionaire” (kwan, 2015, p. 24), bernard tai, whom she later divorces to marry “one of china’s premier industrialists” (kwan, 2017, p. 300). but kitty didn’t give up, she kept on fighting, moving first to shenzhen to work at a ktv bar where she had to do unspeakable things, and then to hong kong, landing a bit part in a local soap opera, transforming it into a recurring role after becoming the director’s mistress, dating a series of rather inconsequential men until she met alistair cheng, that cute, clueless boy who was much too sweet for his own good, going with him to the khoo wedding and meeting bernard tai, running off to vegas with bernard to get married, meeting jack bing at bernard’s father’s funeral, divorcing bernard, and finally, at long last, marrying jack, a man who was truly worthy of all her efforts. (kwan, 2017, p. 30) as time goes on, american dream is not only achievable through education, entrepreneurship, and executive employment. since hollywood golden age, being an actor is considered an immediate shortcut to prosperity. aspiring actresses traveled to los angeles, working as waitresses, hoping to catch their big break as movie stars (banerjee, 2022; kubincanek, 2017). kwan adopts this fairytale for kitty’s characterization. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 132 tantamount to the hollywood actors leaving their past behind, kwan also contrives kitty to reinvent her persona. starting her acting endeavors in hong kong, she claims to have come from “a good taiwanese family”, changing her name, look, and “distinctive northern china accent” (kwan, 2013, p. 37-38) with “the fake accent and fake breasts and fake everything” (kwan, 2013, p. 202). notwithstanding, kwan utilizes kitty being “one of asia’s fastest-rising stars” (kwan, 2013, p. 39) as a stepping stone for her to climb the social ladders. the efficacious course for her reaching a life full of fortune is by marrying up. kitty knew that all this royal treatment was because she had arrived in paris this time as mrs. jack bing. she wasn’t just the wife of some random billionaire anymore, she was the new wife of china’s second-richest man, one of the ten richest men in the world.… and now that she had provided him with his first son (harvard bing, born in 2013), she could do anything she damn well pleased. (kwan, 2017, p. 29-30) one of the aftermaths of patriarchy is gender inequality. having less opportunity for higher education and equal employment leaves hypergamy as the only route for women to grasp the american dream (steichen, 1983, p. 92; cashdan, 1996, p. 135). with her determination to flee the ill fortune in perpetuity and elevate her children into an upper stratum, kitty marries someone of a higher socioeconomic class twice. furthermore, it is not only those of chinese ethnicity whose hard work is made to fruition. supporting characters of other asian ethnicities are also treated with american dream characteristics. setting the majority of the story to take place in singapore, kwan also concocts su yi’s employees working at the “friggin’ palace” (kwan, 2013, p. ), tyersall park, to have come from neighboring countries. su yi’s attendants can be utilized as an instance. who were those two women in matching silk dresses standing like statues behind her?” rachel asked. “oh, those are her lady’s maids.” “excuse me?” “her lady’s maids. they never leave her side.” “like ladies-in-waiting? they look so elegant.” “yes, they’re from thailand, and they were trained to serve in the royal court.” “is this a common thing in singapore? importing royal maids from thailand?” rachel asked incredulously. “i don’t believe so. this service was a special lifetime gift to my grandmother.” “a gift? from whom?” “the king of thailand. though it was the last one, not bhumibol the current king. or was it the one before that? anyway, he was apparently a great friend of my grandmother’s. he decreed that she must only be waited on by courttrained ladies. so there has been a constant rotation ever since my grandmother was a young woman.” (kwan, 2013, p. 138) lady’s maid is a position for lower-class women whose responsibility is related to their female employer’s appearance. they usually start as a housemaid ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 133 (chaubel, 2017, p. 17). two su yi’s lady’s maids previously had training in the thai royal court since they were children. being a gift from the king of thailand, they are “trailing behind her” (kwan, 2017, p. 80) every time and everywhere, including beside her deathbed with an “oxygen tank and several other medical devices” are “dutifully being guided” (kwan, 2017, p. 200). several doctors and nurses huddled over a bank of computer screens, analyzing every blip in their vvip patient’s vital signs, while su yi’s thai lady’s maids hovered just by the doorway, ready to spring into action should their mistress bat an eyelash. the minute they saw prince taksin approach, they dropped to the floor, prostrating themselves. (kwan, 2017, p. 88) kwan awards their devotion in form of inheritance both lady’s maids receive upon su yi’s passing. $1,000,000 to each of my dear lady’s maids madri visudharomn and patravadee varoprakorn along with the antique peranakan gold-anddiamond bracelets labeled for them in the tyersall park vault. (kwan, 2017, p. 258) in the first two installments, they were merely addressed as “su yi’s lady’s maids” (kwan, 2015, p.). their names are revealed for the first time in su yi’s will. lady’s maids customarily work for a house until they are retired. when the lady of the house passes away, they will customarily work for the daughter of the house (chaubel, 2017, p. 25). therefore, kwan mentioning them by name can be construed as a sign of the american dream toward freedom. with them being millionaires, they no longer have to work in service for the rest of their lives. akin ending befalls upon su yi’s captain vikram ghale as well. vikram is a “nepali” (kwan, 2017, p. 119) gurkha, “the deadliest soldiers in the world” (kwan, 2013, p. 122) native to the indian subcontinent. he has been guarding tyersall park since he was young. in all his years of working for the young family as the head of security, … interviewed and hired him for the job thirty-two years ago … (kwan, 2017, p. 118) during the turbulent years before and after independence, gurkha contingent was formed under the singapore police force. displaying skill and bravery, gurkhas are renowned as disciplined and dedicated troops (parker, 2005, p. 390). kwan endows comparable reputes for vikram, as he is greatly loyal to su yi, even until her final days. vikram felt a lump in his throat, but he continued to speak. “ah ling, i swore an oath—a gurkha’s oath—to protect and serve mrs. young with my life. i feel like i would be betraying her if i didn’t see that her wishes are followed. … “well, it’s my duty to make sure that happens. even if i lose my job.” (kwan, 2017, p. 170) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 134 at her funeral, vikram is assigned as “the lead pallbearer” of “su yi’s casket” (kwan, 2017, p. 243). his undying loyalty is then rewarded with an inheritance. moreover, he is the only gurkha whose name is listed in the will. $500,000 to my head of security captain vikram ghale, who has diligently protected me since 1983. i further bequeath to him the type 14 nambu pistol given to me by count hisaichi terauchi preceding his departure from singapore in 1944. (eleanor: wah, so generous! i wonder if old lady knew that he made a fortune with his day trading?) (kwan, 2017, p. 258) once gurkhas, like other soldiers, retire, they largely rely on their pension. to make matters worse, it is widely known that gurkhas’ pension is smaller than national troops (parker, 2005, p. 334). however, as he inherits a sum of su yi’s money and prized possessions, finance will not be an issue in his retirement days. besides, he invests his salary cleverly, accumulating an extensive stock-market portfolio. “vikram, how much money have you made on my stock tips over the years? sino land, keppel corp, silverlake axis. hnh! i swear to god i am never going to give you a single tip again. i made you a rich man, and this is how you repay us? mangkali kow sai!” (kwan, 2017, p. 119) kwan ascribes vikram’s discipline and dedication as an upward-mobility ticket. in his line of work, those able to live above their means are typically corrupt (shinkman, 2022). therefore, molding an honest soldier who devotes his life to his employer for success designates his intent of characterizing and plotting his character to seize the american dream. conclusion literature is not crystalized in a vacuum. extrinsic factors contribute to how its intrinsic elements are created. kwan internalizes american dream in form of characterization and plot in his trilogy. in crazy rich asians and china rich girlfriend, he focuses on the acquisition of the american dream by chinese immigrants pushing forward the ‘model minority’ stereotype. in rich people problems, he also agglutinates the myth to the supporting characters, despite their south and southeast asian origins. by appending them with backstories and life progresses, they develop from static and flat into round characters. regardless of where they reside, he equally conduces those characters opportunities in improving their socioeconomic condition. he embeds them with determination, perseverance, hard work, loyalty, and reinvention to revamp their humble backgrounds into selfmade entrepreneurs, highly-educated professionals, dependable employees, and trophy spouses. his take thereupon represents the asian immigrant perspective on american dream. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 122-138 135 references adhitya, g. n. 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(2017). strukturalisme genetik cerpen hitam putih kotaku karya rismiyana. mlangun: jurnal ilmiah kebahasaan dan kesastraan, 14(2), 713-725. https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2022-08-31/how-russian-corruption-is-foiling-putins-army-in-ukraine https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2022-08-31/how-russian-corruption-is-foiling-putins-army-in-ukraine https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2022-08-31/how-russian-corruption-is-foiling-putins-army-in-ukraine http://dx.doi.org/10.36418/syntax-literate.v6i8.3808 https://doi.org/10.26594/diglossia.v4i2.252 https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12522 https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/tcj/vol1/iss1/4 https://gen.medium.com/asian-american-authors-overdue-recognition-is-a-referendum-on-the-literary-mainstream-897507c84151 https://gen.medium.com/asian-american-authors-overdue-recognition-is-a-referendum-on-the-literary-mainstream-897507c84151 https://gen.medium.com/asian-american-authors-overdue-recognition-is-a-referendum-on-the-literary-mainstream-897507c84151 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 194 euphemism and dysphemism strategies in donald trump’s speech at sotu 2020 lutvia nurul kafi and agwin degaf universitas islam negeri maulana malik ibrahim malang, indonesia lutvikafi@gmail.com; agwindegaf@uin-malang.ac.id correspondence: lutvikafi@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i2.3205 received 16 march 2021; accepted 29 march 2021 abstract in this article, the researchers aim to explain the types and functions of the use of expressions of euphemism and dysphemism in president donald trump's speeches at the state of the union address 2020. with donald trump's controversial background and many of his statements attracting attention, researchers assume that trump uses many expressions of euphemism and dysphemism in his speech. this study uses allan's and burridge's (1991) theoretical framework on euphemism and dysphemism as the base for data analysis. this study's data were taken from trump's utterances in his speech. this study uses a qualitative descriptive research method to carry out in-depth analysis. the results of this study indicate that there are eight types of euphemistic expressions, five types of dysphemism, eight functions of euphemisms, and six functions of dysphemism. keywords: euphemism, dysphemism, political speech introduction politics is one of the main issues discussed by the public and the media. indeed, it happens because the actions of each person can be motivated by certain political influences. political figures themselves are often in the spotlight of the public and journalists for their political activities and discourses. their statements have been the subject of intense discussion by linguists primarily related to their political utterances. the statements they express in the public domain then come to the fore as a discourse. discourse itself means a set of sentences or harmonious sayings that connect proportions, sentences to one another and refers to certain goals (bahri, 2009). when we talk about discourse, the first thing that can be observed about political speech is the choice of politicians' words. according to van dijk (2000), word choice is closely related to the "us vs. them" strategy, manifested by euphemistic and dysphemistic language styles. these two terms are usually used to indicate who belongs to a group and who is considered "the other." euphemism is a term to describe the use of certain beautiful words to give a subtle impression ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 195 in a text context as a substitute for an offensive or unpleasant expression. (kbbi, 2001) euphemism is described as an attempt to avoid harsh and offensive words by using words that have a more positive connotation so as not to cause violations of social norms. using euphemisms, the speaker can criticize and convey his opinion to the interlocutor safely and without offending. in this sense, euphemisms are closely related to the principle of politeness in language. however, it is also used in political processes with certain discourse themes to achieve individual goals (vedung, 1982; bahri, 2009). according to allan and burridge (1991), dysphemism itself is a word or phrase with a painful or disturbing connotation for someone who is being spoken to and for those who listen to the conversation. besides, allan and burridge (1991) state that dysphemism is an expression that has a semantically negative connotation and is chosen by the speaker to show his negative assessment of something or someone so that negative nuances appear. zollner (1997) defines dysphemism as an expression used to indicate something taboo, rude, inappropriate, or of low value. due to its negative connotations, the use of dysphemism is largely based on propaganda and oppositional discourse. the use of euphemistic and dysphemistic language styles by politicians can then represent their ideology. van dijk (2006) gave an example that politicians with anti-communist ideologies usually tend to use dysphemism in their speeches to show that communism is a bad ideology, and these politicians will use euphemism when they talk about bad things related to their ideology so that these bad things seem to be more neutral, even less bad in meaning. this makes researchers interested in studying euphemisms and dysphemisms in the political discourse of state leaders or presidents whose every statement is often in the public spotlight. therefore, researchers decided to examine the political speech by the united states president, donald trump. the reason for choosing this figure is because of the controversy that he often carries out. many studies have examined trump's discourse, especially in uncovering his ideology to get support and sympathy from the public. in this description, previous research will be explained and categorized according to its similarities, such as research subjects, theories, or topics studied, and others. in several previous studies, some researchers examined the use of euphemisms and dysphemisms to focus on political speech research. as the research conducted by zang and lei (2019) about the use of euphemism in donald trump speeches from 2018 to 2019. here they use the conceptual metonymy theory and conceptual metaphor. in the results, it is stated that there are three things behind the use of euphemisms, namely concealment, avoidance, and politeness. furthermore, olimat (2020) researched the expression of the dysphemism trump used in his speech about covid-19. in his research, he combines three theories, namely critical discourse analysis by van dijk (1997), allan and burridge's theory (2006), with his concept of dysphemism, and the conceptual metaphor theory by lakoff and johnson (1980). in the results of his research, he stated that trump is someone who has linguistic reliability in persuading, influencing, and even turning the listener's mind with his utterances when making political speeches. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 196 the following studies use the same theory based on allan and burridge's theories. the research includes heryana's (2019) research, which examines euphemisms and dysphemism in the news media to uncover their form, meaning, and function. furthermore, laili (2012), with her eco-linguistic research, also focuses on finding ways, types, and functions. other previous studies examine euphemism and dysphemism, which are not mentioned. however, a study like this research was conducted by rachman (2016). he examines president jokowi's use of euphemisms with a focus on discussing types and styles. like this research, he also uses allan & burridge's theory in his research. the choice of allan and burridge's theory in this study is because this theory explains the types of euphemisms and dysphemisms more carefully and systematically. from the explanation above, this study conducts further analysis and is different from previous studies. this research will analyze the use of euphemism and dysphemism expressions used by president donald trump, especially in terms of types and functions. according to researchers, the selection of objects and topics is interesting and different from previous studies. this state speech was held shortly after the tragedy of the overthrow of iranian general qassim soleimani by a us military attack on president donald trump's orders. assuming that this speech is also motivated by the ideology and power of donald trump and because his speech is related to political and social issues, this research uses allan and burridge's theory. it integrates it with van dijk's theory of discourse analysis to interpret functions to obtain more critical analysis results. several assumptions have also motivated researchers to formulate several problems related to donald trump's political speeches. the first assumption is that the researcher believes that the text of donald trump's speech, especially on february 4, 2020, has many diction and speech elements that contain elements of euphemism and dysphemism, as mentioned above regarding some examples taken from his speech. this suspicion is also reinforced because donald trump's background is known for his narcissism and arrogance (enns, 2018). the next assumption is that the diction which contains euphemisms and dysphemism here does have a certain function by the context of the text used in the state speech. the final assumption is that several types of euphemisms and dysphemisms emerged in his speech to congress. this assumption also departs from the statement of rahardjo (2002), which states that the use of elements of euphemism and dysphemism by political figures can have certain goals beyond reality. therefore, the researcher aims to conduct this research to reveal the types and functions of the euphemisms and dysphemisms that donald trump uttered in his speech and to show the facts that might be contained in his speech. method this research on euphemisms and dysphemism uses descriptive qualitative methods. it is shown to analyze and describe the data so that the results obtained emphasize more on meaning. the data is taken from president donald trump's speech at the 2020 state of the union address congressional meeting, in the form of words or phrases or clauses or sentences. in analyzing the data, the researchers used several steps following allan's and burridge's (1991) theory. it is described briefly, concisely, and sequential from beginning to end so that the reader quickly understands it. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 197 findings and discussion types and functions of euphemism in this study, the researchers found eight types of expressions using euphemisms: circumlocution, hyperbole, figurative expression, abbreviation, one for one substitution, understatement, jargon, and synesthesia. trump's use of euphemism expressions in his speech is divided into several functions: delivering information, quipping, exaggerating, showing respect, criticizing, avoiding words that stir up panic or anxiety, giving advice, avoiding taboo things, and showing concern or sympathy. the full explanation is below, along with examples of the data. circumlocution circumlocution is the use of several words that are longer and more indirect (laili, 2012). circumlocution usually takes the form of using the word in a circle, not getting to the point of the conversation, and adding a few words or other terms to make it longer. the following is an example of a unit of euphemism in the form of circumlocution found in the data. data 1 under the last administration, more than 10 million people were added to the food stamps rolls. under my administration, 7 million americans have come off of food stamps, and 10 million people have been lifted off of welfare. in 8 years under the last administration, over 300.000 working-age people dropped out of the workforce. in just 3 years of my administration, 3,5 million working-age people have joined the workforce. in this expression, trump uses the phrase “last administration” which refers to obama's administration. the choice of the “last administration” phrase is deemed more refined and can be understood by listeners even though it only implies the meaning. in this context, this expression serves as a satire because the statement contains a comparison of trump's achievements during his presidency. the second sentence reinforces this reason in the statement above, which states, "in 8 years under the last administration," which directly shows that the "last administration" here is intended to insult barack obama's achievements in the previous administration, whose achievements were much lower than trump's. trump tried to make small talk by indirectly mentioning the satirical party so that the expression he made could sound smoother and nicer. hyperbole according to allan and burridge (1991), hyperbole is an expression that exaggerates to express a real situation. this expression is commonly used in everyday life to emphasize and exaggerate a statement. it aims to illustrate a particular situation to the listener. the following are some examples of a hyperbolic euphemistic expression unit found in the data. data 2 i am thrilled to report to you tonight that our economy is the best it has ever been. our military is completely rebuilt with its power being unmatched anywhere in the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 198 world, and it is not even close. our borders are secure. our families are flourishing. our values are renewed. our pride is restored. and for all these 35 reasons, i say to the people of our great country, and to the members of congress before me : the state of our union is stronger than ever before! hyperbolic expressions intend to exaggerate a situation to refine the speaker's meaning. for example, in the first expression, “with its power being unmatched anywhere in the world, and it is not even close”, here is an exaggeration in the american military's context occupying the highest position in the world with the most muscular military power. trump is trying to emphasize that no other country can match american power. this expression's function is also to exaggerate because seen from its use in that context, and trump is trying to suggest that america is truly a powerful country. he chose not to directly express it with the phrase "powerful military" or "strongest military" but made small talk by giving more emphasis to make his expression stronger. figurative expression a figurative expression is a form of expression by symbolizing, likening, or decorating something with another form (heryana, 2019). some forms of euphemisms in donald trump's speech that use figurative expressions are as follows. data 3 almost every american family knows the pain when a loved one is diagnosedwith a serious illness. here tonight is a special man, someone beloved by millions of americans who just received a stage 4 advanced cancer diagnosis. this is not good news, but what is good news is that he is the greatest fighter and winner that you 37 will ever meet. rush limbaugh: thank you for your decades of tireless devotion to our country. rush, in recognition of all that you have done for our nation, the millions of people a day that you speak to and inspire, and all of the incredible work that you have done for charity, i am proud to announce tonight that you will be receiving our country’s highest civilian honor, the presidential medal of freedom. i will now ask the first lady of the united states to please stand and present you with the honor. rush, kathryn, congratulations. the expression “greatest fighter and winner” here is an example of using euphemism in the form of a metaphor. trump chose to use the word “fighter”, which is synonymous with “fighters sent to fight” or “fight crime”, and the word “winner”, which is synonymous with “the person who wins the competition”, refers to rush limbaugh, who managed to recover from terminal cancer. this context's expression serves to provide sympathy and show the speaker's respect for the intended person. trump chose to use the expression “greatest fighter and winner” instead of a man who has successfully recovered from his cancer because the words “fighter” and “winner” here have a moresubtle meaning and impression for trump to show his appreciation for rush, who has struggled hard against his disease and which ultimately resulted in healing for him. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 199 abbreviation an abbreviation is a shortening of a word to several shorter letters but not a whole word (laili, 2012). the abbreviations in the units of expression of euphemisms are meant to protect the feelings of others. the following is an example of a euphemism unit in the form of an abbreviation in the data. data 4 we have launched ambitious new initiatives to substantially improve care for americans with kidney disease, alzheimer’s and those struggling with mental health challenges. and because the congress funded my request, we are pursuing new cures for childhood cancer, and we will eradicate the aids epidemic in amerika by the end of the decade. the word “aids” above is a form of euphemism expression. nevertheless, the word aids here is also included in an acronym because it is in the form of a complete word which comes from the combination of the initials of several words, namely acquired immune deficiency syndrome (the final stage of hiv disease which is a disease that attacks the immune system and until now there has been no cure for it). aids itself is one of the deadliest diseases in america; as trump stated, this disease has become an epidemic in america. trump chose to name the disease in an acronym to avoid being taboo and intimidating for listeners. therefore, the function of euphemistic expressions in this context is to avoid words that cause a scare, fear, or disgust. one for one substitution according to allan’s and burridge’s (1991) opinion, one for one substitution means one word that has the same meaning, but is more subtle, and can replace one other word that is coarser. the following is an example of a unit of euphemism in the form of one word to replace one other word (one for one substitution) found in the data. data 5 as we restore american leadership throughout the world, we are once again standing up for freedom in our hemisphere. that is why my administration reserved the falling policies of the previous administration on cuba. we are supporting the hopes of cuban, nicaraguans, and venezuelans to restore democracy. the united states is leading a 59-nation diplomatic coalition against the socialist dictator of venezuela, nicholas maduro. substituting one word for another is intended to smooth the speaker's words. the “hemisphere” here is used to refine the words “nation” or “countries”. in this context, the word “hemisphere” refers to the countries under the leadership of the united states, especially countries in the hemisphere of the american continent. in that sentence, trump tried to provide information that the american leadership had returned and had brought back independence to the countries he led. on the other hand, this expression is used to hide the fact that there are still some areas in america which, according to trump, are not yet independent like venezuela because a dictator leads them. nevertheless, to cover this fact, trump gives a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 200 subtle impression with “we are once again standing up for freedom in our hemisphere”. understatement understatement is a word meaning that is separated from the meaning of the original word to be humble (rachman, 2016). the following are examples of euphemistic expressions in the form of understatement found in the data. data 5 as we restore american leadership throughout the world, we are once again standing up for freedom in our hemisphere. that is why my administration reserved the falling policies of the previous administration on cuba. we are supporting the hopes of cuban, nicaraguans, and venezuelans to restore democracy. the united states is leading a 59-nation diplomatic coalition against the socialist dictator of venezuela, nicholas maduro. the meaning of leadership is leading a group or organization, but here it implies domination. it means that trump has indirectly stated that america's domination of countries in the world has returned. it could happen because trump's background, who was previously a businessman, often intersects with the term leadership because this term itself is more closely related to the world of economy and business. this expression's function in context is to hide the fact that the real point of leadership here is that america's domination is recovering. not to overtly state this, trump chose to be humble and use the word “leadership” to avoid his ambitious impression. synesthesia synesthesia is a change in meaning caused by an exchange of responses between two different senses (laili, 2012). the following is an example of a dysphemistic expression unit in synesthesia found in the data. data 6 days later, the criminal alien went on a gruesome spree of deadly violence. he viciously shot one man going about his daily work, he approached woman sitting in her car and shot her in the arm and the chest. he walked into a convenience store and wildly fires his weapon. he hijacked a truck and smashed into vehicles, critically injuring innocent victims. one of his bloody rampage was a 51-year-old american named rocky jones. rocky was at a gas station when this vile criminal fired eight bullets at him from close range, murdering him in cold blood. rocky left behind a devoted family, including his brothers who loved him more anything. one of his grieving brothers is here with us tonight. jody, would you please stand? jody, our hearts weep for your loss, and we will not rest until you have justice. the use of the synesthesia expression is shown by the expression “our hearts weep for your loss”. the word “weep” here is used for the sense of the eye, but trump puts it on the heart, which incidentally cannot cry. it is intended to provide a sympathetic effect on the sadness felt by the shooting victims' families. it is an example of euphemistic expressions that serve to show sympathy and concern. using the word 'weep' to heart instead of eyes means that they are saddened and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 201 condoled for the incident. so it does not have to show that the eyes are crying to show sadness. from this, it proves that trump uses euphemistic expressions to show sympathy and sorrow. jargon a technical term or jargon is the use of words that have the same meaning but differ in form (laili, 2012). examples are as in the data below. data 7 my administration is also strongly defending our national security and combating radical islamic terrorism. last week, i announced a groundbreaking plan for peace between israel and the palestinians. recognizing that all past attempts have failed, we must be determined and creative in order to stabilize the region and give millions of young people the change to realize a better future. in this context, trump uses the word “stabilize” to express that he plans to maintain state security and fight radical terrorists, with a peace plan between israel and palestine. the use of the word “stabilize” itself here serves to hide the facts. before this speech, trump stated that hamas, an islamic defense organization to liberate palestine from israel's shackles, is a terrorist group, and the united states itself is known to be allied with israel. moreover, the trump administration has withdrawn all forms of assistance to the palestinian state and its citizens due to trump's frustration because palestine refuses peace dialogue with israel. from this, trump is only siding with one side, and he is trying to look good by using the word stabilize rather than reconcile. in other words, it could be that stabilization here actually means stabilizing israel's victory over palestine. the types and functions of dysphemism in this study, the researchers found five types of dysphemism: hyperbole, jargon, idiom, one for one substitution, and circumlocution. it proves that in his speech, trump uses expressions of dysphemism to voice things that are not pleasing to his heart. in his speech, trump's use of dysphemistic expressions is divided into several functions, including exaggerating, criticizing, giving information, insulting, ridicule or sharpening the insult, quipping, showing disagreement, and denoting dislike. a full description is set out below. hyperbole according to allan and burridge (1991), hyperbole is an expression that contains exaggerated statements with a specific purpose. the following is an example of a hyperbolic dysphemistic expression unit found in the data. data 8 one of the single biggest promises i made to american people was to replace the disastrous nafta trade deal. in fact, unfair trade is perhaps the single biggest reason that i decided run for president. following nafta’s adoption, our nation lost one in four manufacturing jobs. many politicians came and went, pledging to change or to replace nafta, only to do absolutely nothing. but unlike so many who came before me, i keep my promises. six days ago, i replaced nafta and signed the brand new united-states-mexico-canada agreement (umsca) into law. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 202 the context in this example is that trump shows his disappointment with the nafta agreement system, which is no longer profitable for the united states. he expressed his dislike of using the phrase "disastrous nafta trade deal." trump is trying to exert pressure that the agreement is indeed catastrophic for america. it is exaggerated because trump has chosen to use a harsher word, namely “disastrous”, instead of using more subtle expressions such as “adverse agreement” or “irrelevant agreements”. this expression shows displeasure because trump directly shows his feelings towards the agreement system, which he feels is more beneficial to other countries. for such reasons, it is no wonder that trump has criticized the pursuit of new reforms by forging new agreements. with his success in making this new agreement, trump indirectly shows that he has great power in his power. jargon the use of technical terms (jargon) is a word that has the same meaning but has different forms (rachman, 2016). the following is an example of a unit of dysphemistic expression in the form of the use of technical terms (jargon) found in the data. data 9 the united states is leading a 59-nation diplomatic coalition against the socialist dictator of venezuela, nicolas maduro. maduro is an illegitimate ruler, a tyrant who brutalizes his people. cut maduro’s grip of tyranny will be smashed and broken. the second example is the illegitimate ruler, where the ruler should give a positive impression because he has a position as a country's leader. in this context, it is stated that maduro is no longer the legitimate president of venezuela because juan guaido has legally and legally replaced him. nevertheless, maduro won the presidential election for the second time, but trump disagrees more and recognizes the legislative member guaido as the official leader. from this, it can be concluded that the function of the expression of dysphemism in this context is to show dislike and disapproval for something that is not pleasing to the speaker's heart. one for one substitution one word with the same meaning but is coarser can substitute for another word, which is more subtle (laili, 2012). replacement of harsher expressions is done to sharpen the meaning of the speaker. the following is an example of a one-for one substitution expression unit found in the data. data 9 the united states is leading a 59-nation diplomatic coalition against the socialist dictator of venezuela, nicolas maduro. maduro is an illegitimate ruler, a tyrant who brutalizes his people. but maduro’s grip of tyranny will be smashed and broken. a speaker commonly uses the replacement of one word with another to the abrasiveness of an utterance. as in the example data 9, there is the word “tyrant”. tyrant means a leader who has full power to humiliate his people cruelly. trump ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 203 gave maduro the title to give the impression of being more ruthless than the dictator. furthermore, the expression of dysphemism in the tyrant expression shows dislike. tyrant is a term that refers to a country leader who has full power over its people to rule viciously and cruelly. in hindsight, maduro was venezuela's legitimate leader in the presidential election, and he has served for his second term since 2019. however, because in his leadership, maduro was judged incompetent for bringing his country into decline; perhaps, trump showed his displeasure by calling him a tyrant. moreover, this is a form of insulting, vilifying, and sharpening the insult towards maduro. trump has previously called maduro a dictator, but he has sharpened his insults by choosing the tyrant. idiom an idiom is an expression that functions as a unit whose meaning will be lost if the phrase is separated (laili, 2012). below is an example of data using idioms. data 10 days later, the criminal alien went on a gruesome spree of deadly violence. he viciously shot one man going about his daily work, he approached woman sitting in her car and shot her in the arm and the chest. he walked into a convenience store and wildly fires his weapon. he hijacked a truck and smashed into vehicles, critically injuring innocent victims. one of his bloody rampage was a 51-year-old american named rocky jones. rocky was at a gas station when this vile criminal fired eight bullets at him from close range, murdering him in cold blood. rocky left behind a devoted family, including his brothers who loved him more anything. one of his grieving brothers is here with us tonight. jody, would you please stand? jody, our hearts weep for your loss, and we will not rest until you have justice. the first use of idiom expressions in the data above is “cold blood”. its literal meaning cannot take as its phase because it will give a different meaning from the speaker's meaning. in this context, trump mentioned that the foreign shooter had killed rocky cruelly and heartlessly. by using the idiomatic expression cold blood, trump gave an even bigger negative impression. trump did not choose to use another idiom because it is closely related to heinous things like murder. the function of this dysphemism expression is to convey information about the chronology of how the crime occurred. by adding idiomatic spices, trump wanted to give a more dramatic impression with what he said. circumlocution based on rachman’s (2016) opinion, circumlocution is the use of several words that are longer and more indirect. circumlocution usually takes the form of using the word in a circle, not getting to the point of the conversation, and adding a few words or other terms to make it longer. the following are examples of the unit of expression for dysphemism in the form of circumlocution found in the data. data 11 one of the single biggest promises i made to american people was to replace the disastrous nafta trade deal. in fact, unfair trade is perhaps the single biggest reason that i decided run for president. following nafta’s adoption, our nation ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 204 lost one in four manufacturing jobs. many politicians came and went, pledging to change or to replace nafta, only to do absolutely nothing. but unlike so many who came before me, i keep my promises. six days ago, i replaced nafta and signed the brand new united-states-mexico-canada agreement (umsca) into law. the expression dysphemism in the form of circumlocution in the above expression essentially shows that many politicians have failed to fix nafta. trump uses this expression to make small talk and a form of criticism of the politician's performance. the sentence stated that 'many politicians came and went, pledging to change or replace nafta, only to do absolutely nothing' to sharply criticize the nafta agreement's problem, which was no longer profitable. speakers criticized the performance of politicians who failed in fixing them, and the speakers also gave the impression that they emphasized the criticism more by 'only to do absolutely nothing,' which means that they had no progress in performance. discussion after obtaining the data and analysis related to the research questions in this study, in this session, the researchers describe a more in-depth discussion of the findings on the theories used in this study to provide more in-depth explanations to strengthen the answers to the research questions. besides that, the researchers also explain the interpretation of the relationship between the use of expressions of euphemism and dysphemism with donald trump's political speech in this study. in this study, as mentioned in chapters 1 and 2, the theory used in this study is the theory of euphemism and dysphemism by allan and burridge, which states that there are sixteen types of expressions of the two terms. after analyzing, the researchers finally found eight types of euphemistic expressions used in donald trump's speech this time: circumlocution, hyperbole, figurative expressions, abbreviations, one for one substitution, understatement, jargon, and synesthesia. from the results of this study, the researchers got a new expression, namely synesthesia, from the sixteen types of allan and burridge theory. still, it was also found in elisa's 2012 study. after that, for the findings of the type of dysphemism expression, the researchers found five types of dysphemism: hyperbole, jargon, idiom, one for one substitution, and circumlocution. these belong to the sixteen types of euphemisms and dysphemisms of the leading theory. after conducting this research, the researchers concluded that the current study results have several similarities and differences with the theory and previous research that became the reference in this study. as stated in allan and burridge theory, which is the basis of this research theory, there are sixteen types of euphemisms and dysphemisms. after doing research, the results here were only found in as many as eight species. the same thing happened in several previous studies whose results did not mention sixteen species. in this regard, there are two studies that both examine types of euphemisms and dysphemisms. like elisa's (2012) research, her research found 13 types of euphemisms and 13 types of dysphemism in the topic of her environmental discourse. rachman's (2016) research on euphemisms only found six types of the sixteen types mentioned in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 205 theory. it is proven that the research objects are different, so the results obtained are also different. furthermore, regarding the function of using euphemism and dysphemism expressions, according to allan and burridge's theory, there are seven types of euphemism functions, and there are four functions of dysphemism (in kurniawati, 2016: p53). this study found eight euphemism expression functions and six dysphemistic expression functions. of course, these results are different compared to the results of previous studies. some of it is due to the diversity of theories and approaches used, resulting in varied research results. then, further discussion will discuss the relationship between the use of expressions of euphemism and dysphemism with the political speech made by donald trump at the state of the union address 2020. as mentioned above, eight types of euphemisms and five types of dysphemism have been found. of the eight types of euphemisms used, donald trump tends to use the hyperbole type often. in its context, this euphemism is often used when donald trump discusses his performance and achievements. besides that, it is also used in discussing matters relating to america and its people. furthermore, of the five types of dysphemism found, in their use, it was found that trump used more one for one substitution. this usage is often found when trump discusses political opponents or parties that it considers not supporting and is labelled as enemies. the intensity of using words that impress badly shows that trump is the type of person who is easy to tease and shows his dislike openly through his utterances. in conclusion, the researchers can conclude that several previous studies with the latest research have many differences and similarities. the use of the same theory can also affect the similarity of the researchers' interpretation in examining each object. however, with different approaches and different objectivity, it also causes different results but is related and complements each other's shortcomings. after conducting this research, the researcher can determine why the speakers use euphemism and dysphemism expressions in their speech and statements. conclusion after conducting this research, it can be concluded that president donald trump was proven to use expressions of euphemism and dysphemism in his speech. the researchers concluded that the elements of euphemism and dysphemism are closely related to politics with the discovery of eight types of euphemism and five types of dysphemism and the function behind the use of these expressions. as explained in the discussion section, president donald trump uses more euphemism in expressing things related to himself and any other things related to the u.s. government. whereas when talking about what he deems to be a crime or something that he considers threatening and not commendable, he will use the expression dysphemism. it can be seen from this that president donald trump is the type of person who is good at expressing himself through words and speech because it is supported by his background, who is a businessman and a man with much experience as he is also involved in u.s. politics. the conclusion above shows that linguistic elements, euphemism and dysphemism, cannot be separated from every person's utterances, both politicians and ordinary people. there is a vital function behind their use, either to avoid ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 194-207 206 taboo or wrong words or as a form of self-expression when we meet things that unmatch with something that we expect. as readers, we must be more sensitive to someone's words because they may indirectly try to message through their words, whether subtle or harsh, as not all conditions can support them. references abdelaal, n. m., alisood, a. m., & sase, a. s. 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(1982). political reasoning. new delhi: sage publications. zhang, x, & lei, x. a cognitive analysis of euphemism in trump’s political speeches. international journal of liberal arts and social science, 7(11). retrieved on november 19, 2020 from https://ijlass.org/articles/7.11.5.4759.pdf http://repository.uinjkt.ac.id/dspace/bitstream/123456789/39942/1/dinny%20laras-fitk http://repository.uinjkt.ac.id/dspace/bitstream/123456789/39942/1/dinny%20laras-fitk about:blank about:blank ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 185-193 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 185 nicki minaj’s comments in american idol season 12: an analysis of women’s language features diana chandra and made frida yulia sanata dharma university, yogyakarta diana_chandra@ymail.com and frida@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010204 received 15 september 2017; revised 3 december 2017; accepted 11 february 2018 abstract it is commonly believed that women speak differently from men. they carry certain features which are distinctive in their speech (lakoff, 2004). however, some women are found to speak differently from women’s speech in general. this phenomenon is reflected in the use of language by nicki minaj, one of the judges of american idol season 12, whose speech stands out above the rest of the other women. the study investigates nicki minaj’s comments in american idol season 12 in terms of women’s language features. it focuses on two issues, namely how the language used by nicki minaj in american idol season 12 conforms to women’s language features and what possible factors cause the absence of women’s language features in nicki minaj’s comments to the contestants of american idol season 12. to find answers to the two questions, document analysis is employed, in which seven videos of live performances taken from american idol season 12 are examined. meanwhile, lakoff’s theory of women’s language features is employed as the guidelines to analyse the data. the findings reveal that the features characterizing women’s language which appear in nicki minaj’s comments are intensifier, emphatic stress, filler, rising intonation, and lexical hedge. the remaining features do not appear in her speech; they are tag question, ‘empty’ adjective, precise colour term, ‘hypercorrect’ grammar, ‘superpolite’ form, and avoidance of strong swear words. the absence of these features can be accounted for by four possible factors. they are father’s speech, ethnicity, community of practice, and different social psychological perceptions. keywords: women’s language, women’s language features, nicki minaj, american idol introduction one’s sex is reflected through his or her language. this claim is strengthened by a theory from lakoff about women’s language. this theory shows the way women’s speech differs from men’s speech, which is characterised by women’s language features (lakoff, 2004, p. 42). in addition, kress and hodge (1979) describe that language, as a social phenomenon, reflects not only the gender but also the social attitudes towards men and women. this is to say that social change and language change are mutually reinforcing (kress & hodge, 1984, p. 42). changes that take place in society will also reflect the language change. for example, one of the judges on american idol season mailto:yoseph1612@yahoo.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 185-193 186 12, nicki minaj, shows significant differences compared to the way the typical women speak. this phenomenon sparks an interest for further analysis. two research questions are formulated, namely: (1) how does the language used by nicki minaj on american idol season 12 conform to women’s language features? and (2) what are the possible factors that cause the absence of women’s language features in nicki minaj’s comments to the contestants of american idol season 12? women’s language there is a stereotype that men tend to maintain their masculinity within the language which is used while women tend to maintain their femininity. therefore, several different features are applied by them to keep their identities. both, men and women, have their own purposes to keep applying the features. for instance, most women will use a number of linguistic features which reinforce their subordinate status (holmes, 2008, p. 296). through these features, they expect to be heard by the addressee. according to lakoff (1975), there are some linguistic features which are used more often by women than by men to express the uncertainty and lack of confidence. these features are labelled as women’s language, including lexical hedge or filler, intensifier, emphatic stress, tag questions, rising intonation on declaratives, ‘empty’ adjectives, precise colour terms, ‘hypercorrect’ grammar, ‘superpolite’ form, and avoidance of strong swear words (as cited in holmes, 2008, pp. 297-298). possible factors that cause the absence of women’s language features there are some possible factors that cause the absence of women’s language features. they are elaborated as follows. father’s speech parents’ role is important in child’s language development because children firstly interact with their parents. engle (1979) highlights the way of every parent in delivering their speech to their children is different. mother appears to be more sensitive to her child, while father is less polite and more insensitive (engle, 1979, p. 92). furthermore, father’s tends to use more jocular terms, but insulting, to address a son (gleason & perlmann, 1985, pp. 90-91). as a result, the insulting term will not only turn out to encourage bad speech for the son, but also the daughter. ethnicity holmes (2008) points out that there are linguistic features to a person’s ethnicity and these features reflect the regular interactions people have. it means that the language that is used also reflects the group’s identity (p. 184). thus, the cause of language problem experienced by the children might be from the regular interaction of particular ethnic groups in which the speakers do not really pay attention to the right form of a language. for instance, the black english community has language disadvantages since they are historically a minority group, in which violence often exists and diversity among the group is intolerable (kolack as cited in edwards, 1985, pp. 143-144). community of practice wardaugh (2006, p.127) defines community of practice as “...at the same time its members and what its members are doing to make them a community: a group of workers in a factory, an extended family, an adolescent gang, a woman’s fitness group, a classroom, etc.” community of practice is also known by children as well as ethnic ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 185-193 187 group. parents may be wondering why children can swear, joke or insult whereas they never introduce them to such words. gleason and perlmann (1985) suggest that there are certain ways of speaking which are only acquired from peers and cannot be obtained from parents. if the children do not master or use the register current in their group, they will be rejected. feeling rejected by the peers will turn to psychological consequences. thus, children try to avoid rejection as much as possible. it can make the children insist on using the terms everytime and everywhere (gleason & perlmann, 1985, pp. 93-94). uneducated background inevitably, education at school is needed by parents to support the child’s development, including language. based on edwards (1979), traditionally, the school takes the important role as a supporter of ‘proper’ language to use. it helps the children to develop their language better by introducing the standard form of language which is accepted by the dominant mainstream (as cited in edwards, 1985, pp. 132). therefore, children whose parents are not able to afford education for them might lose their chance to acquire more standard language form. different social-psychological perceptions gleason and perlmann (1985) also state that a social-psychological perception aims not only to describe how a language is used for appropriate communication in different social situations, but also how it is used to establish and define someone’s personality characteristics (gleason & perlmann, 1985, p. 95). the one who has socialpsychological perceptions which are accepted by dominant mainstream is said to be able to use language for appropriate communication and have good personality characteristics. meanwhile, the one who has different social-psychological perspections which are not accepted by the dominant mainstream is said to be not able to use language appropriately. being not able to use language for appropriate communication means having bad personality characteristics. the biography of nicki minaj based on the book entitled nicki minaj biography (2012), onika tanya maraj, henceforth known as nicky minaj, was born to father, omar maraj and mother, carol maraj, who were of afro and indo-trinidadian descent. minaj spent her life with her father, who was a severe drug addict with a long history of violence. minaj had a very troubled childhood when she lived with her father (good, 2012, p. 4). everytime her parents had a crack, her father would yell and curse a lot and it really made minaj feel very nervous and afraid (holloway, 2012, pp. 6-7). since then, minaj became traumatic and was determined to change her mother’s life to be better. she enrolled herself to la guardia high school of music and art and started to learn acting. in that high school, she felt weird because almost all of the students spoke with their british accent. yet, her white friends loved the way she called them in black accents. in addition to acting, minaj also had an interest in singing. she once took on backup singing roles for local new york city rappers and began writing her own material (holloway, 2012, pp. 8-9). she also added some sexual lyrics in her songs which included a lot of vulgar and curse words to give women chance to control over their own lives and not let the stereotype, created by men, control them (good, 2012, p. 3). after successfully winning many music awards, minaj became so popular that she was chosen to be a judge on american idol. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 185-193 188 method to answer the first research question, document analysis is identified as the appropriate method in conducting the research whereby the data are nicki minaj’s comments collected from the transcripts of the seven videos. discourse analysis is also considered since the situation where nicki minaj commented spontaneously on a live show is relevant to what is to be studied. next, to answer the second research question, the connection between the answer to the first research question, specifically the absence of some features, to the possible factors that cause the absence of women’s language features is investigated. the biography of nicki minaj is also taken into consideration to support the analysis. findings and discussion the following discussion presents the data analysis related to the two research questions posed earlier. the conformity of the language used by nicki minaj to women’s language features seven videos of nicki minaj on american idol season 12 were used as the data sources. then, the data were analysed by using a checklist derived from lakoff’s theory of women’s language features which becomes the reference of analysis. the checklist includes filler, lexical hedge, tag question, rising intonation, ‘empty’ adjective, precise colour term, intensifier, ‘hypercorrect’ grammar, ‘superpolite’ form, avoidance of strong swear word, and emphatic stress. the features are presented in table 1 along with their number of occurrences in nicki minaj’s comments as well as the percentages. table 1: women’s language features in nicki minaj’s comments no women’s language features the number of occurrences percentage (%) 1. fillers 10 22.73 2. lexical hedge 2 4.55 3. tag question 0 0 4. rising intonation 4 9.09 5. ‘empty’ adjective 0 0 6. precise colour term 0 0 7. intensifier 16 36.36 8. ‘hypercorrect’ grammar 0 0 9. ‘superpolite’ form 0 0 10. avoidance of strong swear word 0 0 11. emphatic stress 12 27.27 total 44 100 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 30-51 189 from table 1 it is clearly seen that out of eleven features of lakoff’s women’s language features, there were only five which appeared in nicki minaj’s comments. ordered on the basis of frequency, they were intensifier (36.36%), emphatic stress (27.27%), fillers (22.73%), rising intonation (9.09%), and lexical hedge (4.55%). minaj used intensifier for anticipation that the audience might remain unconvinced with her comments. in addition to the message, this feature was also used to strengthen minaj’s feeling towards all of the performances. some examples from the data were: i am so serious. (video 1) let me tell you what i have to say is really simple. (video 2) you’re absolutely right. (video 2) you definitely should come back with your guitar. (video 3) you had something that was very intimate when you started singing. (video 3) ...very very old-fashioned. (video 4) it was just right classy. (video 5) i really love hearing you sing. (video 5) i am so proud of you. (video 7) next, nicki minaj employed emphatic stresses in her comments as boosting devices. women boost the force of their utterances because they want to be heard or paid attention to (lakoff, 2004, p. 81). thus, minaj did it just like what common women do. this booster expressed minaj’s lack of confidence whether she would be heard or not. yet, the use of this booster also presented another side of nicki minaj. it showed that she was a kind of confident person who did not hesitate to emphasize what was in her mind in front of many people. she said, for example: you are a super duper star, little boy. (video 1) i am obsessed with you. (video 1) i would find you today. (video 1) you’re ready now now now! (video 1) you are a superstar performer. (video 2) today is not the day to take back kinda chance brother. (video 3) that hit me on my heart. (video 4) baby boy with that bald head that hit me somewhere! (video 4) fillers were also dominant in minaj’s speech. she made a lot of meaningless particles which did not alter the idea of her comments. it happened because she was lack of confidence on how exactly she had to convey her comments. she seemed to reduce the force of her comments to avoid the wrong statement. for instance, she remarked: you know what. (video 4) i like that you know. (video 5) you know what i like teena. (video 5) you know what. (video 5) i think you know. (video 5) it takes a lof of... you know. (video 5) mmm... babe. (video 5) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 52-60 190 hello harry. mmm (video 6) and mmm, like buttermilk waffles (video 6) the use of rising intonation at the end of interrogatives is not similar to declaratives. it sounds less neutral, but potentially informative since the addressee feels “violated” by the use of rising intonation on declaratives. yet, the use of rising intonation on minaj’s comments was merely her responses towards the contestants’ performances. she used this feature to emphasise the significant word to be perceived instead of seeking for the accuracy of her comments or confirmation from the others. the examples from the data were: it was a good old-fashioned. (video 4) it was a sexy old-fashioned. (video 4) that was a good vocal. (video 4) i really love hearing you sing. (video 5) prefacing declaration was the specific lexical hedge minaj used in her comments. in addition, lakoff (2004) believes that many women use this feature as their protection for not overstepping their rights by making a certain statement (p.79). yet, minaj appeared to be not afraid of overstepping her rights. the occurrence of this feature was merely her feeling of surprise towards the performance. another reason was because she always seemed confident with all of her comments. as a result, her comments often sounded controversial. minaj, for instance, said: i think you know (video 5) i guess learning. (video 5) the possible factors that cause the absence of women’s language featues in nicki minaj’s comments to answer the second research question, the connection between the answer to the first research question and the possible factors causing the absence of women’s language features was analysed, interpreted and put into a comprehensive report by providing plausible explanation about the connection. from the analysis, it was unveiled that father’s speech, ethnicity, community of practice, and different social-psychological perceptions were the possible factors that caused the absence of women’s language features in nicki minaj’s comments. father’s speech when minaj was young, her father already signed a bad routine to her, such as the use of curse words. she was used to listening to those words when her parents were arguing at each other. certainly, it was not good for little minaj’s development, especially the development of her language. minaj had to build it by passing through that sort of bad childhood. the result could be seen from her comments which consisted of strong swear words. by all means, minaj also increased the number of strong swear words used by women and it was caused by her father’s speech. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 52-60 191 ethnicity language is used to reflect the group’s identity (holmes, 2008). in a similar vein, the way minaj used the language also signaled her identity. as part of black people, minaj attempted to show her identity towards the language she used. it could be seen from her comments which were straightforward without any intention from her to weaken the meaning. it seems that she revealed all of her thoughts explicitly without considering whether they hurt someone’s feeling or not. this possibly happened since maintaining a good relationship with other people was not an important matter for her because there was no tolerance for diversity among her ethnic group. her behavior supported kolack’s claim (as cited in edwards, 1985) that language disadvantages occurs in minority group whereby diversity among the group is not tolerated. thus, she did not use tag questions to let the contestant participate on her comments or soften them. besides, she never employed ‘empty’ adjective in her comments though this adjective sounds good. again, as a black, she seemed to have no idea in her mind to take it into account. since black english community was historically put as the minority group, she also had a language disadvantage. her language was visibly different from standard english form, which became her symbolic way to show her identity. community of practice generally, women tend to use more of standard english forms than men (cheshire, 1984, p.43) yet, minaj was not at the same point with this theory. being a famous hip-hop singer, she also interacted with other black people, who were rappers. during the show, she made quite a lot of non-standard english forms, such as wanna, kinda, throwin’, eatin’, gotta, gonna, ‘bout in which those standard forms are want to, kind of, throwing, eating, got to, going to, about respectively. this phenomenon also happened when minaj was in high school. she could not get rid of her black accent since her british friends enjoyed hearing her speak in her black accent. this ‘encouragement’ may have caused minaj to be more confident with her accent since she realised that she was accepted by her friends the way she was. as a result, ‘hypercorrect’ grammar disappeared in nicki minaj’s comments since she often dealt with non-standard english form through her community of practice. there are also certain ways of speaking which are only acquired from peers and cannot be obtained from parents (gleason & perlmann, 1985, p.93). minaj mentioned some curse words from her music lyric and she admitted that these curse words were inserted into its lyric purposefully. she seemed to demonstrate that she could not avoid the use of strong swear words in her music career as hiphop music genre was identical to curse words, besides slang words. different social-psychological perceptions from the theory of social-psychological perceptions from gleason and perlmann (1985), it could be considered that minaj was not able to use language appropriately since her comments were vulgar and not accepted by dominant mainstream. actually, there was a reason why minaj inserted those kinds of vulgar comments during the live show. in minaj’s opinion, vulgar or curse words give women chance to not let the stereotype created by men control them (good, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 52-60 192 2012, p.3). she tried to make the figure of herself as the representative of common women who suffered from too much insecurity. minaj’s different socialpsychological perceptions made her believe that she did not need to use ‘superpolite’ form and avoid strong swear words in order to suffer from that old stereotype created by men. conclusion based on the discussion above, it could be concluded that there were only five features of women’s language used by nicki minaj in her comments to the contestants of american idol season 12. they were intensifier, emphatic stress, filler, rising intonation, and lexical hedge. meanwhile, the other six features, namely tag question, ‘empty’ adjective, precise colour terms, ‘hypercorrect’ grammar, ‘superpolite’ forms, and avoidance of strong swear words, did not appear in minaj’s comments. the absence of such language features in her comments may be attributed to four out of five possible factors. they were father’s speech, ethnicity, community of practice, and different socialpsychological perceptions. the findings of this research have given some benefits to better understand language use. first, they make people learn “about” language rather than just knowledge “of” language. mastering a language should make them able to use it for proper and effective communication as language is not only a tool to facilitate communication, but also a means to reflect someone’s sex, characteristics and status in society. second, they demonstrate that general ideas about language can be applied in investigations and observations, not only in language tests. third, such studies shed light on the importance of knowing how language works differently under different contexts. by being able to grasp differences, language users, especially language learners, are made more open-minded and wiser in dealing with various perceptions towards language. further research is encouraged with more data sources to enrich the findings and strengthen the claims. references cheshire, j. (1984). the relationship between language and sex in english. in trudgill, p. (ed.), applied sociolinguistics. london: academic press. edwards, j. (1985). language, society and identity. oxford: basil blackwell. engle, m. (1979). do fathers speak motherese? an analysis of the language development of young children. in giles, h., & st. clair, r. n. (eds.), recent advances in language, communication, and social psychology. london: lawrence erlbaum associates ltd. gleason, j. b., & perlmann, r. y. (1985). acquring social variation in speech. in giles, h., & st. clair, r. n. (eds.), recent advances in language, communication, and social psychology. london: lawrence erlbaum associates ltd. good, d. (2012). nicki minaj biography: more than a rap artist [electronic version]. new york: barnes & noble, inc. holloway, l. (2012). nicki minaj: the woman who stole the world [electronic version]. pheonix: amber communications group, inc. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 52-60 193 holmes, j. (2008). an introduction to sociolinguistics (3 rd ed.). essex: pearson education limited. kress, g. & hodge, r. (1979). language as ideology. in trudgill, p. (ed.), applied sociolinguistics. london: academic press. lakoff, r. (2004). language and woman’s place: text and commentaries (m. bucholtz, ed.). new york: oxford university press, inc. wardaugh, r. (2006). an introduction to sociolinguistics (5 th ed.). oxford: blackwell publishing ltd. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 237-242 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 237 transnational translation of taiwanese and indonesian traditional stories for global citizenship novita dewi sanata dharma university, indonesia novitadewi@usd.ac.id; novitadewi9@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010209 received 18 december 2017; revised 4 january 2018; accepted 27 february 2018 abstract in order to interact and work with diverse communities in this deeply interconnected world and to help solve such global issues as human rights abuse, ecological damage, economic poverty and extremism, we need to continually recognize and exchange values/perspectives across cultures and boundaries. border-crossing is a complex but necessary web of interactions and dependencies among nations to create global peace and justice. taiwan-indonesia border crossing is insufficient, given that no formal diplomatic relation exists between the two countries excepting the informal such as trade and investment, people-topeople relations, education and popular culture industry. taiwan and indonesia similarly shared long history of nationalism, anti-communism, and democratization, but it remains under studied how these historical comparisons are reflected through literature. this paper will argue that transnational translation of literature can connect and define both nations better so as to enhance global connectedness. thus, the crossing of the cultural boundaries by taiwanese and indonesian co-cultures through the translation of diverse literary works may give hope for future development of a mutual, emphatic understanding of each other’s cultures. keywords: transnational, translation, postcolonial, cultural borders introduction a quick survey on scholarly works on taiwan and indonesia reveals that both countries are often discussed in relation to other asian countries in diverse fields such as education (fraser & goh, 2003), psychology (shaw et al., 2011), economics (boddy, 2007) and sciences (toledo et al, 2006), to mention some. studies mainly focusing on taiwan-indonesia relationship is hard to find. due to the one china policy, taiwan and indonesia have no formal diplomatic relations although international relations do occur between people. to quote professor samuel c. y. ku when giving his keynote speech in one international seminar held in indonesia in 2016, “people are the foundation of all countries” with which people-to-people relations need to be maintained (heriyanto, 2016). this article would argue that the crossing of the cultural boundaries by taiwanese and mailto:upstrimulyono@gmail.com mailto:upstrimulyono@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 237-242 238 indonesian co-cultures through translation may give hope for future development of a mutual, emphatic understanding of each other’s cultures. theory following fairclough & wodak (1997), language is ideological, and it constructs reality (kramsch, 2006) with which the more diverse societies nowadays have to to be more aware of the many, differently conceived, realities. communication breakdown, misunderstandings and prejudice may occur between, for instance, taiwan and indonesia, should people mishandle language to convey reality. speaking of the crisis of institutionalized religions as seen in the increase of violence and extremism today, frunză (2011), for instance, highlights that communication constructs reality. he argues further that the globalized postmodern society often fail to communicate openly about new forms of religiosity within the inevitable advances of ict and globalization of mass culture. media failing to communicate the language of religion, misunderstanding of religious texts, lacks of interfaith respects are among the many indications of the incapability of language to function properly. similar to frunză, christians (2005) claims that media communication ethics should take into account local knowledge and identities rather than solely use western references amid this century’s rapid globalization of communications. innovation, collaboration, and intercultural skills therefore have all become increasingly important so as to interpret the various realities, if one wants to become a member of global citizens fostering peace and justice in this interlocked world. one among the many ways to create global peace and justice is to promote understanding through transnational translation of literature. literature both connects and defines a nation and the translation thereof fosters global connectedness. indonesia and taiwan, for example, similarly shared long history of nationalism, anti-communism and democratization, but it remains under studied how these historical comparison is reflected, much less through literature. it is important therefore to translate as many national literatures as possible into three languages (indonesian, chinese, and english) and its cultural, socioeconomic and political implications. the three languages have increasingly become lingua franca for countries in southeast asian region. the impact of worldwide spread of trilingual literary texts is thus not difficult to imagine. the availability of such texts to a broad audience will be significant for studies in the humanities in general as well as language and literature in particular within the context of today’s global citizenship. mindful of the asymmetry of the east-west power-relations and the hegemony of english as global language, translation of literary works in the likes of taiwanese and indonesian literatures is never simple but ideologically loaded. it is important to discuss first the concept of translation that has been revisited in postcolonial context. it was lefevere (1992) and tymoczko (1999) who argued earlier on that translation is often framed, eurocentric, ideologically manipulated as usually shown in the translation of non-western texts into english used globally. both lefevere and tymoczko suggest that translation articulates the voice and stance of the translator whilst taking into account its relevance to the target audience. building on the previous studies on postcolonial translation, gentzler (2008) claims that translation is not a secondary process of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 237-242 239 transporting ideas across borders. translation always involves “primary, primordial and proactive process that continually introduces new ideas, forms or expressions, and pathways for change into cultures” (gentzler , 2008, p.5). dismantling the stereotypes of borders, we need to so see borders as opportunities rather than constraints. translation therefore has to comply the following: (1) recognition of the global context, (2) values and perspectives exchanges and (3) cross-border and cultural understanding articulacy. as said elsewhere, translation is but an interdisciplinary, interlingual and intercultural activity (dewi, 2016, p.69). it is a negotiation channel for maintaining distinct national identities in global cultural context. this inevitable global-local cultural border-crossing is at the heart of postcolonial translation. theory application data shown by taipei economic and trade office in jakarta on taiwanindonesia collaborations are increasingly promising in that to a greater extent both countries connect with each other through trade, tourism, education and cultural exchanges. trade and investment improved significantly especially since the last three years whereby indonesia becomes taiwan’s 14 th largest trading partner in 2016, the 10 th largest source of import for taiwan and the 16 th largest export market. more investments and economic agreements have been signed in recent years (2000s onwards) after its slow beginning in 1990. human resource and culture relations however seem slack to emerge, although indonesian labours in taiwan is the largest in number and ranked first in southeast asia. more educational cooperation and scholarships are available for indonesian students in taiwan but the reverse is yet to be seen. taiwan has lessened the strict immigration law and visa issuance for overseas tourists, but stricter regulations remains enacted to indonesian citizens. only (previously) holders of selected dominant countries’ visas receive free-entry tourist visa to taiwan. nonetheless, the rise of alumnae associations and taiwanese expatriate clubs in indonesia is an indication that interconnectedness between the two countries steadily occurs. interestingly enough, taiwanese pop culture has found an easy entrance to indonesia since a long time. in the 1990s, the cinderella-like romance novels by taiwanese-based writer chiung yao became a household name in indonesia. she is known to indonesian audience when her my fair princess was made into television drama series, i.e. the international asian drama hit putri huan zhu. in the early 2000s, the love lives of dao ming tze and san cai in the taiwanese youth drama meteor garden were all the rage in indonesia. the phenomenal success of the series has attracted scholarly attention (e.g. swastika & andari, 2003; pravitta, 2004; ida 2008) with regard to the dynamic of urban-youth identities and consumerism in indonesia. taiwanese dramas have survived in competition with other television series from india, korea, turkey and local soap operas. while no less than 20 taiwanese dramas are broadcast in indonesian television, it is important to note that indonesian-made movies are hardly shown for taiwanese audience with the exception of the heart series in channel 13 public television service. here we see that the border-crossing is one-directional. given the inequality of cultural flows between the two countries, transnational translation with all the complexity and shortcomings (vatanabadi, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 237-242 240 2009), has to be attempted. this type of translation tasks requires interdisciplinary approach in postcolonial, cultural and translation studies. like any existing studies on taiwan and indonesia, research in this particular area of translational translation of taiwanese and indonesian literary texts is still rare. this present article, however, is preliminary in nature, leaving room for further studies to pick up. translating traditional stories, knowing our neighbours why traditional stories? traditional stories reflect the society in which they are told. despite its often fantastical and larger-than-life nature, traditional tales offer therapeutic effects and positive educational role in increasing personal growth as shown by several studies (e.g. parkinson, 2009; ruini et al., 2014; caracushansky et al., 2016). such stories provide good sources to disseminate cross-cultural understandings. the transformative power of traditional tales helps promoting global-interconnectivity in multicultural settings. taiwan and indonesia are rich with traditional stories told from age to age to different generations. like any traditional stories worldwide, moral lessons, truths and wisdoms are encapsulated in taiwanese and indonesian enchanting stories. traditional stories often use popular sayings such as proverbs, metaphors, mottos, aphorisms, etc. to make the accounts easy to remember and ponder their meanings. literal word-for-word translation does not usually work for, to mention but one, proverbs. in order to achieve idiomatic translation, knowledge about the culture of the source and target languages is important. some proverbs may have target language equivalences, but the cultural aspects thereof should have similar effects to the ears of the source language and the target language alike. although linguistic equivalent in chinese is available for an indonesian proverb, for instance, the message of the proverb should be culturally acceptable in chinese culture. the traditional taiwanese story, “little frog in the well”, taken from crystal dragon of taiwan website is interesting to discuss in terms of transnational translation. little frog adamantly thinks that his own world in the bottom of a deep, dark well is the best. he goes nowhere, drinks the well water, eats insects swirling nearby, and watches the moon and stars at night. he ignores the invitation from the birds that sometimes fly and stop by the well brink to see the outside world. until one day yellow sparrow picks the stubborn frog up and gives him a fly to see many things around him. he sees the blue ocean, mountains, green valleys, apple trees, colourful flowers, monkeys, antelopes, squirrels and many more. he is very happy and now finds a nice place on top of a huge lotus leaf. he stays in the pond and never wants to return to his old, dull well. the chinese proverb “with a frog in the well you don’t talk about the ocean” probably originates from this story to show one’s narrow-mindedness. it would seem that this folktale from taiwan is culturally shared all over the world. “a frog in the well knows not the ocean” is the equivalent proverb in japanese. “a man with little learning is like the frog who thinks its pond is an ocean” is a myanmaran proverb also closer in meaning. meanwhile, the indonesian (and also thai) equivalence is “frog in a coconut shell.” [katak dalam tempurung]. still about frog, “the frog wanted to be as big as the elephant and burst” is an ethiopian proverb that finds its equivalence in the indonesian “a frog ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 237-242 241 wants to be a cow” [katak hendak jadi lembu]. in greek, the proverb goes “the frog wanted to be an ox and swelled up until he burst”. here, the transnational translation of the little frog story as well as its variants should consider its cultural appropriateness. in taiwan and japan, most often people see frogs by the wells or ponds, whereas in indonesia, frogs live in paddy fields, river banks, and other wet places like gutter and ditch. coconut shells where frogs are usually found hidden in indonesia and thailand are hard to find in taiwan. here we see that proverbs deal directly with geographical conditions, societal habits and mannerisms unable to translate directly from one society to another. the intended message of the proverb is thus a guide to translate traditional stories like our little frog tale. to translate a doubtful literary proverb, suggests khodorkovsky, look for equivalence within the context of the source culture and the target culture, instead of translating it into a very familiar proverb in the target language. conclusion taiwan and indonesia share hybrid and heterogeneous cultures as a result of similar socio-political and historical experiences. the two countries also share today’s global problems. therefore, they need to continually examine and exchange views across national borders to create better understandings and positive attitudes for the sake of global peace. aside from strengthening economic partnerships that maybe of more tangible, quantifiable results, augmenting cultural connectivity is equally important by way of, among others, translation of each other’s literature in, preferably, three languages. the availability of trilingual literary texts for global audience will be significant for studies in the language, literature and translation in this twentieth century global citizenship. when more and more people interact with each other, the foundation of all countries, to quote professor samuel c. y. ku again, becomes stronger. references anonymous. 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(1997). critical discourse analysis. in t. van dijk (ed.) , discourse as social interaction. london: sage. http://www.roc-taiwan.org/id_en/post/1199.html http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/036215378701700104 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670052000328168 http://www.cdot.org/links/literature.htm http://dx.doi.org/10.21512/lc.v10i2.885 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 237-242 242 fraser, b.j. & goh, s.c. (2003). international handbook of educational research in the asia-pacific region. berlin: springer frunză, s. (2011). does communication construct reality? a new perspective on the crisis of religion and the dialectic of the sacred. revista de cercetare şi intervenţie socială, 35, 180-193. gentzler, e. (2008). translation and identity in the americas: new directions in translation theory. london: routledge. heriyanto, d. 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(2004). menonton perempuan penonton meteor garden. clea, 6, 1-29. ruini, c., masoni,l., ottolini, f., & ferrari, s. (2014). positive narrative group psychotherapy: the use of traditional fairy tales to enhance psychological well-being and growth. psychology of well-being: theory, research and practice, 4, 13. retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1186/s13612-013-0013-0. shaw, j.d., jing z.m. k., duffy, k.l., scott, h.s., & susanto, e. (2011). a contingency model of conflict and team effectiveness. journal of applied psychology, 96(2), 391. swastika, a. & andari, y. (2003). meteor mimpi, meteor garden. retrieved from http://kunci.or.id/teks/12.meteor.html. toledo, r., esteban, j., & fried, b. (2006). immunology and pathology of intestinal trematodes in their definitive hosts. advances in parasitology, 63,285-365. tymoczko, m. (1999). post-colonial writing and literary translation. post-colonial translation: theory and practice, 19-40. vatanabadi, s. (2009). translating the transnational: teaching the ‘other’ in translation. cultural studies, 23(5&6), 795-809. retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380903132371 http://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2016/05/13/people-to-people-diplomacy-foundation-of-taiwan-indonesia-relations.html http://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2016/05/13/people-to-people-diplomacy-foundation-of-taiwan-indonesia-relations.html https://www.altalang.com/beyond-words/2008/11/19/how-to-translate-a-proverb/ https://www.altalang.com/beyond-words/2008/11/19/how-to-translate-a-proverb/ https://doi.org/10.1186/s13612-013-0013-0 http://kunci.or.id/teks/12.meteor.htm https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380903132371 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 41-50 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 41 the face behind the zoom: what matters? emanuel sunarto graduate program in english language studies sanata dharma university correspondence: emanuelsunarto@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.4426 received 26 february 2022; accepted 25 august 2022 abstract since covid-19 pandemic, zoom has been adopted by many as an online platform to facilitate learning. this article addresses students’ (dis)agreement to how they perceive their faces in zoom; whether it is technically a matter of either on-or-off video mode; of insecurities, of any psychological impacts, and of the notion of face as good name or reputation. a survey by means of google form was organized in the last two meetings of two courses in the odd semester of academic year 2021-2022 to elicit students’ responses to any of likert-based five scales of (dis)agreements to 16 statements concerning face in zoom. 122 elesp usd students of the third and fifth semester responded to this survey. data were analyzed and interpreted by means of percentage of agreements. the findings reveal that the notion of face in zoom is initially and in majority agreed as a matter of being in either on-or-off video mode which depends on the stability of internet connection. next, being in on-or-off video mode is largely bound to whether there is any obligation to be so. the majority agree also that not showing face in zoom allows them to do side work apart, and prevents matters of privacy from being exposed. the majority also agree that one’s face in zoom reflects psychological aspects such self-pride and honor, dignity, consideration, tact, poise, and perceptiveness. preference to being on-or-off-video mode is also a matter of not exposing one’s state of insecurities, and is concerned with the notion of face as a representation and approval of self-reputation or good name. keywords: face, face threatening acts (ftas), on/off-video mode, zoom introduction covid-19 pandemic has drastically changed many aspects of how learning is to keep going. learning is to be fundamentally redefined and reorganized in new ways and aspects, modes, methods, locus and locality, and modes, among others. instead of physically attending classes at schools or campuses, during the pandemic students are to attend classes mostly or entirely at home. even though condition has improved significantly recently, many are still cautious and worried about their well-being. in such a condition, zoom as a platform for video conferencing provides a choice for mediation and facilitation to guarantee that learning keeps progressing. at the current mailto:emanuelsunarto@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.4426 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 41-50 42 state pandemic lingering, the use of such a platform now is a matter of necessity (bothra, 2011). zoom is preferred over others by a good number schools, universities, and institutions because of its simplicity of installation, high quality of audio and video, and the absence of connection drop-out (leung et al., 2021). it also gains widespread acceptance due, among other, to its relative ease of use, cost-effectiveness, data management features, and security options (archibald et al., 2019). therefore, zoommediated online learning amidst the pandemic is intended to maintain good teaching and effective learning process to the students even in facing an emergency situation (rameli et al., 2021). zoom and other online platforms gain more ground as commonly agreed upon as readily available alternatives of organizing learning activities and of extending of students’ presence and participation in the learning activities by way of video-audio mode. this is just one mentioning that annual zoom meeting minutes have increased by 3,300% from 97 billion to 3.3 trillion in 2021 (wiederhold, 2021). in sanata dharma university (sdu), zoom platform has been adopted institution wide since 2019 as the official video conferencing platform in line with learning management system (lms). despite its widespread welcome, however, there are a number of drawbacks or negative effects of zoom on students’ learning experience and their motivation (serhan, 2020). zoom fatigue (bothra, 2011; shoshan, 2021), principally caused by “digital eye strain”( florell, 2020, p. 37 in wong, 2020) becomes common phenomenon. in terms of interactivity, zoom sessions turn to be more psychologically demanding than a face-to-face contact, reduce ability to interpret body language and cues, difficulties of detecting humor and irony, of relaxing into a natural to interpret body language and cues, of detecting humor and irony and of relaxing into a natural conversation and, of making some individuals becoming more dissatisfied with their appearance and a loss of self-esteem (williams, 2021). further study also finds that non-verbal mechanisms of mirror anxiety, feeling physically trapped, hyper gaze, and cognitive load in producing nonverbal cues were significantly positively related to zoom fatigue (moralista et al., 2022). such fatigue is partly attributable to a number of conditions, such as looming heads, staring eyes, a silent audience, and millisecond delay (morris, 2020). in addition to cognitive load, zoom fatigue is also attributable to nonverbal factors, such as eye gaze at a close distance in front of computer screen, computer screen as an all-day mirror, and reduced mobility (bailenson, 2021). another study shows, however, that only very few technical factors were scientifically proven to contribute to fatigue or stress (raake et al., 2021). tips to combat zoom fatigue have been suggested such as activity switching, online small groups, and asynchronous lectures (toney at al., 2021). aside from technological and technical factors, other questions may further be raised such as whether uses of online media contributes to social anxiety, self-concept and self-esteem (kong et al., 2021), and enhance or displace communication (stevic et al., 2021). zoom basically mediates how human or social encounter is to keep going faceto-face. face, in this regard, is understood based on goffman’s concept of a positive social value claimed by oneself in a particular contact, or, one’s good showing (goffman, 1967; thomas, 2013). goffman’s notion of face is operationalized as values ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 41-50 43 of face in terms of pride and honor, dignity, consideration, tact and poise, and perceptiveness (bargiela-chiappini, 2006). by definition, each of these values is, respectively, about formal reserve or seriousness of manner, continuous and careful thought on what is being the focus, a keen sense of what to do or say in order to maintain good relations and being drawn up into readiness, and responsiveness to sensory stimuli and feelings (merriam webster, 2022). based on goffman’s notion of face, brown and levinson propose the concept of face threatening act (fta) in dealing with politeness. fta is basically about individual’s feeling of self-worth or self-image or polite behavior; self-esteem, the wants to be liked, admired, cared about, understood, listened to; face and ftas are matters of freedom for self-approval and freedom from imposition (brown & levinson, 1987). face is also concerned with understanding of self-other relationships (thomas, 2013; bhatia, 2000 in bargiela-chiappini, 2003; kedveš, 2013). as zoom is an extended virtual form of a social encounter, where one’s face represents his or her virtual and visual presence, the notion of face and fta matter individually and socially. when one joins in zoom, there is awareness of virtual-social context and an inherent awareness what and how to take part in the given zoom-mediated communication. it is concerned with one’s communicative and sociolinguistic competence concerning when to speak, when not and as to what to talk to about with whom, when, where, in what manner (hymes, 1972). as zoomed-encounter is an extension of physical faceto-face encounter, it bears, to a great extent, characteristics of social-physical encounter. zoom platform-based classes are, therefore, never void of the very nature of social dimension in which matters of fta also count. studies of ftas in zoom show that students exercise positive politeness strategies (such as greeting, gratitude, address term) and negative politeness strategies (like apology and mixing language) (sembiring et al., 2021). another study finds that in video conferences, there is reduced richness of social cues compared with face-to-face meetings as a source of exhaustion; that talking blindly with silent others heads to super frustration, if they are even there (shoshan et al., 2021). in zoom, therefore, politeness clearly matters, and, apart from efficiency and other advantages, such an online-mediated social encounter cannot be as humanly and socially rich as a direct face-to-face one. this article specifically addresses the concern of how, in zoom platform-based classes, students perceive the very notion of face. it is principally about students’ awareness of what face reveals in zoomed online classes with reference to goffman’s concept of face and brown and levinson’s notion of fta. method the students’ notion of face was investigated by means of google form online survey posted on usd official lms of two subjects, namely introduction to linguistics and grammar 5, in the last two meetings (in november-december of 2021/2022 academic year). the survey consists of sixteen statements, the first five (1-5) statements of which address their (dis)agreement to the choice of being on/off video zoom as a means of showing/representing their face. the second five (6-10) statements address the students’ psychological viewpoint of themselves in the light of goffman’s ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 41-50 44 psychological concept of face, ‘face’ being in the ritual dynamics of a rule-governed moral order which is called ‘polite behavior’ (bargiela-chiappini, 2003). here, face is understood relative to zoom-mediated social interaction. hence, a zoom class is, by default, a forum of social interaction between the lecturers and students and among students themselves. the statement no. 11 to (dis)agree is of particular concern about the students’ feeling of whether they feel (in)secure when their faces are in zoom. the remaining five statements (12-16) are concerned with what their face, in either on-or-off video mode, bears to their sociorelational dimension in the online class, particularly concerning brown and levinson’s notion of face as a signal of their reputation or good name. students were asked to decide their choice of the degree of agreement to each of 16 survey statements. all the sixteen statements to respond is scaled and weighted, ranging from totally disagree, strongly disagree, agree, strongly agree to totally agree (td, sd, a, sa, ta), respectively weighted from 1(the lowest) to 5 (the highest) (johnson & morgan, 2016). data were analyzed and interpreted mainly on the basis of percentages of agreement by 5-point likert-type. finding and discussion there were 122 students who responded to the survey. of these, 73 (59,8%) were third semester students taking the subject of introduction to linguistics), while 49 (40,2%) were of the fifth semester taking grammar 5. based on likert scale and percentage calculation, the total number and the percentage of agreement ranges from the lowest, 320 (52,45%, to statement no. 13) to the highest, 511 (83,77%, to statement no. 2). almost all the ranges of agreement were responded, except statement no. 7 and 8. to these two statements, there were no responses to the option of totally disagree (td). responses in general range between the two scale of agree and strongly agree, the only exception being responses to the option of totally agree to statement no. 2 (54 responses, the highest among the other four scales of agreement to this statement). table 1. responses, scales, weights and percentage of agreements sn statements scale, weight, and number of agreement to each statement (n = 122) total score of agreement percentage of agreement td sd a sa ta 1 2 3 4 5 1 in the zoomed classes, my concept of face is that it is a matter of being on or off cam/video. 2 8 66 37 9 409 67,04% 2 in the zoomed classes, my being on or off cam/video depends on the internet connection stability. 2 3 19 44 54 511 83,77% 3 in the zoomed classes, my being either on or off 4 17 43 50 8 407 66,72% ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 41-50 45 cam/video depends on whether or not it is obliged to by the host (lecturer). 4 in the zoomed classes, my being off cam/video makes it possible to do side jobs or work apart from the currently ongoing class meeting. 6 29 38 27 22 396 64,91% 5 in the zoomed classes, my being off cam/video is meant not to let the messy background visible on the screen. 6 20 27 44 25 428 70,16% 6 in the zoomed classes, my being on-cam/video expresses my pride and honor. 2 4 44 47 25 455 74,59% 7 in the zoomed classes, my being on-cam/video expresses my dignity (formal reserve or seriousness of manner). 0 6 35 60 21 470 77,05% 8 in the zoomed classes, my being on-cam/video expresses my consideration (continuous and careful thought on what is being the focus). 0 5 41 51 25 462 75,73% 9 on my being on-cam/video in zoom, my face expresses my tact and poise (a keen sense of what to do or say in order to maintain good relations and being drawn up into readiness). 2 5 46 51 18 444 72,78% 10 on my being on-cam/video in zoom, my face expresses my perceptiveness (responsiveness to sensory stimuli) and feelings. 1 7 43 54 17 445 72,95% 11 my being off cam/video in zoomed classes is visually meant not to expose my insecurities (state or feeling of anxiety, fear, self-doubt, or lack of certainty or safety). 5 18 33 45 21 425 69,67% 12 my being on-cam/video in zoomed classes is a matter of saving my face (face = reputation, good name). 17 39 42 17 7 324 53,11% 13 my being on-cam/video in zoomed classes is meant not to damage my face (face = reputation, good name). 15 39 48 17 3 320 52,45% ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 41-50 46 14 my being on-cam/video in zoomed classes is a matter of avoiding losing my face (face = reputation, good name). 11 37 55 15 4 330 54,09% 15 my being on-cam/video in zoomed classes is a matter of making my positive face to be liked or approved of by others. 12 26 48 29 7 359 58,85% 16 my being on-cam/video in zoomed classes is a matter of making my positive face appreciated by others. 9 25 43 35 10 378 61,96% notes: 1) sn: statement number 2) n (number of respondents): 122 3) scale and weight of agreement: td: totally disagree; (1); sd: strongly disagree (2); a: agree (3); sa: strongly agree (4); ta: totally agree (5) 4) minimum-maximum scores of agreement: (122x1=) 122 – (122x5=) 610 5) interval (n/highest score): 122/5: 24,4 6) range of agreement by percentage: totally disagree : 0%-24,3% strongly disagree: 24,4%-48,6% agree : 48,7%-73,0% strongly agree : 73,1%-97,4% totally agree : 97,5%-100% a. responses to statements 1-5 almost two-thirds of the student respondents (67,04%) express their agreements that when one’s face is to be on zoom, it turns to be a technical optional matter of clicking and deciding to be either in on-or-off video mode. as such, it is a matter of technical-mechanical decision as zoom provides such facilities to do so. participating in a zoom class is in either on-or-off video. being present does not necessarily mean or entail that their faces are to be always on-video mode; off-video faces also give a sign of being present, albeit nonvisually. when this finding is to be understood relative to statement no. 2, the decision to be on-or-off video depends very much on another indispensable precondition, namely, the internet connection stability (ics). 83,77% student respondents agree that ics really matters as it determines whether to be on-or-off-video mode. ics is a decisive factor for one to be or not to be on-video mode. if the connection is unstable, the respondents’ decision to be on video mode matters seriously, and this in turns implies that preference is given to join the class in the off-video mode. being in either on-off-off video is also bound to whether there is any imposed obligation to be so. nearly one-third of the student respondents (66,72%) agree that to be in either on-or-off video mode is determined by whether there is any obligation imposed on them (statement 3). this implies that it is very likely for student ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 41-50 47 respondents to be optionally in the off-video mode on zoom by the condition that there is no obligation imposed on them to be so. student respondents’ agreements to the decision to be in the offvideo mode also suggests that while attending a zoom class, there is a chance for doing irrelevant side jobs or work apart of what is visually being on focus (64,91%). no further statements relative to this were given, but this may be attributed to, among others, release of tension and physical strain after spending too much attention, focus, and energy on the zoomed class. statement no. 5 was agreed upon by 70,16% (reasons of privacy; privacy is not to expose as it may trigger mental-psychological uneasiness and discomfort). being off-video may also be attributed to whether the point-on-focus on zoom is of no interest or relevance to the students at a given time. in brief, to be in either on-or-off video mode is bound to at least three factors, namely, the ics, the absence (or presence) of imposition, and chances of doing irrelevant side work apart. b. responses to statements 6-10 of the total 122 student respondents, above 70%, nearly two-third, admit, in their agreements that, in a zoom-mediated class, face encounter, or being in the face of others’, expresses fundamental human nature in relation to others. it is admitted therefore that, in the face of lecturers and other fellow students, individual student’s face expresses his or her personal pride and honor, dignity, consideration, tact and poise, and perceptiveness. in other words, one’s being in a zoom class, be it in either on-or-off video mode, bears individual student’s extent of seriousness, focus, and readiness, self-awareness, attentiveness, and a sense of being with and in the face and presence of others’. everyone’s self-worth is to be mutually acknowledged and credited in a balanced and proper manner. c. responses to statement 11 in zoom on-video mode, the issue of insecurities needs special addressing. the survey result shows the percentage of agreement to this is 69,67%, indicating that being either in on-or-off-video, from emotional viewpoint, matters significantly. this partly reveals that, in addition to facilitating face to face encounter, being in the on-video mode for some time may entail emotional and psychological insecurities, such as the feeling of anxiety, fear, self-doubt, or lack of certainty or safety. on the one hand, being in the on-video mode, students virtually feel the sense of collectively being together in a given online classroom. on the other, however, they are also aware of being insecure in some respect, feeling isolated as in reality each is physically and practically apart from one another. the feeling of being insecure is partly attributable to this state and sense of isolatedness, not to mention the physical and facial strain in front of screen. longer postural-facial strain related to zoom fatigue may also contribute to this kind of feeling, heading to become distressed and less and less attentive on what is being in focus. to combat or not to disclose this feeling of insecurity, the choice of being in the off-video mode is ready at hand. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 41-50 48 d. responses to statements 12-16 to a great extent, an online zoomed class represents and mirrors a social encounter in which every individual student is fully aware of their presence. in such an encounter, they are also aware of how to behave properly in the face of others, in which keeping and saving one’s own and others’ good face or reputation matters substantially. whenever and wherever one is present in a social encounter, be it physically or virtually, there is this socio-pragmatically inherent nature. any zoom encounter, therefore, is never void of this very notion of keeping and saving each other’s face. as it is shown above, the percentage of agreement to the last five statements ranges around 50%-60%. this means that, as they join in a zoomed class, the concern of politeness regarding the inherent nature of fta is knowledgeable and reasonable enough. responses to statements 12-16 are matters of confirming the extent of student respondents’ agreement concerning the notion of face as an extension of their individual good name or reputation in the face of their fellow students and lecturers. in other words, showing their own faces on zoom, by being in the on-video mode, is a matter of showing their own good reputation. the decision to or not to show one’s own face on zoom must therefore be based on this notion of keeping or saving one’s own good name or reputation, for some particular reasons (partly attributed to statement no. 2, about ics, no. 3 regarding the absence or presence of imposition, and 5, concerning prevention of not to expose messy background). in short, the socio-pragmatic basis of keeping and saving face or good name, or ftas, in its literal sense and in terms of politeness, also underlies the respondents’ decision to be in either on-or-off video mode. in the context of learning and life in general, a question worth questioning is, therefore: how can technology better enrich our lives? (wiederhold 2021). conclusions in zoomed classes, the notion of face is, in part, initially and technicalmechanically understood and agreed as being in either on-or-off-video mode, and the either choice depends considerably on a number of factors, such as the stability of internet connectivity, the absence or presence of imposed obligation, chances of doing side work/job, and prevention to unnecessarily expose messy background. the decision to be in either on-or-off video mode in zoom is also partly based on the emotional factors such as the feeling of insecurities. student respondents also considerably agree that the notion of face in zoom bears psychological state such as individual student’s extent of seriousness, focus, and readiness, self-awareness, and attentiveness in the face of others. they also admit that when joining in a zoom class, they are aware of being present in the face of others in which sociolinguistic awareness of keeping or saving face or good name, or ftas, in its literal sense, underlies their decision to be in either on-or-off video mode. all above implies that in zoom platform-based classes, students’ decisions to be in either on-or-off video mode are to be rationalized in terms, among others, formaltechnical, personal-social, and emotional-psychological aspects. in such a platform, a class is an encounter which is in and by nature, virtually mediated, a preferred ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 41-50 49 alternative in this lingering covid-19 pandemic, and therefore cannot be fully identical to natural face-to-face one. references archibald, m. m., ambagtsheer, r. c., casey, m. g., & lawless, m. 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(2020). a pandemic in 2020, zoom and the arrival of the online educator. international journal of tesol studies, 2(3), 82–99. https://doi.org/10.46451/ijts.2020.09.19 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 169-177 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 169 the role of money in the pursuit of happiness emmanuel olusegun stober bucharest university of economic studies, romania correspondence: stober.emmanuel@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.4714 received 3 june 2022; accepted 2 february 2023 abstract whosoever says money cannot buy you happiness does not know where to shop. your stand concerning this statement will depend on your level of income and the importance of money for your well-being. since some might argue that having money is not everything, it then raises the question of what does it take to be happy? what is the government's role in this endeavor? and how can happiness be sustained? this study presents some principles about money and happiness. it suggests that while being rich might not necessarily be the main or only path to happiness, having a higher income will guarantee access to homes in safer neighborhoods, better healthcare, and nutrition, provide access to higher education for your family, give you a sense of fulfillment, work satisfaction, and more leisure time. note that how you spend, save, and think about money shapes how much joy you get from it. above all, happiness is a subjective experience. it is about the satisfaction you derive from the way your life is going. happiness is about personal freedom to make important life choices, such as shaping your life the way you want it. keywords: achievement, freedom, fulfillment, pleasure, satisfaction, well-being introduction people from around the globe differ in various ways in terms of their looks, interest, behavior, culture, and religious beliefs. but we are united in one especially important way – the pursuit of happiness. this is one common trace we all have, whether you are a scientist, philosopher, writer, poet, or spiritualist. this pursuit of happiness is an age-old quest that has been a central focus of human civilization for centuries. from the ancient philosophers to modern-day self-help gurus, people have been trying to understand what happiness is and how we can achieve it. while there is no one-size-fits-all definition of happiness, it is generally understood to be a state of well-being, pleasure, and fulfillment. it is a feeling that comes from within, and it is often influenced by our thoughts, emotions, and actions. there was a time when happiness was a spiritual experience, today it is an industry worth over $4.2 trillion. in the last 4 years, about 4.2 million people have enrolled themselves in a happiness course called “the science of well-being” offered by yale university on coursera (santos, 2022). the course intends to engage participants in a series of challenges designed to increase their happiness https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.4714 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 169-177 170 and build more productive habits. on the same learning platform, another 454,441 people already enrolled in “a life of happiness and fulfillment”. instagram posts with #happiness as of 21st nov 2022 amounted to 169.5 million #happylife posts are 17.6 million and 1.4 million for #happinessisachoice. so, with all the mechanization of happiness, is it possible to find happiness, or where can it be found? method this study adopts mostly a qualitative research design with the support of some quantitative. it aims to explore and understand some principles of money and happiness. the qualitative data is not in the form of statistics, nor involve any forms of calculational. by nature, qualitative research can observe complex details about phenomena which is more difficult to decode through a quantitative method such as the usage of statistics or numerical calculation (creswell, 2009, p. 19). the qualitative design looks at how social meanings are attributed to people’s experiences. meanwhile, the quantitative data include general government expenditure on education from eurostat and world happiness index from the world bank. findings and discussions what does it take to be happy? several greek philosophers (from aristotle to epicurus and from plato to socrates) had their views on what it takes to be happy. and of course, we all have our theories about happiness too. the hindu scriptures say a human can only temporarily find happiness on earth by pursuing the four purusharthas or the inherent values of the universe – artha (economic values), kama (pleasure), dharma (righteousness), and moksha (liberation). these are considered the blueprints for human fulfillment. permanent happiness according to hinduism is only possible in the highest heaven, hence we must obtain liberation. islam says happiness is a lifelong process, which includes peace of mind, tranquility of heart, contentment in the world, and everlasting bliss hereafter. the christians believe that the only happiness we can have outside of god is temporary, which sets us up for disappointment and even despair when it disappears. the christians believe that god wants us to be happy but not at any cost. his goals for us are higher, broader, and more lasting than fleeting happiness (bible isaiah 55:9). from a biblical point of view, the pursuit of money can produce feelings of happiness as long as the stock market is up, and thieves stay away (bible hebrews 13:5; matthew 6:19; 1 timothy 6:10) – but many who sit enthroned on piles of money attest to a sense of emptiness. judaism says the pursuit of happiness is a moral duty. this pursuit of happiness is also enshrined in the united states declaration of independence. the subjectiveness of how it has been defined makes it difficult to grasp. the japanese define it as good luck and social harmony, and the americans see it as freedom and personal achievement. meanwhile, the chinese believe that the relentless pursuit of happiness or too much happiness can bring unhappiness. many universities including the ivy league and the university of cambridge now have institutes dedicated to happiness research (bennett institute for public policy, 2023; center for sustainable development, 2023; emirates center for happiness research, 2023; the greater good science center, 2023). and yet, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 169-177 171 happiness is the least understood and subjective term. simply put, happiness is those things we take for granted. for some, it could mean getting a university education, a stable job, and retiring in their early 60s – being free of work, stress, and health issues. if you are living in a war zone or terrorist environment, happiness to you would be survival. what then are the determinants of a happy and fulfilling life? even though we all want to be happy, we hardly have what it takes to be. thanks to scientists for figuring it out in the last 100 years, and most importantly, the studies in the last 20 years have built upon the work of their predecessors so that we can now lead a happy and fulfilling life. in the book “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?” prof raj raghunathan hypothesized that happiness is like a balloon; the bigger it gets, the more uplifted you feel. balloons are such a fun and happy thing associated with positive events. when you hold a balloon; not just you but everyone around you can tell how big it is (raghunathan, 2016). happiness is just as similar. what that suggests is that it is not too difficult to measure happiness; however, since it is a n object of feelings, it will be reasonable to ask if it can be objectively measured. prof ed diener from the university of virginia, who is known around the world as “dr. happiness” has done an extensive study on this topic (diener & seligman, beyond money: toward an economy of well-being, 2004; oishi, diener, & lucas, 2007; diener & biswas-diener, rethinking happiness: the science of psychological wealth, 2008; diener & diener, happiness: unlocking the mysteries of psychological wealth, 2008; pavot & diener, 2008). his study finds that people’s self-reported happiness levels are correlated with:  left prefrontal activity  serotonin and cortisol levels  what family and friends say about happiness  reaction times to good and bad things  memory for good vs bad things prof ed diener found that all correspondents of his survey gave the same answers, although they do not converge 100%. thus, the answer to this question gives predictability to forecast their future behaviors (success, health, and relationship). he argued that happy people make more money, and they are likely to live longer, have better health, and are more likely to get married and stay married. those that are less happy or unhappy at the age of 18-20, are more likely to be unhappy in their marriage, leaving them with no choice but divorce. to understand the idea of happiness and therefore alleviate suffering, neuroscientists, and psychologists have started to investigate the brain states associated with happiness components and to consider the relation to well-being. even though in principle, it is difficult to define and study happiness, psychologists have made substantial progress in mapping its empirical features, and neuroscientists have made comparable progress in investigating the functional neuroanatomy of pleasure, which contributes importantly to happiness and is central to our sense of well-being. according to modern research, there are 3 basic views when looking at theories of happiness: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 169-177 172 (1) hedonism – the pursuit of pleasure; sensual self-indulgence. this is an ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life (2) eudaimonia (life-satisfaction) view – to be happy is to have a favorable attitude about one’s life, either over its entirety or just over a limited period (3) affective state theory – argues that happiness depends on an individual’s overall emotional state. sigmund freud (1930) postulated that people’s endeavor for happiness has two sides, a positive and a negative aim. on one hand, it aims at an absence of pain and displeasure, and, on the other, it aims at the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure. kringelbach and berridge (2010) argue that the neuroscience of both pleasure and happiness can be found by studying hedonic brain circuits. this is because pleasure is an important component of happiness according to most modern perspectives. other theories of happiness combine the life satisfaction theory with other hedonistic or affective-state theories – subjective well-being (haybron, 2003). this subjective well-being is the most widely accepted theory of happiness. ed diener is also of the opinion that happiness is subjective. but critics of this theory argued that the main weakness of subjective measures of happiness is that they are affected by cognitive biases such as the effects of expectation and adaptation, so we don’t know how far to believe the scores (argyle, 2001; bunton & macdonald, 2003). white, gaines jr, & jha, (2012) went further to draw on empirical research in zambia and india to show that context matters and qualitative research is needed to complement quantitative measures of well-being. so, while subjective well-being scholarship has its merits, it is not without its weaknesses. the application of this approach is inappropriate and indeed problematic for applications in public policy. that is why (fabian, 2022) argued that it is time to replace the method with a more realist epistemology that engages extensively with normativity. can money buy happiness? even though the importance of money cannot be overemphasized, it would not buy happiness, but it sure would make dreams come true. that is why verse 3 of the good life tract (kanye west, 2007) said that whether you are broke or rich, you must understand that having money is not everything; not having it is. meanwhile, kahneman & deaton (2010) a princeton university study revealed that people do not report any greater degree of happiness after exceeding an annual $75,000 in earnings. low income indeed exacerbates the emotional pain associated with misfortunes such as divorce, ill health, and being alone. however, high income only buys life satisfaction but not happiness. an income is important and should not be discredited, but it should not be the only measure used when making decisions. sometimes life would offer us fixed variables such as time, and it is up to us to use them to maximize our desired outcome. therefore, it is not surprising that the government of developed and emerging countries has made education a priority, by going beyond the un recommendation of 5% of gdp. in the eu, general government expenditure on education amounted to €671 billion ($720 billion) or 5% of gdp in 2020. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 169-177 173 source: (eurostat, 2022) high government investment in education would lead to higher productivity, an increase in income level, and fulfillment in life. consequently, the 2021 government expenditure on education of the top 10 happiest countries according to the world happiness index accounted for 6% of their gdp. source: (whr, 2022; world bank, 2021) so, to lead a happy society, the government needs to be making choices for a better direction for the country. these choices should include investment in educational institutions to help foster economic growth, enhance productivity, contribute to personal and social development, and reduce social inequality, among other reasons. some might argue that there is extraordinarily little correlation between academic and career success and an even lower correlation between career 6.3% 6.4% 7.7% 5.7% 5.3% 5.0% 7.2% 5.9% 6.0% 5.0% 0.0% 1.0% 2.0% 3.0% 4.0% 5.0% 6.0% 7.0% 8.0% 9.0% 6800 6900 7000 7100 7200 7300 7400 7500 7600 7700 7800 7900 correlation of happiness and education -top 10 happiest countries happiness index 2021 education as % of gdp ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 169-177 174 success and life success. this might get us to then wonder what the purpose of education is. some will even argue that the ultimate purpose of education is to give students the skills-set and tools required to lead a happy and fulfilling life while helping others to do the same. the law of diminishing marginal utility the term happiness means different things to different people. but one thing that is for sure is that if you earn lower than the industry standard or another colleague doing the same job, or if the income gap between your job stage and the next job stage is significantly large, you are likely to be unhappy, hence reducing your job or career satisfaction. notwithstanding, happiness could also be subject to the law of diminishing returns. this takes us back to the balloon metaphor; if the bigger the balloon, the happier you are, then the question is what affects the size of the balloon? one thing that can affect the size is whether it has holes in it. if there are holes, the air will gradually get out and the balloon will get deflated. for example, imagine you are extremely hungry, so you order a pizza that arrived in six slices. the first slice of the pizza will give you the highest level of satisfaction you can ever have. you might even feel amazing with the second slice, the third will be good, and the fourth okay. with each slice, your satisfaction will begin to diminish until you get to the final slice which you might not even derive any form of satisfaction from it anymore. this is the law of diminishing marginal utility. it means that the more you have of something, the less satisfaction you derive from it and the less happy you are. the holes in your balloon in economic terms could also be higher expenditure against your income level which will lead to a budget deficit. we can learn from the law of diminishing marginal utility that as you make more money, your happiness might not grow due to the increase in taste or desire. as a business traveler, i felt amazed the first time i stayed in a five-star hotel. i was still enjoying it after a couple of times, but sooner i literarily stopped seeing the beauty of the rooms and the ego attached to the locations. this is because happiness might be subjective, and it will be wrong to assign happiness to what you have or want, but rather to who you are and the people you spend your time with. if you are not happy with who you are and the people you spend your time with, money will not change anything. money is only an enhancer – if you do not learn how to be happy with the little things you have, there is no way money will teach you how to be happy with more. instead of blindly engaging in the pursuit of money or wealth in the name of happiness, you should rather make your focus on the people that surround you, a healthy workplace and workforce, the knowledge you can accumulate, and how you can use it to make a difference for good. these are the things that will sustain long-term happiness. no doubt, being poor sucks and money makes the world go around. however, money becomes overrated once you have just enough to have a meaningful life. two years ago, my family decided that it is time to upgrade our car from 10 years old plus minivan to a relatively new suv. the first two weeks were amazing for all of us, my wife in particular found every reason to go for a ride. all the places we previously walked to (corner shops, gym, kids’ playgrounds, and next streets) suddenly required driving. she spent time by herself in the car just to enjoy its infotainment system’s special features. she was so excited that if she could, she would have slept in the car or just brought it to bed. after 3 months, the excitement ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 169-177 175 had relatively diminished, and by another 6 months the ego and excitement attached to the suv have diminished significantly and the car had become a simple tool for mobility. even though happiness is found in the deep and abiding satisfaction of our innermost desires, too often we swap happiness with pleasure only to find that it can quickly be deflated like a balloon with holes. happiness therefore must be much more than merely getting what we want. some might ask, how then can one continue to live life to the fullest when the reality is painful? the answer lies in having a positive and productive mindset. the three universally important tips to boost your happiness are to be actively engaged; get involved with group activities as simple as going for a walk with friends, colleagues, or neighbors; and do something meaningful. the government's role in citizens’ happiness would be to promote work-life balance, a high level of institutional trust, and ensure low crime rates, stable social support, and high disposable income. we have learned from the nordic countries that being happy requires a good balance of life. year after year, norway, sweden, denmark, iceland, and finland round up at the top list of the world's happiest countries, although these countries have a high level of prosperity, they are however not the richest countries in the world by any means. they believe that to be happy requires a good balance of life and harmony. another determinant of well-being is one’s sense of personal freedom to make important life choices, such as shaping your life the way you want it. for this reason, it might be reasonable to argue that the american dream is more alive in nordic countries. conclusion happiness is what someone feels during one’s life. in order words, it is the satisfaction you derive from the way your life is going. we all strive and desire this feeling. it is a feeling of contentment, joy, and satisfaction, and it is often associated with positive emotions and a positive outlook on life. some factors that might impact someone’s happiness include biology, income level, and the city they live in. money can indeed play an important role in the pursuit of happiness by providing access to basic needs such as food, shelter, and healthcare, as well as providing the means to pursue hobbies and interests. however, it is important to note that money alone cannot guarantee happiness and that other factors such as relationships, personal values, and mental and physical well-being also play important roles in overall life satisfaction. additionally, research suggests that beyond a certain point, an increase in income does not significantly increase happiness. so, the best predictor to see whether people are happy is to see whether they are satisfied with their relationships. you can ask yourselves these questions: is there someone you can rely on in time of need? and do you have someone you can share your hopes and worries with? ultimately, happiness is a state of mind, and it is something that we can cultivate and nurture within ourselves. by focusing on the present moment, building positive relationships, and engaging in activities that bring us joy, we can all learn to be happy and live fulfilling lives. so, do not be tempted to wonder whether happiness can be found because it must be created. you are the architect of your life, therefore do not blame others. note that the happiest people do not have the best of everything, they make the best of everything. decide today and take the step. if you realized the power of your thoughts, you would never ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 169-177 176 nurture negative thoughts again. remember, thoughts become things. think, decide, and execute. references argyle, m. (2001). the psychology of happiness. london: routledge. bunton, r., & macdonald, g. (eds.). (2003). health promotion: disciplines and diversity (2nd ed.). london: routledge. diener, e. (1984). subjective well-being. psychological bulletin, 95, 542 – 575. diener, e., & biswas-diener, r. (2008). rethinking happiness: the science of psychological wealth. malden: blackwell publishing. diener, e., & diener, b. r. (2008). happiness: unlocking the mysteries of psychological wealth. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444305159 diener, e., & seligman, m. e. (2004). beyond money: toward an economy of wellbeing. psychological science in the public interest, 5(1), 1-31. english, m., & kalla, j. l. (2021, april 23). racial equality frames and public policy support: survey experimental evidence. yale university. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/tdkf3 eurostat, e. 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(2012). beyond subjective well-being: a critical review of the stiglitz report approach to subjective perspectives on quality of life. journal of international development, 24(6), 763-776. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.2866 whr. (2022, march). happiness report 2022. retrieved from https://worldhappiness.report/ world bank. (2021, sept 1). government expenditure on education, total (% of gdp). retrieved https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/se.xpd.totl.gd.zs?locations=il https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760701756946 https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.2866 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 264-272 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 264 communication failures in netflix drama series “13 reasons why”: a pragmatic analysis astri wulandari, brigitta shinta hapsari and barli bram sanata dharma university, indonesia astriwulandari1994@gmail.com, bshintahapsari@gmail.com and barli@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010212 received 26 december 2017; revised 14 january 2017; accepted 26 february 2018 abstract language and linguistics are vital in people’s daily conversation. however, because of some causes, there are some misunderstandings or pragmatic failures which may appear in communication among people. many studies have looked into the pragmatic failures between native speakers and non-native speakers but this study investigates pragmatic failures in netflix tv drama series “13 reasons why”. it aims to discover pragmatic failures that happened in the drama and their causes. to gather the data, the researchers watched the series and highlighted some events that contained pragmatic failures. then, the researchers used three steps of data analysis: gather and organize, categorize, and analyze the findings. the findings showed that there were 25 pragmatic failures that happened in the drama. they were caused by five reasons, namely failure in understanding others’ intentions, failures in understanding others’ state, denials to the reality, trauma, and failures in understanding a situation. keywords: pragmatic failures, 13 reasons why, analysis introduction people nowadays can access everything with high technologies that they have. there is no place and time border. according to schmitt (2015), “the music business was killed by napster; movie theaters were derailed by digital streaming; traditional magazine are in crisis mode in this digital information era. even people can download or watch movies and tv serial online. one of the famous tv serials is netflix drama series “13 reasons why”. this drama is widely watched by youngsters all around the world, so it is labeled as the top trending tv show in 2017. the drama tells a story of a girl named hannah baker who commits suicide. during her high school, she undergoes some bullying in school. she tries to cope up with the bullying and tries to make up her relationships with her friends. however, her effort is in vain. the bullying still happens until she finally decides to commit suicide. but before she commits suicide, she makes a recording in tapes which tells who the ones who make her depressed are and what they do to her. inside those tapes, hannah only retells her story. sometimes, what she says is true, but sometimes there are events who are ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 264-272 265 misunderstood. sometimes, the misunderstandings also reveal pragmatic failures between characters. due to the reason, the researchers of this study are interested in the pragmatic field related to the drama. according to leech (1983), pragmatics is language study in use within a given context. in specific, "pragmatics includes the study of how the interpretation and use of utterances depends on knowledge of the real world; how speakers use and understand speech acts; how the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between the speaker and the hearer" (lou & goa, 2011, p.183). in pragmatics, speakers’ intention and listeners’ interpretation of ‘what is meant by what is said’ are very important because there are variables in communication (thomas, 1983; shammas, 1995; tang, 2013). some research reports have explored pragmatic failures as the theme. most of them discovered pragmatic failures that happen between native speakers and nonnative speakers in the context of cross-cultural communication (lihui&jianbin, 2010; du, 2014). then, there is a study of pragmatic failures within novels and the characters have autism syndrome (semino, 2014). this study analyzes pragmatic failures in netflix drama series “13 reasons why”. different with other studies, the pragmatic failures that happen in this drama occur within native speakers and without any autism syndrome. the knowledge in this study is expected to be helpful for educators and textbook writers to provide more detailed examples in linguistics. to guide this study, the researchers formulate one question: how many pragmatic failures occurred in tv drama series “13 reasons why” and what are their causes? pragmatics pragmatics is one branch of linguistics which studies meaning. leech (1983) defines pragmatics as “the study of meaning in relation to speech situations” (p. 6). regarding pragmatics, crystal (1992) says that it is “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 …” (p. 57). from these points of view, it can be concluded that pragmatics studies the meaning of a language used by people in social communication. thomas (2013) explains that the meaning can be divided into two categories: speaker meaning and utterance meaning. speaker meaning refers to the social view which “the focus of attention firmly on the producer of the message, but at the same time obscures the fact that the process of interpreting what we hear involves moving between several levels of meaning” (p. 2).then, utterance meaning refers to cognitive view which “focusing too much on the receiver of the message, which in practice means largely ignoring the social constraints on utterance production” (p. 2). it means that people can identify the meaning behind sentences either within the speakers’ point of view or the receivers’ point of view. pragmatic failures since pragmatics mainly focuses on meaning, people as speakers or receivers are required to understand what others intend to in their utterances. however, sometimes people fail to catch this meaning due to some reasons. this failure is what refers to pragmatic failure. thomas (1983) defines pragmatic failure as the incompetence of people to understand what is said by others in terms of meaning. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 264-272 266 this failure is divided into two types: pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. pragmalinguistic failure generally “occurs when the pragmatic force mapped by s [speaker] onto a given utterance is systematically different from the force most frequently assigned to it by native speakers of the target language, or when speech act strategies are inappropriately transferred from l1 to l2” (thomas, 1983, p. 99). therefore, it means that the failure to catch meaning happens due to different systematical utterances between the speakers and receivers. since there is a systematical difference in the utterances, pragmalinguistic failure is closely linked to linguistics. it is also related to the bias the hearers make during the conversations. different with pragmalinguistic failure, sociopragmatic failure is widely related to the social context. thomas (1983) explains sociopragmatic failure as “a term i have appropriated from leech (1983: 10–11), which i use to refer to the social conditions placed on language in use” (p. 99). it means that sociopragmatic failure is a pragmatic failure that happens due to social differences that take place in the occurrence. for example is a conversation between western and asian. in western countries, when people visit someone’s house and they are offered something to drink, they directly mentions a drink they want. meanwhile, it does not happen for asian. when asian are offered something to drink, they tend to refuse it first for politeness purpose. from this illustration, it can be seen that there is a possibility for a pragmatic failure when the asian and western meet. consequently, each party may find the others rude, whether for refusing the offer, or directly asking for a drink. considering this matter, it becomes essential for people to understand the speakers and the receivers’ social background in conversations. also, regarding to this social and cultural context, sociopragmatic failure is also known as cross-cultural pragmatic failure. then, there are some reasons why sociopragmatic failure happens. thomas (1983) mentions four causes of sociopragmatic failure. the first one is the size of imposition. this matter is related to a culture view of ‘free goods’ (goffman, 1967). the second cause is tabus. tabus is associated with some topics that are not common and not appropriate to be a topic in some countries. the third one is different assessment of relative power or social distance. power and social distance in some countries may exist, but it may not exist in some others. the last reason is value judgments. when one of these causes appear in two persons’ conversations, a pragmatic failure may happen. the easiest example can be taken from relative power and social distance matter. for instance, some foreigners who learn indonesian may find it quite difficult to adjust the way indonesian talk with elders or the ones with higher status. they might make mistakes in talking with elders and the ones with higher status by talking in informal language. psychoanalysis psychoanalysis was developed by sigmund freud in 1897. rajeevan (2011) argues that psychoanalysis itself has three different meanings (as cited in pangestu & sunardi, 2016). first, it is described as a school of psychology. it refers to the importance of childhood backgrounds in forming one’s adult characteristics. second, psychoanalysis is described as a specific method in investigating mental activities. and third, psychoanalysis is described as a therapeutic method for the investigation and treatment of mental disorders, especially the neurotic disorders. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 264-272 267 pangestu and sunardi (2016) argue that anxiety is related to psychoanalysis. tyson (2006) states that anxiety causes nervousness, fear, and worrying. anxiety happens when our defenses momentarily break down. it is an important moment because it can reveal our own core issues. according to kathy (2015), core issues are issues which describe our behaviour that we carry through life. there are five common core issues: a. fear of intimacy: the chronic and overpowering feeling that emotional closeness will seriously hurt someone. b. fear of abandonment: the unshakable belief when friends or loved ones are going to leave. c. fear of betrayal: the feeling when friends or loved ones cannot be trusted anymore. d. low self-esteem: feel less worthy than other people. e. insecure or unstable sense of self: the inability to sustain a feeling of personal identity, a sense of knowing ourselves. previous studies many studies have explored pragmatic failure as the main topic. as mentioned in the introduction part, many studies focus on the sociopragmatic failures which take place in cross-cultural communication. luo (2016) explores pragmatic failures within cross-cultural communication between chinese students or teachers and foreigners. the results showed that different cultures between chinese and western cause pragmatic failures in the communication. then, a study by economidou-kogetsidis (2011) also discovers some pragmatic failures that are committed by greek cypriot university students, who are non-native speakers of english, in sending e-mail requests to their faculty. the analyzed emails are found to have some pragmatic failures which lead to rudeness and impoliteness. last, a study by semino (2014) research some pragmatic failures which happen between autism protagonists in three novels. the results of the study shows that there are three types of pragmatic failures that happen between the characters. they are “problems with informativeness and relevance in conversational contributions; problems with face management resulting in unintentional impolite behaviours; and problems with the interpretation of figurative language” (p. 141). method this study aimed to identify and present pragmatic failures in netflix tv series “13 reasons why”. thus, a qualitative research design was used in this study. according to patton and cochran (2012), qualitative research is indicated by understanding social life aspects (p. 2). since this study analyzed a tv series, the data in this study were gathered from the tv series scripts and the drama itself. to gather the data, the researchers first watched the drama. the drama consisted of 13 episodes, and the researchers watched all of the episodes. by watching all of the episodes, the researchers were able to gain a big picture of the social life happens in the drama. after that, the researchers re-watched the series and highlighted some events that contained pragmatic failures. last, the researchers found sentences that contained pragmatic failures in the script. the scripts were used as written documents to analyze the pragmatic failures. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 264-272 268 according to ary, jacobs, and razavieh (2010), there are three stages in qualitative data analysis, namely organizing and familiarizing, coding and reducing, and interpreting and representing. in analyzing the data, the researchers used three steps of data analysis. first, the researchers gathered and organized the tv series’ scripts from the english subtitles as a part of the instruments. they were used also as the written documents to identify the pragmatic failures. second, the researchers coded the transcripts and categorize the sentences. the researchers also reduced the unneeded data in order to focus on the problem of study. after that, the researchers analyzed the pragmatic failures that happen in the series based on the scripts and also the videos. the researchers represented the data by generating words instead of numbers. findings and discussion based on the data analysis, the researchers found 25 pragmatic failures that happened in the drama series. these pragmatic failures happened because of at least 5 reasons namely failure in understanding others’ intentions, failures in understanding others’ state, denials to the reality, trauma, and failures in understanding a situation. thus, the types of pragmatic failures that occurred in this drama were considered as sociopragmatic failures (thomas, 1983) since there were no pragmatic failures that occurred because of different pragmatic systems. failures in understanding others’ intention in the drama series, the researchers found at least six pragmatic failures that occurred because of the inability to understand others’ intentions. in this case, the speakers tried to convey an intention within their language. however, the receivers failed to catch the intention. this failure led to an inappropriate reply of the receivers, and it often caused misunderstandings between the speakers and the receivers. low self-esteem is feeling less worthy than other people (kathy, 2015). low self-esteem feelings are based on the backgrounds and experiences which happened in life. if the experiences have been negative for someone, the beliefs about her/himself are likely to be negative too. one of the example can be seen from the conversation between hannah’s mom and dad. hannah’s dad : honey? you okay? hannah’s mom : i was just thinking it's a bad sign that we're... running out of "buy one, get one free" stickers. hannah’s dad : we can look at it as a bad sign or we can consider it the world telling us we can never discount our way to walplex prices. (silent moment) hannah’s dad : i've got more stickers back here somewhere. from the conversation above, it can be seen that hannah’s mom tried to ask for more “buy one get one free” stickers from hannah’s dad. however, hannah’s dad only took it as a joke. this misunderstanding made hannah’s mom a little bit upset, marked by a silent moment which hannah’s mom made. failures in understanding others’ state the misunderstandings that occur in the drama also occurred due to failures in understanding others’ state. it means that the speakers failed to understand the receivers’ state in uttering sentences. this cause was the biggest cause of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 264-272 269 pragmatic failures in this drama with seven pragmatic failures identified. the example of this case can be seen below in the conversation between clay and hannah. the conversation takes place when the students in the high school made a hot list. then, hannah got one of the awards which were the hottest butt. hannah was hurt by the list, but clay did not understand that. hannah: high school is bullshit. clay : yeah. don't disagree. but... any specifics? hannah: i wish there was a button to fast-forward you through all the shitty parts in life straight to the good parts. clay : and where are the good parts? hannah: college. in new york city. clay : why new york? hannah: the minute i get there, i can be someone else. whoever i want to be. clay : but who you are now is okay. hannah: okay? high praise. thank you. clay : i mean, is awesome. you're... i mean, you made the hot list. hannah: seriously, clay? clay : what? they said you had the best... that's out of a lot of good candidates. not that i've surveyed, i'm just saying. hannah: what if girls made a list and you got... worst biceps. clay : girls would probably never do that list. hannah: precisely. clay : and my biceps are at least better than alex's. hannah: that kid hasn't lifted so much as a carton of milk in years, i think. once again, you and the point are complete strangers. in the conversation above, it can be seen that clay did not understand that actually hannah was hurt by the hot list. hence, he said that it was awesome for hannah to be one of those lists. however, hannah also did not understand that clay did not care about the list. hannah had tried to make clay understand how she felt by asking him how it was if the girls voted him to be the worst biceps. however, clay did not catch that meaning and made hannah upset. hannah’s upset can be seen from her last sentence which stated that clay did not understand hannah. because of the hotlist, hannah was feeling insecure. insecure or unstable sense of self is the inability to sustain a feeling of personal identity, a sense of knowing ourselves (kathy, 2015). in other words, hannah was being insecure because she did not have confidence in herself and a situation she was in. she did not have any confidence to face her friends because of the hotlist. hannah put herself down around other students in a way, and her behaviour actually highlighted her insecurities. even she refused to take responses from clay who did not care to the hotlist. she pointed out that all the things happened were actually not fine for her. denials to the reality when the two cases above focused on the speakers’ failures in understanding others, this case paid more attention to the receivers’ view. one of the causes of pragmatic failures in this drama is denials to the reality. for instance of this case is the conversation between skye and courtney in communication class. the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 264-272 270 communication class asked every student to have a bag of compliment for each student. however, instead of getting anonymous compliments, the students’ bag was filled by courtney’s leaflets for students’ president selection. once, skye was upset by that and confessed to the courtney her disappointment. skye : you do realize shilling for votes is not a compliment, courtney. courtney : i'm sorry you feel that way, skye, but i'm proud of my efforts, and i wanted to share that with the class. from the conversation between skye and courtney above, courtney did not want to accept the reality that skye was bothered by her leaflet. thus, she decided to deny the meaning that was conveyed by skye by denying the reality. courtney chose to deny the reality because she had fear of abandonment. fear of abandonment is the unshakable belief when others are going to leave (kathy, 2015). mostly, people grow up with fears of abandonment in themselves. everyone has this kind of fear at various levels. most of people have anxiety over thoughts of rejection. courtney did not want to be rejected by her friends in students’ president selection. as the result, she filled others’ compliment bags with her leaflets. moreover, when skye told courtney that what courtney did was annoying, courtney did not want to accept that because she did not want to be rejected. this fear of being rejected is what causes pragmatic failures occur. trauma trauma is also one of the causes of misunderstandings that occur between characters in the drama. the trauma may happen to one of the characters. meanwhile, either the speakers or the receivers sometimes do not consider others’ trauma in the conversation. this cause was the most minor cause to the pragmatic failures that occurred in this drama. there were only three pragmatic failures that were identified caused by trauma. the example can be seen in the conversation between tyler and hannah. hannah got a trauma for being captured in photos by tyler because the last time tyler captured hannah and courtney’s photo, hannah was accused for being a lesbian. hannah: seriously, tyler? tyler : it's for the yearbook. hannah: i don't care. don't put it in my face. the conversation above takes place when tyler was trying to take hannah’s photo in a prom night. when tyler tried to convince hannah that the photos he took were for yearbook, hannah did not want to understand tyler because of the trauma she got from tyler. in this case, the pragmatic failure that happened between tyler and hannah was case by hannah’s fear of betrayal (kathy, 2015). the last time tyler took a photo of hannah, hannah was accused of being a lesbian. it made her scared of being taken in a photo. so, when tyler took a picture of hannah, even though it was for yearbook, hannah did not want to understand that, in case that the photo would be used for something else. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 264-272 271 failures in understanding a situation one source of pragmatic failures in this drama is failures in understanding a situation. when speakers and receivers talk to each other, situation plays an important role in understanding one’s meaning. if the situation is understood properly, it may lead to misunderstandings between speakers and receivers. for instance is the conversation between hannah and a shopkeeper. when hannah was involved in an accident, hannah was trying to get a help from a shopkeeper to call 911. however, the shopkeeper did not respond to hannah’s request because the shopkeeper did not understand the situation. hannah : i need help. my phone's dead. shopkeeper: chargers are right over there by the beef jerky. hannah : no listen. there's been an accident. i need to make a call. shopkeeper: sorry, we don't have a pay phone. hannah : give me your phone. give me your phone! as can be seen from the conversation, because the shopkeeper did not understand the situation, the shopkeeper guided hannah to the phone charging place. meanwhile, hannah’s meaning is asking the shopkeeper to lend her his phone. however, even though hannah had stated her intention, the shopkeeper still did not understand hannah’s meaning. until hannah explicitly mentioned that she wanted to borrow the shopkeeper’s phone, the shopkeeper just lent her the phone. the failures in understanding the situation that happens during the conversation makes either the speakers or the receivers angry. thus, it is important to understand situations between speakers and receivers in a conversation. conclusion this study aimed to find out pragmatic failures that occurred in tv drama series “13 reasons why” and their causes. in conclusion, the researchers found that there were 25 pragmatic failures that occurred in this drama and they were caused by 5 reasons, namely failure in understanding others’ intentions, failures in understanding others’ state, denials to the reality, trauma, and failures in understanding a situation. from the findings, the researchers found that the major cause of pragmatic failures in the tv drama series was failures in understanding others’ state. there were seven failures in understanding others’ state there. from the tv drama script, the researcher found that the characters failed to understand the others’ state in uttering sentences. then, the smallest cause of pragmatic failures was trauma. in the tv drama series, there were only three examples of pragmatic failures because of trauma. the characters in the drama series, either the speakers or the receivers sometimes did not consider others’ trauma in the conversation. in general, the findings show that pragmatic failures happened in “13 reasons why” and there were 5 causes of them. by analyzing pragmatic failures, this study showed that speakers’ speaking style can cause misunderstanding to the listeners. the findings also signal that this drama can be a source for educators to provide more detailed examples in pragmatic failures. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 264-272 272 references ary, d., jacobs, l. c., & sorensen, c. (2010). introduction to research in education (8th ed.). belmont: wadsworth cengage learning. crystal, d. (1992). introducing linguistics. london: penguin. economidou-kogetsidis, m. (2011). ‘‘please answer me as soon as possible’’: pragmatic failure in non-native speakers’ e-mail requests to faculty. journal of pragmatic, doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2011.06.006 kathy, p. (2015). psychoanalysis: the defenses, anxiety and core issues. educational website content management. leech, g. (1983). principles of pragmatics. new york: longman. luo, r. (2016). analysis of pragmatic failure and pragmatic ability formation in english teaching. 2nd international conference on humanities and social science research. luo, x. & goa, j. (2011). on pragmatic failures in second language learning. theory and practice in language studies, 1(3), 283-286. pangestu, n. a. & sunardi, f.x. d. (2016). an incomplete psychological novel: a psychoanalytical analysis of hazel lancaster in john green’s the fault in our stars. journal of language and literature, 16(1), 20-28. semino, e. (2014). pragmatic failure, mind style and characterisation in fiction about autism. language and literature, 23(2), 141–158. shammas, n. a. (2005). lingua-pragmatic politeness and translatability. damascus university journal, 21(3&4), 23-56. tang, j. (2013). analysis of pragmatic failure from the perspective of adaptation. cross-cultural communication, 9(3), 75-79. thomas, j. (1983). cross-cultural pragmatic failure. applied linguistics, 4(2), 91112. thomas, j. (2013). an introduction to pragmatics. new york: routledge. tyson, l. (2006). critical theory today. new york: routledge. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 93-102 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 93 gender differences and the use of metadiscourse markers in writing essays truly almendo pasaribu sanata dharma university tr.almendo@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010110 received 28 march 2016; revised 16 june 2017; accepted 27 june 2017 abstract this study aims at investigating metadiscourse markers in academic essays written by male and female students. with the goal in mind, 20 essays written by efl female students and 20 essays written by efl male students were chosen. these data were analyzed based on the metadiscourse framework proposed by hyland (2005). the findings revealed that both male and female writers employed more interactive markers than interactional markers due to the fact that both genders inserted transition markers frequently to guide readers through the texts. however, a cultural factor may influence the writers’ tendency not to use transition markers showing arguments. furthermore, although male students employed more interactional markers, female students used more markers in interactional sub-categories except self-mentions. although it is assumed that women prefer to use a more personalized style, male writers in this study also personalized their essays by using self-mentions. one possible reason was that the use of these features tended to be more field-specific than gender-specific. the findings and discussion indicated that gender is not the only factor influencing the use of metadiscourse markers. other possible variables discussed in this study should be taken into account. keywords: metadiscourse, gender, discourse introduction studies have suggested that men and women tend to favor distinct language features in expressing themselves (lakoff 1975, waskita, 2008, matei, 2011, subon, 2013, and shirzad & jamali, 2013). lakoff (1975) revealed that women used linguistic features that reinforced their subordination. she further revealed that they were inclined to use some specific language features, such as lexical hedges, tag questions, empty adjectives, intensifiers, and emphatic stress. these differences between men and women in communication have attracted on-going scholarly discussion. some studies have extensively explored how gender differences influence both spoken (subon, 2013 & matei, 2011) and written language (shirzad & jamali, 2013 and waskita, 2008). besides claiming that women’s language tended to be more polite (subon 2013) and more complex mailto:tr.almendo@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 93-102 94 (shirzad & jamali, 2013; waskita 2008), matei (2011) suggested that women had the tendency to use more discourse markers in spoken communication. a previous study on gender and discourse markers by pasaribu (2017) showed that both genders shared similar patterns, in which they tended to use more elaborative markers than contrastive markers. however, the study was limited to the use of discourse markers or the textual markers used by the students. while the framework of discourse markers elaborates the relations between sentences, clauses, and phrases, the theory of metadiscourse markers employed in this current study covers both the interactive and interactional dimensions of the data. hyland (2005) articulated that the concept of metadiscourse markers “is the cover term for the self-reflective expressions used to negotiate interactional meanings in a text, assisting the writer (or speaker) to express a viewpoint and engage with readers as members of a particular community” (p.37). hyland and tse (2004, p. 156) elaborated that the use of metadiscourse markers expressed “communicative engagement between the writers and readers”. this model does not only investigate interactive markers which are employed to assist writers to organize the discourse, but it also covers interactional markers which enable writers to highlight some aspects in the discourse and project their attitudes. some literature has investigated gender-based differences and the use of metadiscourse markers. tse and hyland (2008) pointed out that the linguistic features that male and female researchers used are not merely determined by gender. on the other hand, yeganeh and ghoreyshi (2015) revealed that gender differences play an important part on the use of two metadiscourse features, booster and hedges. they argued that iranian females preferred to use hedges in their writing, while the males tended to use boosters more frequently. the tendency occurred possibly because women “were more cautious in writing and reporting their opinions” (yeganeh & ghoreyshi, 2015, p. 688). a recent study by seyyedrezaie and vahedi (2017) investigated the projection of gender identity through metadiscourse marking. they found out that both although males and females writers shared the same patterns of using stance makers, it turned out that the male writers used more frequent epistemic markers than their counterparts. it was interpreted that the male authors expressed more certainty in their writings. the distinct findings from these studies showed that further research in the field of gender and metadiscourse markers should be conducted. therefore, this study aimed at elaborating the gender differences and the use of metadiscourse markers in 40 academic essays written by male and female students. theory hyland (2005) applied the term metadiscourse markers to highlight the use of markers in written form. he elaborated that writers use metadiscourse markers as a set of tool “to negotiate interactional meanings in a text” (p. 37). they help the readers see the writer’s perspectives. in his perspective, the use of metadiscourse markers encourages the relationship between the writer and readers. for example, the function of attitude markers, such as unfortunately and surprisingly, express the writer’s attitude toward the issues presented in the text. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 93-102 95 he classifies metadiscourse markers into two categories, namely: interactive and interactional dimension. hyland (2005) elaborated that the interactive dimension “concerns the writer’s awareness of a participating audience and the ways he or she seeks to accommodate its probable knowledge, interest, rhetorical expectations and processing abilities” (p. 49). the resources in this dimension serve as tools to organize information which meets the readers’ need. table 1 projects the five broad sub-categories of this interactive dimension which was taken without modification from hyland, 2005, p. 49. table 1: interactive categories of metadiscourse markers (hyland, 2005, p. 49) category function examples transitions express relation between main clauses in addition; but; thus; and frame markers refer to discourse acts, sequences or stages finally; to conclude; my purpose is endophoric markers refer to information in other parts of the text noted above; see fig; in section 2 evidential refer to information from other texts according to x; z states code glosses elaborate prepositional meanings namely; e.g.; such as; in other words another dimension proposed by hyland (2005) is the interactional categories which concern on how the writers present “interaction by intruding and commenting on their message” (p. 49). there are five sub-categories of interactional dimension which was taken without modification from hyland, 2005, p. 49. table 2: interactional categories of metadiscourse markers (hyland, 2005, p. 49) category function examples hedges withhold commitment and open dialogue might, perhaps, possible, about boosters emphasize certainty or close dialogue in fact, definitely, it is clear that attitude markers express writer’s attitude to proposition unfortunately, i agree, surprisingly self-mention explicit reference to authors i, we, my, me, our engagement markers explicitly build relationship with readers consider, note, you can see that the aim of this study is investigating the use of both interactive and interactional markers in efl academic essays. with this goal in mind, the study analyzed 40 academic essays by employing hyland’s theory of metadiscourse markers. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 93-102 96 method this study elaborated the differences and the similarities in the use of metadiscourse markers between female and male students’ essays through document analysis (lodico, spaulding & voegtle, 2006). the data were collected from 20 essays written by female students and 20 essays written by male students in critical reading and writing i. the researcher carefully identified the metadiscourse markers which were classified into hedges (hg), boosters (bt), attitude markers (am), self-mention (sm), and engagement markers (em). the markers were highlighted, counted using antconc, a free concordance and analyzed by drawing on hyland’s model of metadiscourse markers (2005). the collected data were elaborated using descriptive qualitative approach. both figures and numbers are explained through verbal means. findings and discussion the findings indicated that both genders applied more interactive resources (1561) than the interactional ones (1406). both groups are heavy users of transition markers and hedges. furthermore, males used these resources more than females. this section elaborates the phenomena in details. table 3 shows that both sexes use 1561 interactive metadiscourse markers. both groups had the tendency to use transition markers. female students used 574 markers or 36.8% of 1561 interactive resources, while male students used 667 markers (42.7%). the table also shows that both genders only used the endophoric markers once. table 3: interactive dimensions of metadiscourse markers females males total interactive mm e % e % e % transition markers 574 36,8 667 42,7 1241 79,5 frame markers 42 2,7 87 5,6 129 8,3 endophoric markers 1 0,1 1 0,1 2 0,1 evidential 31 2,0 23 1,5 54 3,5 code glosses 75 4,8 60 3,8 135 8,6 total 723 46,3 838 53,7 1561 100,0 the most frequent feature of interactive markers as shown in table 3 is the transition markers. the model suggested by hyland (2005) classifies transition markers into three distinct categories: addition, consequence, and argument. in line with pasaribu’s findings (2017), essays written by male and female students share similar patterns. table 4: transition markers females males total transition markers e % e % e % addition 435 27,9 480 30,7 915 58,6 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 93-102 97 consequence 134 8,6 180 11,5 314 20,1 argument 5 0,3 7 0,4 12 0,8 total 574 36,8 667 42,7 1241 79,5 total interactive mm : 1561 table 4 shows that addition markers are the most common transition markers. the variants of these markers are and, furthermore, moreover, in addition, besides, likewise, in the same way, in contrast, however, but, yet, although, on the contrary, on the other hand, and despite. both females and males students had the tendency to use addition markers. next, both genders also used markers to show consequences, such as thus, therefore, consequently, as a result, for this reason, hence, we can conclude, since, because, because of, and so. finally, both sexes also tended not to use markers to signal argument. a few variants are used such as in any case, in this case, and of course. the data indicated that the writers preferred adding more information to arguing the ideas. one possible cultural explanation for this preference was due to the fact that indonesian people tend to avoid arguments. one of the famous sayings integrated with the students’ characteristic is “manut lan pinurut” or to obey and to follow (dardjowidjojo, 2006). the belief that obeying is more encouraged than arguing can also be expressed from the students’ tendency not to employ markers showing arguments. the writers also employed frame markers serving as signals of text boundaries (hyland, 2005). there are three types of frame markers, namely: additive relations, discourse goals, and topic shifts. although male writers tended to use more frame markers, both sexes were inclined to apply additive relations rather than explicitly state their purpose in writing by the use of discourse goals (0.3%). table 5: frame markers females males total frame markers e % e % e % additive relations 32 2,0 72 4,6 104 6,7 discourse goals 2 0,1 2 0,1 4 0,3 topic shifts 8 0,5 13 0,8 21 1,3 total 42 2,7 87 5,6 129 8,3 total interactive mm : 1561 hyland (2005) elaborated that some frame markers show additive relations between sentences or groups of sentences. the variants of additive relations found in the essays are first, second, third, at the same time, and next. besides using markers to show additive relations, the efl writers also used several interactive markers such as well, right and now to indicate topic shifts. the efl writers tended to elaborate the relation between ideas rather than announcing the discourse goals. some discourse goals found in the essays are i argue and i agree that. although they knew that the essays they wrote indicated causal relationship and arguments related to particular issues, they had the tendency not to express ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 93-102 98 their purposes explicitly by employing only a few markers expressing discourse goals. the students did not explicitly mention their purposes probably due to their preference in using an asian rhetorical model, whose development of texts is not written straightforwardly (wahab, 2006) it is interesting to note that males use more markers in interactive dimensions except code glosses and evidentials. writers use code glosses to express “additional information by rephrasing explaining or elaborating what has been said” (hyland, 2005, p. 52). writers add more code glosses by giving definition or using examples. in this study, female students used more code glosses than male students. the writers provided definition to clarify the issues presented in the texts. the markers used to indicate definitions in the essays are this is called, in other words, and that is. table 6: code glosses females males total code glosses e % e % e % definitions 15 1,0 20 1,3 35 2,2 examples 60 3,8 40 2,6 100 6,4 total 75 4,8 60 3,8 135 8,6 total interactive mm : 1561 the writers support their opinion not only by giving definitions, but also by providing examples. in supplying additional information, female students were heavy users of examples as seen in table 5. the writers introduced examples by using various markers such as for example, for instance, such as, and like. the examples were given to make the writers ideas more concrete for the readers. both genders also used markers as evidentials from other sources to support their arguments. however, female students tend to use more evidentials as sources to support their arguments. as argued by yeganeh and ghoreyshi (2015), women had the tendency to be more careful in writing by citing others or giving examples. the variants of this metalinguistic representations are according to x, x states, x noted, x said and x mentions. table 7: endophoric and evidential markers evidential and females males total endophoric markers e % e % e % attribution 31 2,0 23 1,5 54 3,5 reference to other parts 1 0,1 1 0,1 2 0,1 total 32 2,1 24 1,6 56 3,6 total interactive mm : 1561 writers also introduced other parts of the text by using endophoric markers. endophoric markers are phrases which refer to earlier material or something yet to come (hyland, 2005). the efl writers do not use many endophoric markers. some of references to others found in the essays are what is mentioned and like i said before as seen in table 7. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 93-102 99 as shown in table 8, both genders have the tendency to use engagement markers. by using engagement markers, the students engaged with the readers. it is turned out that although male students tended to use the overall interactional metadiscourse markers, female students employed more categories of interactional markers than male students except self-mention. table 8: interactional metadiscourse markers interactional mm females males total e % e % e % hedges 122 8,7 100 7,1 222 15,8 boosters 40 2,8 33 2,3 73 5,2 attitude markers 38 2,7 33 2,3 71 5,0 self-mentions 46 3,3 115 8,2 161 11,5 engagement markers 450 32,0 429 30,5 879 62,5 total 696 49,5 710 50,5 1406 100,0 table 8 reveals that both groups applied a considerably high use of engagement markers which involve features that address the discourse participants (hyland, 2005). writers acknowledge participants by using pronouns indicating first person plural (we, our, us) or second person pronoun (you, your). as seen in table 9, female students use more engagement markers (29.9%) than male students (28.4%). table 9: engagement markers females males total engagement markers e % e % e % addressing readers 421 29,9 399 28,4 820 58,3 directives 29 2,1 30 2,1 59 4,2 total 450 32,0 429 30,5 879 62,5 total interactional mm : 1406 the other purpose of using engagement markers is positioning readers into the discourse (hyland, 2005). the students did this by giving directives using modals like should, must or have to. there is no clear indication that women express request or command using less direct manner than men because both genders shared similar variants of directive modals. furthermore, lakoff (1975) introduced hedges to describe words which make things more or less blurry. moreover, hyland (2005) mentioned that this feature emphasizes the writer’s subjectivity. the information is presented as an opinion which is open for negotiation. this feature also implies the degree of confidence and certainty. it is also used to convey indirectness. the variants of hedges found in the essays are possible, might, perhaps, usually, sometimes, almost, likely, tend to, should, may, a little bit, kind of, at least, and maybe. hedges tended to be more common in essays written by female students. female students presented more hedges (122 times or 8.8%) than males (100 times or 7.2%). this finding confirms the previous study by yeganeh and ghoreyshi ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 93-102 100 (2014) in which they revealed that females were more careful in presenting their opinions or arguments. different from hedges, boosters highlight certainty. the use of boosters represents a confident voice (hyland, 2005). he adds that boosters are “widely used by chairpersons to demonstrate a confident image” (p. 79). the variants of boosters found in the essays are clearly, actually, certainly, really, always, definitely, and in fact. the results show that the female students were more likely to use boosters (40 or 3%) than their counterparts (33 or 2.5%). this suggests that female students are more inclined to present higher degree of assurance. this result contradicts yeganeh and ghoreyshi (2014), who found out that males tended to use more boosters. meanwhile, the current finding is in line with serholt (2011) who revealed that females were more inclined to use boosters. another common feature is self-mention markers which “refer to the degree of explicit author presence” (hyland, 2005, p. 53). the presence of the authors in this study is reflected by the use of first person pronouns (i, my, and me) and first person plural pronouns (we, us, and ours). male students were more inclined to use this feature to personalize the ideas in the essays. according to hyland (2005) this feature served several functions such as strengthening the writers’ presence, including personal narratives or experience, and promoting solidarity. usually personalized writing style is often favored by women (goodwin 1988 in d’angelo 2008). however, male students also personalized their essays or made their presence noticed by using self-mentions. the use of this feature seemed to be influenced by a field-specific factor. according to hyland (2005), self-mention markers were more frequent in humanities and social science papers than in science and engineering. in this case, it is likely that the use of self-mentions was influenced by the topic of the texts related to social issues. the writers’ engagement with the texts and the topics is also shown through the use of attitude markers. these features are used to project writers’ attitude to ideas presented in the text. hyland (2005) suggested that they expressed writers’ affective attitude. table 10: attitude markers females males total attitude markers e % e % e % verbs 5 0,4 5 0,4 10 0,7 adverbs 7 0,5 6 0,4 13 0,9 adjectives 26 1,8 22 1,6 48 3,4 total 38 2,7 33 2,3 71 5,0 total interactional mm : 1406 the table shows that both sexes used attitude markers. female students were slightly more inclined to use more attitude markers (38 times or 2.7%) than their male counterparts (33 times or 2.3%). the attitude markers found in the essays are: unfortunately, easily, fortunately, appropriate, strange, weird, negative, important, usual, amazing, correct, essential, interesting, shocked, shocking, surprised, unexpected, and unusual. by using these verbs, adjectives and adverbs ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 93-102 101 which contained affective messages, the writers conveyed their attitude towards information and ideas presented in the text. conclusion the study stems from the assumption that gender differences influence the use of metadiscourse markers. the study indicated that both groups share similarities, in which they employed more interactive markers than interactional markers. both genders were heavy users of transition markers which help them connect ideas in the discourse. in using transition markers, students preferred elaborating ideas than arguing ideas because they were not accustomed to contrasting or arguing ideas. furthermore, although male students use more interactional resources, female students use more markers in the sub-categories except self-mentions. although it is assumed that women prefer to use a more personalized style, male writers in this study also made their presence noticed by using self-mentions. one possible reason was that the use of a personalized style tended to be more field-specific rather than gender-specific. it confirms hyland’s argument (2005) that writers often employ more self-mentions in humanities and social science papers than in science and engineering. the discussion indicates that gender is not the only factor that determines how writers express themselves. further research focusing on the discipline of the essays and the cultural backgrounds of the writers is necessary in the future. references d'angelo, l. (2008). gender identity and authority in academic book reviews: an analysis of meta discourse across disciplines. linguistica e filologia, 27, 205-221. dardjowidjojo, s. (2006). the implementability of western approaches in eastern societies. indonesian journal of english language teaching, 2(1), 1-20. hyland, k. (2005). metadiscourse: exploring interaction in writing. journal of pragmatics, 40, 1232–1248. lakoff, r. (1975). language and woman’s place. new york: harper colophon. lodico m. g., spaulding d. t. & voegtle k. h. (2006). methods in educational research: from theory to practice. new york: wiley. matei, m. (2011). the influence of age and gender on the selection of discourse markers in casual conversations. bulletin of the transilvania university of braşov. series iv: philology and cultural studies, 4(53), 213-220. pasaribu, t. a. (2017) male and female students’ use of textual discourse markers in writing academic essays. journal of language and literature, 17(1). serholt, s. (2012). hedges and boosters in academic writing: a study of gender differences in essays written by swedish advanced learners of english. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2077/29526 seyyedrezaie, z. s. & vahedi, v. s. (2017). projecting gender identity through metadiscourse marking: investigating writers’ stance taking in written discourse. indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 6(2), 301-310. shirzad & jamali. (2013). gender differences in efl academic writing. new york: lambert publishing. http://hdl.handle.net/2077/29526 https://www.lap-publishing.com/catalog/details/store/gb/book/978-3-659-35417-5/gender-differences-in-efl-academic-writing?search=tefl%20academic ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 93-102 102 subon, f. (2013) gender differences in the use of linguistic forms in the speech of men and women in the malaysian context. iosr journal of humanities and social science (iosr-jhss),13(3), 67-79. tse, p. & hyland, k. (2008). robot kung fu’: gender and professional identity in biology and philosophy reviews. journal of pragmatics, 40(7), 1232-124. wahab, a. (2006). isu linguistik: pengajaran bahasa dan sastra. surabaya: airlangga university press. waskita, d. (2008). differences in men’s and women’s esl academic writing at the university of melbourne. jurnal socioteknologi, 7(14). yeganeh, m. t. & ghoreyshi, s. m. (2015). exploring gender differences in the use of discourse markers in iranian academic research articles. procedia social and behavioral science, 192, 684 – 689. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 30-40 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 30 separateness and connectedness: a study of war narrative in van booy’s the illusion of separateness sufen wu guangdong university of foreign studies, china correspondence: 1477263803@qq.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.4517 received 8 april 2022; accepted 15 august 2022 abstract simon van booy, an emerging british novelist, continues to write about war but narrows it down to the separateness and connectedness of war in his novel the illusion of separateness. van booy takes advantage of a series of narrative strategies to create the illusion of separateness at the surface level, but at the deep level of the novel, he reveals that war makes people closely connected with each other, which can be seen in the interlaced, elliptical character relationship diagram of three generations. therefore, this study, drawing on narrative theory, endeavors to investigate van booy’s war writing in the illusion of separateness and explore how the writer uses narrative devices to emphasize the natural elements of war, namely separateness and connectedness. by expounding on these elements and the war narrative in this novel, we can see van booy’s unique thinking on war and also have a deeper understanding of war. keywords: connectedness, separateness, simon van booy, the illusion of separateness, war narrative introduction simon van booy (1975) is an emerging british novelist in recent years. his collection of short stories, love begins in winter, won the frank o’connor award in 2009. in 2013, he published his second novel, the illusion of separateness. it presents the devastation and soldiers’ psychological trauma due to world war ii and emphasizes the separateness and connectedness of war. van booy gets his inspiration from the true story of his wife’s grandparents bert and annett knapp (hustvedt & van booy, 2011, p. 24). after bert gets married, he joins the us air force and suddenly disappears on the battlefield. a few months later, his wife receives a telegram from him saying that he will be back soon. in the illusion of separateness, the couple are john and harriet bray. van booy also arranges for john to go to the battlefield and send a message of peace to his wife. https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.4517 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 30-40 31 after a period of suffering, he finally reunites with his wife. another protagonist in the novel is named a (mr. hugo after the war, hereinafter referred to as mr. hugo). he joins the hitler camp. the two major characters’ encounter on the field. after john threatens mr. hugo with a gun, the two turn to share food and leave with their backs to each other. through the two main lines of john and mr. hugo, van booy connects scattered characters, creating an intertwined elliptical character relationship diagram, so as to maximize the separateness and connectedness of the war. at present, there are only some book reviews and an article on the novel. from the perspective of eco-criticism, colăcel (2014, p. 39) maintains that van booy’s the illusion of separateness “revisits ian mcewan’s 2001 atonement” and these two novels “share a common language of social and moral responsibility which has something to do with the nature-writing frame of reference”. in a book review, leber (2013, p. 32) says that “[t]his short and deceptively simple novel, which affords the pleasure of discovering its well-wrought patterns, is likely to grow in stature as it lingers in memory”. although scholars have noticed that it is “a fractured but fine-tuned narrative revealed through the sum of its piercedtogether parts” (kania, 2013, p. 34), critics have ignored that van booy used this ingenious narrative technique to highlight the separateness and connectedness of war. therefore, based on the theory of narrative time and narrative space, this paper intends to explore van booy’s war writing in the illusion of separateness and investigate how the writer uses narrative devices to strengthen the separateness and connectedness of war. theoretical framework the method applied in this essay is close reading, which is helpful for us to discover the narrative devices utilized by van booy to stand out the separateness and connectedness of war. and the theory that will be used in this paper is narrative time and narrative space, the two “components of the basic conceptual framework for the construction of the narrative world” (bridgeman, 2010, p. 54). in narrative discourse, genette (1980, p. 33) discusses narrative time. he mentions that story time is “the time of thing told”, “the time of the signified” and narrative time is “the time of the narrative”, “the time of the signifier”. when the temporal order of succession of the events in the story differs from the pseudotemporal order of their arrangement in the narrative, there appear anachronies or nonlinear narrative time phenomena, which can be subdivided into analepses and prolepses. analepsis refers to “any evocation after the fact of an event that took place earlier than the point in the story where we are at any given moment” (genette, 1980, p. 40). prolepsis means “any narrative maneuver that consists of narrating or evoking in advance an event that will take place later” (ibid.). in terms of narrative space, it is defined in dictionary of narratology as the “place or places within which the situations and events represented [...] and the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 30-40 32 narrating instance(s) occur” (prince, 1987, p. 88). gabriel zoran is believed to construct a relatively systematic and complete structure of space in “towards a theory of space in narrative” (1984). in accordance with this israeli scholar’s opinion, space in narrative in the vertical dimension can be categorized into three levels of spatial structure, namely topographical level, chronotopic level, and textual level. topographical space refers to “space as a static entity” (zoran, 1984, p. 315). it is the equivalent of physical space which is put forward by lefebvre. both of them mean the natural space in which people live. the chronotopic space refers to “the structure imposed on space by events and movements, i.e., by spacetime” (ibid.). and the textual space means “the structure imposed on space by the fact that it is signified within the verbal text” (ibid.). findings and discussion separateness of war in the illusion of separateness, van booy makes the characters scatter in the cities of the united states, britain, and france – los angeles, new york, long island, manchester, and st. peter’s island. john goes to war-torn france and his wife lives alone in the united states. similarly, mr. hugo joins the army and goes to france, parting with his father. the war not only leads to the separation of husband and wife and that of father and son but also causes the disintegration of families. it is worth noting that in order to strengthen the separateness of war, van booy constructs the separation of stories and that of characters in the aspects of time and space. on the one hand, van booy uses the device of analepsis to write the separateness of war in the illusion of separateness. in the novel, van booy extends the story timeline from 1939 to 2010, covering characters’ lives during world war ii and more than 50 years after the war. but van booy does not use linear chronological order to write the story in his novel. instead, he divides the novel into 15 chapters, and the time point of each chapter falls in a specific year. the time point of the first chapter is 2010, and the last chapter is 1944. in between, there are 1981, 1968, 1942, 2005, 1939, and 2009. it can be seen that the work is in flashback from the big framework. in addition, van booy’s favor of analepsis can also be seen in the characters’ narratives. taking john’s narrative as an example, six chapters center on john: chapter 4: john will go to the battlefield in 1942; chapter 6: john parachutes from a fighter in 1944; chapter 7: a flashback of john’s encounter with his wife in 1939 and his hard military training before joining the war; the following three chapters follow the 1944 incident in chapter 6. in chapter 8, john sees some strangers and flees immediately; chapter 10: john confronts mr. hugo; ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 30-40 33 chapter 13: a flashback of john’s sense of guilt after killing a bird when he was 7 years old. then the author follows the end of chapter 10, telling that after john inserts a gun into mr. hugo’s mouth, the two choose to live in peace. for one thing, it can be seen that these six chapters about john do not appear in succession. van booy inserts other characters’ stories in between. as a result, the writer strengthens the fragmentation and separation of the story. for another, the only continuous three chapters (chapters 6, 7, and 8) are also fragmented in terms of content. we can infer that chapter 8 is connected with chapter 6, but the author chooses to use the device of flashback in chapter 7 to separate john’s landing with a parachute from his escape, which further exaggerates the separateness of war. in addition, at the beginning of chapter 13, van booy first mentions john’s deep sense of guilt after killing birds during childhood. then, the author makes the narrator continue telling the confrontation between john and mr. hugo. on the one hand, the story in flashback or “punctual anachrony” (bal, 2017, p. 80) provides the reason why john gives up killing the enemy. on the other hand, van booy interrupts the climax of the novel by inserting the episode of killing birds, dividing the confrontation of the enemy on the battlefield into two halves. for readers, this technique of interruption makes them more deeply aware of the separateness of war. mr. hugo, another soldier in the novel, is the protagonist in three chapters, namely chapters 2, 9, and 15, which are respectively located at the beginning, middle, and end of the novel. compared with those chapters named john, these three chapters about mr. hugo are far apart and look fragmented and highly separated. it is noteworthy that van booy also uses the technique of analepsis in these three chapters. chapter 2: mr. hugo meets danny in 1981; chapter 9: mr. hugo is treated, recovers in the hospital, and returns to the hospital as a janitor in 1948; chapter 15: mr. hugo confronts john on the battlefield in 1944, picks up martin, and is mistakenly shot by soldiers, resulting in the loss of half of his face. it can be seen that van booy divides mr. hugo’s story into three parts. according to the natural sequence of the story, it should be the sequence of chapter 15, chapter 9, and chapter 2. however, van booy goes the opposite way and takes advantage of the device of analepsis to place mr. hugo’s war experience in the final chapter of the novel, which greatly endows it with significance. at the same time, the author also reveals that everything results from one war. against the real historical background of world war ii, van booy not only highlights the separateness of the story by skillfully dealing with the relationship between story time and narrative time but also constructs a complex and separated ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 30-40 34 spatial structure to stand out the separateness of war. as mentioned above, gabriel zoran constructs a relatively systematic theory about space form in narrative in his article. according to zoran’s view, topographical space can be a series of opposing spatial concepts (such as inside and outside, village and city). it can be divided up in accordance with the modes of existence of its units (such as divine world and human world, reality and dream). in the illusion of separateness, van booy creates the opposing modes of existence, such as reality and dream. the novelist tends to blur the boundary between reality and dreams. taking mr. hugo’s dream as an example, after describing that mr. hugo sees danny home, the author leads the readers into mr. hugo’s dream but does not tell the readers that it was a dream. readers will be confused at first reading, but then they will realize that this is only mr. hugo’s dream. in his dream, mr. hugo witnesses danny and his mother being forcibly separated by the police, and danny’s mother is killed. in this episode, van booy secretly arranges a coincidence: in reality, mr. hugo is a nazi party, adhering to separating jews from other races. in his dream, mr. hugo witnesses the heart-piercing separation of the black mother and son. with the help of this dual separation, the author has greatly strengthened the separateness of war. the second level of the vertical dimension of zoran’s narrative space is the chronotopic space, which refers to the spatial structure formed by the events and movements in the narrative, including synchronic relations and diachronic relations. the former refers to the interrelationship of the objects at any narrative point, in motion or in rest in the text, while the latter refers to the movement of the plot in a certain direction. the synchronic relationship provides a good perspective for interpreting the contrast between the motion and the rest constructed by van booy. in the illusion of separateness, mr. hugo and john are in motion during the war, especially in the period of self-protecting. their running state is in sharp contrast to the static state of the native french. taking mr. hugo’s escape as an example, since he separates from john, he receives help at a peasant woman’s house and gains food from an enthusiastic woman in a restaurant, but he has to separate from them in the end. as for john’s escape, he is treated at peasant paul’s house and escapes the interrogation of the enemy in a barbershop, but he is also forced to separate from them in the end. therefore, it’s fair to contend that van booy spends a lot of time describing their escape journey in order to highlight the separateness of the war. the cause of world war ii was hitler’s propaganda that he wanted to establish the great germanic empire. he claimed that all slavic peoples russians, poles, czechs, slovaks, bulgarians, ukrainians, and belarusians should be excluded and exterminated first and labeled them as “subhuman” (bourke, 2001, p. 120). in addition, anti-semitism is an integral part of fascism, and holocaust is “an integral part of world war ii” (lassner, 2009, p. 179). when the european war broke out, hitler warned that the consequences of the war would be the extinction of the jewish nation in europe. the result of war is also multi-dimensional separation. in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 30-40 35 order to maximize the separateness of the war, van booy uses a series of narrative techniques in the illusion of separateness and coincidentally constructs the separation of the story, the sense of separation of space, and the forced separation of characters at the aspects of time and space. connectedness of war as the title “the illusion of separateness” suggests, the separateness of war written by van booy on the surface of the novel is an illusion. in fact, in the depth of the work, the author skillfully reveals the connectedness of war. in his works, van booy often uses weaving techniques to connect the characters. for example, in his first novel, everything beautiful began after (2011), van booy connects three young people who are trapped in the past through a series of coincidences. while in the illusion of separateness, van booy connects characters with the grand historical background of world war ii, highlighting the connectedness of the war. in 1929, the hungarian writer frigyes karinthy proposed the “small world theory”. he “suggested that any two persons are distanced by at most six friendship links” (backstrom, boldi, rosa, ugander, & vigna, 2012, p. 33). stanley milgram also conducts an experiment which demonstrates that “taken randomly two people in the united states, these are separated by a chain of relationships involving six acquaintance links” (roveri, carcaterra, molinari, & pepe, 2020, p. 2-3). coincidentally, in the illusion of separateness, there are six characters in chapter titles. van booy arranged the six characters to connect with each other, forming an intertwined elliptical character relationship diagram. as the kirkus review (2013, p. 224) says: “unlike the author’s previous works, this novel doesn’t emphasize romance, but the author retains an abiding interest in interconnectedness”. but van booy does not explicitly point out the relationship among the characters. on the contrary, he uses some narrative skills to invite the readers to infer the relationship network of the characters. the most important technique is to change the narrative perspective. professor dan shen (2019, p. 224-225) mentions in narratology and the stylistics of fiction that the shift of point of view can create suspense. in the illusion of separateness, van booy creates suspense and a sense of mystery squarely by changing the perspective. when the narrator introduces john’s opponent in the penultimate chapter, the author does not arrange for the omniscient narrator to play the privilege of knowing everything but uses john’s limited perspective to call mr. hugo the enemy. similarly, in the last chapter of the work, when introducing mr. hugo’s opponent, the author also gives up the omniscient perspective and adopts mr. hugo’s limited perspective, without directly stating that the enemy is john. only after reading through the novel can we readers suddenly realize it turns out that mr. hugo and john are enemies. at this time, we admire the author’s ingenious layout and exquisite narrative techniques. this also echoes the title of the novel: everything is just an “illusion of separateness” since the two people who seem to have no connection have already been secretly ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 30-40 36 connected through the war. in addition to shifting the narrative perspective to delay the disclosure of the relationship between characters, van booy also takes into consideration the choice of words and sentences and the layout of the text. in the first chapter of the novel, when talking about the relationship between martin and mr. hugo, the author mentions that “a disfigured person gave it to others in paris a long time ago” (van booy, 2013, p. 14). the personal pronoun “it” prevents the reader from directly understanding the truth. if van booy uses the personal pronoun “he” here, the reader will know the relationship between martin and mr. hugo at the beginning. however, the author uses the technique of defamiliarization to make readers ignore this key information in his “hypnotism”. in the second repetition, the author points out that martin “was given to his mother by a man he can’t even imagine” (van booy, 2013, p. 19). using the vague phrase, “a man”, van booy once again conceals the relationship between mr. hugo and martin from the readers. in addition, in the first chapter, the author describes that when mr. hugo hears the song hummed by martin on the verge of death, he is familiar with it. but the author does not further explain the familiarity here. it is not until the last chapter of the novel that the author expounds that mr. hugo sings this song to appease martin who is crying in his infancy. although van booy secretly uses the acoustic image to connect the two characters who have not been seen in decades, the span between the first chapter and the last chapter prevents readers from easily discovering the connection between the characters through the image of the song. moreover, the author also uses a cover-up to lead readers to draw a preliminary character diagram. in the first chapter, the author arranges the narrator to explain that martin is kind-hearted and often brings food to the homeless, and the disfigured man (i.e. mr. hugo) is one of the homeless. reading here, the reader will simply think that the relationship between martin and mr. hugo is limited to this the helper and the recipient. but in the last chapter, the author breaks the reader’s cognition and points out the truth: mr. hugo saves the baby martin in the war. as a result, van booy creates a circular reciprocating structure: mr. hugo saves martin in the war, martin sends food to mr. hugo when he becomes a tramp, and mr. hugo finally dies in martin’s arms. as the book review says: “at first glance, clues to what’s happening seem uncomfortably scattered; at second glance, the story snaps together beautifully” (hoffert, 2013, p. 105). what’s more complicated is that on the basis of interweaving the elliptical character relationship diagram, van booy arranges the characters to form three generations through the war: john, mr. hugo, and anne-lise are the first generation; martin, the representative of the newborn in the war, is the second generation; danny, amelia, and sébarstien, as representatives after the war, are the third generation. the first generation who participate in the war witness its cruelty, endure the psychological pressure beyond the limit and suffer from post-traumatic stress ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 30-40 37 disorder, which brings serious sequelae to the body and mind. “the second world war, perhaps more than any war before it, raises the question of how war can be held in the mind when the mind itself is under siege” (stonebridge, 2009, p. 194). as for john, his mind is under siege of the war. john thinks he is indirectly responsible for his granddaughter’s blindness because he wishes he could be blind so that he could avoid witnessing the devastation and destruction of the war. in addition, van booy arranges for john to scream in the middle of the night. john can open his heart and face life calmly only after talking with other veterans. likewise, mr. hugo keeps reminding himself that he has committed heinous crimes and is hated by the world. mr. hugo repeats three times “i was one of those, remember – one of those: hated” (van booy, 2013, p. 73, 76, 79). this repetition highlights mr. hugo’s inner suffering and post-war regret. to make matters worse, mr. hugo often has nightmares. as mentioned earlier, he dreams that his neighbor danny and his mother are forcibly separated by the police, and danny’s mother is shot dead. the image of the gun reminds mr. hugo that he has also shot and killed people on the battlefield and committed the evil act of forcibly separating people. in addition, the author points out that danny and his mother are from nigeria, that is, they are black. in the novel, the author mentions many times that danny and his mother have repeatedly suffered malicious abuse and racial discrimination. on the one hand, the author suggests that the incident of mr. hugo’s joining hitler’s camp is similar to the white police’s separating the black mother and son: the span of 30 years has not extinguished the white people’s sense of racial superiority, and they still commit evil deeds on the battlefield or in daily life. this similarity conveys the author’s idea: be it war or racial discrimination, white people with a sense of superiority is committed to separating themselves from the inferior. but separation is only an illusion because all mankind is closely related and connected. the author constantly reminds readers that our sense of individuality is wrong. to some extent, we are all part of a larger whole. as a representative of the newborn in the war, martin is the link between the first generation. martin connects mr. hugo to anne-lise. at the critical moment, mr. hugo hands martin to the woman next to him. the woman is anne-lise. in addition, martin who is born in the war is a brand-new life, who brings infinite hope to the war-wounded generation: mr. hugo hopes that he can stay away from the battlefield and live a simple life with martin. it is worth noting that martin is jewish. although the author does not specify martin’s racial identity, he implies it through a series of images related to jews. for instance, martin has been circumcised and we know “[f]or jews, circumcision is a religious requirement” (rosen, 2010, p. 1124). another piece of evidence is the yarmulke and “[t]he yarmulke is one of the most familiar external markers of jewishness” (milligan, 2013, p. 71). in the novel, many guests wearing yarmulkes attend martin’s adult ceremony, which indicates that martin is a jew. martin’s jewish identity renders the story complicated. on the one hand, as a jew, martin is the target of the nazi massacre, but he is saved by mr. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 30-40 38 hugo who was a nazi, and brings hope to mr. hugo. on the other hand, as the representative of newborn babies on the battlefield, martin symbolizes the continuation of life and reveals the relevance of life. as postwar representatives, the third generation, danny, amelia, and sébarstien, have not personally experienced the cruel, ruthless world war ii, but they are committed to showing the public about the war. danny is a cutting-edge director and his third film titled ste. anne’s night is a great success. as can be seen from the title of the film, this is about the heroic deeds of martin’s adoptive mother anne-lise. although danny doesn’t know anne-lise and hasn’t witnessed her heroic killing of the enemy and defending the country in the name of sainte anne in the war, danny still completes his mission and introduces the heroine to the public. similarly, amelia devotes herself to the exhibition of the photos lost by soldiers on the battlefield. as a blind person, she is mainly responsible for enabling other blind people to perceive the story in the photo, allowing them to touch and smell the objects with the same material as that in the photo, and telling them about the discoverer of the photo. in addition, the author arranges for sébarstien to donate a photo for amelia’s exhibition. he finds the picture in the wreckage of a plane behind the village. coincidentally, the woman in the picture is amelia’s grandmother, john’s wife. john forgets to take the picture away before parachuting. miraculously, it is still intact after the plane crashes. this is the author’s intention to specially arrange the transmission of war relics among the characters, so as to make the connection between the characters. when talking about the function of coincidence, david lodge (2011, p. 150), a british novelist and literary theorist, says, “[c]oincidence, which surprises us in real life with symmetries we don’t expect to find there, is all too obviously a structural device in fiction”. through this structural skill, van booy strengthens the connectedness of war. the meaning of life also lies in finding connections, just like john who is always “trying to make connections” (van booy, 2013, p. 109). significantly, amelia names the exhibition “the illusion of separateness”. here, van booy points out again that separateness is an illusion, because no matter where we are, we are closely connected and never separated. “each and every man is at the same time separate from his fellows and related to them” (as cited in lang-takac & osterweil, 1992, p. 277). as van booy quoted in his inscription the words of master thich nhat nanh: “we are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” it can be seen that on the basis of the elliptical character diagram, the author sets up three generations to skillfully connect the soldiers, the newborn in the war, and the figures after the war. in both horizontal and vertical dimensions, the characters of the novel are interrelated with each other. the generation who participate in the war do not want to talk about the war. most soldiers are unwilling to talk to their relatives and friends about what they saw, heard, and did in the war. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 30-40 39 anne-lise refuses to admit that she is a heroine. john wouldn’t tell anyone about his war experience. similarly, mr. hugo refuses to mention whether his disfigurement is related to the war. while the third generation of characters in the novel tried to tell the war story. this weaving technique reflects the author’s commitment to conveying his thinking: although the war is cruel, it closely connects people and guides people to reflect on history, face the present and embrace the future. conclusion in mrs. dalloway, virginia woolf sets the story of clarissa and septimus as two parallel lines. they never know or meet each other. it was not until the last dinner that woolf lets clarissa know of the stranger’s death. thus, the two parallel lines are related: septimus’s suicide makes clarissa reflect on life and death and face her own existence. in the illusion of separateness, van booy’s arrangement is more complex. he arranges six characters to act as six independent points of the novel, which are distributed in each chapter of the work. in the narrative progression, the author connects the six characters through the two main lines of john and mr. hugo to form an intertwined elliptical character relationship diagram of three generations. through the analysis of van booy’s narrative technique, we find that the author specially writes the story as a fragment, and shows the separateness and connectedness of the war through the separation and reunion of the main characters. van booy does not personally experience the war and has no direct memory of world war ii, but he shoulders the responsibility to write war with the conscience of the writer and continues the motif repeatedly presented in world literature. references backstrom, l., boldi, p., rosa, m., ugander, j. & vigna, s. (2012). four degrees of separation. proceedings from websci: ’12 the 4th annual acm web science conference, 33-42. https://doi.org/10.1145/2380718.2380723 bal, m. (2017). narratology: introduction to the theory of narrative (4th ed.). toronto: university of toronto press. bourke, j. (2001). the second world war: a people’s history. oxford: oxford university press. bridgeman, t. (2010). time and space. in d. herman (ed.), routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory (pp. 52-65). new york: routledge. colăcel, o. (2014). nature (-advocacy) in the 21st century english novel: the illusion of separateness and atonement. meridian critic, 23(2), 37-45. genette, g. (1980). narrative discourse. new york: cornell university press. hoffert, b. (2013, march). the illusion of separateness. library journal, 138(5), 105. hustvedt, s., & van booy, s. (2011). siri hustvedt and simon van booy. bomb, 116, 22-28. https://doi.org/10.1145/2380718.2380723 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 30-40 40 kania, c. (2013, may). the illusion of separateness. publisher weekly, 34. lang-takac, e., & osterweil, z. (1992). separateness and connectedness: differences between the genders. sex roles, 27(5/6), 277-289. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00289929 lassner, p. (2009). life writing and the holocaust. in m. mackay (ed.), the cambridge companion to the literature of world war ii (pp. 179-193). cambridge: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol9780521887557.014 leber, m. (2013, june). the illusion of separateness. booklist, 109(19-20), 31-32. lodge, d. (2011). the art of fiction. new york: vintage books. milligan, a. k. (2013). colours of the jewish rainbow: a study of homosexual jewish men and yarmulkes. journal of modern jewish studies, 12, 71-89. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2013.763533 prince, g. (1987). a dictionary of narratology. nebraska: university of nebraska press. rosen, m. (2010). anesthesia for ritual circumcision in neonates. pediatric anesthesia, 20(12), 1124-1127. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14609592.2010.03445.x roveri, n., carcaterra, a., molinari, l., & pepe, g. safe and secure control of swarms of vehicles by small-world theory. energies, 13(5), 1043-1070. https://doi.org/10.3390/en13051043 shen, d. (2019). narratology and the stylistics of fiction. (2nd ed.). beijing: pekin university press. [chinese] stonebridge, l. (2009). theories of trauma. in m. mackay (ed.), the cambridge companion to the literature of world war ii (pp. 194-206). cambridge: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol9780521887557.015 van booy, s. (2009). love begins in winter. toronto: harpercollins. van booy, s. (2011). everything beautiful began after. toronto: harpercollins. van booy, s. (2013). the illusion of separateness. toronto: harpercollins. van booy, s. (2013, june). the illusion of separateness. kirkus reviews, pp. 224. woolf, v. (2009). mrs. dalloway. oxford: oxford university press. zoran, g. (1984). towards a theory of space in narrative. poetics today, 309-335. https://doi.org/10.2307/1771935 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00289929 https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol9780521887557.014 https://doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2013.763533 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-9592.2010.03445.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-9592.2010.03445.x https://doi.org/10.3390/en13051043 https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol9780521887557.015 https://doi.org/10.2307/1771935 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 82-89 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 82 the nature of literary study after the rise of contemporary literary theory dian natalia sutanto independent researcher, west borneo dian_natalia_s@yahoo.co.uk doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.020109 received 8 june 2018; revised 23 august 2018; accepted 1 september 2018 abstract before the rise of contemporary literary theory, literary study mainly concerned with the nature, role, function of literary works and general schema for literary criticism. the rise of contemporary literary theories, such as structuralism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, new historicism, postcolonialism, and so on have changed the nature of literary study. by applying concepts and paradigms taken from other spheres of intellectual activity, such as culture, linguistics, aesthetics, politics, history, psychology, economics, gender, and so on, current literary study starts questioning and criticizing literary study basic assumptions. contemporary literary theory brings a broad array of fundamental issues to attention, such as the act of reading, interpretative strategy, epistemology of literary scholarships, nationalism, genre, gender, originality, intertextuality, social hegemony, authorial intention, truth, representation and so on. keywords: literary criticism, literary study, literary theory introduction literary study is generally classified into two: literary criticism and literary theory. literary criticism is a study of the concrete literary works through analysis, interpretation, explication or contextualization (wellek, 1960; hawthorn,1987). it’s the oldest discipline in literary study as it goes at least as far back as archaic greece that begins around 800 bc (habib, 2005; ford, 2002). throughout the history of literary criticism, two strands of the discipline recur in form of rhetorical criticism and grammatical criticism (day, 2008). literary theory, on the other hand, concerns on theoretical principles and concepts that form the foundation for practical methods and strategies used in literary criticism (castle, 2007). in the old days, literary theory involved the general concern of the nature, role, function of literature and conceptual schemes for evaluating literary works. however, historical development shows that contemporary literary theory applied to literature seems less interested just in focusing on the nature of literary works itself and providing general schema for literary criticism. contemporary literary theories, such as structuralism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, new ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 83 historicism, and postcolonialism, actually are not ‘literary’ theory in nature. the theory derives from a non-literary system (carter, 2006). for examples theory derives from culture, language and linguistics, aesthetics, politics, history, psychology, economics, gender, and so on applied to literary works in the interests of a specific critical aim. contemporary literary theory thus grows out of this experimentation with concepts, terms, and paradigms taken from other spheres of intellectual activity (castle, 2007). throughout the history of literary theory, rises a whole range of theoretical approaches those focused on meaning and form, those that are political and those that are seemingly a-political (bertens, 2007). these contemporary theorists pay attention to a broad array of fundamental issues related to the reading, interpretative strategy, literature and culture, nationalism, genre, gender, originality, intertextuality, social hegemony, authorial intention, truth, representation and so on. moreover, the contemporary theory has challenged the status and value of literary scholarship by raising epistemological objections to determine interpretations of literary texts (shumway, 1985). thus, it raises many protests from humanist scholars who seek a return of literary studies to traditional humanistic way. many antitheorists claim that the theoretical enterprise should come to an end. antitheorists are wrong to call for the end of theory and return to the unexamined literary traditions. contemporary literary theories play important role as means of inspecting the gaps and failure of critical tradition and bringing self-aware scrutiny to the methods of literary study (leitch, 2001). as claimed by culler (2000) contemporary literary theory has radically changed the nature of literary study and criticism. this paper discusses how the contemporary theory has changed the nature of literary study. theory the nature of literary study before contemporary literary theory literary theory has its roots in plato’s ideas on mimesis and aristotle’s poetics which establishes the definitions of tragedy and comedy, and distinguishes poetry from history (leitch, 2001; goulimari, 2015). these classical greece theories influence the literary study to see the nature of literary work as the representation of the universal truths about nature through the description of particular. reading text and reading world are parallel activities. in the medieval era, literary study focuses on the practice of reading, interpretation and theory of language. augustine’s hermeneutic theory proposes that language is transparent. language truthfully portrays the world as it is, thus, truth is accessible through language. the foundation of literary criticism is developed under this medieval era through the influence of quintilian’s four level of allegorical interpretation: 1) literal or historical, 2) the allegorical or spiritual, 3) the tropological or moral, and 4) anagogical or mystical (leitch, 2001). in the renaissance era, the national consciousness is growing and thus increases the preoccupation with distinct national literary tradition and the use of vernacular language (patrick, 2007). in this era, horatius proposes important doctrine of verisimilitude that means that literary works must depict historical realities and facts (leitch, 2001). in the romantic era, general reflections on the nature of literature and criticism are still mainly sporadic as in the previous era. it is often arising from ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 84 manifesto-like writings of particular authors and literary groups, or from contemporary commentary upon them, such as sidney’s apology for poetry, wordsworth’s preface to lyrical ballads, or coleridge’s biographia literaria. romantic era is predominated by kant’s philosophy that subjectivity determines the apprehension of world (durant, 2006). literary works are seen as intimately bound with the personal impressions of the author. thus, schleiermacher calls for readers’ sympathetic identification with the author. literary work is also seen as organic form developed by author’s imagination (leitch, 2001; childs, 2006). the development of literary study through these eras has highly influenced the liberal humanism literary approach to literary works that predominates england in the mid of 19th century. basic tenets of liberal humanism approach to literary works are (barry, 2009, pp.17-20): 1. “good literature has timeless significance; it somehow transcends the limitations and peculiarities of the age it was written in, and thereby speaks to what is constant in human nature.” 2. “the literary text contains its own meaning within itself. it doesn't require any elaborate process of placing it within a context, whether this be: (a) socio-political the context of a particular social 'background' or political situation; (b) literary-historical whereby the work could be seen as the product of the literary influences of other writers, or as shaped by the conventions of particular genres; (c) autobiographical that is, as determined by the personal details of the author's life and thought.” 3. “to understand the text well it must be detached from these contexts and studied in isolation. what is needed is the close verbal analysis of the text without prior ideological assumptions, or political pre-conditions.” 4. “human nature is essentially unchanging.” 5. “individuality is something securely possessed within each of us as our unique 'essence'.” 6. “the purpose of literature is essentially the enhancement of life and the propagation of humane values; but not in a programmatic way: if literature and criticism become overtly and directly political they tend to be utilized as propaganda.” 7. “form and content in literature must be fused in an organic way, so that the one grows inevitably from the other.” 8. “sincerity (comprising truth-to experience honesty towards the self, and the capacity for human empathy and compassion) is a quality which resides within the language of literature.” 9. “what is valued in literature is the 'silent' showing and demonstrating of something, rather than the explaining, or saying, of it.” 10. “a theoretical account of the nature of reading or of literature in general, isn’t useful in criticism and will simply, if attempted, encumber critics with preconceived ideas which will get between them and the text.” in this era, it can be seen that literary study is heavily stressed on the criticism rather than on the theorization of literature. literary criticism is dominated by empiricism. thus, it can be understood why the liberal humanist opposed the application of contemporary literary theory from other study fields. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 85 theory application the nature of literary studies and criticism under the contemporary theory early twentieth century shows the transition from traditional literary theory to contemporary literary theory which is adopted from outside the field of literary study, such as linguistics, politics, history, psychology, economics, gender, and so on. theory of criticism begins to be a more self-conscious activity, and more independent of the creative writing of the time. the first theorists which develop a conceptual framework for the understanding of literature were the russian formalists and the prague linguistic circle. this more systematic attitude to theory spread to germany, and then to england and america. in the 1970s, literary theory enters a new phase dominated by philosophy, history, politics, and psychoanalysis. theory in this stage develops along two main pathways. first are text-based theories, such as new criticism, formalism, structuralism, and poststructuralism. text-based theories focus on the analysis of language, signs, or systems of signification. second is historicist theories such as marxism, feminism, new historicism, and postcolonialism. historicist theories focus on the critique of social, cultural and historical conditions and the way these conditions are reflected in and altered by cultural form like literary text (castle, 2007). contemporary theories have radically changed the nature of literary studies because it challenges the traditional literary study assumptions or common-sense. a common-sense view of the world gives the illusion of unity and completeness. theory is always the enemy of common sense; it is the spirit of subversion in the world of thought (selden, 1991). many unexamined concepts in literary study are under scrutiny by contemporary literary theory, such as meaning, interpretation, nature and function of literature. theory has changed people’s views and thought differently about objects of literary study and activities of studying literature. contemporary theory challenges these traditional literary theory assumptions (selden, 1991; shumway, 1985): 1. a literary text is an object which has a meaning which is unified, univocal and definite inside it; 2. the author is the origin of the text and its meaning, and that the author's intention is the only authority for interpretation; 3. the reader is a passive reflector of the author's intended meaning or the text's structure; 4. reading does not affect the meaning of a literary text, because the reader discovers it from a position of parnassian detachment: the instruments of criticism are perfectly sterilized 5. literary canon represent politically neutral values that everyone within a given culture might be expected to affirm. the blow on the common sense of literary study is culminated with the coming of derrida’s deconstruction in 1960s. deconstruction attacks on the core or essence of the text which refers to: spiritual truth, transcendental essence, the author's intention, teleology, social reality, etc. derrida argues that no text can sustain the logic of its own discourse without somewhere violating it (eagleton, 2005; norris, 2002). the multi-accented nature of language always resists the mastery of truth and logic. deconstructive reading requires readers to be critical in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 86 unresolved issues of a text, such as contradiction, paradox, indecision, and logical tension in a text (norris, 2018; stocker, 2006). the contemporary literary theory challenges the status and value of literary study by raising epistemological objections in determining the interpretations of literary texts. according to belsey the central problem of literary theory is the problem of meaning (belsey, 1982). literary theory could not claim of its own impartiality of standing outside of contest for meaning (belsey, 1982). the common-sense of the traditional literary study assumes that literary text tells a certain truth which is communicated to us through the undistorted or transparent language. a literary work is thought of as being governed by a spiritual essence, or a transcendental sign. the readers are trying to discover a truth which the literary work illustrates. the act of reading itself does not influence the meaning of the text and thus literary criticism can be done in objective way solely based on the literary text. all of these traditional literary study assumptions are challenged by contemporary literary theory. the basic assumption of contemporary literary theory is that facts, meaning, value, reason and nature are construction, not objective or unchanging realities. this basic tenet can be traced back to the work of saussure and bakhtin. saussure proposes that a sign not as a sign of something. its relation to the signified is relational and arbitrary (barry, 2009; culler, 1986). the individual signifier always carries with it the multiple possibilities of signification it derives from the multiplicity of its existing signifieds. a word can remain the same, but the meaning varies in history and depends to its context. thus, the meaning does not precede language. bakhtin, on the other hand, establishes a discursive view of language which claims that language is dialogic, the site of ideological contestation (gardiner, 1992). every utterance is potentially the site of a struggle for meaning between competing discourses and voices (pope, 2002). language cannot be separated from its social context. language is always contaminated, interleaved, opaquely coloured by layers of semantic deposits resulting from the continuing processes of human struggle and interaction. words are therefore inevitably marked by ideological struggle; they are multi-accentual, not univocal. words speak of a conflict of perspectives (selden, 1991). even though, contemporary literary theories have different approaches and traditions, based on the previous explained basic assumptions it can be seen that these theories share several similar ideas that have changed the nature of literary study (barry, 2009): 1. politics is pervasive; “theorists generally believe that all thinking and investigation is necessarily affected and largely determined by prior ideological commitment. every practical procedure (for instance, in literary criticism) presupposes a theoretical perspective of some kind.” 2. language is constitutive; “language conditions, limits, and predetermines what we see. thus, all reality is constructed through language, so that nothing is simply 'there' in an unproblematical way everything is a linguistic/ textual construct.” 3. truth is provisional; ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 87 “instead of being solidly 'there' in the real world of fact and experience, they are 'socially constructed', that is, dependent on social and political forces and on shifting ways of seeing and thinking.” 4. meaning is contingent; “the meanings within a literary work are never fixed and reliable, but always shifting, multi-faceted and ambiguous. in literature, as in all writing, there is never the possibility of establishing fixed and definite meanings: rather, it is characteristic of language to generate infinite webs of meaning, so that all texts are necessarily self-contradictory.” 5. human nature is a myth “theorists distrust all 'totalising' notions. ‘human nature', as a generalised norm which transcends the idea of a particular race, gender, or class, is to be distrusted too, since it is usually in practice eurocentric (that is, based on white european norms) and androcentric (that is, based on masculine norms and attitudes). thus, the appeal to the idea of a generalised, supposedly inclusive, human nature is likely in practice to marginalise, or denigrate, or even deny the humanity of women, or other disadvantaged groups.” contemporary literary theory has changed the nature of literary study by bringing forth these consequences to the literary study: the indeterminacy of literary works’ meaning does not mean the negation of the literary criticism, but it renders the value of such interpretation relative to the purposes of the criticism. literary criticism cannot claim to be impartial and objective. it cannot longer stand outside the contests for meaning it identified because all critics operate within specific ideological positions. as a knowledge itself, it is inevitably a location of power and contests for power. it is unavoidable that canonical status of literary works is being questioned and reexamined. aesthetic evaluation on literature would be irrelevant because the boundaries of literature as a value and a category are not unchanging. in literary reception, the readers are demanded to be skeptical with everything they have taken for granted from literary works. rereading are required in order to seek out those elements in a text which are most alien or repressed or most radically discontinuous with what the readers take for granted. it is unavoidable for critics to recast the received interpretations of old texts and frameworks. the critics should have to keep revealing interesting new zones of meaning and possibilities from literary works for future critical inquiry. literary theory remains valuable as long as it persists in being theoretical by continually criticizing its own dogmatism. when literary theory becomes self enclosed area and distant itself from critical movement, then it is no longer being theoretical. theory must not only be assertive in advocating particular theory, but it must always be analytical to its own theory. thus, theory always means criticism. conclusion contemporary literary theory has drastically changed the nature of literary study by questioning and criticizing literary study basic assumptions. it has changed the nature of literary study into unstable and uncertain quest of texts, meanings, identities, values, and truth. the relevance of its quest is relative and relevance only in certain socio-cultural contexts. it would have never achieved the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 88 stability, uniformity, consistency and universality as science has achieved across social and cultural contexts. references barry, p. (2009). beginning theory: an introduction to literary and cultural theory. manchester: manchester university press. belsey, c. (1982). problems of literary theory. new literary history 14(1), 175182, https://www.jstor.org/stable/468964. bertens, h. (2007). literary theory: the basics. london and new york: routledge. carter, d. (2006). literary theory. herts: pocket essentials. castle, g. (2007). the blackwell guide to literary theory. oxford: blackwell publishing. culler, j. (1986). ferdinand de saussure. ithaca: cornell up. culler, j. (2000). literary theory: a very short introduction. oxford: oxford university press. childs, p. (2006). texts: contemporary cultural texts and critical approaches. edinburgh: edinburgh up. day, g. (2008). literary criticism: a new history. edinburgh: edinburgh up. durant, w. (2006). the story of philosophy. new york: pocket books. eagleton, t. (2005). literary theory: an introduction. oxford: blackwell publishing. ford, a. (2002). the origins of criticism : literary culture and poetic theory in classical greece. new jersey: princeton up. gardiner, m. (1992). the dialogics of critique: m.m.bakhtin and the theory of ideology. london and new york: routledge. goulimari, p. (2015). literary criticism and theory: from plato to postcolonialism. london and new york: routledge. habib, m.a.r. (2005). a history of literary criticism: from plato to the present. oxford: blackwell publishing. hawthorn, j. (1987). unlocking the text: fundamental issues in literary theory. london: edward arnold. leitch, v.b. (2001). the norton anthology of theory and criticism. new york: w.w. norton & company. norris, c. (2002). deconstruction. london and new york: routledge. norris, c. (2018). deconstruction. in richter, david h (ed.), a companion to literary companion (pp.100-113). hoboken: john wiley & sons ltd. patrick, j. (2007). renaissance and reformation. new york: marshall cavendish. pope, r. (2002). the english studies book: an introduction to language, literature, and culture. london and new york: routledge. selden, r. (1991). does literary studies need literary theory? critical survey, 3(1), 96-103, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41555559. shumway, d. (1985). why we should teach theory (instead of “literature”)?. the journal of the midwest modern language association, 18(2), 14-19, http://jstor. org/stable/1315182. stocker, b. (2006). derrida on deconstruction. london and new york: routledge. https://www.jstor.org/stable/468964 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 89 wellek, r. (1976). concepts of criticism. new haven and london: yale university press. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 42-50 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 42 the representation of women characters in the movie the breadwinner deta maria sri darta and diah kristina kristen satya wacana university and sebelas maret university deta.darta@staff.uksw.edu and kristina_diah@yahoo.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.020105 received 7 august 2018; revised 15 august 2018; accepted 3 september 2018 abstract this article would like to present how women were defined in the movie, both by male and female characters. mills (1998) provides a tool to help the readers understanding the style of a writer through her choices of words, sentences, and even in the discourse level. a novel based movie which won and was nominated in several awards, the breadwinner, was full of portrayal of women in the setting of afghanistan under the taliban rule. the tragic story was beautifully wrapped under the animated movie produced to show the real picture towards the world. the data are in the form of words, sentences and discourse spoken by male and female characters that represent the depiction of women. the data obtained are examined with the view of sara mills theory. it is found that in the movie, the women are represented as two opposing aspects: women representation as an object of man domination,and women as the subject who is able to speak out her mind and to decide independently. keywords: depiction, feminist stylistics, the breadwinner, women introduction as one artifact of how language is used by human to utter her idea, a text might carry more than the idea itself; it also represents the ideology that the writer believes. van djik (2015, p. 466) says that “critical discourse analysis is discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social-power abuse and inequality are enacted, reproduced, legitimated, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context”. it means that critical discourse analysis studies the production and maintenance of social-power misuse and inequality. moreover, ilinuha et al. (2013) in their article on critical discourse analysis argue that the issue of identity questions the interrelationship between particular entities such as society, religion and culture. understanding the changing issue of how people express themselves related to both social and cultural discourse seems necessary in order to achieve a constructive communication. (p. 262) it means that the text, its producer, and readers are interelated one another. by undertanding the text produced, readers will be able to see what sort of identity that the producer would like to be related to. through text, the producer can also mailto:deta.darta@staff.uksw.edu ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 42-50 43 communicate to the readers and introduce a certain ideology without having a direct contact. texts are not immune to forces outside the texts, as mills stated that “texts are invaded by the social cultural norms, by ideologies, by history, by economic forces, by fashions, by gender and racial stereotyping, and so on” (1998, p. 157). however, this does not mean that the author does not have any power or control over her work, rather that she is also subject to the interaction with those forces. through analyzing the language that is used in the text, the readers will understand the meaning beyond the lines. to do so, the readers need tools, one of it is critical discourse analysis or cda. according to fairclough and wodak (1997), cda sees discourse as a social practice. it means that there is a kind of dialogue between a discursive event and situation, institution, social structure that set the event. power is an important concept cda. using language as the vehicle, power has the capacity to implement and maintain a certain structure in society. thus, studying the language used by a text critically, readers are able to locate power and how the power addresses them as readers. it shows the close relation between text and power, while cda helps readers to scrutinize the text and withdraw themselves from being taken into the text as the power wants. cda aims to reveal the hidden agenda of a text and suggests the readers not to accept anything as it is. the breadwinner (2017) was chosen as the text to analyze because of it was based on a true story. this movie is an animated drama movie directed by nora twomey and produced by angelina jolie. the movie was nominated as best animated feature at the 90th academy awards. it is based on a bestselling novel written by deborah ellis, who had witnessed similar pictures in real life in afghanistan under the control of taliban. though the story as well as the movie aim to show how women survive without the existence of men in afghanistan contexts, still in some parts of the movie, the male domination lingers. the purpose of this article is to find the representation of women by female and male characters in the movie. this article, thus explores how women are defined by men, how they are treated, and how they perceive themselves in the movie the breadwinner. this article also investigates the subject-object position as well as reader position that are the main points of feminist stylistics, a cda proposed by sara mills. feminist stylistic by sara mills feminist stylistic approach deals with the representation of women in a text. this theory was proposed by sara mills (1998) to prove how women are often marginalized in social life even in a text. by looking at the words and sentences produced in a text to represent women, we can tell the ideology of the text writer. this approach aims to explore the text writer’s assumption or ideology through her/his writing style. not only that, this approach also recognizes the actor position in a text, which one is the subject and which is the object. the third aim is to criticize how a writer and a reader are positioned in a text. the readers’ expectation, their values, political affiliation, belief, and norms play an important role in presenting a text to the readers. and the fourth to see a person position through the narrative style and structure (1998, p.13). mills proposes three level of analysis (62 156) as follows: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 42-50 44 a. word level analysis, focusing on sexism language and its meaning in the text. b. sentence level analysis, looking at naming, ready made phrase, metaphor, transitivity choice, jokes/humor which carry ideology that look down on female. c. discourse level analysis, scrutinizing the character/role, fragmentation, focalization and schemata. besides analysing the actor position in the text, mills also sees how writers and readers are addressed by the text. the unfair representations of female are seen from two main points subject-object position and reader position. considering the subject-object position, mills believes that media is not neutral. it is affected by the position of power around it, that is, the text might represents female as object due to male domination over the text creation. meanwhile, reader position point sees how the readers of the text are addressed by the text, whether they are considered as female or male. this is important to see what ideology the writer plays throughout the text. method the data was taken from the movie entitled the breadwinner. the words and sentences taken were those related to represent women in afghanistan. the english subtitle of the movie was used to help locating and understanding the words and sentences well. the novel parvana was used as a supplement to the data taken from the movie, since the movie is made based on the novel written by deborah ellis. this study employs some procedures. first english subtitle was scrutinized to decide which words and sentences belong to the data. then the data were categorized according to the speaker: male and female. the data were also classified into words, sentences, and discourse to match the theory proposed by sara mills. next step was interpreting the words, sentences, and discourse found to see the pattern that can be used to conclude the style of the writer. the data taken from the movie was accompanied by the frames captured from the movie to give a clear undertanding and authentic data. to enrich the discussion, the data obtained was compared to the data taken from the novel. findings and discussion the finding and discussion will be presented under several sub-categories. the first is the representation of woman seen from several points of view and the second is discussion of the position of subject – object as well as the position of reader, and the third is the text interpretation in general. representation of women the discussion of women representation in the movie the breadwinner begins with the representation done by male character. the setting of the movie was afghanistan in the era of taliban. being conquered by taliban, the people of aghanistan had to follow the rule, the order that was set by the conqueror. the rules were mostly captivated women and children living in afghanistan. some rules for women can be concluded from several frames in the movie through the dialogues spoken by male characters that obey taliban. the main rule was that women must not go out of the house without men. this rule resulted to several ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 42-50 45 conditions, one of which was that no women were seen in the market. the economics activities were done by men, while women would stay and wait at home. the sellers must not sell things to women. it was proven by the frames taken from the movie. 6 00:01:55,920 --> 00:01:57,832 i saw you serve a woman! it was stated in the movie, taliban, represented by male character, had already made a rule for women. it was said that they had determined a specific dignity for women. the complete rule can be seen as follow: 70 00:04:50,480 --> 00:04:53,757 we have determined specific dignity for women! 71 00:04:53,760 --> 00:04:55,592 women should not go outside 72 00:04:55,600 --> 00:04:58,069 and attract unnecessary attention! 73 00:04:58,120 --> 00:04:59,998 if a woman shows herself, 74 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:02,605 she will be cursed by islamic sharia 75 00:05:02,640 --> 00:05:04,757 and should never expect to go to heaven. disobeying this rules, women were not going to heaven after they past away. the sympathizer of taliban checked the market and watched if anyone disobey the rule. if women have to go out of their house, they should be accompanied by their husband or brother. even when the women have no choice, whenever they disobeyed this rule, they would be punished by being beaten in the street and being told to go home, “the place where they belong” according to taliban rule. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 42-50 46 230 00:13:28,240 --> 00:13:31,074 why are you out here by yourself? where is your husband? 231 00:13:31,160 --> 00:13:32,913 i... i have no choice! it's not permitted to be 232 00:13:32,920 --> 00:13:35,037 out here without your husband or your brother. from the frames above, it can be seen that whenever going out, women have to wear burkha (a cloth to cover their head). this burkha does not allow the women to see the road clearly, since it only consists a small net in the eyes part that gives a limited view. one of male character, idrees, considered women as a kind of thing that should be kept away from the crowd. it is seen from the expression he said when he saw parvana in the market. idress said that a girl should not draw attention to herself: 97 00:05:55,440 --> 00:05:57,238 she's drawing attention to herself! 98 00:05:57,240 --> 00:05:59,277 she should be at home, not displaying herself ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 42-50 47 the word display shows that women was represented as a thing. the next discussion on representation of women is taken from utterances spoken by female characters. female characters in the movie were depicted to be submissive to taliban rule. one example was when parvana disaggred to go with her mother to find her father: 217 00:12:05,680 --> 00:12:07,717 mama-jan, it's not allowed! women were also portrayed as stereotype of having long hair (which she has to take care of), doing the cleaning and taking care of food and clothes. they also had to be ready to become a ‘gift’ from a family presented to another family who had male that was looking for a wife. parvana’s sister had to be ready and willing when her mother told her to marry their cousin from other city in order to survive. female characters are also looked down for their existence as human being equals to men. a simple scene when parvana took raisins, sorraya, her sister, forbade her to eat them. soraya said that the raisins were for zaki, their younger brother. the family ate together, but the father (man) should take their portion first. although the family did not agree to the taliban rule, they still maintain the patriarchy within their family. the conservation to the patriarchy was done by female characters. however, the female character of parvana was also portrayed differently. losing her father and seeing her mother was beaten by male in the street, parvana gained her courage to go to the market to buy food for their family. instead of getting some food, she lost all the money she had. after a night of deep consideration, she cut her hair and wore her late brother clothes, pretended to be a boy. she went to the market and succeeded to buy some food for her family. she gained confident and went to the market everyday to find a job and becoming the breadwinner for her family. as a girl parvana had an important role within her family. although she had older sister, sorraya, parvana owned a position to replace her father’s position. she even acknowledged that she had provided her family with enough food. she assured her mother that she could take care of the family matters, until she found a way to save her father from prison. it is seen from the frame below: 992 01:05:19,200 --> 01:05:21,635 why? i provide for you just fine! ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 42-50 48 although education for children and women were banned at that time, parvana’s father, who was a teacher before taliban came, told his children stories. he also taught them to read and write. parvana was good at making up a story, she used to soothe her brother with her story. unfortunatelly, in her story she created a male hero who saved his city. she named him sulayman, who happened to be the name of her late brother whose clothes she wore. parvana even owed the courage from the shadow of her brother sulayman, who lives in her made up story. subject-object and reader position this movie addressed women as both subject and object. some parts of the movie portrayed women as the object since the movie depicted the real women condition in afganisthan under taliban. as objects, women were not counted, their voice was not heard. however, through the female main character, parvana, this movie also addressed women as the subject. as subjects, women, through the character of parvana, had the control over the actions they did. parvana did not ask anybody to consider her decision of cutting her hair and pretended to be a boy. nobody told her to save her family and her father, she decided herself. it was also her own choice to go to prison to find her father and did several things to save him: 1004 01:05:48,160 --> 01:05:50,277 let me go see him before we leave. parvana had already planned to gain some money to bribe the prison guard to let her father go. she did not want to ruin her plan, although her mother asked her to obey her and stayed at home until their relative from other city came to pick them. meanwhile, this movie positioned its viewers (readers) as women who need to know the difficult conditions of women in afganisthan under taliban. this movie assumes that the readers will agree to the statement concerning gender that women equal to men. the movie also focalized the voice of muted women and children in afganisthan in the time of the story. readers are asked to join the feeling and experience the hardships that were experienced by the female characters. interpretation although this movie aims to portray women in afghanistan under the control of taliban, it also emphasizes on the struggle of the women to survive. it shows that this movie takes side to support the women actions to liberate themselves. unfortunately, the imaginary story told by parvana spoils the picture of strong women. the movie appreciates women to have courage to liberate, but at the same time it reminds women that they cannot survive without men. this kind of duality shows how deep patriarchy is rooted within human’s life, even when a son has passed away, he still lives as a hope. as a strong girl, parvana did not realize of the thing she was able of doing. while her mother, fattima, finally found her strength after she was about to lose her life and she had to save her first daughter, sorraya, and her baby boy, zaki. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 42-50 49 this shows that the institutionalized culture by taliban was deeply rooted, making each individual loses her strength and confident to decide and act upon her life. compared to the novel version, the movie was considered inconsistence in the portraying the struggle of women in afganisthan. the movie version imprisonned parvana through the story she created, in which a boy became the story hero. while in the novel version, the made up story about sulayman was not found. the movie sadly used male character as the hero, as the subject, above parvana, making the depiction of pervana as strong girl soften and still marginalized by the shadow of her late brother. conclusion using cda, especially feminist stylistics approach, this article has shown that the breadwinner represents women as two opposing dimensions. the first, women representation is as an object of man domination, representated by taliban, in aganisthan context. the second representation is that women becomes the subject, being able to speak on behalf of her own way of thinking, being able to take decision on what to do next. the discussion has also shown that although this movie tried to take readers to see what happened to women in taliban in the hope that women all over the world support one another, still the phantom of patriarchy lingers. the use of story made up by parvana to calm the situation spoils the strong representation of women, due to the creation of male hero in the story. it seems that it wants to perpetuate the statement that women can not survive without men. however, the story that pervana made up was only found in the movie, while in the original novel version this story was not found. feminist stylistics has suggested ways to approach texts and reveal the latent condition carried by the text, especially related to gender issues. a text carries its writer ideology and the elements around the text making. as readers, reading the text critically will help to understand the hiiden agenda that the text would like to convey. a text, like the breadwinner, tries to communicate with the readers in two ways directions. first, the text conveys the message from the author, and second the readers perceive the text as a tool to focalize their marginalized conditions. references ashori, d.s. (2016). gender cognition in religious discourse: a study of framing in thematic holy koran interpretation. indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 6(1), pp. 88-98. babaii, e. & rashed m. (2017). representation of social actors in chinua achebe’s novel things fall apart and its two persian translation. translation & interpreting, 9(2), pp. 151 – 165. coffey, l. (2013). gender matters: feminist linguistic analysis sara mills (2012). gender and language, 7(3), pp. 405 – 408. ellis, d. (2002). parvana. new south wales: allen & unwin. eriyanto. (2001). analisis wacana: pengantar analisis teks media. yogyakarta: lkis. fairclough, n. (1995). critical discourse analysis: the critical study of language. london: longman. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 42-50 50 fairclough, n., & wodak, r. (1997). critical discourse analysis. in t. van dijk (ed.), discourse studies: a multidisciplinary introduction. sage, 2, 258 – 284. lehtonen, s. (2007). feminist critical discourse analysis and children’s fantasy fiction – modelling a new approach. presented at "past, present, future – from women’s studies to post-gender research" 14-17 june, 2007, umeå, sweden. mills, s. (1998). feminist stylistics. new york: routledge. mills, s. & mullany l. (2011). language, gender and feminism: theory, methodology and practice. new york: routledge. mills, s. (1992). knowing your place: a marxist feminist stylistic analysis. language, text and context: essays in stylistics, 182-205. the breadwinner. (2017). film. directed by nora twomey. usa: aircraft pictures, cartoon saloon, mélusine productions, canadian broadcasting corporation (cbc), gaia entertainment, gkids, guru animation studio, jolie pas productions. english subtitle. https://opensubtitles.co/downloadsubtitle/the-breadwinner-2017_98096 ulinnuha, roma et al. (2013). critical discourse analysis: theory and method in social and literary framework. indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 3(1), pp. 115-125. van djik, teun a. (2015). critical discourse analysis. the handbook of discourse analysis, second edition. edited by deborah tannen, heidi e. hamilton, and deborah schiffrin. new jersey: john wiley & sons, inc. https://opensubtitles.co/download-subtitle/the-breadwinner-2017_98096 https://opensubtitles.co/download-subtitle/the-breadwinner-2017_98096 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 243–252 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 243 promoting environmental awareness in learning contexts dirtya s. paradewari, anchieta a. avillanova, and aloysia b. lasar sanata dharma university yogyakarta gisellarin@gmail.com, anchieta.ave@gmail.com, and aloysia.lasar@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010213 received october 28, 2017; revised january 18, 2018; accepted february 4, 2018 abstract a bundle of studies in multidisciplinary context has been conducted concerning the earth changes. as we are now witnessing the destruction that our earth is suffering from, promoting environmental awareness becomes visible to be vital. in line with the rapid development of information mobility and technology, english is becoming world’s language. the scope of english users then proved to be continuously in growth. therefore, english as foreign language (efl) learning context is considered ideal to promote the environmental awareness. there are some evidence that support the way of promoting the environmental awareness in the educational context. moreover, pike and shelby (1994) point out consciousness in various aspects as the desired result for promoting environmental awareness through education. this paper elaborates those evidence and discusses the aims of global environmental education. keywords: narratology, physical structure, mental structure, semantic axis introduction our earth is now becoming brittle compared to decades ago. there are so many environmental issues which are facing by the human in this world as a consequence of the earth changes. sovacool (2014) presents that there are four main environmental issues, namely: “climate change, air pollution, water availability and quality, and land-use change”. climate change becomes an egregious threat for all of the people around the world. however, there are still many people who are not aware of this issue and not realize that humans are changing the earth’s climate (cicerone & nurse, 2014). then, air pollution becomes the next issue that is concerned. “there are two kinds of air pollution, namely, indoor and outdoor air pollution”. indoor air pollution can be caused by the heat of stoves used in the house. besides, sovacool (2004) states that “outdoor air pollution is significantly caused by energy production and use as about 80% of sulfur dioxide emissions, 80% of particulate matter emissions and 70% of nitrogen oxide emissions come from the energy and transport sectors” (p. 5). water availability and quality turn into the third environmental issue. water is now mostly contaminated because of household activity or commercial industry. mailto:gisellarin@gmail.com mailto:anchieta.ave@gmail.com mailto:aloysia.lasar@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010213 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 243-252 244 this can be dangerous for all creatures since water becomes an important element in life. the last environmental issue is land-use change. our forests are declining because of the needs of many companies which want to get advantages from the forest. therefore, the forests now become quite far from the real function which it is known as lungs of the earth. as environmental issues grow rapidly in today’s life, people need to have the environmental awareness which can help the earth recover the existence. environmental awareness is “an important factor in increasing sustainable behavior or practices and focuses on knowledge of the environmental concerns happening globally as well as strategies for positively impacting these concerns” (gomez, et al., 2015, p. 357). it is vital for people to sustain natural beauty for some reasons, including tourisms (yuniarto, 2017). another factor is its tropical climate. raising environmental awareness can be done by every person who is willing to keep and preserve this earth. public education is one of the means. through public education, ideas and relationship about environmental facts are transferred rather than isolated (minkova, 2002). points and meanings about the environment are the roots of the concern. those aspects are expected to help many people understand and appreciate the environment. in addition, people can learn about environment both formally and informally. formally means they learn it from schools, while informally means that they learn about the environment through many things outside school’s field. as an example of informal way, people can join an environmental organization or learn about the environment through the internet. in this paper, the researchers focus on promoting environmental awareness of the formal schools’ students in efl learning contexts. some schools might have provided an environmental subject to raise students’ awareness of the environment. however, other schools which have not provided that kind of subject in their schools can still promote students’ awareness of the environment through other subjects, for example, english subject. hadzigeorgiou and skoumios (2013) state that “there is an argument to be raised in regard to the difficulty for students to develop environmental awareness, due to the difficulty they have to become involved with the natural world, as their object of study, in the first place” (p. 410). therefore, taking into consideration the background above, english subject is chosen as a tool to promote students’ environmental awareness easier. the objective of this study is to present the importance of promoting environmental awareness in efl learning contexts. promoting environmental awareness in education is important because hadzigeorgiou and skoumios (2013, p. 405) assert that people can be more respect for the environment when they have more responsible behavior. besides, the relationship between people and nature can also be changed through the development of environmental awareness. furthermore, according to hadzigeorgiou (2012, p. 987), as a prerequisite of learning, students have to be able to shift or change their perspective through awareness. therefore, when students learn about environmental in the classroom, they are expected to have different yet better insights about earth and environment. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 243-252 245 theory students learn both formally and informally, they learn in a school and outside of school. in a daily life, they learn natural environment. the natural environment can construct students’ knowledge and experience. the teachers can give the students an assignment to present some environmental issues around them, therefore, it is called as a representational pedagogy. “promoting environmental awareness is considered a crucial goal in the context of education” (slattery, 2003; slattery & rapp, 2003). the importance of this goal is in the interdependence between humankind and the world (richards, 2001; orr, 2003). the students may also use their own experience when they try to present the assignment and it is called the constructivist pedagogy (biesta & osberg, 2007). students have already learned some environmental issues but not all of them are truly conscious what they have learned. learning process needs authenticity, therefore, the students are required to connect the task to their own experience in order to raise their environmental awareness. hadzigeorgiou (2012) suggests the as empirical evidence that awareness also facilitates “a shift or change in perspective, which is a prerequisite for significant learning”. some of the experts in education have an argument in the value of teaching in assisting students to develop a new perspective of a world (jardine, clifford & friesen, 2003, p. 102; peters, 1973, p. 20; schank, 2004, p. 37). the new perspective may lead students to see the new knowledge “in a coherent pattern of a life” (peters, 1966, p. 45). however, the students cannot see the knowledge in a simple way. they should pick things which are appropriate to their own life. "to be educated is not to have arrived at a destination; it is to travel with a different view" (peters, 1973, p. 20). environmental knowledge, attitudes, and actions connect with environmental awareness which has “an effect on students’ attitudes” (dimopoulos, paraskevopoulos, & pantis, 2009). besides that, critical thinking is also linked to environmental awareness (wals, 2011). therefore, the students who are aware of environmental issues may develop their critical thinking and build exemplary attitudes. environmental issues sovacool (2014) explains four main issues in environmental awareness, as follows: climate change is an important issue in environmental awareness. grajal, goldman, and marks (2012, p.1) define climate change as “an observable phenomenon rooted in nearly two centuries of basic science.” people experience the climate change in today’s era. students in a school also experience the climate change. to facilitate the students in understanding better the climate change, the teachers should raise their awareness by adding this phenomenon to the courses. sovacool (2014) states that climate change has the big impacts to the world because it can decrease carbon dioxide (co2) emissions. the climate change is caused by some factors. first, the concentrations of greenhouse gasses are caused the climate change (grajal et al., 2012, p. 2). the greenhouse gasses and carbon dioxide (co2) have risen over the past two hundred and fifty years due to the combustion of fossil fuels. second, the factors caused a climate change is a landuse change. it attributes to the quarter of carbon dioxide (co2) emissions to the atmosphere. the third factor is sulfate aerosol and black carbon. volcanic eruptions may produce a sulfate aerosol because it is a tiny airborne particle. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 243-252 246 some industrial activity may also increase the concentrations of sulfur. those factors may lead to the climate change. after knowing some factors, the students are expected to combat this phenomenon. considering the environmental awareness, air pollution is also the aspect of it. air pollution can harm people if the concentrations in the atmosphere are high. “air pollution may be harmful to the development of the brain and may affect cognitive ability” (calderón-garcidueñas et al., 2008; suglia et al. 2008; wang et al., 2009). mcconnell et al. (2002) claim that pollution is associated with asthma “as well as other respiratory diseases, lower lung function, hay fever and infant mortality”. zweig, ham, & avol (2009, p. 2) describe four mechanisms that affects students’ academic performance. four of the mechanisms are school absenteeism, attention problems, fatigue, and brain development. therefore, the students should learn the effects of air pollution in a classroom. water is the important elements in daily life. people need it to wash, drink, take a bath, and much more. the supply of water must consider the availability and quality of the water itself. “groundwater is the primary source of water” (dennehy et al., 2004). alley et al. (1999) describe a groundwater sustainability is the “development and use of groundwater in a manner that can be maintained for an indefinite time without causing unacceptable environmental, economic, or social consequences”. in schools or outside of school such as a house, the students need water, therefore, to recognize the water availability and quality are necessary things to do. figure 1. land exploitation (source: www.ran.org) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 243-252 247 morara, macopiyo, and kogi-makau (2014, p. 192) describe that the aims of which people exploit the land is land use. the land-use change includes demographic changes, economic changes, policies, and quality changes and access to services and infrastructure (olson, 2006; bebe et al., 2012; mwangi, 2006). the land-use may affect the air pollution. in this case of urban changes will affect human beings in undergoing this life. therefore people should build their own desire to prevent this environmental issues. theory application implementation of promoting environmental awareness regarding the unpleasant effects that we may hear as the prophecy of our future earth, environmental awareness needs to be taken into account as a concern of all. people are campaigning everywhere. industries and companies are competing to produce environmental friendly stuff. however, the effort of preserving our earth has been started even more than three decades ago. early in 1972, “the united nations first put forward the idea of “sustainable development” in its first conference on the human environment, emphasizing that any development must take into account the environment, balancing not only economic and social needs but also the needs of future generations. in the early 1990s, the united nations also worked with the world bank to construct the system of integrated environmental and economic accounting to promote the calculation of green national income” (united nations, 1993). in asia, hong kong government launched a strategic study entitled “sustainable development for the 21st century in hong kong” in 1998 and established the council for sustainable development the next year to plan the long-term development of environmental affairs in hong kong. in wider contexts, environmental awareness is gained through policies, regulations, organizations and community. while in education, the real action should be well-structured and functioned practicality. figure 2. green school (source: www.jawapos.com) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 243-252 248 recently, people start to initiate green schools, also some are to implement environmental-based curriculum in their schools. one of them which is the best we can find in indonesia is “green school bali, a non-profit, private and international pre-kindergarten to high school”. they integrated nature and students-centered approach in learning. they provide facilities and learning environment that vote for earth sustainability. they have enrolled school not only for children from abroad but also for children from indonesia (www.greenschool.org). this becomes visible as a great step of preserving earth through education. teaching environmental issues in efl learning context the main environmental issues are climate change, air pollution, water availability and quality, and land-use change. considering these issues, efl learners should learn how to minimize the effects of that. tang (2009) says that teaching environmental education may raise students’ awareness about the crises of global environmental. students who have a critical thinking may think about the project that they can do to save the world for the global environmental crises. cates (1997) notices that “we cannot call our english teaching successfully if our students, however fluent, are ignorant of word problems, have no social conscience by using their communication skills for international crime, exploitation, oppression, or environmental destruction”. brown (1991) adds that teachers are the agent of change to help students do something for this environmental issues, particularly english teacher. english teachers have an important role to be the agent of change because the language ability they have, it means that the teachers can share the knowledge not only in the country where they live but also other countries. figure 3. sanata dharma’s centre for environmental studies (source: www.usd.ac.id) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 243-252 249 pike and shelby (1994, p. 301) divide five aims for global environmental education. the first is system consciousness in which students should gain the thinking ability “in a system mode, an understanding of the systemic nature, and a holistic conception of their potential”. the second is perspective consciousness in which students are able to discern that the worldview they have is not shared universally and they should build receptivity to other perspectives. the third is the health of planet awareness in which students should acquire the global environmental issues and trends. the fourth is involvement consciousness and preparedness in which students have the choice to choose what the best for this world is and the choice they make, have repercussions for the global nowadays. the last is process mindedness in which students should learn and build a personal development to see the world is vibrant but dangerous. these aims for global environmental may be used by the teachers to make an absorbing teachinglearning process in a classroom. since the environmental issues can be linked to subjects in a school, it can be the bridge the gap between language teaching and other subjects. furthermore, the major international english teachers’ associations such as teaching english to speakers of other languages (tesol) and international association for teachers of english as foreign language (iatefl) have established sections focusing on environmental issues. regarding teaching environmental issues in efl learning contexts, english teachers should not be confused because veselinovska and kirova (2013, p. 1067) suggest four materials that can be used in the classroom in the context of environmental education. the first is that students can bring any articles, audio, video, newspaper, magazine, radio, tv shows, or the internet. pudhika (2016) the use of the toughest place to be a binman video, a video to raise students’ awareness, gives the students meaningful experiences. furthermore, after watching the toughest place to be a binman video, the students are expected to be more aware of the environment around the students, especially the trash. the second, the students can make use of song which contains environmental elements in the lyric. the third is by having a conversation about the latest environmental issues. the fourth, the students and their classmates can develop surveys regarding the environmental issues. through those four kinds of materials, the students are expected to develop their environmental awareness through critical thinking. veselinovska and kirova (2013, p. 1068) express that students will be able to enhance their abilities for critical thinking as well as they develop their language skill through “the inclusion of environmental education in english language teaching”. therefore, the teachers should use the materials wisely and creatively so that the students can develop their critical thinking well. conclusion the evidence which is provided here can be the way to promote environmental awareness to the efl learners. the students should be familiar with the environmental issue because it is important nowadays. if they are not aware of the environmental issues then who will be aware of that? since they are the next generations who will continue to undergo this precious life. yet if students are not aware of environmental issues, they will be regret in the future. the young generations will not experience the good atmosphere to live. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 243-252 250 teachers as the facilitator in a classroom should teach the environmental issues to raise environmental awareness to the students. cates (1990) says that the way teachers teach is important because the students do not have time to sit silently learning. it is the time for students to explore and learn their environment because the environment is a part of the world they live. particularly for those students who can speak different languages such as the english language, they can share to friends from other countries about their experience living in this environment. since learning a language is not only learning its structure but also how to use it in delivering the message and communicating to others. references alley, w. m., reilly, t. e., & franke, o. e. 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(2014). land use, land cover change in urban pastoral interface: a case of kajiado county, kenya. journal of geography and regional planning, 7(9), 192202. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 134-140 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 134 the longing for the beloved: mystical journey behind the homecoming tradition on eid al-fitr in indonesia and songkran inthailand sri hariyatmi mae fah luang university, chiang raithailand sri.hariyatmi@mfu.ac.th doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.020203 received 22 february 2019; revised 5 march 2019; accepted 11 march 2019 abstract on the day of eid al-fitr and songkran celebration, massive exodus from big cities such as jakarta and bangkok to rural areas in indonesia and thailand takes place as people wish to celebrate the tradition with the loved ones at home. hence, this mass departure turns the capital into a temporary desolate city. this paper aimed at unveiling the symbolic meaning behind the largest annual homecoming of family reunion in indonesia and thailand to observe eid al-fitr and songkran feast. this qualitative research examined the symbolisms in these two mostcelebrated festivals in indonesia and thailand calendar that breathe similarity with sufi (islamic mysticism) imagery. by applying hermeneutic approach specifically of paul ricouer as theoretical concept, the finding shows that the main symbolism in eid al-fitr and songkran, the homecoming, demonstrates the core symbolism in sufi tradition. this symbol is a metaphor of union or invitation for union with the beloved as the ultimate point in sufi tradition. keywords: eid alfitr, songkran, homecoming, symbolism, the beloved, union. introduction there is no love but for the first friend whose naked glory you hide under hundreds of veils-annemarie schimmel once in a year in indonesia and thailand, there is an exodus of homecoming that celebrated nationwide to observe the biggest festival in the two countries: eid alfitr and songkran. this annual people mass departure has always turned the bigger cities in the two countries into a temporary deserted city. indonesian and thai people who originally are not the native residents in the cities will travel to their hometowns to visit their parents or relatives and celebrate the tradition. these two celebrations, regardless of the differences in its ritual form breathe commonality that carries the fragrance of humanity. it is therefore worth remembering that despite of the region and religion, there is a fundamental ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 134–140 135 similarity to celebrate different festivals in human cultural expression. similarity is essential as the thing that leads to intercultural understanding is similarities than differences (samover, 2000). this study argued that the commonality between the two traditions, the affectionate longing in the heart of indonesian and thai people to go home and reunite with their loved ones symbolizing the core symbolism in sufi tradition. indonesian and thai people yearn to reunite to their core origin or with the people they love is a symbol of their yearning to something bigger. this yearning will lead them to move forward to god. as everything that people cherish in this world is just a veil or a ladder that will lead them closer to god. hence, there is a saying that “human love is called metaphorical love in contrast to the pure, true, divine love. love of human being is the ladder leading to the love of the merciful” (schimmel, 1982, p.68). the objective of this study is to understand the symbolic meaning behind the homecoming to observe two canonical cultural traditions in indonesia and thailand. accordingly, this study is expected to bridge mutual understanding between indonesian and thai people as i strongly believed that exploring similarities from different civilizations is worth pursuing to deepen our understanding and trust between each other. literature review etymologically, hermeneutic is rooted from classical greek convention. it is derived from the greek term hermeneuein “to interpret” (sinha, 2008, p.8). in addition, the word hermeneutic is originated from the greek mythical creature, hermes. as zeus’s messenger, hermes’s role is to deliver zeus message into a comprehensible language for other gods and goddesses in olympus as well as for the mortal on earth (quito, 1990, p. 8). hermeneutic, as described by ezzy, 2002, p.24 is the “art and science of interpretation.” it is a series of interpreting process to describe human experience in order to comprehend the “core nature of that experience” (sinha, 2018, p.11). thus, “hermeneutic is a process to bring an incomprehensible thing or condition to understanding” (palmer, 1969, p.3). having said that, this study referring to ricouer’s theory of interpretation to understand the role of symbols as delivered by the people exodus to celebrate the two important festivals in indonesia and thailand. in this context, ricouer’s understanding of symbols is drawn as followed: the symbol as it stands means more than one thing; there are different levels of meaning contained in it. the most obvious, or literal meaning hides the figurative meaning but at the same time it also discloses it, since the figurative meaning cannot be grasped except through the literal meaning (blaikie, 1995, p.154). hence, in hermeneutic tradition, it is believed that symbols invite an interpretation as “the symbols give rise to the thought” (ricouer, 1967, p.352). therefore, ricouer’s hermeneutic initiates from “symbols and endeavors to promote the meaning, to form it, by a creative interpretation” (ricouer, 1967, p. 355). it can also be associated with “revealing the unseen” (preminger 1993, p. 517). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 134–140 136 method respondent recruitment and data collection method this study was a qualitative study of a purposive sampling of indonesian and thai students between the ages of 17 and 20. the thai respondents were of chinese language and culture thailand whereas the indonesian respondents were the students of english for academic purpose’s class year 2016, universitas sebelas maret, solo, indonesia. the study was conducted in the first week of february 2019. the respondents were exclusively chosen due to their availability for filling up the questionnaire as well as their cultural exposure to the two most celebrated festivals in this study. primary data collection for this study was attained through questionnaire filling where the respondents had to answer a list of questions given to them to discover the meaning behind their return to their native towns to observe the tradition in this study. in addition to the main data in this study, secondary data was collected from library study and the internet to collect articles, news, blogs, and related stories about the two festivals in this paper. findings and discussion this study aimed at unveiling the symbolic meaning that drives the largest homecoming exodus from big cities in indonesia and thailand in order to celebrate songkran and eid al fitr with their family. in order to find the answer of this study, this paper is divided thematically into two sub-categories: the first subcategorize will highlight a brief introduction of songkran and eid al fitr to provide a better understanding on what is going in the two famous cultural celebrations. the following sub-categorize will primarily be focusing on the symbols that motivate the indonesian and thai people to go home regardless of the external circumstances to spend several days observing the tradition with their beloved people. eid al fitr eid al-fitr is one of the foremost religious celebration in muslim tradition worldwide after they observe thirty days fasting in the holy ramadhan month. eid al fitr is celebrated by muslim across the globe at the end of their fasting month. this muslim special day falls on the first day of shawwal in lunar hijr year (eid al-fitr, n.d.). this day is also widely popular as the day for distributing their blessing in the form of an obligatory alms to the poor and less fortunate people prior to the performing of eid mass, as well as a time to gather with family (satt, 2017, p.3). in indonesia, eid al fitr marks with an exodus of people from big cities in indonesia to their hometown in smaller cities or rural areas to celebrate one of the most significant religious muslim holiday with their loved ones. following all the rituals they have performed, muslim will visit their elders, neighbors, and their friends to greet them and forgiving each other wrongdoings in the past. songkran songkran is the day of celebrating new year in thai traditional calendar which falls on 13 april. however, thai government has extended the holiday from 1216 april to enable the citizen travelling home to reunite with their loved ones at their hometown. the word songkran can be traced back from the sankrit ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 134–140 137 “samkrati” or “astrological passage”, which means to change or to transform (songkran thailand, n.d.). songkran is the day when people who work or study in big cities returning home to reunite with their family in rural areas or smaller cities in thailand. this festival of unity begins by merit making in the early morning, visiting local temples, performing bathing rite, pouring water fragrance on budha images and the monks, donating food to budhist monks, and freeing caged bird back into the sky. another important rite in songkran day is paying homage to the ancestor. on this reunion day, people will pay reverence to the elders by pouring scented water over the palms of their hands. in return, the elders will pray for the youngsters’ fortune and prosperity. following this traditional rituals, people of all ages wills joyously splash water to each other as songkran is also widely known as “water festival’. splashing water to each other symbolizes purification and to wash away ones’ sin and bad luck (chachaidee, 1994). homecoming as the source of happiness most of the respondents in this study come from different city where they currently live. they leave their hometown to pursue their higher education in thailand and indonesia. this circumstance gives them no choice but to taste the bitterness of separation from the love of their family and friends at home. the sadness they feel when they are away from home and their beloved ones symbolizing the pain of separation in sufi tradition. separation, however is something essential, as it is a prerequisite to be closer to the beloved. it is “the element required to propel the traveler forward”, as without it “union cannot be reached” (sinha, 2015, p. 90). therefore, it is important to understand that within separation there is an invitation for union (chittick, 1984, p.232). based on the respondents’ answer, it is obvious that there is an assurance in their disconnectedness from their hometown and family: a promise that out of the sadness from being away from their family there is a glimpse of hope every time they remember that there will be a time for reunion. this is best described in rizal answer who thinks that eid al-fitr is very special as he can heal his lovesick to his hometown and family. “i always feel delighted for eid al-fitr celebration. this is very special to me because my sadness and loneliness from being away from home and family will be wiped away.” thai respondents also shared similar feeling about this issue, “i would be very sad if i didn’t go home for songkran. it is the time in the year that i always waiting for. no….i couldn’t imagine how sad i would be if i couldn’t meet my parents on that day, i have missed them since the last time i met them last year. but i feel happier because songkran is coming closer and i will be home to be with them again” bella explained. opel added, “omg no…..i can’t even think of it. i don’t want to imagine it. my heart would be broken if i don’t meet my mom for songkran. it’s a family reunion, how can i be happy without being among my parents on that day? it’s been hard to leave here in a city without them” these young soul longing for their hometown and families symbolizes the longing of a lover toward their beloved (god) in sufi tradition. in the beginning, they live together with their beloved at their origin, then they have to be separated from them in order to purse their education in different city. artitaya described her feeling: “i have to leave my parents and my old friends to study in chiang ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 134–140 138 rai. it is true that i meet new people and make new friends, but i cannot help feeling sad for leaving them behind. i always miss them and wish to see them again in the future. that is why songkran is so special to me even though there are other holidays too. songkran is a reunion day, it is time for us to go home and reunite with our family.” ainun wrote that being away from home is truly heartbreaking for her and coming home for eid alfitr is the remedy for her heartbreak: “i’ve lived in solo for two years, but still i feel lonely because i miss everything in my hometown in palembang. it is hard to not seeing my parents every day and also my childhood friends. eid al-fitr has a very important meaning for me. i can go home and meet my parents, my friends, and my hometown. it is a day when i can replace my sadness for being far from them with joyous reunion.” with reference to the respondents’ answer above, homecoming can be interpreted as a journey of happiness for them. in homecoming, they find remedy for their loneliness and sadness from being disconnected from their home and family. their separation from their hometown and their yearning to go home are the symbol of a journey that human has to undertake to get closer or to reunite with their beloved. the void they feel in their heart as a result of their separation and the excitement they get from the idea of coming home are the symbols of their consciousness of being separated from god and the intense longing to return to it (hariyatmi, 2015, p.23). homecoming: god invitation for union not only do the thirsty seek the water, the water as well long for the thirsty rumi, mathnavi 1: 1741 homecoming is the annual event that the respondents in this study are waiting for. they are delighted to return home to their family and spend several days to celebrate the two festivals in this study. leaving their hometown, those young people cannot be happier when songkran or eid alfitr day is approaching. at that time, they will return to their origin and spend time with their family and relatives to celebrate songkran or eid al-fitr. “april is coming soon, nothing makes me more excited than counting on the days to meet my mother, it is the time to be reunited with her”, yu said. momay, another respondent confessed that she feels delighted as april is coming soon, meaning she will go home and meet up with her family and friends at her hometown.” i feel like i cannot wait until april. i know it’s still february so i kinda exaggerating, but thinking of april and travelling back home make me so excited.” returning home means a lot for the respondents in this study as they feel happier and it also makes them more ready to go back to their daily routine far from their loved ones. as explained by betty,” homecoming is an annual event that i always wait for. especially now that i am studying in java, far from my parents and family who live in sumatra. i feel so happy even before i go home to meet them and celebrate eid alfitr with them. coming home after all, makes me feel like i am a new born again, being at home with everyone i love and spending several days in my hometown is something that i believe recharging my body and soul. yes…i definitely love going home on eid al-fitr.” similar message also echoes in thai respondents about coming home to observe songkran with their ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 134–140 139 parents and family. for them travelling home when all the flight tickets are more expensive than the tickets price on regular days is something that will satisfy their longing to reunite with their family. junior said that although the flight ticket is very expensive, he would still go home for songkran: “of course i will go home. on that day i can meet my parents as well as my relatives from other provinces. they will come to celebrate new year (songkran). nothing will be more delightful than the happiness i feel to be reunited with my parents and family.” it can be noted from the respondents’ answer above that they yearn to go home and meet their family symbolizes their longing to their original root. as explained in the introduction of this study, human’s love towards their parents, friends, jobs, and any other worldly entities is a ladder leading them into higher form of love. to love is the nature of human and coming closer to their beloved is the only way to maintain the love they have. hence, homecoming is the symbol of invitation that god put in human heart to get closer to him. nonetheless, the affectionate longing that the respondents in this study encounter, is “not their own work, but was called into existence by god’s activity” (schimmel, 1982, p. 131). this can be read from risma answer, she said coming home for eid alfitr is a must for her, despite the obstacles that she has to encounter. she said, “i will always go home in eid al-fitr no matter what. i don’t care about how expensive the flight ticket is or how tiring the trip would be. all those are nothing compared to the joy i would feel when i can see my parents, brothers, and sisters. the money i spend and the exhausting trip i took; all is paid off when i see the smile of my parents.” on similar tone, mata explained that life will provide a way for her to get the remedy of her longing to reunite with her family on thai’s new year. she believes that despite of the high flight ticket price, she would manage to get the affordable one: “it might sound ridiculous, but i always believe that life has always been so generous to me. on songkran celebration, all the price is insane. yet, i always get affordable price when i booked my flight ticket. maybe it’s the blessing of songkran.” from the above respondents’ answer, it may be seen that all longing in human heart along the effort they take to satisfy those affectionate longing is the “primordial divine grace without which they would not have learned” (masignon,1922, p. 610). hence, “no lover can seek union unless the beloved seeks it (schimmel, 1982, p. 131). the affectionate longing in the respondents’ heart is put by the divine grace, inviting them to get closer to him through the love and yearn they feel towards their parents, family, and hometown. conclusion applying ricour’s hermeneutic theory, the present study discovered that despite differences between the largest annual traditions in indonesia and thailand to observe eid al-fitr and songkran, both cultural festivals exhibit one remarkable symbolism that breathes similarity in sufi tradition. the mass exodus of people on the two festivals in this study is triggered by the respondents’ longing to see their hometown and family. the foregoing discussion revealed that the respondents yearn to reunite with their family is the ladder that will bring them to be united with the source of love, god. as presented in preceding sub category, human’s desire is in fact a desire for god which is veiled by diverse things such as love for parents, hometown, job, or money. thus, the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 134–140 140 homecoming, the cultural phenomenal in indonesia and thailand to observe the two canonical religious tradition in the two countries in this study can be seen as metaphor for union or the invitation for union from god in sufi tradition. references blaikie, n. (1995). approaches to social enquiry. cambridge: polity press chittick, & william, c. (1984). sufi path of love. new york: suny press chadchaidee, t. (1994). essay on thailand. bangkok: d.k. today co.ltd eric, g. (2010). introduction to sufism the inner path of islam. indiana: world wisdom. retrieved from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eid_alfitr hariyatmi, s. (2015). the rise of spiritual islam in turkey’s identity quest: understanding orhan pamuk’s oeuvres through sufi framework. (master’s thesis). universitas sanata dharma, yogyakarta. palmer & richard, e. (1969). hermeneutics. evanston: northwestern university press. preminger, a., & brogan, t.v. f. (1993). hermeneutics. in the new princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics. new jersey: princeton university press. quito, e. s. (1990). the philosophers of hermeneutics. manila: de la salle university press. rumi. (2004). the masnavi book i. (jawid, m., trans.). oxford: oxford university press. ricour, p. (1967). the symbolism of evil. (emerson, b., trans.). boston: beacon samovar, l.a. (1998). communication between cultures. california: wadworth publishing house satt, h. (2017). eid mawlid al-nabi, eid al-fitr and eid al-adha; optimism and impact on analysts’ recommendations: evidence from mena region. arab economic and business journal. 12. 57-67. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aebj.2017.04.001 2214-4625/© 2017 schimel, a. (1975). mystical dimension of islam. chapel hill: the university of north carolina press, —. (1982). as throgh a veil: mystical poetry in islam. new york: columbia university press. sinha, l. (2008). unveiling the graden of love. mystical symbolism in layla majnun & gita govinda. indiana: world wisdom. songkran thailand. (n.d.). retrieved from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/songkran_(thailand) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 97-108 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 97 an ecolinguistics analysis of the wind gourd of la’amaomao kristiawan indriyanto universitas gadjah mada correspondence: kristiawan.i@mail.ugm.ac.id doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v5i1.3717 received 7 september 2021; accepted 30 september 2021 abstract this study foregrounds the native hawai’ians’ interconnection between culture and nature through ecolinguistics analysis of the wind gourd of la’amaomao. the language use in this hawai’ian folktale emphasizes the reverence hawai’ian people have toward their environment based on familial kinship. the analysis mainly focuses on two aspects of language use in accordance with stibbe’s theory of ecolinguistics, ideology/discourse and evaluation/appraisal. the study also posits the ecosophy/ecological philosophy derived from the text in consideration with the current state of environmental crisis. the finding argues that the discourse employed in the text is positive, based on recognizing the need of sustainability. the positive discourse is also reflected through close emotional connection between people and place as seen through wind naming pattern and hawai’ian place names. secondly, nature is also appraised positively with celebratory tone and in term of vocabulary used. the study concludes that alternative way of perceiving the environment as seen from the reading of the wind gourd of la’amaomao should be considered as a critique toward western anthropocentrism. keywords: hawai’ian literature, ecolinguistics, language use introduction in recent years, a growing interest of the environment, or the ‘environmental turn’ is observed among scholar of humanities. this issue is intertwined within a burgeoning awareness of environmental problems on a global scale, such as climate change and ozone layer depletion. in the anthropocene era, western’s perception toward nature is considered as one rationalization behind the current environmental crisis which lead into the necessity of perceiving alternative paradigm of human and nature relationship. the epistemology of indigenous people, once criticized as the example of the backwardness of non-western culture is now contemplated as a more sustainable outlook in conceptualizing humanity’s position within a wider ecosystem. (buell, heise, & thornber, 2011) the indigenous perspective on the environment is articulated through their language use and their cultural production. indigenous people, through their interaction and negotiation with the environment have developed detailed system of first-hand knowledge about local environment and their dynamics, as well as the resulting practices, beliefs, institutions, and traditions. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 97-108 98 the sanctity of nature is emphasized through epistemology that emphasizes interconnection of all entities. for native peoples, ecology is the cosmology of interrelatedness. this interdependent orientation includes all things within the ecosphere (planet), as well as above and outside of it (sun, moon, stars, planets, spirits, and ancestors). within the material realm there are humans and nonhumans such as plants, minerals, and animals—what we call ‘‘nature.’’(machiorlatti, 2010, p. 65) the adherence towards nature, reflected in their language, worldview, tradition and cultural production can be observed in hawai’ian indigenous ethnic group/kanaka maoli. hawai’ian indigenous people are a society that conceptualizes nature as the founding tenets of their pre-western contact tradition and is still observed into the contemporary period. hawai’ian conception of nature highly regards nature not only as having intrinsic value by itself but also contains sacred values. nature is foregrounded as the basis of hawai’ian indigenous culture in form of local wisdoms, prohibitions (kapu), genealogical/familial tree from shared ancestry of mythological figure, ancestral knowledge, both orature/oral and written literature. these aspects in hawai’ian tradition exemplifies the centrality of nature within their culture. hawai’ians’ respect toward nature is derived from a shared familial tie that asserts nature as the biological sibling of their ethnic ancestors. the creation myth of kanaka maoli, as canonized in the book of kumulipo (beckwith, 1972) positions the native people of hawai’i as the youngest child from the deities papa and wakea and the islands of the archipelago as their elder siblings. as the youngest sibling, hawai’ian people are responsible to preserve and maintain nature which in turn will repay their kindness through providing provision to sustain living. the kanaka maoli have a genealogical, familial relationship to the land. the islands were said to have been conceived and born like human beings, of the same parents, papahanaumoku who gives birth to islands and wakea, the sky father ‘who creates the stars in the heaven”. (n. k. silva, 2005, p. 22) the principle of reciprocity based on kinship underlines hawai’ian perception of nature. the indigenous people consider nature as their elder sibling, and it is their duty to be the caretaker of the land, a principle different with western epistemology that seek to control and conquer nature. the concepts articulated within hawai’ian language ‘(olelo hawai’i) are the manifestation of an indigenous epistemology based on love and respect of the land. several concepts within the hawai’ian local wisdom positions nature as the source of knowledge. the idiom kama’aina, the child of the hawai’ian land/aina symbolizes an inseparable relationship between the hawai’ian people and their birthland. in line with kama’aina, the concept of malama’aina in which malama can be interpreted as nurturing or caring asserts the responsibility of the hawai’ian islanders to preserve, maintain, and protect the nature as their oldest sibling. a study by nero (1997) illustrates that the word aina, although can be simplified as land in the english translation evoke a much deeper meaning based on the reciprocal relationship between the kanaka maoli and their environment. aina can be ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 97-108 99 interpreted as that which feed us, and the word ai itself is the hawai’ian word for eat, a recognition that it is nature which allows humanity to survive and flourish. furthermore, the word aina is connected with the hawai’ian word for family/ohana, in which ‘oha refers to the branches of taro plant, a plant symbolically believed to be genesis of hawai’ian people. the image of taro plant reflects a hawaiian perspective of family, with both joined in the mutual dependence on the roots. the emotional association between kanaka maoli and aina can also be viewed from the naming of the place, the natural elements, and the certain landmarks in which certain meanings are associated within the naming pattern. in relation to the statement, kimura (1983, p. 178) argue that hawaiian place names further demonstrate the intimate relationship between people and the environment, the evocative power of place stems from alona aina, or love of land, pride of place. hawai’ian indigenous people considers naming pattern to include a story (mo’olelo) that becomes the basis of the name, whether a legend, an appearance of the gods, a historical event, or a natural phenomenon that takes place around the name. (clark, 2002; herman & berg, 1999) a book entitled place names of hawai’i (1966) has summarized 1,125 names of places in hawai’ian language and when the book was reprinted in 1974 with more addition of place names, resulting in 4,000 names of places in overall, the authors concluded that completely record all hawai’ian place names is an impossible task. “how many place names are there or were there in the hawaiian islands? even a rough estimate is impossible: a hundred thousand? a million? hawaiians named taro patches, rocks and trees that represented deities and ancestors, sites of houses and heiau [places of worship], canoe landings, fishing stations in the sea, resting places in the forest, and the tiniest spots where miraculous or interesting events are believed to have taken place.”(pukui, elbert, & mookini, 1974, p. x) story (mo’olelo) is another way of inheriting history, tradition, and belief of the hawai’ian people through orature. ho’omanawanui (2015) has found that the word mo’olelo originates from the combination of two words, olelo, which can be defined as language, word, pronunciation, discussion, and storytelling, and mo’o, a preservation. mo’olelo, as ho’omanawanui asserts can be defined as the preservation of a story recalling the fact that all stories in hawai’i in the past are oral instead of written (p. 86). continuing the elaboration by ho’omanawanui, kay-trask (1991) argues that mo’olelo is one avenue for kanaka maoli to preserve their history. to her understanding, mo’olelo is the retelling of something that had really happened in the past instead of fiction or imaginary thing. the word olelo means both ‘tongue’ and language’, mo’olelo or ‘history’ is everything that comes from the tongue, or a story.(kay-trask, 1993, pp. 141–142) the hawai’ian folktales also have a social function as a tool for preserving the local wisdom and the local knowledge especially in relation to the position of human beings amidst the universe. the other forms of the folktales are parables, sermons, and advices (olelo no’eau) that teach the novel values of hawai’ian culture especially the respect to the elders, the nature, and all of the entities throughout the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 97-108 100 world ((elbert & pukui, 1979; fujikane, 2016; williams, 1997)through olelo no’eau, the older generation (kupuna) preserves hawai’ian conception of nature as part of their family/ohana toward the younger generation. several idioms such as ka la i ka maulioa (sun is the source of life) and he ali’i ka aina, he kaua ke kanaka (land is the chief and mankind are his servant) articulates the ecological wisdom located within hawai’ian local tradition. these proverbs refigure human and nonhuman relationship by emphasizing human’s dependence toward the non-human entities. this study analyzes a hawai’ian folktale, the wind gourd of la’amaomao to further establish the close connection between language use and adherence toward the environment in hawai’ian tradition. ecolinguistics approach is applied as it focuses on the study of language according to the environment it is used to, or in other words, exploring the interconnection between nature and culture. from an ecolinguistics perspective, the environmental language and language environment are considered as metaphorical expressions which explain the correlation between the linguistics and environmental sciences. the analysis mainly explores the love and respect toward the environment from language used to describe the environment, mainly concerns with the naming pattern of various hawai’ian winds and place names. theoretical framework ecolinguistics is the study of languages in relation to one another and to various social factors which is also known as language ecology or linguistic ecology. the seminal theory of this field is often associated to einar haugen through his book, the ecology of language (1972). haugen mainly discusses the lexicons contained in environmental discourse text and proposes his definition of ecolinguistics as the study of interactions between any given language and its environment. the word ecolinguistics includes both the term eco -a shortened form of ecology correspondents with the relationship among organism, including human with other organism and the physical environment and linguistic itself, the study of human speech. (theorist) from an ecolinguistic perspective, the environmental language and language environment are considered as metaphorical expressions which explain the correlation between linguistic aspects and the environment which is negotiated through the use of language. it is further noted that ecolinguistics is the study of the impact of language on the life-sustaining relationships among humans, other organisms and the physical environment. it is normatively orientated towards preserving relationships which sustain life. in other words, ecolinguistics is concerned with how language is involved in forming, maintaining, influencing or destroying relationships between humans, other life forms and the environment. (alexander & stibbe, 2014, p. 104) thus, ecolinguistics contextualizes the role of language within an interaction that sustains the lives of humans, other species, and the physical environment (peranginangin & dewi, 2020). one particular example of cultural production which grows, develops, and reflects the socio-cultural condition of a given society is folklore, a form of oral literary works which was born and developed in a relatively fixed time among certain communities. folklore can be interpreted as the example of a society’s https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-language-1691218 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 97-108 101 cultural expression through speech language which is directly linked with various aspects of socio-cultural structure of a particular society. furthermore, how a society contextualizes the environment and their position within a wider ecosystem is also reflected through folktale. machiorlatti (2010, p. 65) affirms how folktale contains the indigenous discourse of ecology, the cosmology of interrelatedness which includes all things within the ecosphere/planet and also on spiritual realms such as spirit and ancestors. in his book, ecolinguistics : language, ecology and the stories we live by (2018), stibbe posits an ecological framework derived from the analysis of language pattern in stories. stibbe comprehends how stories inherited by various individuals across a culture, or what he coins as ‘stories we live by’, can either perpetuate or hinder current ecological crisis. these stories, as stibbe argued are embedded within language and culture and reflected in metaphors, appraisal patterns, and a variety of linguistic features and/or visual elements. (poole, 2017, p. 524) in his understanding, there exist eight forms that story takes and their linguistic manifestations. 1. ideology: how the world is and should be which is shared by members of a group 2. framing : a story that use a frame (a packet of knowledge about an area of life) to structure another area of life 3. metaphor: a story that use a frame to structure a distinct and clearly different area of life 4. evaluation: a story about whether an area of life is good or bad 5. identity : a story about what it means to be a particular kind of person 6. conviction: a story about whether a particular description of the world is true, uncertain or false 7. erasure : a story that an area of life is unimportant or unworthy of consideration 8. salience : a story that an area of life is important and worthy of consideration. (stibbe, 2015, p. 15) stibbe concurs that the aforementioned linguistic features should be appraised within an ecosophy (a shortening of ecological philosophy) that contemplates the norms and values that regulate human’s position inside a wider ecology. stibbe derives his conception of ecosophy in one word, “living”, which is based on the necessity of valuing and respecting all entities right to live, to live with wellbeing both in the current era and sustaining the earth for future generation. (2015, p. 14) it can be phrased that this ecosophy is intended to form a beneficial discourse toward environment and presenting a more sustainable outlook for generations to come. findings and discussions the wind gourd of la’amaomao or moolelo hawaii o pakaa a me ku-a-pakaa, na kahu iwikuamoo o keawenuiaumi, ke alii o hawaii, a o na moopuna hoi a laamaomao in hawai’ian is an example of an adaptation of hawai’ian oral tradition into written form. the original version was adapted from the recounting of ku-apaka’a by moses nakuina and was compiled as a newspaper serial in ke aloha aina in the 1900’s. this story had been translated into english several times, included in william hyde rice’s hawai’ian legends (1923), an abridged version in thomas g. thrum’s more hawai’ian folktales (1923) and the backbone of the king (1966) by ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 97-108 102 dorothy kahananui. the current translation to english was done by esther t mookini and sarah nakoa in 1990 and was revised in 2005. while prior translations of the wind gourd of la’aamaomao were only a simplification or summary of the narration, the 2005’s version as the object of this study is a complete translation which includes all the plot points and chants. the story mainly focuses of the three generations of the kahu iwikuamo’o/personal attendant of keaweanuia’umi, the ruling chief of hawai’i, the grandfather kuanu’uanu, his son paka’a and his grandson kua-paka’a. while on a journey to o’ahu, kuanu’uanu marries a beautiful woman named la’amaomao and have a son, paka’a with her. after being summoned by his liege, kuanu’uanu is forced to return to hawai’i and left his family behind. after paka’a reaches adolescence, his mother gives him a mythical gourd containing all the winds of the hawai’ian islands and the chant required to summon the wind. paka’a ventures to hawai’i, meets his father and eventually replace him as the personal attendant of keaweanui’umi. later in the story, paka’a is betrayed by two other attendants of keaweanui’umi, ho’okele-i-hilo and ho’okelei-i-puna and exiled to moloka’i. during his time in moloka’i, he gets married and have a son named kua-paka’a. meanwhile, his former chief grows dissatisfied with his new attendants and seeks to restore paka’a to his former position. although paka’a is willing to return, he understands that as long as his rivals remains in the court, his position remain unsecure. he sends his son kua-paka’a to employ the wind gourd and make sure his rivals get lost in open sea. the story ends with the reunification of paka’a and his liege, keawenuia’umi and the restoration of paka’a former rank and lands. as a cultural production of the hawai’ian indigenous people, the wind gourd of la’amaomao provides an avenue to contextualize kanaka maoli’s reverence toward nature. this conception of nature, underlined through the narration, articulates the dominant discourse of the kanaka maoli which is beneficial or positive in outlook. as articulated by stibbe, discourses can be defined into several examples depended of their position toward nature and current environmental crisis, destructive discourses, ambivalent discourses, and beneficial discourses. the discourse underlined in the wind gourd of la’amaomao is beneficial in outlook and it provides a counter discourse toward western reductionist view of nature by emphasizing the need for sustainability. in the text, the concept of sustainable living is articulated through the existence of annual fishing season and proverb advocating preservation. the fishing for malolo (flying fish) for example is only allowed on may until june. “ka’elo (mayjune) was when the first malolo was eaten and malolo was so plentiful that the fishermen’s container were full to the brim.” (nakuina, 2005, p. 108) the existence of kapu protected these fish from being overfished and killed during their spawning seasons, hence insured their survival. kapu (taboo) were enacted on several aspects, limiting how much can be taken from both the land and the sea, kanaka maoli employs conservation in fishing, hunting, and gathering of resources. furthermore, a hawai’ian proverb recounted in the text illustrates the necessity of sustainable living, “he wa’a he moku, he moku he wa’a which can be translated as the canoe is an island, and the island is the canoe. (nakuina, 2005, p. 23) embarking on a canoe voyage requires rationing of resources, water, food and contribution from all people abroad, similarly, the hawai’ian isle in particular and earth in general requires sustainable living to preserve it for the future generation. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 97-108 103 the close emotional connection between the hawai’ians and their surroundings, as a reflection for a positive discourse of environmentalism can also be observed in the naming pattern. as briefly illustrated in the prior section, hawai’ian naming pattern is associated with stories / mo’olelo related with local legends, folktale, historical occurrences, or natural phenomena. the importance of naming in the wind gourd of la’amanaonao mainly focuses on two aspects, variety of winds in hawai’ian archipelago and place names. nash (2015) asserts that place names/toponym is an important cultural and environmental artifacts belonging to a nation and its language. in the story, kua-paka’a demonstrates his proficiency in hawai’ian ancestral tradition by memorizing the wind names in the island of hawai’i, o’ahu, kau’ai and moloka’i through various chants. hawaiian chants, as reflected in the wind gourd of la’amanao create a distinct naming pattern for wind and rain which was observed or experienced in a particular place. the diversity of wind naming pattern based on a particular locality in hawai’ian islands is articulated through the following chant here, there are the winds rising from the earth, the apa’apa’a is of kohala apa’apa’a is of kohala’s upland cliffs the wind that flies about like vapor the raining wind called naulu is of kawaihae the kipu’upu’u is of waimea a cold wind that hurts the skin a wind that whips the kapa of that land about (nakuina, 2005, p. 42) the presiding passages, recounting a chant in the wind gourd of la’amanao illustrates the interconnection between culture and nature in hawai’ian language. while the general vocabulary for wind in olelo hawai’i is makani, there exist naming convention associated with variety of winds due to certain characteristics and its location. the wind apa’apa’a is the name of a famous wind from kohala, north western tip of hawai’i island located on the slope of extinct volcano mauna lea. located in the intersection between sea, mountainous cliffs and slope, a distinct characteristic of this wind is its ferocity, as the winds crosses the channel with such force than the tree on the coastline lean toward the mountain. different with apa’apa’a, naulu is a convection wind that precede rain, originated from the word ulu (to grow). hawai’ian people of old considers the forming of convectional clouds to resemble a plant growing out from the ground, which lead into the naming of naulu for a wind in kawaihae. (oliveria, 2009)the place name kawaihae itself is derived from three words, ka (the), wai (fresh water) and hae (something torn) which can be translated as fresh water that separate people. this name originated from the historical circumstances concerning the limited availability of fresh water in hawai’i which lead to constant warfare to acquire water spring. other example is the naming pattern of kipu’upu’u, a swift and powerful rain in the wai’mea which is described in the text as ‘a cold wind that hurts the skin” as it blows away from snowcapped mauna kea. historically, the name kipu’upu’u as a symbol for ferocity and tenacity is taken by the personal guard of king kamehameha the unifier who were trained in wai’mea, an area believed to be haunted due to constant rain. (pukui et al., 1974, p. 56) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 97-108 104 another chant recounted in the text stresses that the hawai’ian naming pattern is not localized in a particular island but is a convention held all over the archipelago. kua-paka’a inherited the generational legacy of kanaka maoli in form of wind naming pattern and place names through the chant that describe the variety of wind in maui island. there, there, the windy clouds rest, the paliale is hilo’s wind paki’ele is of waiakea hana’s winds are ‘ai-maunu, kaomi, kapae ho’olua, lauawaawa pailopaowa, halemauu kui, kona ; the wind paliale which blows in hilo region is derived from the word pali (cliff), in which the translation can be defined as cliff wind from below. as a place name, hilo which literally means ‘to braid or twist’ derives its name from a legend concerning kamehameha and his follower, in which kamehameha was angry that his follower left the canoe unattended but it is later found out that the canoe has been twisted with cordage. different with the hilly terrain of hilo, waiakea which is derived from wai (water) can be translated as broad waters, due to the fact that this particular region gets almost 360 days of rain a year. the wind that blows in waiakea is named paki’ele, derived from the word paki (to splash) which indicate the wet nature of waiakea’s wind due to high rainfall. lastly, the diverse variety of wind names in hana is linked with its location in the central tip of maui island. being close to the shorelines of hawai’i island, the name of the wind changes depending of the direction of the trade wind. kaomi refers to northeast trade wind, kapae indicates trade wind in general and ho’olua is named for strong north wind which is generated by storm system passing north of the islands. the prior exposition highlights how the distinctive tropical climate of an archipelago results in the diversity of place names and wind naming pattern depending of the situation. another example of reverence toward nature as the provider of life is the celebratory vocabularies employed to praise the tropical weather of hawai’ian isle. the beauty of natural landmarks, both sunny days and rainy days, and the rich bounties provided by nature is considered as a blessing by the hawai’ians gods especially the four pantheons, ku, kane, kanaloa, and lono. silva articulates that a pule (prayer) was addressed to both the spirits and ancestors/aumakua in four wind direction so that the people will be blessed in turn. (2019, p. 83) the feeling of gratitude is reflected through the language uses that celebrates nature as source of life. stibbe (2015, pp. 86–87) identifies appraisal pattern – whether something is described as either positive or negative in textsto highlight the perception of feeling toward a particular area in live. the positive appraisal of nature in the wind gourd of la’omaomao can be observed in the following chants, the rain falls the misty, sticky, rain of hanakani gentle and passing is the rain, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 97-108 105 muddy and wet is the sand (nakuina, 2005, p. 35) the rain draws the school of nehu seaward of punahoa the adze-headed rain in the unulau wind the lehua blossoms open in the zigzagging rain, the warm rain of the land of hilo the land of kuluku’a (nakuina, 2005, p. 43) appraising language use within the preceding chant articulates how nature in kanaka maoli’s conception is portrayed in a positive light. several positive appraisal items in the prior chants are ‘gentle’ ‘passing’ and ‘warm’ which evoke the nurturing aspect of nature and encourage the islanders to embrace the beauty of their surrounding landscape within pleasant weather. another example of positive appraisal items that celebrates the bountiful nature can be seen in the phrase “the rain draws the school of nehu” which indicates how the islanders can more easily caught nehu fish after rainfall. the rain causes the sea to blow up the nehu fish in rows until they rest in the calm sea of la’akona. (titcomb, 1972, p. 112) moreover, relating rainfall with the blossoming of lehua, a colorful flower used in hula dances also articulated the positive appraisal of nature through the interconnection between natural phenomena and wild plants necessary for hawai’ian cultural performances. while the word ‘misty’ might evokes negative perception due to being the opposite from warm weather, its hawai’ian word, ‘ohu can be translated as mist, fog, vapor, or light cloud in a mountain. interpreting ohu as light cloud in a mountain evokes the image of a wreath around the neck which aligns with a positive appraisal of nature. the positive appraisal of nature in hawai’ians’ conception is further rooted within a sense of respect and acknowledgement of nature’s own agency. different from western epistemology that seeks to control and exploit nature, (marzec, 2007, p. 36) kanaka maoli recognizes the agency of nature as something beyond human comprehension. the hawai’ians’ islanders believe that all entities, both biotic and abiotic elements possess mana (power) in which natural phenomena, considered as the manifestation of gods’ power in earth contains mana in particularly large amount. this recognition of nature’s agency conceptualizes human as powerless in the face of natural disaster and only capable to predict instead of manipulating nature. the knowledge of wind patterns and able to predict when storm will occur is a necessity skill in pre-contact hawai’i which employs canoes are the principal medium of transportation. in the wind gourd of la’omaomao, it is narrated that paka’a and his son kua-paka’a is learned in both the laws of the skies and nature of the earth through their knowledge of various wind patterns, astronomy, and navigation. kuapaka’a convinces the voyage of keaweanuia’umi to land ashore in moloka’i as a terrible storm will soon occurs “tomorrow is a calm day for sailing ; today will be stormy ; there are thick cumulus clouds resting above kawainui and the ridge of wailau, when these clouds are blown with full force, a terrible storm will rage ; when the clouds are at rest again, then good weather will follow.” (p. 38) the prior passage contextualizes hawai’ians’ respect for the uncontrollable agency of nature. as a pre-modern society in which technological progress to safely ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 97-108 106 venture in the open seas during stormy weather is limited, ability to observe the sign of nature is essential for inter-island navigation. inability to interpret the changing weather can lead into disastrous consequences, as highlighted through the following passage which emphasizes the danger of nature toward unprepared individuals. a big storm overtook the canoe. the winds blow hard, driving the canoe out into the open sea. the skies darkened, lighting flashed, thunder roared, and rain pelted down. the storm was boundless. the canoe was buffeted by the wind, and kaua’i almost disappeared. (p. 83) the beneficial environmental discourse and positive appraisal of nature in the wind gourd of lao’maomao aligns with the need of contextualizing alternative perception of environment in light of current ecological crisis. different with western conception that nature exist for the humanity’s benefits, kanaka maoli recognizes the need for sustainability, having deep seated emotional attachment with their surroundings, and understanding nature as having its own agency. (lynch & glotfelty, 2012, p. 6). the wind gourd of lao’maomao underlines the epistemology of aloha aina (love for the earth and all its entities), based on the hawai’ians’ conception of nature based on familial ties. to the hawai’ians, as the land and all the entities are part of their extended family (ohana), they have to treat it with care and respect in a reciprocal relationship. (indriyanto, 2020, p. 4) this story promotes an ecological philosophy/ecosophy founded on ecological sustainability, equality among all entities and harmonious living with nature. the positive appraisal of nature contemplates nature as something to be valued, respected, and celebrated. positioning the analysis of the wind gourd of lao’maomao, within the realization of current environmental crisis, it can be asserted that the ecosophy goes beyond sustainability to present generation, but to find alternative environmental discourse that seeks to restore the harmful deeds humanity has done toward the environment. conclusion ecolinguistics analysis of the wind gourd of la’amaomao underlines hawai’ians’ epistemology based on the interconnection between culture and nature. language use in the wind gourd of la’amaomoa articulates the love and respect hawai’ian people have toward their environment based on familial ties. the analysis mainly concerns with two aspects of language use as articulated by stibbe’s theory of ecolinguistics, namely ideology/discourse and evaluation/appraisal and the ecological philosophy derived from the narration. the study argues that the discourse employed in the text is positive, based on recognizing the need of sustainability. the positive discourse is also reflected through close emotional connection between people and place which is reflected in wind naming pattern and hawai’ian place names. secondly, nature is also appraised positively as seen in the celebratory tone and vocabulary used. these arguments illustrate an ecosophy based on ecological sustainability, equality among all entities and recognition of nature as having its own agency and intrinsic values. this ecosophy explores the necessity of finding alternative ways of conceptualizing environment as a critique to western anthropocentrism. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 97-108 107 references alexander, r., & stibbe, a. 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(1997). from the mountains to the sea : early hawaiian life. honolulu: kamehameha schools press. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 22-31 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 22 locating digital literature in world literature: a case of quarterly literary review singapore kristiawan indriyanto gadjah mada university kristiawan.i@ugmail.ugm.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.020103 received 20 july 2018; revised 1 august; accepted 3 september 2018 abstract although not to the full extent of south or east asian literature, southeast asian (sea) literature written in english has begun to reach wider prominence. it is important to underline that sea literature have begun to embrace online or digitalized literature to complement the existence of printed literature. in line with the rising popularity of digital literature, this paper highlights the annual publication of quarterly literary review singapore (www.qrls.com) which encompasses several literary genres, from poetry, short stories and literary criticisms. although originally established to raise the awareness regarding singaporean literature, later publication has extended its scope into south east asian and even diasporic writers. through reading on several short stories in this annual publication, this paper emphasizes two main concerns. (1) what are the prevalent values and themes addressed by the (selected) short stories published therein and (2) how does the existence of digital literature problematizes the concept of world literature as it is theorized by goethe and damrosch? the analysis concludes that digital short stories published in www.qrls.com offer broad varieties of themes which enrich south east asian literature field and should be considered into discussion regarding world literature as classroom materials. keywords: world literature, south east asian literature, digital literature introduction in this modern era, english has been used as the language for global communication in which literature as one media of transmitting information is not an exception. the prominence of english as global language makes the circulation of literature easier as literary works now circulates in multiple directions, no longer limited from the metropolitan center to the colonial periphery. (damrosch, 2009-, p. 106) moreover, as a shared language, literature written in english functions also to foster intercultural communication among its readers. in the preface of a rainbow feast: new asian short stories, an anthology of southeast asian short stories, quayum remarks that http://www.qrls.com/ http://www.qrls.com/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 22-31 23 literature in english is…not confined to a culture-tight compartment and therefore, it can help establish better understanding between various ethnic groups and nations through the articulation, appreciation, and understanding of each other’s values, histories, and cultures (2010, p. 25) among asian literature in english, it can be seen that south and east asian literature has a marked advantage in pioneering the use of english and also their longevity in literary production. as early as 1910s, the famous rabindranath tagore won the nobel prize in literature with the translation of his poems such as gitanjali, manasi, and sonar tori. tagore’s recognition in the west is soon followed by a japanese writer, ryunosuke akutagawa through his short stories, rashomon (1915) and yabu-no-naka (in a grove). akutagawa is noted for embracing modernist characteristics which dismantle the archetypical genre of the showa period (lippit, 1999, p. 30). besides poetry and short stories, novel also flourishes as one genre among south asian literature. during the colonial period, ahmed ali’s twilight of delhi (1940) recalls the glory days of india before the advent of the western colonizer, throughout “the era of kauravs, pandavs…babur…humayun, and jahaghir.” (1940, p. 4) specifically focusing on sea countries, singapore has been a leading proponent in using english as the language used in literature production. summarizing the growth of singapore as an english-speaking country, a fact highlighted also in their literature, patke notes that “the first attempts of poetry in english in the late 1940’s….is synonymous with the growth of singapore as a small, rapidly modernizing metropolis” (2000, p. 293). several notable pioneers of singaporean literature, especially poems are wang gungwu’s pulse (1950), litmus ones (1958) and 30 poems (1958). in this contemporary era, english continues to be prevalent as the primary language of singaporean literature as seen in the publication of several notable novels such as the art of charlie chan hock chye by sonny liew in 2016 and also simon tay’s city of small blessing (2009). the development of singaporean literature also encompasses literature which is uploaded online or known as digital literature. this phenomenon can be seen in annual publication of a singaporean online journal entitled quarterly literary review singapore (www.qlrs.com). ever since its first issue in october 2001, this online journal consistently publishes their annual yearly publication with the most recent issue of vol. 17 in april 2018. although originally intended to “promote the literary arts in singapore, to stimulate the feedback mechanisms in the literary scene, and to develop singaporean writers to international standards”, in its expansion this journal has accepted submission from other sea writers, diasporic writers and even western expatriates. encompassing a wide spectrum of literary genre from poetry, short stories, essays and literary criticisms, the annual publication is reviewed by a board of editors to insure the quality of the online publication. by analyzing several short stories published online in www.qlrs.com, this paper aims to shed some insight on the incorporation of digital literature into world literature. how singaporean literature has begun to embrace the development of digital literature can be seen as one solution to bridge the gap between sea and other asian literature. in this modern era where everything is digitalized, literature does not only circulate by their printed version but also by the digital copies, one http://www.qrls.com/ http://www.qrls.com/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 22-31 24 notable example being google books. sanz, for example, considers that the launching of google books in 2004 is “the symbolic turning point when the techniques of storage, transfer, and processing of information became a must on a global scale.” (2017:16) moreover, several digital literature especially the ones uploaded in qlrs website are primarily intended for digital readership and no printed version is available. different from the ‘classical’ printed model of literature such as novels, anthologies and romance, digital literature in this case is a form of literature born in the digital world, i.e., the text was created on a laptop for example, and uploaded to a blog or webpage for online reading. although digital media offers one avenue to popularize sea literature, several questions should firstly be addressed regarding digital literature. firstly, what about the quality of the literature itself? indeed, anyone can write and then upload either on their personal blogs or social mediawith which some kind of editorial control remains needed to differentiate between “high” and “low” literature. secondly, what about the themes? and lastly, how to locate digital literature as one example of world literature? several leading theorists of world literature such as goethe, damrosch and moretti theorize their differing definition of world literature based on printed literature. the circulation of digital literature differs significantly compared to the classical one, as basically after uploading to the internet the texts are able to read globally. henceforth, the existence of digital literature then problematizes the previously accepted convention of world literature. method this subsection is intended to contextualize two main aspects regarding the definition of digital/electronic literature and world literature. the development of electronic literature is inseparable with the rapid ascent of technological advancement, especially in the field of computer and internet or mobile networking. as summarized by montfort (2007:172), computer enables digital literature to represent events by directly outputting narrative text, graphics and sounds. this statement confirms that digital literature can take full advantages of their medium by simultaneously provides its readers with audio-visual reception. moreover, digital literature is advantaged by their connection with the internet, in which basically “narratives of personal experience is now possible to be shared with millions of strangers.” (ryan, 2005, p. 18). since anybody with an internet connection can publish his or her own weblog, there is a great variety in the quality, content, and ambition of weblogs, and a weblog may have anywhere from a handful to tens of thousands of daily readers. (walker, 2005, p. 97). the increasing influxes of digital literature can threaten the dominance of printed literature. some even go as far to suggest “pronouncements of the death of the novel became increasingly frequent and strident as the twentieth century progressed and varieties of visual and electronic media became more influential. (mancing, 2005:538) moving into the discussion of world literature, this concept has been questioned and constantly revised since its conception. world literature is first theorized by goethe through his concept of welt literature which anticipates the emergence of a universal world literature. (pizer, 2000, p. 215) writing in the 1800s, goethe is convinced “that a universal world literature is in the process of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 22-31 25 formation” (cited in prendergast, 2004, p. 3) that literature must not only be read and circulated in their nation but should be able to reach wider, even global audience. goethe’s seminal concept is further refined by damrosch’s assertion that world literature encompasses all literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their original language.” (2000, p. 9). moreover, in this modern era, most literature circulates via translation. (damrosch, 2009, p. 65) which highlights the easier accessibility of literary production among the global community. damrosch highlights the notion that circulation of world literature is inseparable with the issue of publication. book publishers are the one that firstly select whether a manuscript is deemed suitable for publication and whether it will be able to attract wider readership. moreover, the circulation of literature such as novels, anthologies of poetries and also short stories from their country of origin has been a pivotal landmark in the informational exchange since the colonial era especially the how novel as the pre-eminent example of western literature is transmitted from europe to latin america. (siskind, 2010, p. 336). it can be asserted that circulation and publication plays quite a notable role in world literature, which makes this classical model of literature differs from the digitalized one. damrosch’s statement that any literature becomes world literature whenever it is circulated beyond their country of origin is scrutinized when it concerns digital literature as it is uploaded into a virtual media with global scope. it is particularly emphasized through sanz’s statement; digital literature is “literature born to circulate on the internet” (2017, p. 16) that affirms the primacy of internet in circulating digital literature. locating digital literature within world literature, it is clear that the previously accepted definition of world literature still does not recognize the increasing prominence of digital literature. it is worrying, as even as early in the turn of the millennium apparadurai already asserts that “public spheres are increasingly dominated by electronic media” (2000, p. 22) in which literary field is not an exception. yet, the emergence of digital literature is still rather neglected by the discussion of world literature specially concerning canonical world literature. the concept of ‘opening up the canon’ (gulliory, qtd in damrosch, 2003, p. 8) by complementing the classical canonical literature with lesser known literary production should also begin to incorporate the emergence of digital literature. circulation and publication, as previously asserted by damrosch become one problematic area to incorporate digital literature especially into canonical world literature. as the screening for publishing online literature is negligible compared to the printed world, skepticism then arises whether digital literature is qualified enough to be considered an example of canonical world literature. to further contribute in the ongoing debate regarding the incorporation of digital literature into the canonical world literature, this paper analyzes several short stories published online in quarterly literary review singapore and argues that the stories published there are worthy to be considered as canonical world literature. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 22-31 26 findings and discussion this section focuses on analyzing several short stories published online in www.qlrs.com with two major emphases : (1) identifying several overreaching themes and values addressed in several texts and (2) arguing that the definitions of world literature as previously theorized by goethe and damrosch still do not cover the emerge of digital or electronic literature. in turn, this paper argues that the short stories uploaded in quarterly literary review singapore (henceforth qlrs) should be placed into consideration when concerning canonical world literature especially asian literature in english. qlrs has been a prolific journal, since the seminal launching of qlrs website in 2001, there has been 17 volumes of qlrs which signifies the 17 years of this online journal. moreover, as each volume in one year encompasses three until four publications, it can be noted that this journal has uploaded sufficient works, the website itself summarizes a total of 252 short stories. from this anthology, this paper aims to provide a brief chart of overreaching themes from several short stories. one of the most prevalent theme of qlrs publication is nostalgia concerning the past and how the shifting timeframe alienated the protagonist in the present era. one short story, oh-chien by lydia kwa focuses on the main character, millee’s reminiscence with oh-chien (fried oyster) and how her recollection of eating oh-chien in the past differs significantly with the present era. “she associated oyster omelletes with her childhood” and how “this scene reminds her with how it used to be in singapore 40 years ago.” (kwa) she recalls how the older scene of “a string of naked light bulbs suspended between poles of the cart, the charcoal-fuelled fire” is in total contrast with the present melaka, “jalan hang jebat had transformed into a tourists' jonker walk, free of cars and trishaws, packed with vendors selling goods made in prc.” another short story, mrs chan’s wedding day also places the character’s reminiscence of the past a central theme. in this story, the unnamed main character contrasted between singapore and hong kong between singapore and hong kong regarding preservation of chinese custom and culture. the unnamed protagonist’s housemaid, mrs chan will not be working on new year’s eve, as she was busy “bringing the wedding cakes round as an old chinese custom.” (poon, 2002) this tradition, unfortunately had stopped in singapore around 1970, after the time of ”tower records and mtv” (poon, 2002). on the contrary, this dying tradition of visiting families and bringing wedding cake remains continued in hong kong, where the main character goes to school after leaving singapore. though several stories portray their place as something nostalgic to pine for, another story contextualizes their homeland as old-fashioned and conservative compared to the previous short stories. one example in jasmine’s father by paul tan, the conflict that occurs between jasmine and her father is fueled by jasmine’s dissatisfaction with the sexist and misogyny driven singaporean society. jasmine’s struggle in singapore starts when her boss, a chinese former government scholar was threatened by jasmine’s “outspoken manner, the speed of her decisions, and her strong presentation skills.”(tan, 2001) all those abilities – which her boss considers should only be acquired by male– marginalizes jasmine and led her to immigrate abroad to canada. moreover, her disdain with singaporean which later further extended to other asian men further flourishes. http://www.qrls.com/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 22-31 27 she increasingly chooses to interact with canadian men, rather than men from the asian community there. those guys are so with it, articulate and sporting, she declared, compared to singaporean men who were graceless, guarded chauvinists with the charm of a flea. (tan, 2001) among the short stories uploaded in qlrs, one notable short story is fathers, written by ioannis gatsiounis, a greek-diasporic writer, a new york native and now living in malaysia. his cosmopolitan background provides a fresh outlook of singaporean community as it is now perceived from a westerner’s eyes. in this story, gatsiounis contextualizes how an unnamed male protagonist from a foreign european country lives his life as a freelance in singapore in a decrepit neighborhood. living poorly in a back-alley, next to the spandex-clad old women harrumphing their way through stacks of cardboard, the cantonesespeaking junkies flashing sheathes of pirated dvds from their seats along the curb; or jamu, the limbless boy wonder who snatched up used condensed-milk cans with his teeth (gatsiounis, 2005) from the aforementioned passage, gatsiounis subverts several stereotypically tropes about westerner who either lives or visits asia. a research by dewi (2014, p. 136) illustrates that the genre of australian colonial fictions in several novels such as five skull island and other tales of the malay archipelago (1897), castro’s last sacraments (1900) and flight into paradise explores the westerner’s lack of understanding of the local traditions and customs in asia. even in the modern era, several portrayal of westerners in asia still abide to the “imperial eyes” (pratt, 1994, p. 8-9) trope, where asia is perceived through euro centrist perspective. one research on christoper koch’s fictions, especially his novel the year of living dangerously finds out how the protagonist, as the westerner who visits asia is disorientated and feeling loss in a strange place and his desire to “regain knowledge and his sense of place in the world” (habel, 2007, p. 49). the portrayal of gatsiounis’ main character in fathers explores living condition of singapore from a different angle. his protagonist is a freelancer trying to do odd-jobs as his occupation as a writer is inadequate instead of going to “the sheratons, the kfc’s, the mega malls and light rail”.(gatsiounis, 2005) during his stay in singaporean’s suburban, he befriends several of his room-mates and neighbors, razali, a muslim by name onlywho smokes and drinks powdered milo during the holy month of ramadhan and nadhira, who he has a relationship with. gatsiounis explores the dynamics of singapore as multi-ethnic society where the indians, malays, and the chinese are the majority groups. gatsiounis portrays his protagonist as a more tolerant person towards the racial diversity in singapore, which is contrasted with the character named charlie wong. on the contrary with gatsiounis’ unnamed protagonist, wong is an unashamed racist with statement that “the chinese were a gruff money-minded minority. the malays were said to be passive and courteous, to cherish god and family and bumming around more than money.” (gatsiounis, 2005) the racist character in fathers is not the white male protagonist but instead the native singaporean who is dismissive towards other races in this island, the malays and the chinese. from the prior discussions, it can be concluded that the short stories published in qlrs website enriches sea literature discussions by providing ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 22-31 28 different angles of perceiving southeast asia especially singapore. several stories offer contrasting portrayal of singapore, either through reminiscence of the forgotten traditions and customs in singapore, or depicting the still rampant sexism and misogyny as prevailing factor which causes jasmine in jasmine’s father to emigrate toward canada. subsequent paragraphs will problematize more about how online literature, as illustrated through qlrs short stories should also be incorporated into canonical world literature especially in asian literature in english. returning to the second question addressed by this paper, the previous discussion of world literature by goethe and damrosch still do not accommodate the emergence of electronic literature. damrosch himself acknowledges that what constitutes world literature is not a fixed definition or only accommodates certain canonical works but instead is a mode of circulation and of reading (2003, p. 5). in damrosch’s opinion, world literature is not a settled state and instead unstable in flux. he reviews the development of world literature, while previously the notion of “world literature” only signifies western literature, nowadays the term ‘opening up the canon” has incorporated non-western writers into the anthology of world english literature. as asserted by gurray, (qtd in damrosch, 2003, p. 8) to “open the canon” we must have to modernize it, not just focusing on the early or classical literature but also to include the later works. the “opening up of the canon” have begun to accomodate hitherto unknown including non-western literary works into canon, either as “hypercanon, countercanon, or shadow canon” (damrosch, 2006, p. 45). although “opening up of the canon” has been beneficial for minor and third-world writers, few steps have been taken regarding the incorporation of digital literature as example of world literature. (tabbi, 2010) at this point, it is important to underline the differences between world literature and canonical world literature. both goethe and damrosch’s previous concept regarding the circulation of literature beyond their country of origin is more particularly biased toward world literature instead of the canonical world. the emergence of digital literature itself is a problematical concept concerning world literature as after the literature is uploaded into the internet itself it instantly becoming world literature. as internet basically is owned by the world community –hence the name world wide web (www), digital literature by definition is already circulated beyond their country of origin. hence, speaking about world literature and the canonical one, it is important to differentiate between the two of them. in this paper’s perspective, the literature published by the qlrs should be taken into consideration regarding canonical world literature although some consideration must also be taken. basically, literary works published outside their countries’ boundaries can be classified as canonical works after it passes several criteria, mainly whether it has already been taught as teaching material either at university or high school level and secondly whenever it is anthologies. in the case of digital literature uploaded in qlrs, this paper states that the selected short stories should be considered as material for asian literature in english. this present study argues that the selected short stories uploaded in qlrs encompasses the working definition of sea literature as proposed by dewi (2014). in her article, dewi mainly explores how to define asian literature in english, and this study reduces the scope into southeast asian literature instead of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 22-31 29 asia as a whole. she addresses several characteristics of (southeast) asian literature as follows, (a) to portray (southeast) asian people, places, and experience (b) to depict values, tradition, principles associated with (southeast) asian society in the past to the present (c) intended to meet (southeast) asian readership (d) written by writers of (southeast) asian origin or with (southeast) asian background (2014, p. 138) as previously explored, the selected qlrs short stories abide to the working definition of (southeast) asian literature as proposed by dewi. the selected short stories contextualize living experience in southeast asia especially singapore from various angles and diverse outlook. oh-chien and mrs chan’s wedding puts forward the issue of nostalgia, how modernity has changed the street of singapore into business-oriented district catered for tourist and the extinction of wedding tradition in the rapidly-developing singapore. another story, jasmine’s father implores the reader that behind the façade of modern and westernized singaporean society, sexism and misogyny still entrenched and hinder the advancement of singaporean females. lastly, fathers, although written by a greek-diasporic writer does not portray singapore from “imperial eyes” but instead gives an illustration of a struggling european in singaporean suburban area. the varied and ranging theme such as the longing of the past, disillusionment with the modern society, rampant sexism and misogyny in singaporean society and different portrayal of the white living in asia makes qlrs literature worth considering in the curriculum of asian literature in english. conclusion it can be stated that the emergence of digital literature enriches the discussions of world literature, especially sea literature and should be considered. digital literature can be one possible consideration for sea literature to –which to saycatching up with the entrenched dominance of other regions in asia such as east, south, or middle east in world literary discussion. yet, several problems still arise regarding the incorporation of digital literature into world literature and there should be a marked differentiation between world literature and canonical world literature concerning digital literature. goethe and damrosch’s previous concept regarding world literature is too broad, as according to their definition any online literature since it has been uploaded in the web instantly become part of world literature. the notion of circulating literary works by the printed version is shattered by the entrance of internet as the primary medium of digital literature. this paper is in the opinion that classification should be done regarding the integration of digital literature into canonical world literature. literature published online in reputable journal or academic forum such as qlrs has wide ranging themes, tackling various problems in sea countries which makes the short stories worth considering as a classroom material especially in asian literature in english. it is hoped that this discussion shed some light regarding the position of digital literature in world literature. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 22-31 30 references ali, a. 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(2010). “the globalization of the novel and the novelization of the global: a critique of world literature.” comparative literature. 62(4), pp. 336360 < https://www.jstor.org/stable/40962923> tabbi, j. (2010). “electronic literature as world literature; or, the universality of writing under constraint” poetics today. 31(1), pp. 17-50. < https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-2009-013> tan, p. (2001). “jasmine’s father” quarterly literary review singapore. 1(1). <taken from http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=136> https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-2009-013 http://www.qlrs.com/story.asp?id=136 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 225-236 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 225 beyond the public health narrative: abstinence-only education in the united states 1,2angelica raras anindiati ningtyas and dewi h. susilastuti 1,2universitas gadjah mada 1angelicararas@gmail.com; 2dewi.haryani.s@ugm.ac.id correspondence: angelicararas@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.3978 received 18 december 2021; accepted 30 april 2021 abstract this research studies the intention and endeavour of christian-based organizations, namely family research council and family policy alliance in disseminating the notion of sexuality in american society. this research utilizes a narrative analysis strategy and employs the following steps: 1) close reading the collected documents; 2) categorizing the recurring patterns of narratives using sociological perspective and cultural reproduction theory; 3) drawing a conclusion on the intention and efforts of family research council and family policy alliance in spreading the knowledge of sexuality. using the narratives of aspirations and tensions which surrounds sexuality, this study shows that family research council and family policy alliance uphold christian values as the organization's foundation and attempt to secure those principles in the ‘sexsaturated society.’ to accomplish the mission, family research council and family policy alliance promote abstinence-only education and oppose comprehensive sex education, arguing that comprehensive sex education holds liberal values that threaten the sanctity of the heterosexual relationship. this research demonstrates that family research council and family policy alliance, as christian-based organizations, strive to preserve the conservative values that have been passed down from generation to generation. keywords: christianity, education, moral perspective, sexuality introduction in the default power: the false prophecy of america's decline, josef joffe (2009) declares that america is the default power. joffe (2009, p. 31) states that america is ‘the country that occupies center stage because nobody else has the requisite power and purpose. competition, creation, and innovation play crucial role in creating american greatness. nine years later, a study from national science foundation (2018) reports that america is the global leader in science and technology. however, it is safe to argue that technological developments are not in line with the developments in social aspects of america. america might be progressive in science and technology, but when it comes to sexuality, specifically sex education, it is not as advanced as the development of science and technology. meanwhile, austria is quite progressive in that it makes sex education a mailto:angelicararas@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.3978 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 225-236 226 mandatory program from primary to secondary school. in comparison, america’s sex education is dismal and full of confusion (picken 2020; slominski 2021). furthermore, as reported in a book entitled not under my roof – parents, teens, and the culture of sex, amy schalet (2011, p. 3) explains that ‘in america, teenage sex has been dramatized, fraught with cultural ambivalences, heated political struggles, and poor health outcomes’. there are two sex education programs in america that have been popular since the 20th century. they are abstinence-only education and comprehensive sex education. abstinence-only education, later rebranded as sexual risk avoidance education (srae) is the program that promotes the idea that the only effective method of preventing pregnancy is to practice abstinent until marriage. in addition, heterosexual marriage is the expected standard for sexual activity (lavin, 2020, p. 36; william, 2011, p. 417). in srae program, necessary knowledge around sex, sexual health, and sexuality are restricted, perpetuating the stigma of open discussion on sexuality (linberg & boonstra, 2017). the other sex education program, namely comprehensive sex education, views sexuality as healthy and positive, covering broad topics such as “human reproduction, anatomy, physiology, and sexually transmitted infections, as well as issues such as masturbation, contraception, and abortion” (irvine, 2011, p. 487). despite the good outcomes of comprehensive sex education, trump’s administration proposed a budget of $277 million to fund abstinence-only education focusing on sexual risk avoidance education and cut about $200 million funding for comprehensive sex education (fox et al., 2019). in addition, it is reported that there was $15 million funding for community and faith-based groups or christian-based organizations for abstinence-only education or sexual risk avoidance. the purposes of this sex education are to promote abstinence until marriage, specifically heterosexual marriage (guttmacher institute, 2017). in fact, report from world population review (2021) shows that the states which choose not to teach contraception and require to stress teaching on abstinence-only education have the highest rates of live births among teenage girls in the age of 15-19. the discussion on sex education grows more complex since unlike austria's sex education program, there is no federal mandate on how sex education should be taught in the united states. slominski (2021) mentions that sex education in the united states is full of confusion, and data show similar facts about it. the report entitled sex and hiv education reveals that from 50 states in the united states, only 39 states and the district of columbia requires sex education and/or hiv education. from 50 states in the united states, only three states ban the programs that promote religion, and there are 37 states plus dc which allow parents to remove their children from sex education programs (guttmacher institute, 2021). those facts demonstrate how sex education varies across states. the policy of sex education is decided at the state and district level; therefore, it does make sense that every young people have various insight when it comes to sexuality. the majority of publications on sex education in the united states focus on how sex education affects young people's sexual health and behaviour. this argument is presented mainly by public health organizations. however, little research has been done to examine the involvement of christian-based ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 225-236 227 organizations in spreading the knowledge of sexuality. this article dissects the narratives of two christian-based organizations, namely family research council and family policy alliance in their attempt to construct sexuality in american society. method this research presents a qualitative analysis. drawing from the publications of the christian-based groups from the united states, namely family research council (frc) and family policy alliance (fpa), this research explores the articles and news from the websites that show how these groups view sexuality in general. in an attempt to narrow down the variety of the documents, this research purposely selected the issues of sexuality and sex education in the websites of family research council (frc) and family policy alliance (fpa). both of these faith-based groups are chosen as the object material because they provide various information on how they, as institutions, participate in the public dissemination of knowledge on sexuality. this research also utilized secondary data such as ebook, journal articles, and news to enrich the discussion. in analyzing the data, this study used a narrative analysis strategy to observe and understand the meaning of the experiences as revealed in the narrative. for the first step for analysis, the researcher read the collected document containing the information on sexuality and education issues. next, the researcher notated the potentially relevant information, including interpreting and reflecting on the notes which had been written. after notating the data, the researcher categorized the recurring pattern found in the notes and examined the objectives of this study narratively. to make sense of the recurring pattern found in the data, this research utilized sociological perspective and cultural reproduction theory. the sociological perspective opens the understanding that sexuality is a product of social forces, which means that sexuality is born from diverse social practices which are meaningful to society (siedman, 2011). to put it differently, sexuality is a manifestation of struggles between groups that contest various issues related to sexuality. meanwhile, cultural reproduction theory helps to make sense that perception, practice, structures, and habitus are interrelated in a community (bordieu 1990). findings and discussion christianity as the guidance of sexual conduct this section begins with exploration of the historical context of conservative groups in the united states. it is then followed by the examination of the general mission of christian-based organizations about sexuality. the 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of sexual modernity in the united states in the form of open access for women to birth control and abortion. at the same time there was an emergence of homosexual’s groups that began to struggle for their rights. as a result, the conservative group renewed their effort to revive their power within american society. in response to sexual modernity, a particular conservative movement called the new right (nr) emerged in the 1970s. those who participated in the new right movement were the religious conservatives, such as evangelical protestants and catholics. they banded together to fight against abortion and lgbt rights (blee and creasap, 2010, p. 273). for the new right followers, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 225-236 228 sexual minorities were seen as deviant and threatening, and their existence should be stopped by confronting them. in an attempt to regain their power as the religious conservative groups, they support regulations on abstinence-only education, anti-pornography, and prayer in public schools (schreiber 2008, as cited in blee and creasap 2010). despite the rise of sexual modernity in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the aids crisis in the 1980s forced people to rethink about sexuality and brought the conservative view of sexuality to the forefront. aids was initially known as a "gay disease" because the first cases were found among gay men in 1981. aids was the turning point of debate on sexuality. it strengthened the position of the conservative group that abstinence is the best option for young people. many religious groups exercised scare-mongering tactics to dissuade young people from engaging in sexual activity. it also promoted abstinence as a mean to avoid the probability of contracting aids or associating with homosexual groups (lavin, 2020, p. 30). the religious groups were not the only ones who use the momentum of the aids crisis to highlight the importance of abstinence. the federal government introduced regulation on sex education lesson in public schools. it passed the adolescent family life act (afla) in 1981, section 510 title v abstinence education program in 1998, and the community-based abstinence education (cbae) program in 2000. the funds for the cbae programs are directly funnelled through the community-based organizations, including faith-based organizations (santelli et al., 2017). the availability of the funding enables some faith-based organizations to keep on carrying abstinence-only sex education, among those organizations are family research council and family policy alliance. family research council is a non-profit organization that focuses on the family-centered philosophy of public life. it was founded in 1983 by james dobson. in an effort to meet their goals, family research council plays a role as a research and educational organization that shares analysis and policy research in media and community about family issues from a biblical perspective. family research council exemplifies the faithbased group that promotes christianity as the foundation of their voice. this faith is revealed in the following statement: ‘believing that god is the author of life, liberty, and the family, frc promotes the judeo-christian worldview as the basis for a just, free, and stable society.’ (family research council, n.d., general information section, para. 1). the family research council’s view on marriage, family, and sexuality is heavily influenced by christian belief that ‘the only appropriate context for sexual relations is within the marriage of a man and a woman. moreover, we believe that because god created us “male and female” (gen 1:17), we have no right to re-create ourselves otherwise’ (family research council, n.d., marriage, family, and sexuality section, para. 1). similarly, family policy alliance, founded by james dobson in 2004, plays a very prominent role as the voice of biblical citizens in the united states. it partnered with national and state-based allies in mobilizing support to elect profamily leaders and to push forward the pro-family legislation. the family policy alliance’s view emphasizes the believe that sex is only meant for two people – one man and one woman as mentioned in this following statement: ‘a god-given gift to be expressed within the context of a marriage between one man and one woman for life.’ (family policy alliance, n.d., sexual orientation section, para. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 225-236 229 1). moreover, both of these christian-based organizations consider a sexual activity outside marriage as a distortion of god’s gift of sexuality. the rise of sexual modernity in the 20th century was accelerated by pop culture such as music, movie, fashion, and television shows. in response to the expansion of sexual modernity christian-based organizations reignite their sense of identity, and firmly embrace a traditional set of social institution such as marriage, monogamy, and heterosexuality. to put it differently, both family research council and family policy alliance present a conservative teaching of sexuality as a response to what they perceive as the secularization of society. they delineate people based on their sexual orientation, namely heterosexual and homosexual. weeks (2010) argues that since the 19th century american society has been obsessively differentiated people into normal or abnormal. the distinction between heterosexual and homosexual is the progression from the categorization of normal and abnormal. the religious conservatives have been trying to conserve the grouping of people's sexual orientation into heterosexual and homosexual up to now. these groups strive to present their values as valid. bourdieu's (1990) reproduction strategy refers to the attempt of dominant group to impose their values as valid. the family research council and family policy alliance as dominant groups try to maintain their power by emphasizing the naturalness of heterosexuality. the following section will demonstrate how family research council and family policy alliance–both represent the social institutions that shaped people’s perspective on sexuality–narrate their thoughts and expectations on sexual behaviour. both institutions oppose lgbtq+ community and support abstinenceonly education. securing the traditional values in the ‘sex-saturated society’ addressing the fact that the lgbtq+ community has begun to fight for their rights in the 21st century, family research council and family policy alliance strengthen their efforts to restrict the idea of sexual rights in the american community. according to family research council (n.d.), homosexuality, samesex marriage, and transgenderism are forms of deviation from god’s plan. in response to the lgbtq+ movement, peter sprigg of family research council, explains that as an institution, they resist calling the lgbtq+ community with terms like “gay,” “lesbian,” or “bisexual” as the solo noun because it implies that family research council supports the idea that ‘some people's intrinsic, inborn, immutable identity as gay, lesbian, etc. is who they are.’ (2018, p. 2). rather than using the solo terms that are widespread these days, they prefer to use the terms ‘people who engage in homosexual conduct’ or ‘people who identify as homosexual’ to refer to the lgbtq+ community (2018). further, sprigg (2018) argues that family research council, as the conservative social institution, does not consider that people who identified as homosexual as inferior and do not deserve their rights as americans. instead, they regard homosexual conducts as harmful behaviours since it is antithetical to the will of god as explained in the following statement: ‘the bible and christianity (which shape the religious beliefs of a majority of americans) do not teach that “gay people are inferior.” they teach that homosexual conduct is contrary to the will of god, and thus morally wrong or sinful (sprigg, 2018, p. 9). since homosexuality is viewed as a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 225-236 230 morally wrong conduct, therefore, as the christian-based group, family research council advises that it is better for those people to keep their life private rather than opens it publicly by demanding the federal government to affirm and celebrate their existence as the lgbtq+ community (sprigg, 2018). the view of the family research council on transgenderism is similar to that of homosexuality and same-sex marriage. family research council refuses to recognize the gender of people who are not congruent with their biological construction. meanwhile, the family policy alliance that supports similar values of sexuality takes a different approach in delivering their aspirations. unlike the family research council, which creates publications to highlight their area of concern, the family policy alliance encourages those who have the same concern regarding sexuality to use their political rights to support their cause. this section presents the response of two supporters of the family policy alliance towards the discussion on sexual orientation and gender identity. meridian baldacci, the policy and communications strategist of family policy alliance, published an article entitled a prayer for our lgbt neighbors in response to the lgbtq+ pride month in june 2021. baldacci (2021) argues that christians are saddened by that event because it is a celebration of sin in christianity. the following statements are the two verses of the prayer: for those within the walls of the church who may claim the identity of lgbt, we pray for the work of your holy spirit and of the church to call those in sin to repentance; for all those who identify as lgbt, or who are struggling with their sexual identity in another way, we pray that they would find the joy and freedom that only comes from following you as lord. we pray that their hearts would be opened to see sin for what it is – and to see the joy of your salvation as greater (baldacci, 2021, para. 7) in the closing paragraphs of the publication, baldacci (2021) encourages people who read the article to join the prayer and speak to the lgbtq+ neighbors to follow the path of god. meanwhile, nicole hudgens writes an article entitled urgent: stop the implosion of family values in the infrastructure bill! hudgens (2021) encourage her audience to vote no to the senators who supports the current infrastructure bill, specifically the equality act language that focuses on prohibiting discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. as the representative of family policy alliance, hudgens (2021) disagrees with statements included in the bill that states the terms ‘gender identity’ as being ‘actual or perceived.’ according to hudgens (2021), the bill is created and used to punish those who have religious beliefs in marriage and biological sex, which indirectly also infringes children's parental rights since parents can no longer convey their conservative faith as those belief can be construed as discriminative towards non heterosexual people. from the above narratives, it is clear that the central discussion of the family research council and the family policy alliance is about morality. both of them emphasize the idea that people who do not identified themselves as heterosexual do not share the values of the conservative group. both of them do not verbally say that the lgbtq+ community is inferior than their non-lgbtq+ peers. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 225-236 231 however, implicitly they stress that the lgbtq+ community is outside the purview of “normalcy”. hence it is the best interest of the lgbtq+ community to conform to the mainstream sexual norm, namely heterosexuality. by doing so the lgbtq+ community maintain the harmony of larger community as it does not rock the boat. the family research council and the family policy alliance find the lgbtq+ community's demand for government's support problematic. they perceive government's support to lgbtq+ community as undermining the values that the christian-based organization upholds. the previous point highlights that the family research council and the family policy alliance attempt to control people’s sex lives and limit the sexual freedom of the individual. besides controlling people’s sex life, they propose the superior position of the family research council and the family policy alliance as christian-based organizations by stigmatizing the lgbtq+ community, albeit subtly (fischer, 2011, p. 40). both the family research council and the family policy alliance argue that the infrastructure bill, specifically the equality act language infringe parental rights for children. their argument shows that the right to exercise religious belief is used as a weapon to preserve the conservative belief on sexuality at the cost of other belief. in other words, their inclusive tendency runs against the spirit of exclusiveness that provides room for equality for all people, irrespective of their sexual orientation and gender identity (durgin, 2021). by promoting their conservative sexual belief and marginalizing other ways of looking at sexuality, both organizations solidify the notion their belief is superior to opposing viewpoints. the behavior and attitude of members of those christian organizations represent what bourdieu (2001) calls ‘symbolic violence’. symbolic violence refers to the attempt of the dominant groups in society to reproduce and maintain their narrative and alienate the minorities. by producing, and reproducing, narratives that push the lgbtq+ community at the social margin of society, both groups create subtle mechanism that generate relations of domination (bourdieu, 2002). their narratives may normal and legitimate, but it represents an indirect and subtle form of abuse towards those who are harmed by those descriptions. criticizing the public schools in the united states for promoting comprehensive sex education the family research council and the family policy alliance perceive themselves as institutions that will shape people's perspective on sexuality. due to their belief, they support abstinence-only education. the family research council, argues in their publication entitled sexual risk-avoidance education (2014), that abstinence-only education or sexual risk avoidance education (srae) mirrors the public health model. srae is designed to teach and encourage children to choose the risk avoidance approach rather than the risk reduction method (grossu and sprigg, 2014). according to their perspective, the risk avoidance approach, which entails encouraging children to avoid sexual activity before marriage, is considered the surest way to reduce the risk of teenage pregnancy (grossu and sprigg, 2014). ruse (2020) of the family research council published a pamphlet entitled sex education in public schools: sexualization of children and lgbt ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 225-236 232 indoctrination for parents. the purpose of this publication is to provide description on how public schools are teaching sex education. ruse (2020) argues that sex education in public schools in this current era has shifted to the sexpositive attitude, which pushed the idea of inclusivity in educational content. besides the concept of inclusivity, students are also taught about sexual consent. the purpose of teaching sexual consent to children is to equip them with a tool to resist sexual assault that may happen to them. however, ruse (2020) views sexual consent as a means to promote sexual relations. ruse (2020) argues that the concept of consent is not in accordance with christian-based group’s value: ‘consenting to a sex act does not make that act healthy, acceptable, or safe— especially when the actors are children! the “consent” movement seems less about avoiding assault and more about promoting sex and sexual rights.’ (ruse, 2020, p. 6). ruse (2020) also argues that sex education could be manipulative in today's era. it presents the children with information to approve the concept of sexual rights and fluid sexual identities, such as affirmation to the lgbtq+ community. therefore, in the pamphlet, ruse (2020) explains the harmful elements of comprehensive sex education in reference to the lgbtq+ community. furthermore, ruse (2020) contends that comprehensive sex education promotes acceptance of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. it also provides medically inaccurate information on homosexuality and transgenderism (2020, p. 15-16). likewise, the family policy alliance published back to school – for parents in 2020. the aim of the publication is to outline steps for the parents to protect children from the inappropriate and biased material in public school known as comprehensive sex education. the publication strongly suggests the parents to support abstinence-only education or sexual risk avoidance education (srae). the family policy alliance believes that srae protects children and youth from the possible consequences of sexual experimentation. in addition, srae is the real solution for sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy, and emotional harm as a result of teen sexual activity (family policy alliance, 2020). the family policy alliances perceives comprehensive sex education as synonymous with public school's support for education which promotes the early engagement of sexual behavior (family policy alliance, 2020). according to the family policy alliance (2020, p.14), comprehensive sex education as a whole can be defined as the education that is ‘not based on science, but radical social ideology, turning traditional notions of monogamy, marriage, and committed relationship, and abstinence on their heads.’ hence, to weaken comprehensive sex education, parents are strongly encouraged to dissect some terms commonly associated with comprehensive sex education lessons such as consent, safe and healthy relationship, and medically accurate information. similar to the family research council's opinion on consent, the family policy alliance also views consent as the permission to have sex – if no means no and yes means yes, it means consent teaches children to say yes to sexual activity (family policy alliance, 2020). the family policy alliance (2020) consider the concept safe and healthy relationships as deceptive as it only represents the viewpoint of some people. the organization sees government's attempts to define what is safe and healthy for children without considering the religious, moral, and ethical beliefs of each family (family policy alliance, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 225-236 233 2020). the family policy alliance (2020) perceives the term medically accurate information as the support of left-leaning medical organizations on the ideology of abortion, same-sex marriage, and transgenderism (2020). in an attempt to curb the impacts of the comprehensive sex education materials, the family policy alliance states that parents have the right to opt their children out of comprehensive sex education classes. united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco), one of the prominent international organizations, has a different stand on the comprehensive sex education. it recommends the comprehensive sex education for its inclusiveness and its potential to reduce marginalization of certain group of people. promoting universal rights as the core component of education, the comprehensive sex education provides equal access and safe space for people regardless of their social background, gender, and sexual orientation. in its guidance unesco (2018, p,34) explains that comprehensive sex education ‘takes a rights-based approach that emphasizes values such as inclusion, respect, equality, empathy, responsibility, and reciprocity as inextricably linked to the universal human rights' one of unesco's mission is to provide comprehensive sex education curriculum for both formal and non-formal education. unesco suggests several learning key concepts such as discussion on relationships, values, rights, culture and sexuality, skills for health and well-being, sexual and reproductive health, etc. the narratives regarding comprehensive sex education offered by unesco and the family research council and family policy alliance demonstrate their different perception on the comprehensive sex education. unesco is on the side of the proponents of comprehensive sex education; therefore, it supports inclusiveness in sex education. on the other hand, the family research council and the family policy alliance support the advocates of the abstinence-only education. both organizations rejected the teaching of the comprehensive sex education, particularly the concept of consent. by refusing to acknowledge the importance of consent through their narratives, both the family research council and the family policy alliance turn a blind eye to the rampant cases of sexual assault, abuse, and coercion. the centres for disease control and prevention (cdc) in the united states reveals that nearly 1 in 5 women experienced rape or attempted rape during their lifetime (smith et al., 2018). approximately 1 in 6 women experienced sexual coercion, such as being pressured to carry out sexual activity by someone who has a high influence and authority. men in the united states also experience sexual abuse. almost one-fifth of men report unwanted sexual contact like groping or touching (smith et al., 2018). the family research council and the family policy alliance neglect those fact. at the same time, they refuse to equip children with skills to protect their bodily autonomy. they do not teach young people to understand what unwanted sexual attention is and what a healthy sexual relationship is. they have a very narrow focus, namely portraying the comprehensive sex education as a vehicle for the indoctrination of liberal values. they fail to see that the comprehensive sex education provides the necessary factual information on sexuality. both organizations do not see sex education as an important life skill for young people, regardless of whether they will use this skill or not. the sole concern of the family research council and the family policy alliance is preserving conservative values on sexuality. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 225-236 234 consequently, they strongly believe that avoiding sexual acts is better than giving information on how to manage the risk of sexual activity. through the narratives of the family research council and the family policy alliance on supporting abstinence sex education, the focus is no longer on the health and well-being of young people but rather on selling moral and religious beliefs to advance their own group’s position. conclusion the result and discussion above show that sexuality is not just a personal matter between people in a relationship, but it is also a social matter. as christianbased organizations, the family research council and the family policy alliance have the tremendous power to regulate with whom people can have sex and make meaning to what is acceptable and unacceptable in terms of sexuality in society. compiling the narratives from the family research council and the family policy alliance, this study presents a novel information on their intention and efforts as a christian-based group representing the conservative values in the discussion of sexuality. putting christianity as the building block of sexuality, this study elucidates that the main intention of the christian-based organizations is to conserve the sanctity of heterosexual relationships in the form of abstinence-only education and criticize the liberal values which are reflected in comprehensive sex education. their narratives also show how the state's efforts in promoting sexual health discourse clash with the christian doctrine. the sexual education class in the united states represents the contestation among groups with competing belief. the family research council and the family policy alliance assume the role of the social institution that tries to preserve the conservative view of sexuality. as a result, these two organizations do not view sexuality from the perspective of public health, but rather from the religious standpoint. given their sustained attempts to shape the society's view on sexuality, their belief will be transmitted to the next generation. thus, the tension between the conservative and liberal groups regarding the content of sexual education in the american schools will not end any time soon. references baldacci, m. 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(2011, august 15). battling a ‘sex-saturated society’: the abstinence movement and the politics of sex education. sexualities, 14(4), 416-443. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460711406460 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 95-108 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 95 google classroom in indonesian efl classes: voices from high school teachers and students lia erisca debbyanti1 and *adaninggar septi subekti2 1,2duta wacana christian university, indonesia liaerisca@gmail.com1 and adaninggar@staff.ukdw.ac.id2 *correspondence: adaninggar@staff.ukdw.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.5052 received 15 august 2022; accepted 15 october 2022 abstract the study was conducted to investigate the extent to which google classroom (gc) was used in english as foreign language (efl) instruction at the high school level as well as english teachers' and students' views on the use of gc for the instruction. the study employed a qualitative design involving observations and interviews as the methods of data collection. three english classes at a private high school in indonesia were observed. three teachers of the observed classes and six randomly selected students were interviewed. the interview results were analyzed using thematic analysis. the study found that gc was used by teachers to upload assignments, monitor students' progress, and make class announcements. regarding the teacher and student participants' views on the use of google classroom, the study found three themes. first, the features of gc were easy to use. second, gc facilitated a more organized collection of assignments and learning materials. third, gc had several limitations including difficulty to upload large files, unorganized notifications, and a limited feature allowing instant messaging. from the findings, pedagogical implications and possible limitations are stated along with suggested directions for further relevant studies. keywords: efl classes, google classroom, thematic analysis introduction due to the covid-19 pandemic, many schools employed learning management systems (lmss) to facilitate online learning, google classroom (gc) being one of them. gc is an application and platform developed by google to facilitate blended learning activities (maskar & wulantina, 2019). gc is considered efficient and it enables students to learn even when they are physically separated from the teachers (astuti & indriani, 2020). the fundamental objective of gc is to facilitate file sharing between teachers and students (tinungki & nurwahyu, 2020). the decrease in the number of daily covid-19 cases in indonesia by the end of 2021 prompted the minister of education, nadiem makarim, to issue a new regulation regarding regions that could hold limited face-to-face meetings on the condition that complete vaccinations had been completed (maspul & amalia, 2021). even so, the use of lmss such as gc continued. mailto:liaerisca@gmail.com mailto:adaninggar@staff.ukdw.ac.id mailto:adaninggar@staff.ukdw.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.5052 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 95-108 96 specific to the indonesian english as foreign language (efl) learning contexts, many recent studies investigated the use of gc in efl classes in indonesia (megawati & astutik, 2019; octaberlina & muslimin, 2020; okmawati, 2020; sukmawati & nensia, 2019; syahputra & isnani, 2020; syakur et al., 2020). a study by sukmawati and nensia (2019), for example, reported the use of gc facilitated teachers to quickly design and manage assignments, provide students with feedback in an effective manner, and connect with their students in a simple online space. in comparison, okmawati (2020) found that there were technical limitations in the use of gc during the blended learning period, such as students were unable to access gc and some students sent assignments using their friends’ accounts. regarding this, to make the most effective use of gc in efl classes, there needs to be an appropriate comprehension of the platform and its functions on the part of both the teachers and the students (atmojo & nugroho, 2020; megawati & astutik, 2019). several studies on gc were also conducted in efl contexts outside indonesia (albashtawi & al bataineh, 2020 in jordan; azhar & iqbal, 2018 in pakistan; khalil, 2018 in palestine). albashtawi and al bataineh (2020) reported that gc positively affected jordanian efl students’ reading and writing performances. the study concluded that the students' improvement was related to the successful implementation of gc. teachers could use it in conjunction with face-to-face classes and upload the required materials (albashtawi & al bataineh, 2020). an earlier study conducted by khalil (2018) in palestine investigated the use of gc in grammar classes. the study reported that using gc applications for grammar learning positively affected the students’ grammar mastery. this was attributed to the features enabling teachers to provide corrective feedback highlighting students' errors encouraging improvement (khalil, 2018). in comparison, azhar and iqbal (2018) found that gc did not have a denotative influence on learning. instead, optimization and mastery of the use of features in gc were what made it more effective when used (azhar & iqbal, 2018). several studies reported obstacles and limitations of gc in online learning contexts (harjanto & sumarni, 2019; nursyahrina et al., 2021; octaberlina & muslimin, 2020; syahputra & isnani, 2020). the site could not be accessed without an internet network and this could be an issue in the learning contexts whose students’ and teachers’ internet connectivity was not very good (atmojo & nugroho, 2020; octaberlina & muslimin, 2020; okmawati, 2020; rosyada, 2020). another limitation found by nursyahrina et al. (2021) was that gc was too "googlish" in that it had various buttons only recognizable to google users. despite the possible limitations, several studies have reported the advantages it could offer for language learning (nursyahrina et al., 2021; rosyada, 2020; salam, 2020; singh et al., 2020; sukmawati & nensia, 2019). gc enabled teachers to construct an online learning environment in which they could teach and manage all of the assignments they wanted their students to work on (singh et al., 2020). furthermore, students could gain information through interaction, communication, and discussion using the gc (nursyahrina et al., 2021). furthermore, a study by singh et al., (2020) also reported that gc is innovative, seeing as how the teacher and student interface are created and designed primarily for teachers and students to interact and make the learning process more meaningful. sukmawati and nensia (2019) found that their student participants felt excited using gc as it was easy to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 95-108 97 use anywhere using a mobile phone and could also be integrated with other google applications such as google forms, google docs, and google drive. teachers and students can benefit from the numerous features of the platform (rusdiana et al., 2020). for example, teachers can submit instructional materials to gc so that students can access them anywhere and at any time (osborne et al., 2018). the uploaded materials can be in the form of articles or text, images, videos, audio, and various other teaching materials (okmawati, 2020). later the students will receive a notification alert whenever a teacher makes a new upload (osborne et al., 2018), allowing students to keep track of the progress of the class more easily. additionally, in a study outside the efl context, tinungki and nurwahyu (2020) reported that gc contains a variety of features that make things easier for both students and teachers to engage in online instructional activities, suggesting the advantages of gc may not be limited to language learning field. several studies have investigated teachers' and students' views of using gc in efl classes in the indonesian context and reported various findings (maskar & wulantina, 2019; megawati & astutik, 2019; octaberlina & muslimin, 2020). student participants reported that gc could make the learning process fun, can foster independent learning attitudes, motivations, and creativity, foster active learning attitudes, and make learning effective (alfina, 2020; astuti & indriani, 2020; maskar & wulantina, 2019; rosyada, 2020). student participants in a study by salam (2020), also acknowledged that gc enabled them to submit their tasks on time, obtain feedback from their teachers, and communicate with their instructors about course descriptions. furthermore, the teacher participants in the study by harjanto and sumarni (2019), reported that gc helped promote collaborative learning, minimize problems, organize students' documents, and save time. in comparison, the use of gc was reported by the student participants to be inefficient because they needed a suitable device and a good internet connection (octaberlina & muslimin, 2020). previous studies on gc in efl classes in indonesia have predominantly focused on university contexts (megawati & astutik, 2019; octaberlina & muslimin, 2020; okmawati, 2020; sukmawati & nensia, 2019; syakur et al., 2020). for this reason, it could be worthwhile to conduct a study on the use of gc for efl instruction in an indonesian high school context. this is because, during the covid19 pandemic, gc may have been widely used in many indonesian high schools. furthermore, involving both english teachers and students in a study could also provide a more comprehensive picture of the phenomenon because they may have different viewpoints on the same issue. by knowing their students’ viewpoints on the use of gc thus seeing it in “students’ shoes”, teachers may obtain knowledge of how to use gc more appropriately and effectively. for researchers, this study may pave a way for further study on the use of gc in the indonesian high school efl context, which is thus far relatively under-researched. considering the aforementioned rationales, the present study intends to answer the following two questions. first, to what extent is the use of google classroom in high school english instruction? second, what are teachers’ and students’ views on the use of google classroom in english instruction? ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 95-108 98 methods research methods and instruments the study used a qualitative design employing observations and interviews. qualitative design focuses on people's real-life experiences and is a great way to find out what people think about the events, processes, and structures of their lives and how they relate to the social world (miles et al., 2014). in line with the reiteration of miles et al. (2014) on the forte of qualitative design in exploring a phenomenon and participants’ experiences in-depth, qualitative design was employed in the present study to explore the use of gc in english instruction and obtain in-depth perspectives of both teachers and students regarding its use. the data were collected using observations and interviews. observations were used to obtain the answers to the first research question whilst interviews were used to obtain the answer to the second research question and provide support for observation data for the first research question. an observation checklist was used as the instrument to guide the observations and field notes were used to note down relevant findings. there were two types of observations employed in the present study. the first was observations of synchronous meetings in google meet. the second was observations on activities recorded in gc. next, an interview checklist was used as the instrument to ensure the interviews were relevant to the research questions throughout. research setting and participants the setting of the present study was a private senior high school in a big city in java, indonesia. the observations were conducted in three different english classes, both the synchronous meetings and the activities in gc. each class consisted of 30 students with the age ranging from 15 to 17. the interviews involved the three teachers of the observed english classes, all of who were females, and six randomly selected students who indicated their willingness to be invited for interviews. of these six student interviewees, three students were females, and the other three were males. ethical consideration the present study adhered to the principles of research ethics. before data collection, gatekeeper consent was secured from the principal of the high school becoming the setting of the study. then, informed consent forms were distributed to both the english teachers and the students. in the forms, the prospective participants were informed of the researchers’ identities, the objectives and the methods of the study as well as what they were expected to do if they decided to participate in it (gray, 2014). the distribution of consent forms also implied the implementation of voluntary participation (israel & hay, 2006). confidentiality was also maintained by not disclosing the name of the institution and through the use of pseudonyms throughout this report (allen & wiles, 2016). data collection and analysis the data collection was conducted from october 2021 up to december 2021. during this period, there was a shift from a fully online mode of instruction to limited face-to-face instruction per the regulation issued by the government. the first step of data collection was to conduct observations on synchronous sessions of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 95-108 99 three english classes and observations on the activities on gc of these classes. these observations were intended to obtain an initial "picture" of the use of gc in the class instructions. some data from observations also became the basis of several interview questions. the next was to interview the three english teachers whose classes were observed. the step after that was to interview six students that had been randomly selected using random picker application. these students were selected from a list of students indicating their willingness to be interviewed in the consent forms they filled out previously. all the interviews were conducted in the indonesian language. the following were the steps for analyzing the interview data. first, the interview recordings were fully transcribed and translated into english. next, the english transcriptions were analyzed using thematic analysis per the research questions (braun & clarke, 2006, 2012). the steps of thematic analysis were getting familiar with the data by reading and re-reading, generating preliminary codes, generating possible themes and reviewing them, and refining the themes best representing the whole data (braun & clarke, 2012; maguire & delahunt, 2017). the last three steps were conducted by making annotations on the word documents containing the transcripts and taking separate notes. extract samples best representing the themes are presented in this report for further analysis and discussion. concerning that, the observation data from the observation checklist and field notes were presented qualitatively per the themes emerging in the interview transcripts. hence, it could be said that the observation data were used to support the interview data. the sequence of data collection and analysis can be seen in figure 1. figure 1. the sequence of data collection and analysis findings and discussion the data were gathered from observations and interviews. for reference tracing, the following codes are used. three classes observed were xi science 1 (e1), x social 2 (e2), and xii science 3 (e3). the pseudonyms of the three teacher participants (t) were aca (female/f), lala (f), and titi (f) and those of the six student participants (s) were as follows: che (f), rhere (f), gege (f), vin (male/m), steve (m), and sam (m). “obv” indicates the data obtained from observation in english synchronous classrooms, whist “aobv” indicates the data obtained from asynchronous observation in gc. “intv” indicates interview data. for example, “[intv/aca/f/t]” indicates that the data are from aca, a female teacher interviewee. conducting synchronous and asynchronous observations interviewing three teachers and six students in indonesian transcribing the data and translating the transcripts into english conducting thematic analysis per the research questions analysing the data qualitatively reporting the data per the themes emerging in interviews answering the first research question in the form of themes answering the second research question in the form of themes ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 95-108 100 the use of google classroom in high school english instruction based on the result of the observations and interview, there were two themes on the extent to which gc was used in the observed english classes and these themes can be seen in table 1. table 1. the extent of the use of google classroom in high school english instruction theme 1. google classroom was used to upload assignments and monitor students’ performance. theme 2. google classroom was used to make class announcements. theme 1. google classroom was used to upload assignments and monitor students’ performance. it was found from the observation that gc was used in all three observed classes. aca, the e1 teacher, for example, used gc to save materials to be presented. the teacher (aca) asked the students to open powerpoint (ppt) in gc and said, “open the ppt that i have uploaded in google classroom. and read it for five minutes”. all students followed the instructions. for five minutes, all students focused on the ppt… before the class ended, the teacher said, “have you checked the latest task i uploaded in google classroom?” more than half of the students answered “yes, miss!” and a few responded, “not yet, miss.” the teacher then continued to explain the task uploaded. she said, “i have uploaded a new task in google classroom. it contains three paragraphs; all you have to do is write additional two paragraphs about your personal experience.” [obv/e1] gc was also used to monitor students’ performance regarding assignments and assignment collection. it could be seen in the following result of observation in e2 taught by lala. after asking for attendance at the beginning of the class, the teacher (lala) said, “have you finished the task i gave you last week?” she later explained the task a week before that was uploaded to google classroom. checking the google classroom, she mentioned some students who did not submit the assignment. by the end of the class, the teacher explained a task about a descriptive text…the task was uploaded to google classroom, and the teacher told the students that they could upload any file format of the task to google classroom… [obv/e2] regarding the aforementioned findings on the use of gc to upload assignments and monitor students’ performance, several previous studies reported the same results (nursyahrina et al., 2021; okmawati, 2020; rosita et al., 2019). two recent studies in the indonesian high school context also reported the effectiveness of gc to facilitate teachers in providing materials for students and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 95-108 101 providing secure document storage for both teachers and students (nursyahrina et al., 2021; okmawati, 2020). in the observation in e3, when the teacher, titi, was explaining the materials in front of the class, the electricity suddenly went out. the teacher did not panic and the class continued because students could access the materials from gc independently through their respective devices. … the class started and the teacher showed the learning materials on the projector screen. after the class began, the light suddenly went out. the teacher (titi) said, “please open the ppt that i have uploaded in google classroom.” all the students immediately opened their google classroom using their gadgets… before the class ended, the teacher mentioned the next task that would be uploaded in google classroom after the next class finished their session. [obv/e3] the aforementioned findings from observations generally suggested that materials uploaded in gc helped teachers and students be more prepared during instructional activities. gc served as a consolidated location for all learning activities. these findings were also supported by the results of interviews with the three teachers. they shared that gc was mostly used to upload materials before class and to upload tasks after class ended. aca, for example, highlighted that she uploaded material to gc to prevent any troubles during class. she stated: “i'm afraid if there is a power outage or something… all the ppt or files are already on each student's cell phone. so, when [i am] explaining or reviewing materials it can be easy.” [intv/aca/f/t] in line with aca’s viewpoint, titi reported that she chose to upload materials to gc when she could not explain the material directly and students needed to selfstudy. she reported: “…google classroom is used as a forum for posting assignments, or materials that i can't explain directly because of one reason or another.” [intv/titi/f/t] the teachers’ testimonies were in line with those of several student participants. sam, for instance, commented that gc was practical for collecting and archiving assignments. he said: “i think google classroom is good i mean for collecting assignments... i don't need to send them (assignments) via whatsapp one by one to all the teachers. it can be collected and archived in google classroom.” [intv/sam/m/s] these findings suggested that gc had helped both teachers and students in terms of assignment collection and archiving. regarding these findings, a recent classroom action research study by syakur et al. (2020) at an indonesian university context reported that the platform helped teachers keep instructional materials and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 95-108 102 activities in the cloud and this contributed to a generally more effective instructional process. theme 2: google classroom was used to make class announcements. through observations, the study found that gc was also used to make class announcements, for example, class schedules, announcements about topics to be studied in a meeting, and meeting links on google meet. the following observation result showed an example of a class announcement. one day before the meeting, the teacher gives an announcement about what time the class would be held. the announcement says: "hi everyone! we will have a google meet session tomorrow at 10.30. here's the link: https://meet.google.com/lookup/hadguhbsnc?hs=179. if you are unable to join, please let me know. thank you". [aobv/e1] in e3, gc was also used to announce topics of the day. titi, the e3 teacher, reported: “i asked questions there (posting a question on that day’s topic) and students discussed it in the stream menu on google classroom.” [intv/titi/f/t] in line with titi’s reports, from the asynchronous observation in class e1, aca used gc to provide announcements about the materials to be studied and information to students about the next meeting. she announced: good morning, fellas… good news for you, there will be no meeting today, but there will be an activity you must do. find the topic of the invitation; formal and informal on the internet or book; read it and learn it by yourselves first. next week, without any further explanation of this topic, there will be a quiz to check whether or not you understand this topic. [aobv/e1] these findings were in line with the findings of several previous studies (harjanto & sumarni, 2019; nursyahrina et al., 2021; rosita et al., 2019; salam, 2020; sudarsana et al., 2019). teachers could publish announcements to the class stream, which students could respond on, allowing for two-way communication between teachers and students (nursyahrina et al., 2021; octaberlina & muslimin, 2020). furthermore, nursyahrina et al., (2021) reported that to ensure that students noticed important messages or inquiries for the announcement, the teachers could just post the announcement to the class stream, and they would be visible as soon as the students had logged in. through the use of the announcement feature, teachers could easily distribute important announcements to all students, including assignments, quizzes, deadlines, and feedback (astuti & indriani, 2020; harjanto & sumarni, 2019; nursyahrina et al., 2021; okmawati, 2020; tinungki & nurwahyu, 2020). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 95-108 103 teachers’ and students’ views on the use of google classroom in english instruction the present study found three themes regarding the teachers’ and students’ views on the use of gc in english instruction. these themes can be seen in table 2. table 2. teachers’ and students’ views on the use of gc in english instruction theme 1. the features of google classroom were easy to use. theme 2. google classroom facilitated a more organized collection of assignments and learning materials. theme 3. google classroom had several limitations. theme 1. the features of google classroom were easy to use. both the teachers and the students agreed that gc was generally easy to use. aca, for example, reported: “…. there are indeed some teachers who need time to practice [using google classroom] several times… it is easy [using google classroom] … although it's not really that easy and you still have to learn [still] it's easy to understand…, especially during distance learning… the [newest and additional] features appear one by one and it is very easy [to use]. [intv/aca/f/t] in line with aca's statement, vin also stated that gc had more complete features than other platforms. regarding this, he reported: “in my opinion, google classroom is very helpful. i've used other platforms before, but i don't think that's enough for me. it feels like the features are not as complete as google classroom.” [intv/vin/m/s] lala also reported the ease of using the features of gc. she stated: “it's also easier if you use google classroom… more well-archived [the tasks, scores, materials], and the screen is bigger too [when using google classroom on a laptop]." [intv/lala/f/t] the findings conformed to several authors' reiteration of the advantages of gc. sudarsana et al., (2019), for example, stated that some of the most important advantages of gc are its time-saving and organizing capabilities. there have also been several studies reporting that gc facilitated learning, improved cooperation, and communication (e.g nursyahrina et al., 2021; octaberlina & muslimin, 2020; sudarsana et al., 2019). titi, also shared how easy it was to use gc, especially since it could be accessed through different devices. she reported: “i use it [google classroom] on my cell phone, sometimes on the web. because i often save drafts [saved tasks for later uploads] using my laptop. so, the draft is saved [automatically] in google classroom, so i ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 95-108 104 can upload [the task] directly using my cell phone whenever or wherever, [so…] i don't need to open my laptop again.” [intv/titi/f/t] the student participants seemed to agree with the teachers on the ease of using gc. vin, for example, commented that gc could be accessed anywhere. he stated: “i'm already used to using google classroom on a pc… if i access it via a smartphone, (though) the screen is smaller, it can be compatible and can be taken anywhere. also, even in class, we are allowed to open materials or open google classroom on our smartphones." [intv/vin/m/s] these findings confirmed several authors' assessments of gc (harjanto & sumarni, 2019; salam, 2020). gc is available via various types of computers or smartphones (harjanto & sumarni, 2019). salam (2020) believed that gc is a positive innovation in education because it provides numerous benefits to both teachers and students, including the ability to access the application from anywhere and at any time as long as they have an internet connection. theme 2. google classroom facilitated a more organized collection of assignments and learning materials. some of the teachers and students were in agreement that gc facilitated a more organized collection of assignments and materials. lala, for example, reported: “i prefer to use google classroom because it's more organized. it also archives [all tasks, material archived to google drive automatically], so you don't have to carry around student notebooks everywhere.” [intv/lala/f/t] rhere was also in agreement. the tasks collected became more neatly organized and collected into one database. she stated: “if we send an assignment, it's clear where to send it, and where it goes (the task). so, it is clear that the task can be entered directly into the school data. that's a plus (using google classroom).” [intv/rhere/f/s] this finding was in line with the idea of nursyahrina et al., (2021) stating that gc makes it easier to stay organized by consolidating all of the assignments, grades, and announcements into one location. for example, in lala's case, by using gc there was no need to carry books anymore. the fact that everything is kept in classroom drive folders and is easily accessible with a single click makes it much easier to locate completed assignments or individual student works (nursyahrina et al., 2021; syakur et al., 2020). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 95-108 105 theme 3. google classroom had several limitations. apart from the reported advantages of gc, the platform also had limitations. several students reported that their submissions could not be opened by the teachers. rhere, for example, stated: “i sent an assignment… the teacher's google classroom database doesn't have my assignment. [before] i've also sent a file like that… umm... sometimes the file can't be opened by the teacher… in my account, the file was there and could be opened.” [intv/rhere/f/s] furthermore, it was also reported that gc had problems uploading tasks with large file sizes. however, facing this issue, vin found a way to successfully upload assignments using other google applications such as google drive. he stated: "my preference is to transfer the task to google drive… the file size exceeds 100 mb. therefore, i should… upload the assignment [to google classroom] as a google drive link. otherwise, google classroom will be unable of processing extremely large videos or audio files...” [intv/vin/m/s] in line with vin's view as a student submitting assignments, aca, one of the teachers, also acknowledged the limitation of gc in receiving large files and also found a solution. she stated: “… when they [students] are asked to upload an audio file, it’s a bit difficult because it [the file] is in a handphone, so the key is when uploading videos or audios, google classroom will run smoothly if you use it on a laptop or computer. so, if you access it on a handphone, not everything can run smoothly. [intv/aca/f/t] the same issue was reported in a study by islam (2019) in a bangladeshi context where students reported being unable to upload large files and their internet was disconnected in the middle of the process. the similarity of findings between the two studies may partly be attributed to relatively the same internet speed that the participants used to access gc in both studies. another reported limitation was the notifications which were not categorized or clustered based on classes or lessons students took using gc. steve, for example, reported: “sometimes the notifications get mixed up with other notifications, like new assignments, new materials from other classes." [intv/steve/m/s] the problem with the notification feature was also experienced by participants in several studies (harjanto & sumarni, 2019; islam, 2019). the notification mechanism of this platform has undesirable problems (islam, 2019). the notification feature includes all the notifications for all classes and this may confuse students. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 95-108 106 steve further stated that gc could not accommodate instant messaging, for example, to ask questions to teachers. he stated: "i asked (my teacher) via whatsapp (about assignments). in google classroom, the response took a little longer." [intv/steve/m/s] regarding this finding, several studies also reported the limitations of the absence of the "message" option (islam, 2019; nursyahrina et al., 2021). due to this absence, if there were questions students wished to discuss, students or teachers should upload the questions in the "stream" or "comment" menu and the message was read by the whole class (islam, 2019). as a result, students had a difficult time submitting queries, questions, or clarifications to their teachers (islam, 2019). conclusion these findings have several implications for in-service teachers planning to use gc in teaching english. firstly, for the in-service teachers, this study can provide them with insight into using gc to support them in teaching, for example scheduling a task submission and monitoring students’ performance. teachers can also optimize the features of gc for convenience in checking and grading assignments as well as to archive the students’ works over time. knowing several limitations of this platform, teachers anticipate and prepare an alternative plan. furthermore, this study has several limitations. first, this study was conducted when the school was in a transition period from online to limited faceto-face, so gc was not used optimally. if the study had been conducted before the period of limited face-to-face meetings, the data would have been richer since the use of gc and its features could have been more optimized. furthermore, because the present study was qualitative, the findings may be context-specific and may not be applied to a wider context. however, qualitative replication may still be possible in contexts sharing relatively the same characteristics as that of the present study. future studies may look into the applications of gc during offline classes. such studies could explore more teachers' and students' views of using more features of gc in the post-pandemic era either in limited face-to-face instruction or fully face-to-face to gain more data from the participants in different settings. references albashtawi, a. h., & al bataineh, k. b. 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(2020). the effectiveness of english learning media through google classroom in higher education. britain international of linguistics arts and education (biolae) journal, 2(1), 475– 483. https://doi.org/10.33258/biolae.v2i1.218 tinungki, g. m., & nurwahyu, b. (2020). the implementation of google classroom as the e-learning platform for teaching non-parametric statistics during covid19 pandemic in indonesia. international journal of advanced science and technology, 29(4), 5793–5803. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 109-121 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 109 a postcolonial feminist reading of j. m. coetzee’s waiting for the barbarians (2000) mary mensah1 and *emmanuel mensah bonsu2 1,2department of english, university of cape coast, ghana mollearogim@gmail.com1 and ebonsu@stu.ucc.edu.gh2 *correspondence: ebonsu@stu.ucc.edu.gh https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.3937 received 2 december 2021; accepted 25 october 2022 abstract literary texts and kinds of research have reframed postcolonial experiences to capture several issues in society. on that note, coetzee’s waiting for the barbarians has chalked many successes in gaining the attention of literary scholars to subject the text to interpretation using varied literary approaches, except postcolonial feminism. the postcolonial aspect of the feminist issues in the text is fundamental. the thrust of this paper is to analyse coetzee’s waiting for the barbarians using the postcolonial feminist theory. guided by three objectives, the study uses the qualitative content analysis method to interpret the text. from the analysis, the study reported that, while objectification and ‘othering’ are characteristic of the representation of females in the text, violence against them is constructed through fear and torture and resisted mainly through silence. also, the mode of narration influences the presentation of the narrative to readers. finally, the study offers implications for further research using other literary theories or approaches. keywords: literary approaches, postcolonial feminist, representation, violence, waiting for the barbarians introduction coetzee’s writings are typical for uncovering historical arrangements that contribute to and account for the seeming nervousness in post-apartheid south africa. particularly with the publication of waiting for the barbarians (2000), coetzee tries to deconstruct falsified knowledge of african epistemologies as barbarous. while the novel has received a substantial amount of critical attention (asempasah, 2013; may, 2001), the parallel between narrative perspective, female vulnerability and feminine barbarism are yet to be explored. dominant literature on coetzee’s waiting for the barbarians has focused on the traitor trope functioning within the context of othered bodies, terror and resistance (asempasah, 2013, 2019; craps, 2007; al-badarneh, 2013) and the reconstitution of identities, sexual epistemologies and feminist politics (madhok, 2016; qassa, 2020; boletsi, 2007; salih & janoory, 2019; may, 2001). while these studies are important, they do not prioritize the parallel between the narrative perspective in the novel and how it succeeds in exposing female vulnerability through a postcolonial feminist lens. mailto:ebonsu@stu.ucc.edu.gh2 mailto:ebonsu@stu.ucc.edu.gh https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.3937 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 109-121 110 thus, the objectives of this paper are to focus on the magistrate and the girl as symbolic and ethical tropes of vulnerability, and a redefinition of postcolonial barbarism. the paper also looks at how the narrative mode de-emphasizes male superiority. the paper is subdivided into four parts; the first part looks at the plot summary of the paper. the second part which is titled theoretical formulations will pay attention to the emerging postcolonial feminist theory. the development of the theory and its tenets are discussed in this portion. the third focuses on the analysis where the theory is applied to the interpretation of the text. the final part of the paper is the conclusion. plot summary waiting for the barbarians mirrors the issues of oppression and resistance in apartheid south africa (saunders, 2001). the protagonist of the novel is an unnamed public officer who works as a magistrate in a frontier settlement owned by an unknown empire. readers are put in a temporal sequence where the magistrate had been faithful a servant of the empire, directing the affairs of a small frontier settlement, ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. however, when the interrogators (colonel joll and his men) arrive, he witnesses the cruelty and injustice of the prisoners of war by the empire. empathizing with their victims, he commits an otherworldly act of rebellion that marked him as an enemy of the empire. the text presents a binary between an empire and the other (barbarians). with colonel joll and the barbarian girl as a symbolic representation of the empire and barbarians respectively, the magistrate, as the narrator, lies between this continuum. the novel displays power dynamics in postcolonial settings through the notion of othering. some nations, according to gallagher (1991), “achieve strength, unity and identity by creating others to be an enemy” (p. 132). joll, the representative of the empire seeks to achieve the same. however, this inevitably leads to a “loss of identity” as happened in the case of the magistrate. loomba (1991) asserts that the creation of the other is “crucial not only for creating images of the outsider but equally essential for constructing the insider, the (usually white european male) self” (p. 104). on reflecting on joll’s position in the empire, the magistrate realizes that he is “the lie that empire tells itself when times are easy, [joll], the truth that empire tells when harsh winds blow” (waiting for the barbarians, p. 148). theoretical formulation postcolonial feminism hooks (1984), as cited in peterson and rutherford (1986) asserts that feminism is a movement to nullify sexual oppression. spanning the dusk of the 19th century, the movement has had an immense impact on the lives of women. while feminism defies a single definition, the core of the advocacy is to expose how women are subjugated, and discriminated against equality among genders, while ensuring advocacy (dobie, 2012). feminism has evolved in three important waves; the first wave, the second wave, and the third wave. the first wave of the feminist movement focused on women’s rights and women’s suffrage movement with an emphasis on social, political and economic reforms. the second wave focused on the frustrations of the white heterosexual demands to advocate radical destructuring of society to make way for emerging sexualities. the concerns of the third wave feminist movement prioritise the unique experiences of third-world ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 109-121 111 women. marrying postcolonial tendencies with feminist assumptions, postcolonial feminism is not a mere intersection between feminism and postcolonialism, but situates in the ‘third world feminism’. the postcolonial feminist framework, which is an important strand in this phase of the movement deals with injustices pertaining to race, gender and imperialism in every aspect of society. although mishra (2013) finds the theory to be relatively new to the scholarship of postcolonial and feminist studies, the postcolonial feminist theory has some tenets that align with third wave feminism. rajan and park (2000) assert that the post-colonial feminist theory intervenes and reconfigures feminist and postcolonial explorations. that is, the configuration of homogenizing all women as one is undermined as the theory unravels the double jeopardy that the marginalized female (perhaps ‘other’) faces. this follows the idea that the theory has been perceived as a type of feminist theory or a subcategory of post-colonial studies. postcolonial feminism looks at the myriad of oppressions that arise from racist, sexist, patriarchal and gender inequality (neimneh, 2014). racine (2003; 2009) adds that it is geared toward unpacking the factors concerning socio-economic and cultural ideals that model and enforce oppression in different contexts. tyagi (2014) opines that the theory focuses on how gender differences are constructed, how women are represented, and other discourses. peterson and rutherford (1986) reveal that women suffer subjugation double-fold. that is, women are subjugated and oppressed under patriarchal and colonial practices. tyagi (2014) adds that the theory, therefore, puts force on the mainstream theory of postcolonialism for a stable and continuous consideration of issues concerning gender. the study takes into consideration the racial and cultural differences that are in waiting for the barbarians. the post-colonial feminist theory understands the causes of existing gender inequality and interrogates power dynamics concerning genders (raftari & bahrami, 2011). gender discrimination and the exertion of patriarchy are some of the main issues that have steered the focus of feminists (plaatje, 2014; mcglynn, 2010). while the theory exposes issues of discrimination and subjugation (fernández & wilding, 2003), part of its goal is to identify gender discrimination in daily experience and to inspire radicalism that can question the patriarchal systems, which avoids the diversity of voice and subjectivity (ryan 2006; eudey 2012). in this regard, the framework proves functional to serve the purpose of the study. method the study adopts the qualitative research design, which explores the experience, attitude, and interaction (fraenkel & wallen, 2000). it is exploratory. it investigates “how people make sense of their lives, experiences, and their structures of the world” (creswell, 1994, p. 145). the approach considers the processes and characters in social lives to make meaning. these relate to features and parts of documents which are socially produced (altheide, 1996). the qualitative design looks at how social meanings are attributed to the experience of people, and how such meanings are embedded into the text, image and other semiotic things. the qualitative approach focuses on texts and images rather than statistical data. in choosing this study design, i, therefore, agree with creswell (1994) that qualitative research is an appropriate approach for exploratory and descriptive research such as the present study. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 109-121 112 this study particularly uses content analysis as a qualitative research method for analysis. content analysis is used to analyse documented communications (babbie, 2013), either visual or oral (elo & kyngäs, 2008). according to babbie (2013), suitable forms for content analysis include books, magazines, web pages, poems, newspapers, paintings, speeches, letters, emails, laws and constitutions, and among other collections. this research used a fictitious text. qualitative content analysis provides the researcher with subjective interpretations of the text content by identifying topics or patterns (hsieh & shannon, 2005). characters in focus the study focuses on the girl and the magistrate as the main characters for the analysis. this results from the magistrate’s response to life by following feminine interference. he is obsessed with echoes of women and tries to understand the barbarian girl, his unchecked desire and the abstract empire. the magistrate is represented in the text to be fundamental to perspectives of feminism given his association and obsession with the barbarian girl. finally, the fact that he is the narrator of the story is also significant. the girl is chosen because her body is explored by the magistrate through her silence. she is the leading female character in the text. also, her body becomes an object which suffers torture from colonel joll. to some extent, the magistrate becomes represents the oppressors of women who are silent and the girl becomes oppressed. the county magistrate’s obsession with the mutilated body symbolized the authenticity of rebelling against the empire and the essence of imperialism. for instance, the magistrate believes that a woman’s “body is anything but a site of joy” (waiting for the barbarians, p. 48). findings and discussion this section of the paper presents a discussion of the text by applying the assumptions of the postcolonial feminist theory to coetzee’s waiting for the barbarians. this is achieved under three broad themes: the construction and resistance of violence, representation of the female, and point of narration. although the analysis and discussion revolve around the stated characters, they liaise with the research objectives in the introductory section. excerpts of the text are extracted and interpreted through the postcolonial feminist perspective the construction of and resistance to violence through ‘silence’ the subject of violence, and its construction in different forms, has received considerable attention from literary scholars exploring coetzee’s work (asempasah, 2013; boletsi, 2007; qassas, 2020). the construction of violence in the text is depicted to be gratuitous through colonel joll. hence, violence, construed in the form of torture (asempasah, 2013), is modelled to be inherent in colonial contents. myklatun (2018) maintains that “the ethical implication of the face-toface relation motivates a sense of resistance towards the political dimensions of violence” (p. 8). contextually, the text is situated in a violent world. as an allegory representing the opposition between the oppressed and the oppressor, the novel presents the recurrent nature of violence rained on the natives by the third bureau of the empire. violence has been construed to be political and gratuitous. relevant to this analysis is sexual violence which revolves around the magistrate. he ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 109-121 113 perpetrates sexual violence through the silence of the barbarian girl. he says to himself, “i behave in some ways like a lover i undress her, i bathe her, i stroke her, i sleep beside her but i equally might tie her to a chair and beat her, it would be no less intimate” (waiting for the barbarians, p. 43). he sees himself as the embodiment of self-interest in his relationship with her. he describes his desire for the girl as “questionable desires” (waiting for the barbarians, p. 79). there seems to be a dual patterning in the emotions of the magistrate which is blurry. the unsettling turmoil in him sketches such interpretations as to whether it is an act of kindness to associate with the girl or a way of finding meaning in his life. poyner (2016), reflecting on the magistrate’s relationship with the girl asserts that the magistrate’s desire for the girl is based on “the lack of reciprocity, self-interest and an irrational neglect of truth justified by the magistrate’s wavering belief in his altruistic motivations for taking her in” (p. 60). thus, his relationship with her takes a form of oppression and exploitation of her body, instead of being a mechanism to discover the truth. this can be interpreted in the notion of rape given that the girl did not consent to such moves. the case is he does not interpret the silence of the girl as a refusal to participate, but rather as consent to do what he perceives right for her. the magistrate in his interest took her silence as a weakness to caress her body. while in an embrace with one of the town’s prostitutes, his thoughts revisit the barbarian girl: “the body of the other one, closed, ponderous, sleeping in my bed in a faraway room, seems beyond comprehension ... i cannot imagine whatever drew me to the alien body … without aperture, without entry” (waiting for the barbarians, p. 45). dovey (1988) points out that “the magistrate’s obsessive gesture of massaging the barbarian girl’s scarred and damaged feet implies the fetishistic and guilt-ridden attachment … to the figure of the victim” (p. 22). his strong sense of affection for the disfigured body sparks some intentions to delve deeper into unravelling what is beneath the damaged body. his unchecked, perhaps subconscious, desire creates a space to interrogate his guilty feeling. this assertion echoes the questionable desires of the magistrate towards the girl. higgins (2013) reveals that “rape and the threats of rape are a major force in the subjugation of women. in ‘rape cultures’, the danger, the frequency, and the acceptance of sexual violence all contribute to shaping behaviour and identity, in women and men alike. the nature and degree of oppression will vary with the historical moment and, within that, the permutations of racial, class, gender, and institutional relations of power” (p. 1-2). here, the magistrate has relative power within the jurisdiction and exercises such authority in exploring the body of the girl. this act is considered sexual violence. this is complemented by the magistrate’s intentions and acts concerning females. his supposedly ‘kind’ gestures are interpreted to match his womanising acts. this leads to a master-slave relationship where the slave is sexually violated through her silence. enns et al. (1995) prevent sexually violated victims from sharing their experiences. the girl in waiting for the barbarians represents a love object whom the magistrate desires to identify within his endeavour towards the understanding of self. that is, he tries to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 109-121 114 find meaning in the events that have transpired in space. trying to violate the girl’s body as a site for understanding his personal desires undermines the very nature of the girl in the text. there are instances in the text where violence was physically enacted. returning from the quest to find the ‘traitors’, colonel joll brought in the natives “roped together neck to neck” (p. 29). he treats them as ‘objects’ which to the magistrate was difficult to evidence the physical violence. most of the captured natives were brutally beaten to death. specifically, the girl is subjugated to physical violence by colonel joll in the text. this leads to her long silence. colonel joll tortures the girl in order to acquire information about the supposed upsurge of her people. he assumes his answers through the silence and resistance of the girl’s body. the construction of violence is met with a resistant silence. asempasah and saboro (2021) envisage silence, “not only as a mechanism for containing memories of pain” (p. 4) but as a strategy to fight imperial domination which is clearly perceived in this text. the notion of resistance through silence is once again established in the case of the barbarian girl. she passively accepts the magistrate’s ritualistic bathing and oiling, thus rendering herself a resisting, unreadable text (madhok, 2016). the girl’s response to the traumatic physical violence encodes her silence. nkealah (2008) reveals how silence is constrained within the feminine body and women’s personal relationships. given the complexity of sexuality, nkealah (2008) diagnoses how social control coerces women into silence. this assertion directly concurs with the violence that forced the girl into silence. contrary to this, mohammad (2018) counters silence as a way of healing from traumatic events. she deconstructs the misconception of silence as powerlessness to a “meaning of strength and resistance” (p. 265), through the feminist perspective. hence, it is deductible that the girl instrumentalizes her silence to resist the masculine discourse from the magistrate. nonetheless, the magistrate understands silence as a coping mechanism to carry on his ritualistic baths and treatments. the magistrate, referring to his relationship with the girl, explains to the cook that torturers “thrive on stubborn silence: it confirms to them that every soul is a lock they must patiently pick” (waiting for the barbarians, p. 141). the magistrate tries to demystify the suffering that the girl has encountered from colonel joll, as the epitome of colonialism. there is a resounding effort to expose difficulties and create a reconciliatory atmosphere of belonging to a community. it is evident that, through the postcolonial feminist angle, there are patriarchal tendencies, demonstrated by colonel joll, where the girl is oppressed and subjugated to violence. representation of females in the text representation is very important to feminist explorations. that is, how an author projects female characters in a work to justify his or her concerns about feminine issues. the girl is represented as an ‘other’, an inferior being in the text, which fascinated the interest of the magistrate. this can be aligned with the desire of the magistrate to delve into and interrogate what constitutes the silence of the girl, through his fondness. he is unable to recall her face before the torture and all his endeavours to visualize her face go futile. he says, “i took back my thoughts and tried to restore her previous image... i know that my eyes have moved away from her when i was with other people ... my eyes passed over her, but i don't remember that period … she was still ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 109-121 115 unmarked that day, but i must believe that she was unmarked because i must believe that she was once a child ... strain, as in my first image, the remains of a kneeling beggar” (waiting for the barbarians, p. 36). qassas’s (2020) assertion of construing sexuality as textuality finds root here. the magistrate takes a stance in directing his attention to figures of his attraction and not recognizing the girl. from a psychological perspective, his thoughts are to reconfigure the girl as a text, he is continually hindered by his first interaction with her. “she was still unmarked that day” sets the thoughts of the magistrate within a temporal plan while trying to visualise the girl, the object of his desire, but this effort proves futile. in his inability to imagine her face, the magistrate, refuses to recognize her as human following her disfigurement from the torture, she was subjected to by colonel joll. the unnoticed reality of the magistrate concerning the torture of the girl confirms the irrelevant association of kindness from him to the girl. justifying this in the context of the torture she has undergone, the magistrate reflects; “thereafter she was no longer fully human, sister to all of us” (p. 88). her disfigurement blurs his vision of her original face. increased consciousness of her as a woman with subjectivity of her own enables him to imagine her as she was before she was disfigured. the girl, carrying characteristic qualities different from the empire, is represented as an “other”. the concept of otherness creates negative attitudes and widens socio-cultural gaps through identity construction. her ‘otherness’ reflects the tenet of postcolonial feminism where she suffers as a barbarian and as a woman in a patriarchal outskirt of an unnamed empire. the girl deconstructs the understanding the magistrate had about her. on the journey to return the girl, the magistrate is fascinated by the orality of the girl. he says, “[he is] surprised by her fluency, her quickness, her self-possession….. i even catch myself in a flush of pride: she is not just the old man’s slut, she is a witty, attractive young woman!” (waiting for the barbarians, p. 63). his failure to recognize the girl as a “witty, attractive young woman” until a few days before he returned her to her people re-emphasizes the theme of otherness depicted in the novel. he does not understand the identity of the girl in a different setting which presents contradictory representations. that is, he could not appreciate the distinctiveness of the girl until she was placed amongst her people, the other. through the intersection of cultures and sexuality, the girl loses the touch herself in the eyes of the magistrate. she does not find her voice in a land where she is represented as inferior and an object of affection. he admits to himself that he “oppressed her with gloom” with his obsessive cleaning ritual. the use of the phrase “old man’s slut” condemns the very being of a girl coming of age. a ‘slut’ means a female who has much casual sex (farvid, braun & rowney, 2017). this coincides with the sexual violence the girl was subjugated to by the magistrate. armstrong et al. (2014) reveal that women’s participation in slut-shaming is often viewed as internalized oppression. however, even during such intimate acts, the two remained isolated from each other, one sleeping, indifferent while the other is lost in the act to enter oblivion. it can be seen as an exploitative act as his selfcentred caresses offer no satisfaction or release to the barbarian girl. minh (2020) confirms that there are covert meanings in representing women as sexual objects ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 109-121 116 which violate their being. it is only towards the end of the novel that he realizes that all his ways to recompense her pain and suffering only led to further desolation. he concedes, “i wanted to do what was right, i wanted to make reparation: i will not deny this decent impulse, however, mixed with more questionable motives: there must always be a place for penance and reparation” (waiting for the barbarians, p. 152). he denies himself the acceptance of bringing unhappiness to the girl and was filled with surprise at the girl’s refusal to return with him. this can be interpreted from how the magistrate represented the girl through his sexual acts. more importantly, through a torture strategy by joll’s men, the study identifies another way of representing women. a further dehumanisation of females is presented through the dressing of the magistrate as a woman and hanging him in the middle of the town by colonel joll and his men. joll and his men humiliate the magistrate and break his territorial power by equating him to a woman, hanging him on a tree with a woman’s clothes and making a spectacle of him in front of town people. this reflects the insignificant and treacherous nature of the magistrate. this torture technique has importance in the way of representation of victimization of the woman in society. it depicts the passive and silenced position of the woman with no access to authority in society. colonel joll tells him that “you are dirty, you stink, and they can smell you a mile away” (p. 124) which directly carries a dehumanizing effect on the female character. the inactions of the magistrate, therefore, foreground the various suppressions and lack of power concerning the representation of women. later, dressed only in the smock, which reaches halfway down his thighs, the magistrate is turned into the object of the gaze of the people in the fashion of women in a patriarchal society. through a male gaze, there is symbolic violence that witnessers commit on the object (magistrate). here, through the postcolonial theory, the implied effect is transferred to the females in and outside the text. there is inverse reciprocity where earlier, the magistrate shows discomfort in evidencing torture. the representation reiterates the near-blindness of the barbarian girl who could not return the gaze of the magistrate, while in his chamber. the uneasy bond through a gaze aligns with the concept of us and others. feminist film critics say that in society “woman is deprived of a gaze, deprived of subjectivity and repeatedly transformed into the object of masculine scopophilia desire” (doane & hodges, 2013, p. 2). drawing our attention to the postcolonial aspect of the interpretation, there is a negatively formed stereotype characteristic of a group of people who have suffered violence and debasing prejudices which affect the group’s representation. in essence, minimal or no attempt is made to embed the colonised within the imperial image, given the colonised humiliated representation. mode of narration as a technique in foregrounding masculinities the story is told in the first-person mode of narration. intertextually, coetzee’s disgrace explores the manifold of violence from a third-person narrative mood. while such a technique presents a more objective stance, the mode of narration in waiting for the barbarians foregrounds a subjective account of violence and representation from the magistrate. as the focaliser in the novel, the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 109-121 117 magistrate interrogates his own thoughts through an internal monologue. while he draws readers to share in the felt traumatic violent experiences of himself and the barbarian girl, he indulges in forms of violence and subjugation of the girl. this narration provides a homodiegetic account of the happenings on the empire’s border where the narrator is intricately part of the plot. while this mode of narration presents several criticisms, it explores the felt experiences of the magistrate and the girl. “one day he picked up the lantern to see what happened. after that, his life changed”. through the subsequent events and environment, he became an interrogative voice and gained personal awareness of the practices of others and himself. the narrator exercises the power of narration providing us with credible information from his point. he does not provide the name of some characters, particularly the barbarian girl. from a critical perspective, the researchers associate loss of identity with the non-names of the characters in the text (aldrin, 2016). interestingly, coetzee uses this approach to foreground the masculine ideological perspectives inherent in postcolonial studies. what ensues in this narrative is that we are controlled through dialogic interactions and at the forefront of maledominated accounts. maalouf (2001) explains that names make us unique. aldrin (2016) adds that, through onomastic literature, names provide us with identity. it identifies us individually and collectively. briefly, the narrator’s strategic way of enacting the girl as a subaltern robs the girl of her identity and status. identifying her people and returning her is not enough to provide a solid identity for the girl. this lack of identity, we believe, leads to what the narrator provides that she remains in a space or a blank whenever he tries to remember her first days in the barracks. the girl is given little space to articulate her experience which is surmounted by silence – alluding to the power difference. conclusion in all, the study has set out to conduct a feminist reading of coetzee’s waiting for the barbarians. using the postcolonial feminist theory, the purpose of this study was to examine the construction of violence, the representation of females, and the point of narration. the comprehensiveness of the theory fleshed out the interpretation of the text. following the analysis of the text, three major findings were identified concerning the research objectives. first, the text objectifies and ‘others’ the representation of women in the text. this artistry is achieved by revealing the demeaning human experiences in the text and representing them in real-life situations. further, in the context of gender-based attacks, various suppressions lead to silence, which needs to be addressed. while it appeared women are dormant on the issue of sexual harassment, the study implicitly pointed out that brutal existences are lurking in the shadow of humans paying attention to the female population. their dormancy is an act of resistance through silence as portrayed by the barbarian girl. the lack of power in the context of sexual violence reflects the myriad of experience faced by women globally. also, women are represented as inferior and their identity is, if not imposed, stolen from them through power dynamics. through colonel joll, the exertion of imperial power that culturally and racially exploits a people, mostly females, is evidenced. second, while violence against women was constructed at ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 109-121 118 different levels, it was mainly resisted through silence. third, the mode of narration reveals some ideological perspectives which influence the narrative. coetzee crafts the narration not to represent a specific historical presentation of a colonial experience. he leaves the narration in an open spatial perspective to encompass other postcolonial issues. again, the narrator, being a male character exercised much power over the female character leading to power imbalances, hence, the author should have employed a third-person narrator who is not patriarchically skewed to present the experiences and narration of the characters. the study adds to the empirical evidence in the repository of postcolonial feminist theory. the study provides implications for further studies in postcolonial feminist studies. given the newness of this theory, the researchers propose that further studies can adopt the theory and apply it to other literary texts. this promises to expand the foundations and assumptions of the theory. references al-badarneh, a. f. 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(2014). understanding postcolonial feminism in relation with postcolonial and feminist theories. international journal of language and linguistics, 1(2), 45-50. retrieved from https://ijllnet.com/journal/index/2141 https://ijllnet.com/journal/index/2141 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 155-168 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 155 deconstructing paradise: we narration as collective indigenous voice in “this is paradise” kristiawan indriyanto english language education, faculty of teachers training and education universitas prima indonesia kristiawanindriyanto@unprimdn.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.5155 received 12 september; accepted 14 november 2022 abstract this paper contextualizes how the short story “this is paradise” by kristiana kahakauwila deconstructs the idealized trope of hawai’i as paradise by presenting a localized narration from the perspective of the indigene working within the tourist industry. the use of first-person plural narration as the focalizer echoes the collective voice of the hawai’ian indigene in their marginalized status within the tourist industry. an econarratological perspective as stated by erin james provides the reader with textual cues necessary to construct a mental model of hawai’i from the insiders’ perspective. kahakauwila’s use of an insider’s perspective enables the reader to have an understanding of indigenous marginalization in hawai’i, informed by a local experience of the place. this perspective challenges the common depiction of hawai’i as seen from the outsider/tourist point of view. the present study concludes how “this is paradise” underlines a localized portrayal of hawai’i as the counter-narrative toward the established trope of hawai’i as paradise through its use of first-person plural and spatialization of waikiki. keywords: econarratology, hawai’ian-american literature, indigenous resistance, story world, we narration introduction the imagination of hawai’ian isles often evokes the idealized image of tropical paradise in the middle of the pacific ocean. this conception aligns with caminero-santangelo’s idea of how the driving factor behind contemporary tourism is the depiction of picturesque places and welcoming natives which alludes to the construction and maintenance of a feminized and exotic image. (2011, p. 292) similarly, sasaki further articulates how “almost everything in hawai’i communicates through a system of codes constructed over years of selling hawai’i as paradise.” (623) the current image of hawai’i as a tourist paradise has been cultivated through years of tourist-oriented discourse. mak (4) identifies how the advent of mass tourism began in hawai’i after 1950, in which the advancement in air traffic enables easier travel to this archipelago, although its roots began earlier, since the 1870s when hawai’i was still an independent and sovereign nation. the dominant number of tourists in the early age was mailto:kristiawanindriyanto@unprimdn.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.5155 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 155-168 156 predominantly american, pioneered by mark twain’s visit to hawai’i in 1866 although the number remains limited. the peak year of tourist travel in hawai’i pre-1950 was 24.390 tourists and a further 41.041 ‘one-day tourists’, mainly from mainland america in 1939 just before the outbreak of the second world war. (schmitt, 1977, p. 273) by contrast, there were around 10.424.995 visitors to hawai’i in the 2019 survey, mainly coming to appreciate hawai’i’s unspoiled natural beauty. (khan, 2020, p. 1) the relationship between tourists and their impact on both the natural environment and the indigenous people is problematic within postcolonial discourse. hall and tucker elaborate on the contested nature of tourism concerning the issue of identity and representation over nature and implications concerning the tourist experience. they argue how tourism “both reinforces and is embedded in a postcolonial relationship” (2004, p. 20) regarding the tension concerning the preservation of indigenous heritage and its eventual commodification as a marketable aspect driving the tourist industry. similarly, the commodification of hawai’ian natives’ cultural heritage under the package of ‘aloha spirit’ is integral in ensuring this archipelago’s continuous popularity as a tourist resort. the commodification of cultural traditions such as chants (mele) and hula dances results in a performance devoid of meaning instead of a celebration of the divine personified within natural aspects. the hawai’ian archipelago and the kanaka maoli ethnicity represent the existence of a pleasurefilled exotic paradise in which the local inhabitants are always welcoming toward the visitors. (linnekin, 1997; mak, 2018). within the instrumentalization of an indigenous agency under tourist discourse, the islanders’ presence is systematically written out of existence ̧ only represented through their role as brand image and symbolic labour. mandelman underlines how “tourism in hawai’i has relied upon native hawai’ian culture to carve out its unique niche, the tourism’s instrumentalization of native hawai’ians and their culture, including the core ethical value of aloha (love, empathy, compassion, mercy and respect) demonstrates how tourism appropriates indigenous culture as a commodity.” (2014, p. 174) several scholars have analyzed the role of the tourist industry in ensuring america’s continuous domination of the hawai’ian indigene. a native hawai’ian nationalist, haunani-kay trask is a staunch opponent of the tourist industry of her homeland and the ensuing commodification of hawai’i’s own cultural identity. the image of a female hula dancer alongside the white beaches of the pacific shore has become an iconic symbol of exoticism and celebration of polynesian sensuality. trask argues how the authentic essence of hula dance, as a form of worship and respect toward the sanctity of nature has been altered into some sort of cultural prostitution for the white male tourist’ own pleasure. she emphasizes how “the hula dancers wear clownlike makeup, don costumes from a mix of polynesian cultures, and behave in a manner that is smutty and salacious rather than powerfully erotic. in the hotel version of the hula, the sacredness of the dance has completely evaporated, while the athleticism and sexual expression have been packaged like ornaments. the purpose ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 155-168 157 is entertainment for profit rather than a joyful and truly hawaiian celebration of human and divine nature.” (1993, p. 144) the essence of the ‘aloha spirit’ as a marketing symbol to attract potential tourists in hawai’i has been naturalized through various aspects, including education for the younger generation of indigenous hawai’ians. kaomea argues how several textbooks such as hawai’i: the aloha state (1982) or hawai’i: the pacific state (1997) functions as tourist advertisement through a stereotypical depiction of white beaches, exotic scenery and women dancing the hula which entices the younger hawai’ians to partake within the profitable tourist industry. she concludes how the ’curriculum of aloha’ was intended to maintain the continuous influxes of hawai’ian indigenes working within the tourist industry. it can therefore be concurred, as trask argues, how tourism “plays an important role in maintaining the ongoing colonialism between the united states and hawai’i”. (23) within the limited agency of indigenous hawai’ians under tourist-oriented discourse and the prevailing popular imagination of hawai’i as paradise, hawai’ian literature functions to foreground these concealed issues into wider public consciousness. the literature written by the hawai’ian natives represents the reality concerning the indigenous struggle under american domination, previously concealed through paradisal imagery. (indriyanto, 2022a, p. 2) the emergence of an indigenous hawai’ian agency through literature is a recent phenomenon, mainly driven by the hawai’ian renaissance in the 1960-70s, parallel with the wider civil right movement in the u.s and the ensuing revitalization of hawai’ian cultural heritage, ancestry and artistic performances. up until the renaissance period, hawai’ian literature is subjected to much scrutiny regarding its authenticity as the majority of literature about hawai’i was written by foreign visitors instead of local hawai’ians. their writings mainly preserve the constructed image of hawai’i as paradise. as argued by spencer (2010, p. 23), “the pacific has often been delegated as mere scenes for the white writers’ fantasies”. similarly, lesuma identifies how literature marketed for young adults in hawai’i creates an idealized narrative of the island marketed for outside consumption. (2018, p. 28) hence, it is often problematic to define what exactly constituted hawai’ian literature, fictional works which accurately represent the ongoing marginalization of the indigenous people under american influence. an attempt to define what constitutes hawai’ian literature comes from ho’omanawanui’s argumentation which summarizes this example of indigenous fictions as, “the writing produced by kanaka maoli which references hawai’i or hawai’ian culture and asserts their identity as indigenous pacific people seeking self-determination and political independence. reflecting both values of the ancient past and thoughts of the modern era, hawaiian literature holds a unique place as an ethnic american literature.” (2015, p. 258) one of the emerging kanaka maoli writers is kristiana kahakauwila, a hapa (half-breed) of hawai’ian, german and norwegian descent. she has written several short stories contextualizing life in contemporary hawai’i from an insider perspective, a native hawai’ian. her literature contemplates the challenges of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 155-168 158 growing up and living in modern hawai’i within the ever-expanding scope of tourism, development and globalization. several of her works have been included in anthologies chronicling indigenous literature from america and the pacific such as “bridge jumping”, published in bamboo ridge: journal of hawai’i literature (2011) and “hands”, included in off the path: an anthology of 21st century american indian and indigenous writers (2015). her first book, this is paradise: stories (2013) is a compilation of several stories representing the diverse perspectives and landscapes of hawai’i, a melting pot of many distinct cultures. this story provides an avenue to explore contemporary living in hawai’i’s island chains, mau’i, o’ahu, kaua’i and the big island of hawai’i, foregrounding the contested nature between local and tourist, tradition and authenticity. this work was short-listed for the william saroyan international prize for writing and named a 2013 barnes & noble discover great new writers selection. the polemic concerning tourism and its impact on the native population is explored through the narration of “this is paradise”, a short story from the narratorial perspective of several native hawai’ian women working within the tourist industry as housekeeping. “this is paradise” underlines the untold side concerning the detrimental impact of tourism on the local hawai’ians from the insider perspective of native hawai’ian women as the focal point. the central point of the story is told through first-person plural “we” narration in which the protagonists, the local workingclass women of waikiki are collectively grouped into “the women of housekeeping.” they encounter a young woman, susan, who stayed in their hotel and later meets her again during their off-hours in a local bar. a tourist from mainland america, susan is attracted toward the more foreboding side of the city’s native and unable to understand the tension between hawai’ian indigene and the tourists as in her words, “they (the hawai’ians) already lived in paradise.” the next morning, susan is found dead on a beach and it was the housekeeping women who discovered her body. a funeral service is later held in the afternoon and although the area on the beach was quiet for a brief moment, tourism continues as usual. this perspective challenges the popular imagination of hawai’i in which the history of mainstream tourism marketing focuses on evoking the image of hawai’i as paradise. kahakauwila instead delineates and depicts the lives of hawai’ian native locals and the often-turbulent relationship with its tourist visitors, the tension rooted within the historical background of racial and class division, and the conflict between traditional hawai’ian culture and the homogenizing effect of globalization encroaching its shores. although not particularly emphasizing the short story “this is paradise”, several prior studies have been conducted regarding the contested nature of tourism and its impact on the indigenous population. carrigan's (2009) reading on mcmillon’s school for hawai’ian girls and davenport’s shark dialogues illustrates the interpolated aspect between tourism and cultural genealogy. he emphasizes the indigenous hawai’ians’ negotiation of the tourist industry and how “the presence of indigenous culture now exists within the framework of the modern world system both political and economic”. (2009, p. 184) his reading argues how the tourist industry is interwoven with ancestral hawai’ian genealogy and is incorporated within the process of cultural renewal. differently, toyosato’s (2000) analysis of shark dialogues emphasizes the impact of tourism through ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 155-168 159 local hawai’ian’s loss of connection to the land. she dramatizes an excerpt from the novel where the local fishermen give in and sells their ancestral land for the development of a tourist resort. moreover, the loss of the land also results in the transformation of the natural environment, causing physical uprooting and spiritual pain among the populace. (2000, p. 76) compared to the prior studies concerning the contested nature of tourism in hawai’i, the present study focuses more on elaborating how the use of first-person plural narration echoes the collective native hawai’ian struggle under the tourist industry. it further posits the active role readers play during the process of reading in simulating a fictional representation of a narrative text, a story world based on textual cues provided by the narrators. theoretical framework this study foregrounds how readers actively participate in imagining and simulating a mental construction of a fictional literary work during the act of reading. the proponent of the cognitive turn in literary studies, such as erin james argues how “narrative comprehension requires the construction of a mental model of narrative that readers must know and inhabit during the reading process.” (5) reading, as a performative act allows for a mental relocation or transportation of the immediate physical reading proximity of a reader into the fictional space/time coordinate presented within a narrative. as james further asserts, the mental model regarding the contexts of a virtual environment in a narrative, simulated through the active act of reading is essential to acquire narrative comprehension. in her words, “importantly for the considerations of narrative environments, the concept of story world calls attention to the worldmaking power of narrative, or its potential to immerse/transport readers into a virtual environment that different from the physical environment in which they read.” (james, 2015, pp. 9–10) james proposes her model of reading, coined as econarratology which explores the interconnection between storyworld formation in the readers’ mind and its potential to allow readers in exploring different ways of contextualizing the environment based on space and time. narrative, through its world-creating power, provides an important tool for sharing a cross-cultural perspective of environmental imagination and experience. the process of imaginative transportation enables readers to understand different ways of contextualizing the environment based on material realities and shaped by socio-cultural circumstances. james illustrates how “econarratology studies the storyworld that readers immerse themselves in when they read narratives, the relationship between these worlds and the physical/actual world, and the potential of reading process to raise awareness of different environmental imagination and environmental experience.” (2015, pp. 243) storyworld emphasizes the active role of readers, through interaction with the contexts and the narrative environments inhabited by characters to simulate a fictional world of narrative during the reading process. the process of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 155-168 160 constructing a virtual storyworld is facilitated through several narrative devices in the form of textual cues. these textual cues appear in a variety of forms, mainly related to space (spatialization) and what it is like (qualia) to undergo a different experience. qualia refers to the conscious experience narrated from a subjective perspective, either from a narrator or focalizing character. furthermore, as explored by buell, spatial imagination and conscious experience “is not value neutral, but is loaded with the values and agenda of a particular perspective.” (2001, p. 85) a story narrated from an indigenous perspective will have a different understanding of a particular place compared to a settler/visitor's point of view. hence, storyworld formation problematizes how the textual cues given by the narrating character enable the reader to imagine material realities from a subjective consciousness. these diverse voices problematize the polyvocality of narratives in which the voices might remain separate or blended together as heterogenous narration. problematizing the issue of narrative voices is the point of view and narratorial stance/position taken by the narrator/focalizer. as argued by fludernik, “narrative is closely bound with the speech act of narrating and the figure of a narrator.” (2009, p. 67) a narration might employ an omniscient perspective in which a narrator has no limitation in narrating a story or a more limited perspective from the point of view of a particular character as the focal point. the use of subjective consciousness provides readers with instruction to model and experience unfamiliar spaces and times as if the readers were physically present in a particular scene. another type of narratorial voice is the usage of “we” narration, the first-person plural pronoun in which the narrator alludes to a particular group or community. richardson argues how the “we narration” is most often employed in a text “seeking to emphasize the construction and maintenance of a powerful collective identity.”(2010, p. 50) this type of narration underlines the struggle of discriminated/marginalized ethnic groups, in which their collective voices function to challenge the dominant hegemony and authority. beck further addresses that the use of plural narrative voices emphasizes and frames a communal counter-voice to dominant narratives. (2018, p. 3) similarly, the narrative voice of “this is paradise” is narrated from the collective voice of native hawai’ian housekeeping, contextualizing the experience of tourism from the discriminated indigeneity and challenging the entrenched imagery of hawai’i as paradise. method the object of the study is literary analysis in which the data is in the form of quotations, excerpts, sentences, and phrases taken from the short story “this is paradise”. this research is qualitative, which aims to explore and understand individuals or groups which ascribe to a social or human problem. the data is not in the form of statistics, numbers or any other calculational forms. by nature, qualitative research can observe complex details in relation to phenomena which is more difficult to decipher through a qualitative method such as the usage of statistics or numerical calculation. (creswell, 2009, p. 19). the data are in the form of written words and sentences to better understand the questions of human and social problems. the analysis is conducted by analyzing the quotation from the text within the econarratological perspective as articulated by james. to better ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 155-168 161 support the argumentation, the present study provides secondary data in the form of academic articles, journals, essays or books in relation to the situation faced by the hawai’ian indigenous people under white american socio-economic domination. findings and discussions “this is paradise” deconstructs the usual tropes of hawai’i as the site of idealized fantasy of an edenic paradise by employing a group of native hawai’ian housekeeping, grouped into the communal voice of “we” narration as the protagonists. this depiction places the focal point from an insider perspective instead of the outsider, tourist point of view. lui argues that the author writing about hawai’i from a visitor’s perspective is unable to represent the authentic understanding of hawai’ian culture, and historical and ethnic heritage. (2006, p. 41) through the subversion of insider/outsider binarism, as hawai’i is often narrated from the viewpoint of the visitors, readers are able to imagine a different way of conceptualizing what it is like to live in the hawai’ian isles from what they might expect to experience. the understanding of indigenous marginalization under settler domination is directly informed by this insider’s experience, through textual cues representing both space and time. this insider's perspective catalyzes readers’ immersion in a fictional storyworld of hawai’i, more specifically the area around waikiki in honolulu as a prime tourist destination. kahakauwila criticizes the ongoing exploitation of her native heritage as a marketing brand for tourism with the so-called ‘aloha spirit’ or ‘aloha culture’. as previously explored, this concept refers to the commodification of native hawai’ians’ ancestral tradition which is embellished by exotic imagery of polynesian sensuality and hospitality. in her narration, kahakauwila underlines how the word aloha is reduced in meaning into a simple slogan or jargon to greet tourists. in hawai’ian culture, aloha is a cultural feeling of expressing love which is derived from the familial and genealogical connection between both people and the homeland of hawai’i. appropriated in a tourist-oriented industry, the word aloha alludes to the hospitality of hawai’ian natives in which the tourists are warmly received and welcomed as honoured guests. it is narrated in the story that the housekeeping staffs in waikiki have to always use the word aloha during a phone conversation, “the hotel is strict about a great number of our activities. they have rules on how to store the carts, what time to punch in, what time to punch out, how to answer the phone (always start with “aloha”), how to arrange the pillows on the bed, how to report suspicious activity”. (kahakauwila, 2013, p. 3) in line with what haunani-kay trask refers to as cultural prostitutions of her native culture, “this is paradise” explores the appropriation of the word aloha by the tourist industry not as an expression of love and kinship but into a word devout of meaning or as simple slogan. the spirit of aloha positions the indigenous hawai’ian as subservient natives pandering toward the tourists’ wishes, always with a welcoming smile on their faces. the trope of hawai’i as paradise is further underlined through the exploitation of hawai’i’s natural landscapes in which the hotels and other facilities are decorated to evoke the idea ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 155-168 162 of an idyllic paradisal archipelago. the following excerpt, narrated in first-person plural by the housekeeping protagonists contextualizes how waikiki is constructed in the paradisal imagery and inhabited by exotic islanders, “we look into the hotel, and we can almost understand why here, in waikīkī, the world appears perfect. the hotel lobbies are brimming with flower arrangements and sticky with the scent of ginger and the people are beautiful. tan and healthy, with muscles carved from koa wood and cheeks the color of strawberry guava. these people—our people—look fresh as cut fruit, ready to be caressed, to be admired. these are people to be trusted. this is not new york or los angeles. no, hawai’i is heaven. a dream.” (kahakauwila, 2013, p. 7) the preceding passage enables the reader to mentally simulate a storyworld of waikiki from the perspective of a locally oriented insider, participating within the tourist-oriented industry. the use of the first-person plural, as stated by von mossner enables the reader to experience qualia, simulating a conscious experience from a different perspective from him/herself. (2021, p. 93) waikiki is spatially reconstructed through visual cues of the housekeepers working in a waikiki hotel, how it is decorated with flower arrangement while also noting the exoticism of the islanders whose skin is tan and healthy, in contrast with the white caucasian visitors. moreover, olfactory cues, dealing with the smell, “scent of ginger” further orients the readers’ sensory perception through the scent of exotic spices. this spatial and sensory imagination of waikiki underlines the construction of a carefully preserved image of hawai’i as a tropical paradise. the narratorial voices move the reader from an outsider/visitors’ perspective by shifting the focus of narration from the observation of spatial imagery that constitutes the setting to the people working in the tourists' industry, the islanders. the use of first-person plural, “we” narration emphasizes the commonality between the narrators and the people they commented on, as seen in “these people, our people”, while simultaneously criticising the subservient role the indigene performs within the lucrative tourist industry. these pronouns signify the invocation and reaffirmation in the context of hawai’ian indigenous collective. their narration delivers a satirical and scathing critique on how the hawai’ian indigene is stereotypically viewed only through their physical appearance, compared with exotic tropical floras and hospitality toward the visitors, as seen in how they are “people to be trusted.” this depiction echoes williams and gonzales’ assertion on how “native hawai’ians are commodified as the defining images for the tourist industry, symbolically performing labour as welcoming hosts.” (2017, p. 690) “this is paradise” contextualizes the conflict and tension between hawai’ian indigene and the white tourist visitors from the perspective of the housekeeper protagonists and their encounter with susan, a female american visitor. as the story is narrated from a limited perspective in which the women of housekeeping become the central focus, information about susan’s inner psyche is closed from the reader, and they can only infer what the protagonists have to state about susan. their first meeting is a chance encounter on the beach where the girl (still not identified as susan) tries to warn the women of housekeeping that it is dangerous to surf on waikiki beach, by referring toward the signs which read ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 155-168 163 ‘dangerous undertow’. the women of housekeeping, being natives and accustomed to surfing and paddling just laughed at the visitor’s warning. “we ignore it. we are not afraid of the beaches and breaks here in waikiki. we laugh, “just like da kine, scared of da’ water. haoles.” (kahakauwila, 2013, p. 7) in the prior passage, the use of first-person pronoun establishes the distinction between the natives and the visitor by emphasizing how as islanders, surfing has been an essential part of hawai’ian tradition. as is addressed by mitchell, for centuries, the ocean has functioned as a wellspring of cultural practice, values and traditional knowledge in hawai’i. (1982, p. 65) furthermore, the inner thoughts of the women of housekeeping are not represented in standard english but are in a form of creolized english is known as hawai’i creole english (hce). the use of hce in literature, commonly employed by writers of either hawai’ian or asian plantation settler descends echoes the history of hawai’i’s colonial past which embraces the culture, identity, and solidarity of hawai’ian locals. (indriyanto, 2022b, p. 19) by employing hce to narrate the women of housekeeping’s inner thoughts, kahakauwila underlines the distinction between the local and the outsider in hawai’i. this is further explored by how the protagonists remark that the girl is haole, a derogative hawai’ian term referring to the whites. as the narrative progresses, kahakauwila provides more insights into the women of housekeeping’s social status as a representation of the indigenous struggle in hawai’i, which is contrasted with susan’s expectation of hawai’i as paradise. although the women of housekeeping had a meagre job within the tourist industry, have to clean the hotel room since six in the morning and have to leave the hotel from the basement, “tucked away from the visitors who wander in and out of the front lobby” (kahakauwila, 2013, p. 4)they are active and vocal speakers in representing the island community. the narrators acknowledge how, “we are considered by our peers to be local women who’ve done well, left but come back, dedicated their education and mainland skills to put this island right. we speak at civic club gatherings and native rights events. we are becoming pillars of the island community. we are growing into who we’ve always dreamt of being.” (kahakauwila, 2013, p. 12) as vocal speakers upholding the rights of the indigenous community, the protagonists criticize the ongoing commercialization of the island of waikiki. they acclaim that tourism in hawai’i is catered to the tourists’ every wish, luxurious hotels, high-quality shopping districts, retails and convenience store instead of promoting authentic hawai’ian culture and tradition. this perspective echoes carrigan’s line of argumentation in how mass tourism is positioned as a central component of globalization with its culturally homogenizing effects. (2010, p. 182) what is promoted in hawai’i’s tourist district is the western culture of consumerism and hedonistic lifestyle, symbolizes by its multinational hotel, restaurants and coffee chains instead of preserving the original infrastructure of waikiki with its distinctive cultural heritage. the women of housekeeping criticize the homogenization of waikiki tourist infrastructures in the following quotation, “hawaiʻi has less tropical flavour than they recall from the morning, less exoticism, less beauty. waikīkī has become like any other city strip. we’d ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 155-168 164 like to tell them that waikīkī is nothing more than a succession of hyatts and courtyard by marriotts, cheesecake factories and planet hollywoods, señor frogs and dingy irish pubs with names like murphy and callahan.” (kahakauwila, 2013, p. 13) the narrators scathingly address the loss of exoticism in midday waikiki as waikiki has become “like any other city strip”. the consumerist culture which catered for tourists’ amenities further causes the hawai’ian locale to stay away from premier tourist resorts with their exorbitant prices. even the bar in the suburb, “lava lounge” in the short story, where the women of housekeeping spent their night partying is populated by tourists, college students, and u.s army and navy soldiers off duty from pearl harbor. the protagonists remark, “but where else can we go for a strip of bars and clubs? why do we have to share it with all these tourists, military, college kids,” (kahakauwila, 2013, p. 14) this statement echoes the demographical situation in honolulu both as a prime tourist destination which is also the front-line of u.s national defence in which the indigenous people are marginalized in their homeland. a study by ireland (2011) acknowledges that all together, the military-connected population comprises around 15 per cent of hawai’i’s total population. (2011, p. xiii) this context represented through the indigenous voice of the women housekeeping challenges the stereotype of hawai’i as paradise, a lingering trope continuously reproduced within the tourist discourse, as seen in the portrayal of susan. susan underlines the expectation tourists possess toward hawai’i, an exotic island chain in the middle of the pacific ocean with white sand beaches, picturesque natural landscape, and the welcoming hospitality of the indigene. for susan, hawai’i is merely a place to have fun and have an unforgettable experience. in the story, she is prevented from getting close to a man named brian, whom the housekeeping women recognize as a former convict, but susan believes that their warning indicates that the local people do not want the tourist to enjoy the pleasure in hawai’i. being subjected to the hawai’i-as-paradise tropes, she is unable to comprehend how the local people who already lived in the supposed paradise does not want the tourist to enjoy the same privileges. this conflict between the insider and the outsider in hawai’i is aptly summarized through the following excerpt, “everyone talks about aloha here, but it’s like hawaiians are all pissed off. they live in paradise. what is there to be mad about?” “we look at each other, and we feel the heat rising in our faces. our families are barely affording a life here, the land is being eaten away by developers, and the old sugar companies still control water rights. not only does paradise no longer belong to us, but we have to watch foreigners destroy it” (kahakauwila, 2013, p. 14) the hawai’i-as-paradise trope, packaged for tourist marketing prevents the outsider, as seen through susan’s perspective from fully comprehending the racial tension and marginalization faced by the local people. the insider perspective of the women of housekeeping, employing “we” narration to represent the hawai’ian indigene underlines the marginal status of the local hawai’ian under the tourist-oriented industry. kahakauwila represents how the rising price ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 155-168 165 of commodities, the legacy of colonial control in essential sectors and the continuing development of tourist resorts work to disenfranchise the kanaka maoli ethnicity. the women narrators somberly address the fact that paradise is no longer in the hand of the hawai’ians but is it now the property of the whites, which they kept on exploiting to enrich the capitalist owners. on the other hand, the local people working within the tourist industry are unable to cope with the continuous surge in prices. the rising price of land meant that eventually the hawai’ians are forced to abandon the area around waikiki and live somewhere else, as the narrator's remark, “they live in an ʻohana behind his parents’ house. with two kids they’ll outgrow the tiny cottage in no time, but they’ll never be able to afford their own place. we also wonder about laura’s resort design, worried that another development will push housing prices further upward, making it harder still for our people to remain on their land. “and what about water usage?” esther demands.” (kahakauwila, 2013, p. 15) the ever-increasing development of hawai’i leads to continuous demand for new tourist facilities in the form of hotels, resorts, villas and other amenities. to meet the labour demand required, many native hawai’ians are drawn into the tourist industry to make a way of life. their job is synonymous with low wages, which hinder their ability to support a family, especially as land prices keep on rising. while native hawai’ians continue to be subjected to minority status, hawai’i continuously attracts millions of tourists every year, luring them with the hawai’i as paradise tropes. darowski acknowledges how “how tourism in hawai’i displaces local community, both physically and culturally, denies local access to resources, and inequitably distributes benefits to company stakeholders.” (2007, p. 34) tourism privileges high-paying customers, enticed by the exoticism of south seas paradise while projecting the unequal relation of dominance toward the locale. as is narrated in “this is paradise”, the struggle of indigenous hawai’ian to maintain an acceptable standard of living is concealed through the veil of island utopia that symbolically erases their presence from the visiting tourist. this short story contextualizes the inability of the visitors to fully comprehend the extent of racial inequality and tension beneath the paradisal imagery and provides its readers with a first-hand perspective to simulate the reality of contemporary living in hawai’i from the perspective of the indigene. the use of first-person “we” narration problematizes and negates the dominant tourist discourse of hawai’i by representing a more grounded narration from the insiders’ perspective. conclusion reading “this is paradise” from an econarratological perspective posits how the use of the first-person plural “we” pronoun catalyzes readers’ immersion in the locally oriented representation of hawai’i. kahakauwila’s use of an insider’s perspective of the hawai’ian indigene conveys the reader to have an understanding of indigenous marginalization in hawai’i, informed by a local experience of place. first-person plural pronouns collectively embodied the voice of the hawai’ian indigene as they struggle to assert their existence within the dominant discourse of hawai’i as paradise. the prevailing stereotypical view, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 155-168 166 embodied through susan’s perspective contextualizes hawai’i as a utopia and negates the presence of indigenous struggle and tension between the locals and the tourist. the tension between these groups contextualizes the problematic issue of tourism in hawai’i. to conclude, “this is paradise” underlines a localized 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(2017). indigenity, sovereignty, sustainability and cultural tourism: hosts and hostages at ’iolani palace, hawai’i. journal of sustainable tourism, 25(5), 668–716. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1226850 https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1226850 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 204 214 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 204 the roles budi utomo in women’s organization movements in 1928-1940 brigida intan printina sanata dharma university intanbrigida@ usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.020210 received 10 december 2018; revised 9 january 2019; accepted 23 february 2019 abstract this article is the result of research on the role of budi utomo as the driving force of women’s movement. the article attempts to describe the track records of women and their organizations during 1928-1940 which were inspired by budi utomo youth movement as a reformation movement of indonesian people. the type of research is a historical research, i.e. the description of the roles of budi utomo as a motor of women’s movements during 1928-1940. the method employed in the research is a library study using historical analysis. the findings revealed the development of budi utomo movement and its roles in mobilizing women during 1928-1940. keywords: roles of budi utomo, movement, women’s organization introduction budi utomo was the pioneer of women’s movements in indonesia. at the beginning, woman emancipation movements were initiated by a personal transformation such as kartini and dewi sartika. later on, the movements found a clear direction after the reformation done by budi utomo. women created a new tradition of not excluding themselves but exploring the outside world, so that indonesian women could voice their wise reformation according to the character of the nation. one of the challenges is the indonesian tradition, which made women curb themselves under the stigma of self-limitation as they had to follow their predestination. thus, the nature of being women should not become the limitation which curbed themselves. in this way, young people nowadays would be able to uphold their dignity with their character without considering status and gender (printina, kr: 2017). discrimination against women during the colonial era could be observed in the way the dutch colonial recruited women to become gundik (a term used for sexual workers during the colonial era). moreover, they often got pregnant and gave birth to mixed-breed dutch-indonesian babies who were not accepted legally as either dutch or indonesia citizens. therefore, they built a diaspora community in papua and create their new tradition of “tong-tong fair” in order to secure their identity and gain acknowledgements (marlene voor de, 2009:368). mailto:intanbrigida@usd.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 204–214 205 budi utomo focused its movements on the equality of social people, and it could be seen in women’s movements in indonesia. some women’s organizations were established in 1915 by dewi sartika (1884-1947), among them was pengasah budi (mind sharpener) in bandung and semarang established by budi wanito (women’s mind), which aimed at fighting for women’s progress and emancipation. women’s movements did not stay silent seeing injustice to women. therefore, some women’s movements were established after sumpah pemuda (youth pledge) in october 1928. the commemoration of mother’s day in 22 december 19281 in yogyakarta, which took place at presently known as wanitatama building, was the evidence of reformation in women’s movements in indonesia (soewondo, 1955:128). one of the issues raised in the indonesian women's congress was the living condition of indonesian women, which were curbed by patriarchal culture which were based on feudal values (suryochondro, 1984). some women’s organizations participating in the congress were wanita oetomo (outstanding women), aisyah, poetri indonesia (indonesian gentlewomen), wanita katolik (catholic women), wanito moeljo (noble women) and women in sarekat indonesia (indonesian sarekat), jog islamienten bond and wanita taman siswa (wieringa, 1988.12). some prominent figures of women movements were nyi (mrs., javanese) hadjar dewantara from wanita taman siswa, mrs. soekonto from wanita oetomo and sujatin kartowijono from poetri indonesia (prasetyo, 1998:17). these women’s movements were no longer observed after the domestication of the new order regime. thus, young generation now could learn the lesson that although women could not voice their aspirations revolutionarily, they were able to inspire young generation through the character they possessed and it will be discussed further in this paper. besides, women’s roles could not be separated from the struggle of budi utomo movements, which were dominated by men. methods the research method of this article was a library study with historical analysis, in which the writer collected data by means of source criticism, analyzed them by interpreting the sources and historical writings, and also implemented feminism approach to strengthen historical writings (syamsuddin, 2007:86). the stages of historical method cannot be rearranged or reversed by putting forward criticism interpretation, or historiography. all kinds of historical writings or historical research put forward historical sources as absolute requirements which must be available. without historical sources, stories of the past cannot be reconstructed by historians (hamid, et al., 2011:43). stages in writing this article were: heuristic or data collecting, verifying or source validation, interpreting, and historiography (abdurrahman, 1999:55). in the last stage (historiography), the data were merged to explain the role of budi utomo in the development of organizations during the national movement era, in this case women’s organization (voeger, 1997:4). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 204–214 206 findings and discussion the indonesian revolutionary young people in the twentieth century realized that the only way to fight against colonialism and imperialism was simply by recognizing the capabilities they had, namely politics. however, in order to do so, they were required to have sufficient knowledge and experience to be able to find out the weaknesses of the opponent. an understanding of nationality began to grow in indonesia, which was initiated by scholars who received educational opportunities. ethical politics had an influence on efforts to improve the colonies, although in practice it was still aimed at dredging up colonies’ resources. the dutch also had a role in introducing the nationalism to the indigenous people (inlanders) by establishing schools for the people. in 1893 eerste klass indlandsche scholen was founded (sekolah bumi putera angka satu), which was devoted to the indigenous people of the nobility and priyayi, and tweede klass inslandsche scholen (bumiputera angka dua school) for poor indigenous people (ricklefs, 2008:37). this strategy was also carried out by budi utomo movements which were initiated by dr. wahidin sudirohusodo, a scholar who felt responsible for any forms of colonialism that happened to his country. he realized this when visiting the stovia school (one of the educational institutions that produced low javanese priyayi). together with his colleagues at stovia (soetomo and goenawan mangunkusomo), dr. wahidin conducted an exploration on the island of java to raise educational funds. budi utomo believed that gathering educated people would enable them to free their country from all kinds of imperialism and colonialism. kurniadi (1987: 12) confirmed that young people were the national asset with the capabilities to build the country through education. the establishment of the budi utomo organization was inseparable from the role of dr. wahidin sudirohusodo, who gave advice to soetomo to form a movementbased organization (komandoko, 2008: 8). budi utomo gave an opportunity for indonesian youth to participate in educational activities as one of the visions of the organization. one of the reasons for the establishment of budi utomo was that the growth and development of educated groups in the regions, which at that time was very late compared to the central government (soedarto, 1978:26). the development of education in the past time was much influenced by the dutch because at that time the dutch came to the archipelago in a cooperative manner with the kings, later on the dutch influence on education in yogyakarta was systematically applied like trade, culture, agriculture, language, culture and law. to date the existence of dutch heritage schools in yogyakarta were well maintained and sustained, for examples sma negeri 3 yogyakarta, sma negeri 11 yogyakarta, smp negeri 5 yogyakarta (bambang soewando, 1977:140). after successfully raising enough funds to build a movement, on may 20, 1908, on the 26th street abdulrahman saleh jakarta, they established a community called budi utomo, which was chaired by soetomo. at the beginning of the formation of the budi utomo was the organization intended only as a cultural organization limited to javanese and madurese communities. however, in the early development of the organization, the membership had already covered all indonesian people regardless of their ethnicities and religions. in addition, budi utomo organization was the first organization for indigenous javanese ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 204–214 207 which was established in modern system, so that the first congress attracted much attention from the press throughout the indies (nagazumi, 1972:73). the nationalism movement in the 20th century in indonesia was pioneered by national figures, one of whom was budi utomo (suwarno, 2011: 1). the same feelings and ideals experienced by the countries in asia because of the various rebellions which happened to their countries made the natives feel being treated unfairly. some of the influences that moved the community towards nationalism were the boxer rebellion in china and the philippines resistance against spain (wiharyanto, 2015:19). the nationalist movement had the same awareness of placing the highest loyalty of individuals towards their nation and homeland. the principles that they are upheld were togetherness, unity and democracy (mangunhardjana, 1985:33). young people who had the opportunity to enter the dutch east indies school were called the educated class. budi utomo was a national movement organization founded on may 20, 1908 and the organization stimulated scholars be involved. some newspapers affirmed that there was a growing desire among the indigenous elite to fight for their own interests. however, since the presence of dr. wahidin, there had been some reforms to promote education and awareness among the javanese, and it became the main advocate for the establishment of budi utomo. sutomo also emphasized the term budi utomo when responding to dr. wahidin’s explanation stated in javanese, saying ‘puniko pedamelan ingkang sae, mbutekaken budi ingkang utami’ (it is truly a good deed, showing a noble character.). upon hearing dr. wahidin’s words, sutomo’s friend suraji named the newly established organization budi utomo (tirtoprodjo, 1984:12). budi utomo organization was not only known as one of the first national organizations in indonesia, but also as one of the longest lasting organizations until the proclamation of indonesian independence (suhartono, 1994: 32). from budi utomo records, it was very obvious that there were some reforms introduced by budi utomo in the form of local awareness which was formulated in a modern organization, especially women’s organizations which caused social political reformation in indonesia. the visions and missions of budi utomo were aimed to make standard of living and gender equality become clear visions of women’s movements which were to be founded in that era. the women’s movements (organizations) gave rise to feminists who understood women’s issues and various feminist ideologies. feminist ideology contains ideas that describe sexism in a society and how this condition can be eliminated in the future. one example of sexism is the idea of women’s domestic roles. the idea about women’s domestic roles has been attacked by feminists because it refers to the conservative image of women’s social conditions (jurnal perempuan: 1998). the bases of every feminist ideology were values and targets that will allow the achievement of ideal social conditions for women. feminist ideologies consist of various kinds of ideologies, including; liberal feminism, radical feminism, marxist feminism, and social feminism. in indonesia, liberal feminism and social feminism were known to respond to issues of colonial policy and their influence on women and society (fakih, 1997:73). several years after the establishment of budi utomo, in 1912 the first women’s organization was established in jakarta, which was called putri mardika. this organization fought for education for women and encouraged them so that ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 204–214 208 women gained recognition in public, freed themselves from fear and placed them in equal positions with men terms of employment (wieringa, 1999:105). prior to the establishment of budi utomo, leaders of women movement focused the mission on fighting for women’s position in marriage and family life, improving their skills and knowledge to strengthen their roles as decision makers in family life (pringgodani, 1970: 20-21). this was made clear by the great ideals of raden ajeng kartini (1879-1904) that indonesian women at that time had to be free from the problems of forced marriage and polygamy. this appeal was also caused by her own painful experience as kartini was forcibly mated with a polygamous regent named rmaa djojodhiningrat. indeed, kartini also had a big wish in her mind to free indonesian women through education. it was proven as kartini wrote twice about education. in her letter dated october 11, 1901, she wrote (kartini:1987:76): according to my father, becoming teachers was the best option for me...where else would i be able to spread my dream in a better way other than it, as an educator foryoung girls who would be mothers in the future?... later in her letter to mrs abendanon on januari 21, 1901, kartini wrote: it is from women that humans received their first education... and it is getting clearer for me that the education we first receive is not something meaningless for entire lives. and how could local mothers educate their children if they themselves were not educated?... not only to women but also to all indonesian people would education give benefit to girls. the same thing was also felt by female pioneers who struggled after the movement from budi utomo. it was proven by adding teaching fields and enhancing skills of women. hence, the new vision of education was born after the reformation of budi utomo which was continued by dewi sartika. the second role of budi utomo which was very prominent was seen in the women’s movement including the women’s congress. initially the congress was held to strengthen a movement which started from the youth congress which had been carried out earlier before the indonesian women’s congress. the youth congress, which is currently known as the youth pledge day, held on october 28, 1928 was the forerunner of the indonesian women’s congress which was established on december 22, 1928 (the date is celebrated as mother’s day). it was not surprising that the renewed mindset of progressive women of indonesia was also from the merit of the indonesian male movement budi utomo. since then more women’s organizations whose vision was almost the same as the organizations of the national movement in general, namely social politics and culture, emerged. after the establishment of the first women’s organization named putri mardika (independent women) pawiyatan wanito was established in magelang in 1915. the influence of the indonesian women’s movement in politics had been proven since the period of national revival. they designed plans and programs starting at the national level to local areas. they also gave an insight to small groups of women on how to participate in an organization, so that their members ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 204–214 209 were ready to carry out their duties. for example, it was shown by indonesian women’s union or persatuan perempuan indonesia (ppi), which embraced small movements into a single unit within the women’s movement federation (kartini:1987:76). in its program, the women's movement made all members active and sensitive to political problems, established a committee to abolish women’s trafficking, solved problems within the women’s movement, maintained their respective movements, built good relations with other movements, and played many roles in women’s movement during the national reviva l era. along with the establishment of various national organizations and political parties, the women’s movement in the form of organizations began to be established, either as a wing (part of existing women's organizations) or forming a separate organization carried out by women's struggles in one sector at a certain level. the spirit of women’s organization also appeared several months after the youth pledge was read in theyouth congress in 1928. this was proven by the holding of the first women’s congress in yogyakarta. about a thousand people attended the official reception of commencement of the women's congress which was held for the first time in yogyakarta (pusat pengembangan sumberdaya wanita:124) on december 22, 1928 (the date is celebrated as national mother’s day as starting from at this moment indonesian women gained awareness of promoting their status in society). there were various issues originating from various organizations that were raised as the topics of discussion, such as aisyah, wanita utomo, wanita taman siswa, catholic women, and other small organizations at that time (blacburn, 2007: 11). picture 1: the spirit of the indonesian women’s movement in the first indonesian women’s congress on december 22-25, 1928, in yogyakarta. source: http//: artikel_kolomkitajurnalism.org. october 28, 2011 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 204–214 210 picture 2: desember 15, 1928. the core committee of indonesian women’s congress from left to right: nyi hadjar dewantara (wanita taman siswa), ibu soekonto ( wanita oetomocongress chairperson), nn. soejatin (putri indonesia) now known as ibu kartowijoyo. source: foto rep. idayu (susan blacburn, op.cit.) picture 3: desember 22, 1928. the first indonesian women’s congress. from left ro right: ny.b. goelarso, ny. s. kartowijono, ny. hardjodiningrat, nyi hadjar dewantara, ny. soekonto (congress chairperson), ny. sonearjo mangoenpoespito (writing), ny. ismoediati saleh, ny. moendijah, ny. anwar, ny.dirdjowongso. s: foto rep. idayu (susan blacburn, op.cit.) the influence of the women’s congress in 1928 gave rise to other organizations of wives; one of the most prominent one at that time was the sedar wives. the organization struggled to make indonesian women play an active role in politics, improve good working conditions for women workers and support national education for women workers. national actions which had been carried out by the women's movement since the early 20th century include the education of women, paying attention to the condition of orphans and widows, child marriages, reformation of the marriage rules in islam, raising awareness of the importance of self-esteem among women, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 204–214 211 and paying attention to the negative impacts of forced marriage. there was also a campaign against the children marriage. picture 4: barisan laskar putri (female army ranks). source: ruth indiah rahayu the struggle did not stop there; in 1930 a congress was held in surabaya. the congress created new discourses such as women’s trafficking and women’s voting rights (kowani, 1978: 38), also established work information offices for women and initiated research on sanitation in the villages and on high child mortality rates. in 1930’s many women’s organizations fought against coercion from concubines who exploit minors. putri budi sedjati organization built a dormitory for women and girls who were “abandoned” and trained them to be skillful in sewing, cooking, and other skills so that they could become skillful domestic helpers (indisch vrouwenjaarboek 1936:12). one of the agreements of the first women’s congress at that time was the determination of mother’s day on december 22, and since 1950 it was recognized as the national celebration day. this was a historic momentum that can be felt by the indonesian women’s movement to date (blacburn, 2007:12). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 204–214 212 picture 5: the celebration of mother’s day. source: ruth indiah rahayu the first congress produced a federation of women’s organizations called indonesian women’s association (persatuan perempuan indonesia ppi). a year later the ppi was changed to ppii (perikatan perhimpunan isteri indonesia affiliation of the indonesian wife association). ppii was very active in the field of education and efforts to eradicate women trafficking. at the congress in 1932, ppii raised the issue of the struggle against women trafficking and one of the important decisions was the establishment of the association for the eradication of women and children trafficking (perkumpulan pemberantasan perdagangan perempuan dan anak p4a) (sekretariat negara republik indonesia, 2011: 1). after the first national indonesian women’s congress, the next national congresses were held in three cities, namely in jakarta (1935), bandung (1938), and semarang (1941). the frequently conducted national congresses had increased nationalism spirit of other indonesian women’s organizations (blacburn, 2007:12). at the 1935 congress, the indonesian women’s congress (kongres perempuan indonesia kpi) was formed, and ppii was dissolved. although their focus of attention was on poor women, their membership still consisted of the upper class, and the demands they voiced mostly revealed the interests of upper class women (weirenga, 1998:12). since then, national movements, especially the women’s movements, had developed rapidly, and there were also signs of a growing spirit of nationalism. the enthusiasm was apparent at the beginning of the japanese occupation. there were several women’s movements namely the women’s union of the people (perempuan serikat rakyat psi) and the sedar wives (sedar isteri) which opposed the dutch colonial government. they also paid attention to the anti-capitalism struggle (blacburn, 2007:13). in 1935 the issue of women’s suffrage demand was raised for the first time in the congress. this was due to the colonial government policy which opened the opportunity for indonesian women without voting rights (vreede-de stuers, 1960: 95). for this reason a campaign was carried out and women were involved in volksaard. at that time, the first woman to study in the netherlands as a lawyer was maria ulfa. since then the voting rights for women was opened (locherscholten: 2000). in the later development, a group of observers of female workers emerged, which was chaired by mrs. sujatin. with her group, mrs. sujatin went to lasem to investigate the conditions of the batik laborers, who were actually hostage workers. this group of women protested against the working conditions of women workers, and also discussed the fate of the comfort women and concubines of the male owners of batik business (rambe, 1983: 43). in 1940 for the first time, an association called perkumpulan pekerja perempuan indonesia (the indonesian women workers association) was formed in jakarta. the members of the association consisted of women who worked in offices, both government and private sectors, such as teachers, nurses, office employees, and so on. however, judging from its activities, these organizations could not be regarded as a professional organization, because in general their activities focused on female skills education and promoting of nationalism. these ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 204–214 213 activities were not very much different from the activities carried out by other women’s movements. conclusion budi utomo played significant roles in promoting indonesian women’s movements, among them are 1) motivating the birth of the first indonesian women’s movement, putri mardika (independent women) ; 2) transforming the women’s vision by means of raising the women’s status in the social, cultural and political fields; 3) promoting the fast growth of women’s organizations which were established between 1928 and 1940, starting from putri mardika (independent women) to the indonesian women workers association in jakarta. from the discussion we can learn the meaning of being spectacles of the life of the nation, and that the responsibility to build society and the state is our common task regardless of our status, gender or anything else. therefore, it is difficult for the nation to grow without learning deeper or recognizing youth movements during the national movement. without youth and without indonesian women, this nation would never have existed. references abdurrahman, d. 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(1998). kuntilanak wangi: organisasi-organisasi indonesia sesudah 1950, jakarta: kalyanamitra pusat komunikasi dan informasi perempuan. wiharyanto & kardiyat a. (2011). sejarah indonesia dari proklamasi sampai pemilu 2009. yogyakarta: universitas sanata dharma. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 192-200 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 192 the courtesy call: study on politeness of fiction characters i dewa putu wijana universitas gadjah mada idp_wijana@yahoo.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030205 received 29 january 2020; accepted 14 february 2020 abstract this research is an attempt to study politeness issues based on utterances of osamu dazai’s short story characters entitled “the courtesy call”, the english translation from japanese “shinyu kokan” by ivan morris. by using politeness maxim theory proposed by leech, it is found that the antagonist often violates 6 politeness maxims which tend to obey by the protagonist and his wife. the violation and the obedience of politeness maxims constitute a reflection of character differences intended by the writer. utterances expressed by fiction’s characters are a rich source to exploit for studying politeness for pragmatic studies as their creation is based on careful observations of the author toward the world realities. keywords: politeness, maxim, and fiction introduction matter factually, speech act constitutes one of the most important aspects of the study of pragmatics. in a line with this statement, leech (1983, 14), in trying to describe context which he called “speech situation”, proposes that every utterance produced by the speakers is a product of verbal act. accordingly, human beings can perform various kinds of speech acts in order to communicate their, thoughts, ideas, and emotions with other interlocutors. from those unlimited number of speech acts, experts then classify them into five big categories, those are representative, directive, expressive, commisive, and declaration (leech, 1983, 105-106; dardjowidjojo, 2003. 101-107). meanwhile, searle added with one more category, i.e question (searle, 1976, 1-24; parker and riley, 2014, 3233). each speech act category can also be expressed through various strategies, the choice of each is determined by various sociopragmatic factors which in many cases is not always easy to explain. no matter what kind of strategy the speaker chooses, the choice is mostly underlined by his/her intention to create a comfortable speech situation to whom (s)he communicates with. for achieving speech convenience, all conversation participants should be cooperative and polite to one another (allan, 1986, 10-12). therefore, politeness matter plays a very central role in any communicative interlocution. however, studies on politeness ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 192-200 193 and mainly impoliteness in language use are not always easy to carry out. researchers often face a lot of difficulties to find primary materials that can authentically describe the use of impoliteness between two or more conversants. the concrete situations of people using language impolite utterances, such as usually found when they quarrel with each other, express indecent or swearing expressions are very difficult to gather. for overcoming all these conditions, the politeness study in this paper will try to use data that clearly, though imaginatively, describe such speech situations in literary work. this kind of data is considered quite representative to describe the situations because in creating their works, fiction writers usually have carried out long and careful observations toward any life reality for enable them describing it vividly in their works. the use of imaginative works in linguistic studies has been done by many researchers, such as kramer (wardaugh, 1986, 308-309) in order to investigate the differences between male and female languages. basing his research on cartoon characters found in the new yorker magazine published between february 17 and may 12, 1973, he finds that in spite of the choice of conversation topics, in which men choose ones related to business, politics, legal issues, taxes, and sports, and women rather do one's concern with social life, books, food and drink, life troubles, and lifestyle, men and women languages are also clearly shown in their various linguistic habits, such as in the frequency use of swearing words, empty adjectives, and the bluntness of the utterances. men’s languages are more forceful, use more indecent words, and blunter than those of women. basing his research paper on the negative and positive theory of politeness proposed by brown and levinson, wijana (2014, 197-219) tries to describe the politeness differences of utterance expressed by the protagonist and antagonist characters in oka rusmini’s short story entitled “harga seorang perempuan” (woman dignity). in this paper i will try to describe with a different theory, the politeness differences of expressions of protagonist and antagonist characters of short story entitled the courtesy call written by javanese writer osamu dazai. the politeness theory i use to approach is one proposed by leech (1983, 132133). theoretical framework politeness, according to folley (2001, 270), is a buttery of social skills whose goal is to ensure everyone feels affirmed in social interaction. to achieve this mutual satisfaction, different from brown & levinson (1987) which based their theory on positive and negative face-saving, leech (1983, 132-133) proposes his politeness theory based on cost and benefit scale of self and other. according to this theory, politeness in verbal interaction can be attained by maximizing and minimalizing cost and benefit of self (addreser) and other (adressee) of six conversational maxims, i.e tact, generosity, approbation, modesty, agreement, and symphaty maxim. for each maxims, every speech participant should obey these following rules: 1. tact maxim: every participant must minimize the cost to others, and maximize the benefit of others. 2. generosity maxim: every participant must minimize benefit to self and maximize cost to self. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 192-200 194 3. approbation maxim: every participant must minimize the dispraise of others and maximize prise of others. 4. modesty maxim: every participant must minimize prise to self and maximize dispraise to self. 5. agreement maxim: every participant must minimize disagreement and maximize agreement between self and other. 6. sympathy maxim: every participant must minimize antiphaty and maximize symphaty between self and other. from the six rules outlined above, it can be stated that the first four maxims (tact, generosity, approbation, and modesty maxim) are bipolar scaled maxims, while the rest (agreement and sympathy maxim) are unipolar scaled maxims. to enable bipolar scaled maxims to work properly in order to achieve polite utterances, every participant should apply a pragmatic paradox. if one participant try to maximize the benefit of others, the addressee (person) whom s/he speaks with must also paradoxically minimize the benefit or maximize the cost of him/herself. if one participant try to maximize the prise of others, the addressee (person) whom he/she communicates to, should also minimize the praise or maximize the dispraise of him/herself. for example, i will try to describe this phenomenon by using a dialog between the two characters santiago (the old man) and the boy found in ernest hemingway “the old man and the sea” (1) below”: (1) + “what do you have to eat?” the boy asked. “ a pot of yellow rice with fish, do you want some?” + “ no, i will eat at home. do you want me to make the fire? “no i will make it later on. or i may eat the rice cold.” + “may i take the cast net?” “of course” there was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. but they went through this fiction every day. there was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too (page 16). to maintain the mutual respect that has been tied in between the old man and the boy, both characters always try to maximize the benefit and minimize the cost of others as outlined by the first (tact) and the second (approbation) maxim. the old man offers something to the boy, and in turn, the boy politely refuses the offer. conversely, when the boy offers some help to take the cast net using the polite question “may i take the cast net?”, the old man gives him permission. with regard to adherence of the third (approbation) and forth maxim, quoting miller (1967, 289-290) leech exemplifies the following (2): (2) + my what a splendid garden you have here the lawn is so nice and big, it’s certainly wonderful, isn’t it. oh, no, not at all, we don’t take care of it at all anymore, so it simply doesn’t always look as nice as we would like it to. + oh no, i don’t think so at allbut since such a big garden, of course, it must be quite a tremendous task to take care of it all by your self; but ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 192-200 195 even so, you certainly do manage to make it look nice all the time: it certainly is nice and pretty any time one sees it. no, i am afraid, not at all. in (2) it is clearly shown that (+) always tries to maximize the praise in admiring the beauty of the interlocutor’s garden. meanwhile, the garden’s owner (-) paradoxically responds it by mitigating such admiration (see also wijana, 2005, 6-7). based on this politeness theory, it can be hypothesized that in order to strengthen the characterization of the protagonist and antagonist of fiction, the obedience and disobedience of politeness maxims are not difficult to find. the protagonists in order to show good manners, tend to obey the politeness maxims, but the antagonists incline to flout them. these matters are explicitly described in “the courtesy call”. synopsis “the courtesy call”, the title of dazai’s short story ironically refers to the informal and annoying visit of two friends who have not met for years with each other. the host (osamu, protagonist) who acts as a protagonist living with his wife receives a guest (the antagonist), his playmate in primary school. their meeting is full of boasting and empty impolite talks of the antagonist concerning many things about his life in tokyo. no matter how disgusting and impolite the guest is, the hosts (osamu and his wife) must serve him with full of their good manner. everything which concerns the impoliteness of the guest and politeness of the hosts in association with the obedience and violation leech’s politeness theory will be described in the following sections. the antagonist’s verbal acts the bad or wicked behavior of the antagonist is described by osamu’s narration in the opening of the short story as quoted below in which the guest without any adequate evidence always tries to slender and insult the protagonist’s life in tokyo. “until my death, i shall not forget the man who came to my house that afternoon last september.[.....]. for me, these men foretold a new species of humanity. during my years in tokyo, i had frequented the lowest class of drinking house and mixed with some quite appealing rouges. but this man was in a category all his own: he was far and the way the most disagreeable, the most loathsome i had ever met; there was not a jot of goodness in him (page 467)” after years of separation, there would be no intimacy left between the antagonist and protagonist, and this condition obliges both hands to respect each other. in fact, because of his bad character, the antagonist often violates leech’s tact and generosity maxim. he frequently forces or imposes the protagonist for the benefit of himself. in fact, as stated by fraser (1990), to achieve politeness, every speaker should not impose, give options, and always make the interlocutor feel good (see also watts, ide & ehlich, 1988, 5). for this matter see the imposition ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 192-200 196 done by the antagonist in forcing osamu to take some drink, and asking osamu to call his wife to pour the drink in spite of some indecent expressions, such as little woman, damned stingy, and your stinginess, and book worm he uses to insult the protagonist and his wife. (3) “come on” he said, “you needn’t look as if you’d never heard of the stuff. theey tell me you’ve always got a good supply put away. let’s have a little drink together! call the missus! she can pour for us” (page 469) (4) protagonist: i dont have any sake,” i said. “i hope you won’t some whisky.” antagonist: “it’ll do,” he said. but i want your little woman to pour the stuff.” protagonist: i am sorry but my wife isn’t at home,” i said. antagonist: of course she’is at home”, he said. “tell her to come and do the pouring” (page 470). (5) good gracious, madam, he said, “you shouldn’t heve gone to all that trouble. i don’t want anything to eat. i come here to drink. but i want you to do the pouring from now on. this husband of yours is too damned stingy for my liking.” (6) protagonist: you can have this bottle,” i said handing it to him. antagonist: “hey, hey”, he said. “none of that! i have enough of your stingeness for one day. you’ve still got another full bottle stored away in that cupboard, haven’t you? let me have it! (page 481)” although it is undeniable that sometimes the antagonist constructs utterances which look like obeying tact and generosity maxims, but those utterances are implicatively lowering or offending the protagonist’s dignity. for example, in (7) and (8) the antagonist’s offers treat the protagonist as a very poor person despite his boasting strategies to maximize the prise of himself and maximize the dispraise of others as manifestations of violation of approbation and modesty maxims. (7) “if you are ever short of food, you can come to my farm too and i will give you whatever you need. iam not the sort of fellow who’d drink a man’s liquor for nothing. i’ll repay you-down to the last penny. we farmers are grateful folk. (page 474)” (8) “i was just telling osamu here that if you ever need any food, be sure to come round to my place. i’ve got plenty of everything: potatoes, vegetables, rice, eggs, chikens. what about some horse meat? i’m a great expert at stripping horsehides, you know. come a long tomorrow and i’ll go out tomorrow morning a whole horse’s leg to take home. do you like pheasant? of course you do! well. i’m the most famous famous shot in these parts. (page 476)” ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 192-200 197 the other examples of approbation and modesty flouting are (9) and (10) below: (9) protagonist: “it was very good of you to support my brother,” i said with a sardonic smile. antagonist: “don’t get me wrong”, he said. “i did it out of common humanity-not because i thought he was any good. your family may have got ahead in the world now, but a couple of generations ago they, common oil sellers. did you know that. i’ve been doing a bit of research. your family use to sell cans of oil and if anyone bought half a pint or more, they gave him a piece of toffee as a premium.” (10)antagonist: “i my self come from a really old family, though, he continued. “my ancestors move to this village hundred of years ago from kyoto.” protagonist: “really? in that case, i expect you are noble lineage.” antagonist: “you may not be far wrong,” he said wit a nasal laugh. ”of course, you wouldn’t think it to see me in this clothes. but both my brothers went to university. the older one’s made quite a name for himself in the government. you’ve probably seen his name in the papers.” protagonist: “yes, of course,” i said (page 473-474). in (9) the antagonist dispraises the protagonist’s ancestors, while in (10) he praises his own. and, the following (11) is the antagonist insult of osamu’s wife, and the antagonist’s praise to his own and family: (11)protagonist: ”she’s no good!” he shouted, as soon as my wife had left the room.” antagonist: “your missus is no damned good, i tell you! now take my old woman, for instance. there’s a real wife for you! we’ve got six lovely kids and we’re as happy a family as you’ll find anywhere in these parts. ask anyone in the village if you don’t believe me.” ...your missus she can make a fool of me by walking out like that. well, i’m going to bring her right back to say she’is sorry? in the bed room, i expect. i’ll go and drag her out of her bedroom (page 480).” the antagonist is also shown several times maximizing disagreement with the protagonist. in (12) the antagonist refuses that he had already been separated from the protagonist for years, but for him, it was already for decades. in fact, these to terms according to the host is not significantly different, and useless to debate. in (13) the protagonist tries to mitigate his disagreement because he doubted it for unable to recall the fight events, but it is rudely rejected by the antagonist. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 192-200 198 (12) antagonist: “well, well,” he said loudly, “it ‘s been a long time, hasn’t it?” protagonist: “yes years and years.” antagonist: “years?”, he shouted. “decade, you mean! it mus be over twenty years since i last saw you. i heard some time a go that you’d to move to our village but i’ve been far too busy on the farm to call (page 468).” (13) antagonist: “d’you remember how we used to fight at school?” he said, starting a new tack. “we were always fighting, you and me.” protagonist: “were we really?” antagonist: were we really, indeed!” he said, mimicking my intonation. “of course we were. i’ve got a scar at the back of my hand to remind me. you gave me this scar (page 468) ” finally, the antagonist effort to always minimize sympathy to his old friend constitutes evidence of his impolite behavior. in (14) instead of expressing condolence to the interlocutor about the bombing the protagonist experienced in the wartime, he forced to take the blanket of the protagonist’s wife. consider the following conversation. (14) antagonist: “where do you life in tokyo?” protagonist: “i lost my house in the war.” antagonist: “so, you were bombed out, were you?” that’s the first i’ve heard of it. well in that case you must have got that special allocation of a blanket that they gave each family of evacuees. [...] give me the blanket . it’s meant to be quite good wool. my wife can make me a jumper with it. i suppose you think it’s funny of me to ask you for the blanket like this. but that’s the way i do things. if i want something, just ask for it (page 477). the antagonist seems not knowing how precious is the blanket for the protagonist’s family. see the osamu’s narration (15) below: (15)i still stared at him blankly. this wool blanket, which we had been given as a sort of consolation prize, seem to be my wife’s most treasured possesions. when our house was bombed and we moved to the country with our children, like family crabs whose shells have been smashed and who crawl naked and helpless across a hostile beach, she had kept the blanket constantly in sight, as though it were some sort of talisman. the man who now faced me could never know how a family felt who had lost their house in the war, or how close to commiting mass suicide such families often were (page 477). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 192-200 199 the protagonist’s verbal acts as the host, osamu always shows his politeness by continuously respect his old friend, hirata. no matter how sarcastic the guest insulting him, he keeps trying to contain his feeling for the sake of the guest’s comfort. for example, in (16) he pretends for not forgetting the friend, and invite him respectedly to come in. (16)antagonist: don't say you’ve forgotten me! i’m hirata your old friend from primary school.” from the dim recesses of my memory there emerged some vague recollection of the face. we may indeed have known each other in scholl, but as for being old friend i am not so sure. protagonist: “of course i remember you,” i said with a great show of urbanity. “do come in, mr. hirata (:page 468). being aware of his position as a new resident, he did not dare to ask the guest to leave, instead, he offers some fruit to him. consider (17) below: (17) i suddenly wanted to ask him to leave. yet the fact was that i did not dare to. our position in this village was far from secure and i could not risk offending someone who appeared to be an old and well established inhabitant. besides, i was afraid that if i asked him to go, he might think that i looked down on him for being an educated farmer. i went to the living room and come back with a plate of fruit. “have a pear”, i said. “it’ll do you good (page 472).” osamu’s wife verbal act osamu’s wife takes the smallest part of this short story. there only two verbal acts expressed by this character. one when she was introduced to the guest (18), and the other when she asked permission to leave the guest and her husband because her baby was crying (19). all of her utterances and gestures are intended to please and respect the guest and their reunion. (18)protagonist: “let me introduce mr. hirata,” i said, “my old friend from primary school. we were always fig hting when we were kids. he’s got mark on the back of his hand where i scratched him. to day he’s come to get his revenge.” protagonist’s wife: how terrifying!, she said, laughing. anyhow, iam glad to meet you.” she bowed in his direction (page 476).” (19) my wife laughed good-naturedly and stood up. “i am afraid i’ll have to leave you,” she said. “i hear the baby crying (page 480).” ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 192-200 200 conclusion in line with the language function for creating harmony between speech participants, politeness and impoliteness are important topics discussed in the study of pragmatics. however, the study on them is often not easy to carry out. the researchers are often faced with the difficulties of data recording which representatively describe politeness and moreover impoliteness locution of human language use. as such, this paper recommends the use of utterances expressed by imaginative characters abundantly found in various kinds of fiction, such as cartoons, novels, short stories and the like. the writers of such works are commonly based their creations on careful observations for enabling them to mimic as close as to the world realities. references allan, k. (1986). linguistic meaning. london: routledge and kegan paul. brown, p., & stephen, l. (1967). question and politeness: strategies in social interaction. cambridge: cambridge university press. dardjowidjojo, s. (2003). psikolinguistik: pengantar pemahaman bahasa manusia. jakarta: obor. dazai, o. (2019). modern javanese short stories. tokyo: tuttle. foley, w. a. (2001). anthropological linguistics: an introduction. oxford: basil blackwell. fraser, b. (1990). perspective on politeness. journal of pragmatics, 14, 219-236. hemingway, e. (2003). the old man and the sea. new york: scribner. leech, geoffrey. 1983. principles of pragmatics. london: longman. miller, r.a. (1967). the japanese language. chicago: chicago university press. parker, f., & kathryn, r. (2014). linguistics for non-linguists. singapore: pearson. searle, j.r. (1976). the classification of illocutionary acts. language in society, 5, 1-24. watts, r. j., ide, s., & ehlich, k. (1988). politeness in language (2nd ed.). mouton: de gruyter. wardaugh, r. (1986). an introduction of sociolinguistics. oxford: basil blackwell. wijana, i. d. p. (2005). teori kesantunan dan humor. gatra, 29, 1-7. wijana, i. d. p. (2014). bunga rampai persoalan linguistik, sosiolinguistik, dan pragmatik. yogyakarta: a.com advertising. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 80-94 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 80 sundanese indigenous knowledge in sindang barang cultural village – bogor *rizki nurislaminingsih1, arido laksono2, and eka purna yudha3 1faculty of communication science, universitas padjadjaran 2faculty of humanities, universitas diponegoro 3faculty of agriculture, universitas padjadjaran nurislaminingsih@unpad.ac.id1 , arido@live.undip.ac.id2 , and eka.purna.yudha@unpad.ac.id3 *correspondence: nurislaminingsih@unpad.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.4758 received 11 june 2022; accepted 14 october 2022 abstract the sindang barang cultural village was formed by the descendants of customary holders who live in bogor to revitalize sundanese culture. this is useful for preserving customs so that people can continue to live the sundanese way (using indigenous knowledge and sticking to local wisdom) even though they live in the modern era. this study aims to identify the sundanese indigenous knowledge possessed by them. this study uses a qualitative thematic analysis approach to identify it. the results of this study indicate that the themes of indigenous knowledge owned by the society are village landscape, agriculture, natural signs, health, and batik. the village landscape has sub-themes landscape of land and building position. the sub-themes of agriculture are the type of paddy, fertilizer, planting time, magic guard, and granary. natural signs have the sub-themes of changing days and signs of calamity and disaster. the sub-theme of health is herbs. batik has a sub-theme of motifs and natural dyes. this study found that some of the indigenous knowledge about herbs and batik had been lost from the people's memory. keywords: indigenous knowledge, sindang barang, sundanese introduction the sindang barang cultural village in bogor district is the result of the efforts of traditional holders to preserve the sundanese culture inherited from their ancestors. this effort is important because bogor is one of the archaeological heritage sites of sundanese culture. abah etong sumawijaya (the former leader of sindang barang) continued the ancestral efforts to maintain the sindang barang culture to stick to sundanese customs until 1971. from 1971-2005 sindang barang did not have a traditional head. this caused concern for abah entong sumawijaya's grandson, achmad mikami sumawijaya. in 2006, he together with traditional leaders, elders, and the community agreed to establish the sindang barang cultural village so that sundanese culture stay maintained. the village was inaugurated by mailto:nurislaminingsih@unpad.ac.id mailto:arido@live.undip.ac.id mailto:eka.purna.yudha@unpad.ac.id mailto:nurislaminingsih@unpad.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.4758 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 80-94 81 the governor of west java on september 4, 2007. achmad mikami sumawijaya (abah maki) was elected as pupuhu (the new leader). pupuhu is responsible for maintaining sundanese wisdom and ensuring that people continue to use indigenous knowledge in their lives. masekoameng & molotja (2019) argued that there is no single definition of indigenous knowledge (ik). ik is usually described as indigenous knowledge from the community, the knowledge that is still traditional, or local knowledge that is only owned by certain communities. mazlan & omar (2012) explained indigenous knowledge is usually stored in the memory of traditional leaders, elders, and people who are considered experts in certain customs. it has not been explored and documented. indigenous knowledge of the sundanese can be seen in the research of wicaksana & sumaryana (2018) exemplifying the knowledge of sundanese in baduy-dalam. the community in this traditional village calls orion kidang and venus as bintang timur (the eastern star). orion or kidang is used to indicate the time to farm. venus is east direction. the result of the study by nikmatullah et al. (2019) shows that the people in baduy-dalam know herbs. there are 54 types of plants that they used to make medicine. based on those two research results, we argue that other villages also have local knowledge that represents sundanese culture. we chose sindang barang cultural village because it is located in bogor. bogor's relationship with sundanese culture is explained by gultom (2018) that the name sunda is listed on the kebon kopi ii inscription found in bogor. pusparini et al. (2017) said, since the 17th century bogor has been the center of civilization of the padjadjaran kingdom. bogor's position as a historical city has continued into the modern era. in 2012 the ministry of public works and public housing of the republic of indonesia through the directorate general of spatial planning and indonesian heritage preservation agency designated bogor as one of the heritage cities in indonesia. nature and culture in bogor are considered to have a history that represents one of the tribes in indonesia, namely the sundanese. one of the places in bogor that are considered sacred by the sundanese is sindang barang. abah maki explained that the land which is currently used as the sindang barang cultural village was formerly a sacred place for the sunda galuh kingdom (12th century) during the reign of king wisnu barata. sindang barang's position as a sacred place is evidenced by the menhirs, dolmens, punden terraces, jalatunda wells, and sri bagenda park around this cultural village. the status of sindang barang as a sacred place persisted until the sunda galuh kingdom changed its name to the padjadjaran kingdom (13th to 15th centuries). the palace for dewi kentring manik mayang sunda (one of the wives of prabu siliwangi or king padjadjaran) was built on sindang barang land. even though people currently live in the modern era, they have not abandoned sundanese cultural values according to the teachings of their ancestors since the days of the kingdom. based on the results of our survey, it can be seen that the sindang barang cultural village holds the collective memory of the sundanese people about their identity. in this place, there are traditional houses, rice storage warehouses, and halls. those traditional buildings were built according to the sundanese rules. some residents also grow herbs. they plant it in front or beside the houses. another thing that reminds us of the identity of the sundanese is the position of the village which was established in the highlands. the terraced land ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 80-94 82 contour is the most suitable place to build a sundanese village. this fact forms the basis of our argument that the sindang barang cultural village has indigenous knowledge that is typical of the sundanese. therefore, we are interested in research to identify the kind of indigenous knowledge. method this study used a qualitative thematic analysis approach to identify indigenous knowledge in the sindang barang cultural village. according to braun & clarke (2013), qualitative research is research with data in the form of spoken, written, and image forms that is not intended for generalization. qualitative research has thick descriptions of research results to interpret more local meanings. the thematic analysis (ta) approach is useful for identifying themes and patterns of meaning in the dataset according to the research question. the analysis is not shaped by theory but is shaped by the researcher's point of view based on epistemological principles without having to study theoretical constructions in depth. our data collection technique was carried out through direct visits. we saw the terraced land, traditional houses, herbal plants, batik, food storage warehouses, and paddy fields. we interviewed abah maki (pupuhu/customary leader), abah ukat (kokolot/elder), and emak (one of the residents). the results of our observations are written in the form of a description of what is in the location (the land, houses, herbal trees, batik, warehouses, and fields). we also recorded the interview process. we copied the recordings of the interviews in written form. we read the texts from our observations and interviews repeatedly until we get the themes, sub-themes, and explanations. the results of our analysis are presented in the narrative. this is as stated by braun & clarke (2013) that the thematic analysis stages are reading data (textual or audio-visual data must be read, listened to, and watched many times), noting unique keywords, determining themes, defining the themes, creating subtheme map, explaining the subthemes, analyzing the relationship between the themes and subthemes, and displaying the results of the analysis. findings and discussion according to gupta (2015), knowledge is part of a culture, created from various facts, and contains information. the knowledge that is identical to a particular culture, is traditional, and applies to local customs is known as indigenous knowledge (ik) that does not use written or printed learning media, is not created in the laboratory, and is not learned in formal education. it is created because of the long process of community interaction with nature. they recognize what is happening around them, and believe what they see and feel. beliefs in the natural events they see are associated with religion. although belief in the supernatural is sometimes perceived by modern society as a superstitious practice, indigenous peoples still regard the supernatural as a part of life. indigenous knowledge is also owned by sindang barang as in table 1. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 80-94 83 table 1. sidang barang cultural village indigenous knowledge themes and subthemes themes subthemes brief explanation village landscape the landscape of the village land forest, settlement, and paddy fields building position customary leader’s house, meeting hall, paddy barn agriculture paddy type ketan, cerei, sri kuning, and kewal natural fertilizer salt used for fish preservation magic guard the scarecrow planting time based on day, month, and constellation granary rice storage natural sign change of days late afternoon signs of calamity and disaster animal sound health herbs fever pain in the stomach skin disease toothache bruises batik motif especially for the royal family, commoners natural dyes leaves, fruit skins, flowers, and tree bark village landscape the people in sindang barang have indigenous knowledge about the landscape following sundanese customs. customary leaders and elders always choose hilly locations as their territory. in general, they divide the territory into three positions (up, middle, and down). the upper part (such as the highest land or hilltop) is devoted to sacred places such as human tupan (forest prohibition), places of worship, and ancestral tombs. the middle position is a residential village (leader's house, meeting hall, rice barn, and residents' houses). paddy fields, fields, farms, and ponds are in the lowest plains, usually next to rivers. an illustration of a village that is under sundanese customs can be seen in figure 1. the landscape of village land figure 1. illustration of sundanese village ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 80-94 84 according to abah maki, the location of the sindang barang cultural village is by the principle of warugan lemah (good land layout according to the sundanese) namely ngalingga manik (land in hilly areas), and bahe ngaler (land extending to the north). this formation is suitable for traditional villages. the sindang barang cultural village was built in a hilly area with a land position that extends from south to north. abah ukat added, the lower part is used as paddy fields, vegetable gardens, and farms. this area is in the form of terraces and is usually next to or close to a river. farmers often use rivers to irrigate rice fields during the dry season and bathe the livestock. near the river also grow herbs that can be used for medicine. according to phungpracha et al. (2016), the form of terracing land is useful for farmers to regulate water for rice fields. rice fields in hilly areas are also useful as a preventive measure for soil erosion. camacho et al. (2016) explained that the philippines has a land division system according to customary law. the zoning set by muyong is the boundaries of settlements, forests, grasslands, fields, and terraced rice fields for maintaining harmonious relations between the community and nature and for avoiding land ownership disputes because there are sanctions that apply traditionally to people who violate this rule. building position abah ukat explained that the ancient traditional village arrangement was also like sindang barang cultural village. when viewed from afar, sindang barang cultural village is located in the hills. imah gede (the house of the leader) and the house of the elders are on the highest residential land (not parallel to the ordinary people's houses). just like rice planting time, the best time to make a house is thursday and sunday. a good house position is facing south. in settlements, leuit (rice barns) and saung talu (a multipurpose buildings for entertainment performances, dance practice, and craft-making) are generally erected in the settlements. agriculture according to abah ukat, some people in sindang barang are still farming traditionally (selecting seeds, calculating planting time, fertilizing, to getting rid of pests). paddy type the paddy planted is large-grain paddy such as padi ketan (oryza sativa l. var. glutinosa), cere (oryza sativa l. var. sinica/japonica), sri kuning or gogo (rice growing on dry land), and kewal (paddy typical of banten). these types of rice are now classified as rare because farmers generally do not want to plant the reason that the harvest period is long, only once or twice a year. they prefer the type of rice with small grains that can be harvested up to three times a year. however, according to abah ukat, large-grain rice tastes much better than small-grain rice and is healthier because it is grown using natural fertilizers. natural fertilizer abah ukat acknowledged that some farmers have used chemical fertilizers for rice. they reasoned practical and cheaper. some other farmers still use natural ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 80-94 85 fertilizers, namely garam krosak kuning (yellow coarse salt). it is the salt used for fish preservation in the home industry for pindang ikan cue (boiled cue fish). they believe that this type of salt contains residual nutrients from fish so it is good when used to make fertilizer. according to gondek et al. (2020), not all salt can be used for fertilizer but salt containing k+, ca2+, so42+, co32-, and no3 can improve soil health to support plant growth. magic guard the belief is the existence of supernatural powers that can protect paddy from calamities. they place orang-orangan sawah (scarecrows) in several corners of the fields as a medium to prevent disaster so that paddy can thrive and be free of pests. respondents in the study of król et al. (2019) explained that scarecrows are humanlike dolls made of straw. this doll is wearing a shirt, belt, and hat. it is to protect the fields from pests, especially birds. the majority of farmers in poland still install scarecrows at the end of the 20th century. they believed in her magical powers to protect the fields. this belief is still held firmly by old farmers. planting time farmers rely on the constellation waluku (orion). when the star is above (oktober) is the best time to plant crops that also grow to the top (rice and corn). when the orion is below (may), they use the land to plant plants that grow below (cassava and sweet potatoes). the rotation of rice, corn, cassava, and sweet potatoes on the same land is useful to complement the needs of the community for the need of main food. according to masekoameng&molotja (2019), the seasonal calendar is useful as a calculation of the right time for plowing, planting, fertilizing, weeding, and harvesting. phungpracha et al. (2016) gave an example of farmers in ban pa village in thailand also planting different plants at different times but on the same land. they plant corn, rice, and black beans alternately in one field for the community's needs. farmers in sindang barang believe that the good days for planting rice are thursday and sunday. thursday is identical to the wind element and sunday represents the cloud. they believe that wind and clouds greatly affect the growth of rice. they also believe that the best position of the farmer's body when planting rice is facing west because the rice needs sunlight. when harvesting farmers face east and south. the taboo position of planting and harvesting is facing the north. they believe that the north is a bad direction for agricultural activity. the day that is believed to be bad for agricultural activities is tuesday. they will not plant, harvest, take paddy from the barn or pound it on tuesday. sereenonchai & arunrat (2018) argue that local farmers must have in-depth knowledge of agricultural systems and ecosystems in their respective areas. tanyanyiwa (2019) said local knowledge about climate that will affect agriculture is still used by farmers in zimbabwe. they know how to recognize climate change that has an impact on agriculture. extreme climates will affect crop production. low yields will have an impact on people's food security. according to phungpracha et al. (2016), food security is a very complex national problem that involves the community's need for food and the challenges to fulfill it so that people are free from hunger. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 80-94 86 granary food security is a problem that is often faced by the community, not least in sindang barang. the main cause of this problem is crop failure due to bad weather, pests, and infertile fields. this became a valuable lesson for them until found a solution by making leuit (granary). leuit is a traditional building. the walls are made of woven bamboo, the roof is made of palm leaves (arenga pinnata), and the pegs of the sago tree (metroxilon sago). natural materials allow leuit buildings to have air cavities so that indoor circulation is maintained. thus the rice will not become moist. this building is placed on a stone foundation so that the floor does not touch the ground so preventing it from getting wet, especially during the rainy season. the wooden floor is given teureup leaf (artocarpus elasticus) to avoid insects. special storage areas for foodstuffs also exist in southern africa. kamwendo&kamwendo (2014) explains that people in malawi make msanja as a place to store food (millet, sorghum, unpeeled beans, peas) so that they do not run out of food throughout the year. msanja is a tall table mounted above the fireplace (in the kitchen). the smoke from the stove will prevent the food wet. figure 2. leuit farmers in sindang barang also know about preserving paddy so it is not moist when stored in leuit. the harvested paddy is then dried in the sun. if the rainy season, it is smoked until it dries. mhache (2018) explained that the people in the mbokomu (kilimanjaro region) also have their knowledge and system for selecting and preserving raw food. big and smooth corn and bean seeds are selected immediately after harvest, dried in the sun, and hung on the kitchen roof so that they are exposed to the smoke from the stove. this smoke slowly keeps the seeds dry. asogwa et al. (2017) admitted the importance of indigenous knowledge on food preservation for 240 million people in sub-saharan africa. they preserved food under the hot sun. they also fermented grains, fruits, and vegetables. this method has proven to be effective in ensuring the availability of food ingredients for years. natural signs the sundanese have a different calculation of the turn of the day with the modern calendar (ad). the change of day for sundanese customs begins after sunset (6 p.m), not after midnight. sundanese people also still believe in natural signs that indicate disaster. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 80-94 87 change of the days abah ukat told, his family often taught him how to recognize natural signs to recognize the time, animal sounds, and signs of disaster. when dusk begins to darken (6 p.m), it is time for the turn of the day. after that hour, it will be the next day. if a child is born on thursday afternoon (modern calendar) after sunset (around 6 p.m) then for sundanese, he is born on friday. signs of calamity and disaster another natural sign is the unusual sound of animals. the crying sound of a cat and the sound of kedasih or wikwik bird (cacomantis meulis) indicate that someone will die. the sound of the crow (corvus) is a symbol of calamity, disaster, and news of sorrow. the roaring sound of a tiger is a reminder to perform the seren taun ceremony. misno (2016) explains that seren taun is one of the sundanese rituals to give thanks to the goddess of rice, nyi pohatji or dewi sri. people in sindang barang believe that nyi pohatji is the origin of paddy in west java as well as the protector of it. they believe that if the seren taun ceremony is not held, their harvest will fail. abah ukat also explained that another natural sign that is often trusted by the community is a sign of disaster, such as a very strong wind blowing in the rainy season. taremwa et al. (2016) said indigenous knowledge about weather patterns that often occur in rwanda becomes knowledge to predict how and when natural disasters will occur. this prediction makes them alert so that they can plan disaster mitigation early. health people in sindang barang know herbs. when a family member is sick, their grandparents or parents will make potions to cure it. when making medicine, they usually invite other family members to join in concocting herbs. the members will master the types of herbs and the technique of making potions. abah ukat also has some knowledge about herbs from his grandmother who worked as a paraji (traditional midwife). he was ordered to look for herbs around the house, garden, and near the river. his grandmother explained the medicinal benefits of each plant. when his grandmother mixed and boiled them, abah ukat also helped. this assistance activity made him understand herbs. research by agung et al. (2019) proved that various ethnobotanical studies recognize the importance of customary management systems on botanical resources. indigenous knowledge owned by the community is useful for preserving medicinal plants, plants for aromatics, and cosmetics. fever according to emak, when the whole body feels sore, fever, and the head hurts, this is a sign that the body is not in a fit condition. people usually use hantap leaves (sterculia oblongata r. brown) as fever medicine. one handful of fresh leaves is washed, crushed, dissolved in 1 cup of water, filtered, and drunk. they drink it twice a day. according to susiarti et al. (2018), people living under mount gede pangrango bogor still drink hantap boiled water for fever. pamungkas et al. (2014) made health drink products from hantap leaves (sterculia oblongata r. brown). the leaf jelly drink contains fiber, carbohydrates, vegetable protein, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 80-94 88 phenols, and antioxidants that are useful for health, especially for lowering body temperature or internal heat. people in sindang barang also usually use buntiris or cocor bebek leaves (kalanchoe pinnata l) as fever medicine. the plant is mashed, boiled, strained, and drunk while still warm. mashed buntiris leaves can be used to compress the forehead fernandes et al. (2019) described that kalanchoe pinnata l. has many uses for treatment such as skin diseases (microbial infections, ulcers, diabetic wounds), respiratory diseases, gastritis, tumors, and cancer. emak also explained that dadap (erythrina orientalis) also can be used to relieve body heat by drinking boiled water leaves and compressing the forehead. kaushal et al. (2020) recognized that medicinal plants are a gift from nature for human society to live a healthy life, for example, the genus erythrina. plant parts that can be used as medicine are bark, roots, leaves, and flowers. kumari&kumari (2017) explained that erythrina variegata l. contains various sources of nutrients (fiber, potassium, tannins, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, sodium, and sulfur). pain in the stomach another traditional medical knowledge that is mastered by the people of sindang barang is healing digestive. they usually eat one piece of turmeric (2 cm) or drink the boiled water of babadotan (ageratum conyzoides linn) for an ulcer. babadotan used for medicine is a white flower. singh et al. (2013) explained that ageratum conyzoides linn provides analgesic, antimicrobial, and antiinflammatory. abah ukat explained that other digestive problems are masuk angin (bloating, stomach bloating, nausea, dizziness, and fever). people often use a decoction of the leaves of kahitutan (pederia foetida linn.) to cure it. another way to use this plant is to tie the tendrils of stems to the waist. they believe that this plant will stimulate the stomach to expel gas. ismawati et al. (2020) explained that people in the gapura sub-district wrap the tendrils of the paedria foetida linn tree around their waists to stimulate defecation. they also put crushed leaves into the stomach to soothe flatulence. according to dubey et al. (2017), paederia foetida linn is also a part of medicine in india because provides anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, and antiulcer benefits. in addition, this plant has analgesic and hepatoprotective properties. people in sindang barang believe that the leaves of hanjuang tree (cordilyne fructicosa) can treat hemorrhoids. naher et al. (2019) said cordyline fruticosa leaves can be used in the treatment of diarrhea. according to abah ukat, emak paraji (traditional midwives) often make special herbs to be drunk by mothers who have just given birth. one of the herbs used is paku rane leaves (selaginella plana). sutoyo et al. (2021) have proven that selaginella plana contain steroids, saponins, phenolics, flavonoids, alkaloids, and tannins that are useful for the body. it is a traditional medicine to treat internal wounds (respiratory tract infections, liver disorders, and urinary tract infections), rheumatism, and increase immunity. skin disease people in sindang barang also know about treating diseases on the skin. they treat ulcers using mashed leaves of jawer kotok (plectranthus scutellarioides) by placing the paste on the wound. they also believe that bathing with piper beetle l. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 80-94 89 boiled water will cure itching in the body while reducing body odor. another leaf that can be used for itching on the skin (ringworm, tinea versicolor, ringworm, and scabies) is ketepeng (cassia alata). mix the leaves and salt, mash finely, then apply to the skin. sagnia et al. (2014) explained, cassia alata contains antioxidants and anti-inflammatory. antioxidants are useful for reducing the effects of free radicals. anti-inflammatory is useful in the natural healing process. abah ukat and emak also used to use the peteui leaves (parkia speciosa hassk) for itching on the skin due to herpes or insect bites. the crushed leaves are attached to the skin. nikmatullah et al. (2019) explained that the baduy-dalam (sundanese village in banten) people also still use parkia speciosa hassk to treat itching on the skin. toothache people in sindang barang know a natural medicine for toothache, kamboja tree (plumeria sp). the sap from this tree (flowers, stems, or leaves) is dripped directly onto the cavities. they also used to drip sap on cotton to apply to a tooth that hurts but doesn't have a cavity. bihani et al. (2021) explained that plumeria obtusa l. contains essential oils with pharmacological activities such as inhibiting microbial growth, reducing pain in inflammation, and healing wounds. bihani (2021) added plumeria rubra l. is traditionally used to treat skin diseases (wounds, leprosy, boils, itching, and acne), toothache, and earache. bruises sundanese has a special potion to treat bruises on the body due to bumps, sprains, falls, or after being hit. this herb is named cimande oil. this oil is also often used by fracture specialists to massage patients when returning the bone to the correct position. abah ukat only mentioned two main ingredients to make the oil, namely sugarcane juice (saccharum officinarum linn) and coconut oil (cocos nucifera). he kept the secret about the other ingredients. another requirement in making this oil is that the maker must be menopausal woman. if massage oil is made by women who have not been menopausal, then the benefits will be reduced or even lost. tlhompho (2014) said, rre makoi's traditional knowledge in south africa also forbids women who are menstruating to be involved in treatment. a woman who is menstruating is considered not to be in a holy state so the medicine she makes will not give healing to the patient. abah ukat also suggested for people who are suffering from bruising drink boiled water from the leaves of remek daging (hemigraphis colorata hall f.) or ki urat (plantago major) to prevent heartburn and moringa leaves (moringa oleifera) to smooth blood flow and reduce inflammation. prakashbabu (2017) explainded that hemigraphis colorata has an anti-inflammatory for wound healing. hussan et al. (2015) explained that plantago major has anti-inflammatory properties to reduce the effects of the injury. aekthammarat et al. (2020) proved that moringa leaf extract is useful for lowering arterial blood pressure. when asked about what other herbs are commonly used for treatment, abah ukat admitted that he forgot because now his family has used chemical drugs more often due to simple. the fact that abah ukat and the community are starting to forget about some of the indigenous knowledge indicates that this knowledge is still in the form of tacit knowledge. the fading of indigenous knowledge (ik) in the community is considered normal by tharakan (2015) because the nature of ik is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 80-94 90 indeed unstable, delivered by verbal, and direct practice. chergui et al. (2018) emphasize the importance of making explicit knowledge of it. this can be done by recording objects. suprihono (2022) gave an example of a solution in preserving local culture. the creative team from the yogyakarta royal palace digitized it then uploaded them on social media. thus the local culture will still be seen and remembered by the community. batik people in the sindang barang cultural village also know sundanese batik. abah maki is keeping the waroge motif (an antidote to calamities) which is the king and his family motif. the waroge motif represents an evil supernatural being. this image aims to tell evil supernatural beings not to disturb the wearer. an example of a batik with a waroge motif can be seen in figure 3. abah maki and abah ukat admit that at sindang barang there is only 1 person who is an expert in making batik. batik motif waroge motifs are wawayangan, wangapah, ratuning tutulak, watu panggilang, sungke buana, dan rajah karatun. another motif that is only allowed to be used by the royal family is the motif of the pakujajar or kipaharé plant (pteridohyta). this is a typical plant of bogor which is the symbol of the padjadjaran kingdom. waroge and pakujajar motifs are sacred motifs that should not be used by ordinary people. in ancient times, making special batik for the royal family began with a ritual (reverence to god) before painting the waroge motif. this motif was made based on the hope of salvation, blessing, and glory for the king and his family. the happiness of the king is the happiness of the people. figure 3. waroge motif natural dye batik craftsmen in sindang barang used to use natural dye (from fruit skin, leaves, and flowers). mangosteen rind will produce a reddish-brown color. rambutan skin gives a dark brown color. duku peel and mango leaves produce a light brown or pale cream color. the flower used for batik dye is a dried telang flower for blue. batik's making begins with drawing a motif on the cloth, waxing it (using malam), coloring it, washing it, and drying it in a shady room. batik is not dried in the sun but must be aerated. according to aizat et al. (2019), mangosteen rind will produce a dark purple color that is useful for giving color to food or ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 80-94 91 textiles. natural dyes are biodegradable and non-toxic so they do not pollute the environment. paramita et al. (2017) showed that rambutan peel can be used for textile dyes. rambutan peel extract added with feso4 will produce a gray color. a mixture of al2(so4)3 produces a light or pale brown color while a mixture with caco3 produces a yellowish-brown color. conclusion the themes of indigenous knowledge owned by the people of the sindang barang cultural village are about village landscape, agriculture, natural signs, health, and batik. the village landscape has a sub-theme landscape of land and building position. the sub-themes of agriculture are the type of rice, fertilizers, planting time, magic guard, and granary. the sub-theme of natural signs consists of changing days and signs of calamity and disaster. the sub-theme of health is herbs. batik has a sub-theme of motifs and natural dyes. the results of this study can be a reference for other researchers who are interested in analyzing the reasons why people in the sindang barang cultural village still use local knowledge even though they currently live in the modern era. this study found that some of the indigenous knowledge about herbs had been lost from the people's memory. this village also only has 1 expert in making batik which will have an impact on the loss of knowledge about traditional sundanese batik. this fact requires attention from all stakeholders, including researchers, academics, and the government. this problem can be a source of reference for further research on the causes of the loss of some sundanese indigenous knowledge about medicine and batik. references aekthammarat, d., tangsucharit, p., pannangpetch, p., sriwantana, t., & sibmooh, n. 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(2018). evaluation of education policy at baduy society, lebak district banten province. advances in social science, education and humanities research, 141, 8–12. https://doi.org/10.2991/icoposdev-17.2018.2 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 70-81 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 70 the phonological analysis of a japanese singer: the criticism of using songs in english teaching albertus agung sanjaya sanata dharma university albertgungsan@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.020108 received 25 november 2017; revised 2 august 2018; accepted 5 september 2018 abstract this study deals with the phonological analysis of a japanese singer in some english sounds in live performance music videos. it aims to analyse and describe the pronunciation process of japanese singer in producing tense vowels, diphthongs, and liquids. it also criticizes the use of songs in english teaching based on the findings. the data are from live performance videos of japanese singer. the researcher watched and listened to the videos. after that, the researcher listed the words in the lyrics of the songs containing tense vowels, diphthongs, and liquids. the words were transcribed into standard phonetic transcription. then, the researcher transcribed the words into the phonetic transcription according to the pronunciation of the singer. after that, the data were classified into three parts which were the words containing tense vowels, diphthongs, and liquids. after the researcher analyzed the videos, the findings of this study showed that the japanese singer as an efl speaker had different pronunciation process in producing tense vowels, diphthongs, and liquids sound. the findings also gave the criticism on the use of songs in english teaching in a form of caution and contribution keywords: phonological analysis, a japanese singer, songs, english teaching introduction as an international language, english has been learned by many people around the world. it is in accordance with crystal’s statement (2003) that english becomes the language which is most widely taught as a foreign language so that the number of second language speakers increases vastly. in this case, there will appear a lot of accents which are produced by the foreign speakers of english such as japanese accents, chinese accents, korean accents, spanish accents and so on. it is a clear sign that the sound patterns or structure of their native languages influence the speech or production of their second language. in short, it is very equitable to say that the nature of a foreign accent is determined to a large extent by a learner’s native language (avery & ehrlich, 1992). the sound patterns of language or usually called as phonology of a certain language raises some problems for the foreign speakers in pronouncing english words since the phonology of a certain language is different from the phonology mailto:albertgungsan@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 71 of english. the difference can appear from the absence of sounds in a certain language but they are present in english. one example of the language is japanese. as kenworthy (1987) said, japanese has only five vowels in its vowel inventory namely /i/, /e/, /a/, /u/, and /o/. a system is quite common among many natural languages in the world. it is different from english which has fifteen vowels namely /i/, /ɪ/, /e/, /ᴈ/, /ᴂ/, /ə/, /ʌ/, /u/, /ʊ/, /o/, /ɔ/, and /a/. the difference of japanese and english vowel systems is also indicated from the existence of lax and tense in those two vowel systems. the difference between tense and lax vowels is made according to how much muscle tension or movement in the mouth is involved in producing vowels (ladefoged, 1982). some of english vowel systems are tense such as /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/ and all of japanese vowel systems are lax. in addition, there are differences in consonantal distribution between japanese and english. according to avery and ehrlich (1992) and kenworthy (1987), there are more consonants in english than japanese. japanese does not have fricatives and affricates which are much more widely distributed in english such as /f/, /v/, /θ /, /ð/, / ʃ /, / ʒ /, /ʧ/, and /ʤ/. in addition, japanese has a liquid /r/ which is different from the /r/ or /l/ sound of english. the exact of articulation point of /r/ sound in japanese is not specific. this study discusses the phonological systems in japanese which influence the japanese singer in pronouncing the english words. the study describes the process of japanese singer in making the sounds of tense vowels, diphthongs, and liquids. from the findings, the study gives the criticism on the using of songs in english teaching. as it is known that many believed that using songs in teaching english is good, the finding of the study notes that not all english songs can be used to teach english. according to the finding, a singer did some mispronunciations in english words containing liquids, vowels and diphthongs. therefore, the study gives the implication and caution for teachers to be more careful in selecting the songs will be used to teach english. phonological analysis phonological has meaning as relating to the nature of sounds of certain language, in this case is english (fromkin, rodman, & hyams, 2007). therefore, phonological analysis can be defined as the theoretical and practical steps in analyzing the sound patterns of english produced by foreign speakers and the strategies they use to solve the problems in producing the english sounds (jenkins, 2000; & nathan, 2008). steps of phonological analysis can be divided into three major steps. as veen and mve (2010) said, the first step of phonological analysis is carrying out preliminary inquiries in which the researcher has to determine the clear goals of the research and the sound representations. the second step is performing phonetic transcription. this is the necessary step yet it consumes a plenty of time to work on. the final step is analysis. veen and mve (2010) also stated that in working on phonological analysis, there are some important things to consider. being rigorous, meticulous and accurate are must in working on phonological analysis, especially in terms of transcription, data management and storage, analysis, and description. they are ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 72 very important since doing a phonological analysis is a task that combines specific analytical skills, techniques and reasoning (describing problems and giving solutions). the ability to manage the time and being patient are also important since when the researcher does the phonetic transcription it will take a plenty of time. it requires careful observation in watching and listening. in addition, it requires repetition in identifying the exact pronunciation of the subjects. vowels mcmahon (2002) said that vowels refer to the sounds which are produced on a pulmonic aggressive airstream, with central airflow. vowels can also refer to an unobstructed sound produced by unimpeded airflow that moves up from the larynx and out through the lips (roach, 2009, p. 10). vowels have some types, three of which are diphthongs, tense and lax a diphthong is a sequence of two sounds, vowel plus glide. for example: bite [bajt]; there are [a] vowel and glide of [j]. another example is bout [bawt]; there are vowel of [a] and [w] glide (fromkin, rodman, & hyams, 2007). this kind of vowels do not exist in japanese since as kenworthy (1987) said, japanese has only five vowels. tense vowels are the vowels which are produced with greater tension of the tongue muscle than its counterpart, and they are often a little longer in duration (fromkin, rodman, & hyams, 2007). [a], [e], [i], [o], [u] and diphthongs are tense in english, while in japanese, there is no tense or lax differentiation. in his journal, ohata said that the tense/lax vowels pairs of english such as /i/ vs. /ɪ/, /e/ vs. /ε /, /u/ vs. /ʊ/, do not exist in the five-vowel system of japanese. according to fromkin, rodman, and hyams (2007), lax vowels refer to the vowels which are produced with smaller tension of the tongue muscle than its counterpart, and they are shorter in duration. some examples of lax vowels are /ʌ/, /ɪ/, /ʊ/, /ᴈ/, and /ɔ/. liquids liquids refer to the sounds produced by some obstruction of the airstream in the mouth, but not enough to cause any real constriction or friction (fromkin, rodman, & hyams, 2007). there are two liquids in english: [l] and [r]. in japanese liquids are not exactly the same as in english. this issue stems from the lack of a separate /r/ and /l/ sound and the difference in place of articulation between japanese and english /r/ sounds. there are two types of liquids namely trilled and flap. a trilled “r” can be found in the word “perro” which means dog in spanish. they produce the /r/ very clear. therefore, according to fromkin, rodman, and hyams (2007), a trilled “r” is the sound produced by rapid vibrations of an articulator. a flap is produced by a flick of the tongue against the alveolar ridge. it sounds like “a very fast d (fromkin, rodman, & hyams, 2007).” this kind of sound can be found when american pronounce the word “writer” in which it is almost the same as pronouncing the word “rider”. a flapped “r” is symbolized as [ɾ], so the word “writer” will be pronounced as [raiɾər]. it also happens when japanese students say an english word which has liquids. it is different from english in which /l/ is an alveolar lateral or approximant and the /r/ is a post ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 73 alveolar approximant. japanese students produce a single liquid voiced consonant that combines the two sounds of /l/ and /r/ as it is produced by a very quick tap (also called a “flap”) of the tongue tip on the alveolar ridge (suski, 1931, p. 70). method this study dealt with the description of sound production analysis, which focused on the pronunciation process when japanese produced liquids, diphthongs, and tense vowels. this study described how the sounds were produced. in this study, the sources of data gathering can be specified into document analysis. as ary, jacobs, and razavieh (2002) said that document analysis refers to a method of research utilized to written or visual materials in a purpose of identifying specified characteristics of the material or a project that focuses on analyzing and interpreting recorded materials within its own context. from the description of document analysis, live performance videos from japanese singer can be indicated as the visual materials which are going to be identified and analyzed the errors. as ary, jacobs, and razavieh (2002) stated, there are six steps in document analysis which should be done. the first step is specifying the phenomenon to be investigated. in this step, the researcher specified the phenomenon of pronunciation process of japanese singer in producing tense vowels and liquids. secondly, the researcher selected the media to analyze which are the videos. the third step is formulating exhaustive and mutually exclusive coding categories so that the verbal or symbolic content can be counted. then, the researcher specified the sample in this case video based on the year or period when they performed. it aims to obtain a representative sample of the documents. the next step is training the coders so that they can consistently apply the coding scheme that has been developed and thus contribute to the reliability of the content analysis. finally, the data was analyzed and it involved the descriptive accounts since this study used qualitative research. the materials could be analyzed from the textbooks, newspapers, web pages, speeches, television programs, advertisements, videos, musical compositions, or any of a host of other types of documents. the reason why the researcher wanted to use the live performance videos as the data because they showed the originality of the singer when he sang a song in english. the videos did not use the process of editing and it was as real as it was. in addition, from that originality the researcher was able to see the authentic process when the japanese singer pronounced the english words. the pronunciation of the japanese singer was analyzed from the lip movement and mouth so that the clearer sound transcription could be interpreted. in analyzing the data, there were some steps which should be undergone by the researcher. the following is the steps in analyzing the data. 1. the first thing to do was watching the videos and listening to the songs 2. secondly, the researcher found the words containing liquids. 3. next, the words found were transcribed into phonetic symbols. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 74 4. the writer inserted those in the table of variation of phonetic transcription, as can be seen in table 1, so that the difference from the standard phonetic transcription could be seen. 5. the next step was categorizing the findings into three major groups, which were word or word group with tense vowels, word or word group with diphthongs, word and word group with liquids and combination. 6. after inserting the phonetic transcription, the researcher tried to find the difference between the standard phonetic transcription and variation. 7. from the differences, the researcher described the process of pronunciation of the japanese singer when producing tense vowels and liquids by relating the theories how the process of pronouncing the tense vowels and liquids were with the pronunciation produced by the japanese singer. 8. describing what made the japanese singer produce the sounds of tense vowels and liquids differently in which the strategies of how they made the sound could be indicated in table 1. table 1. sounds production finally, the study will give the criticism on the using of songs in english teaching based on the finding. by providing the table 2, the study will discuss mispronunciation cases found in english words containing liquids, diphthongs, and tense vowels which will affect the use of songs in english teaching in table 2. table 2. mispronunciation cases findings and discussion the findings of the study answered the first research problem by describing the process of pronunciation of the japanese singer in producing tense vowels, diphthongs, and liquids. then, the second research problem was answered by no. words phonetic transcriptions standard variation 1. 2. 3. 4. cases words standard pronunciation mispronunciation tense vowels diphthongs liquids ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 75 criticizing the use of songs in english teaching based on the mispronunciation done by the japanese singer when he produces the tense vowels, diphthongs, and liquids. the pronunciation process of tense vowels, diphthongs and liquids produced by the japanese singer this part discusses the pronunciation process of japanese speakers which are represented by the japanese singer. this part has three sections of discussion containing the pronunciation process when he produced tense vowels, diphthongs and liquids. 1. tense vowels in two videos, the researcher found thirty nine single words containing tense vowels. from the videos, the researcher analyzed that the singer of the band l’arc-en-ciel produced words containing tense vowels in a different way. even though japanese vowel system has sounds /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, and /o/, it does not have exact pronunciation between tense and lax. it means that in english, there are specific differences between tense and lax vowels, such as /i/ and /ɪ/, /u/ and /ʊ/, /e/ and /ᴈ/ and so on. however, although long vowels of japanese are sometimes analyzed as having the same quality as english tense vowels, this claim is difficult to support because those vowels of japanese are not always contrastive in nature as the english tense/lax vowel pairs (vance, 1987). this case occurred when the singer produced /i/ sounds. several examples are provided in table 3. table 3. tense vowels production no. words phonetic transcription standard variation 1. me /mi/ /mɪ/ 2. street /stri:t/ /strɪt/ 3. knee /ni:/ /nɪ/ 4. see /si:/ /sɪ/ 5. deeply /di:pli/ /dɪplɪ/ 6. heavenly /hevnli/ /hevənlɪ/ 7. eternity /ɪtᴈ:nəti/ /etᴈ:nətɪ/ 8. venality /vi:nᴂləti/ /vənalətɪ/ the table showed that the singer produced /i/ sound in lax. in english, it is usually called short /i/ which is symbolized as /ɪ/. when the singer said the word me, he pronounced it as /mɪ/ instead of /mi/. it also happened when the singer pronounced street, knee, and see. he pronounced all of them as /strɪt/, /nɪ/, and /sɪ/ in which the /i/ sound which is supposed to be the tense vowel became /ɪ/. there were also other examples such as the words eternity and venality. in english, eternity and venality are pronounced /ɪtᴈ:nəti/ and /vi:nᴂləti/, yet the singer pronounced them as /etᴈ:nətɪ/ and /vənalətɪ/. those words also showed the same results that the singer produced /ɪ/ sound instead of /i/ especially in the final syllable from the other words such as deeply and heavenly. in the videos, the researcher also watched the vocalist did not totally do unrounded lips. in fact, fromkin, rodman, and hyams (2007) said that when someone produces /i/ sound ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 76 he or she will have the lips in the shape of smile which is totally unrounded. meanwhile, the vocalist’s teeth were still not closed which means the lips were not in the shape of smile. in addition, when the singer pronounced words me, knee, and see, he actually had produced impossible words in english. it means that lax vowels mostly did not appear at the ends of english words. for example the words me, knee, and see should be pronounced as /mi/, /ni:/, and /si:/ in english yet the singer which is a japanese pronounced them as /mɪ/, /nɪ/, and /sɪ/ all of which have no meaning in english words. it comes from fromkin, rodman, and hyams (2007) who stated that lax vowels do not occur at the ends of words, so [sɪ], [sᴈ], [sᴂ], [sʊ], and [sʌ] are impossible words in english. from the data result, it can be concluded that the singer who is a japanese speaker did not pronounce the tense vowels clearly. the singer produced the tense vowels in lax. it means that the singer did not spread the lips when he produced the words me, knee, and see. in fact, ladefoged (1982) stated that the difference between tense and lax vowels is made according to how much muscle tension or movement in the mouth is involved in producing vowels. in this case, the muscle tension or movement in the mouth occurred when the singer spread his lips. 2. diphthongs the second section is diphthongs. in order to make the discussion clearer, the meaning of diphthongs was explained concisely here. as fromkin, rodman, and hyams (2007) stated, diphthongs are the sounds produced by the english speakers by adding the short /j/ and /w/ glides when they produce front and back vowels. for example, english speakers pronounce survey as /sᴈveɪ/ in which the front vowel /e/ is followed by a short /j/ glide and they are symbolized as /eɪ/. discussing the analysis result, there were fifty eight single words and word groups containing diphthongs found from two videos. the researcher analyzed that there were several different pronunciation done by the vocalist when he produced diphthongs. the different pronunciation occurred because the vocalist often pronounced diphthongs only the tense vowels without the /j/ or /w/ glides. there were several examples of the different pronunciation provided in table 4. table 4. diphthongs production no. words phonetic transcription standard variation 1. rolling /roʊlɪŋ/ /lɔ:lɪŋ/ 2. cold /koʊld/ /kɔ:ld/ 3. no /noʊ/ /no/ 4. twilight /twaɪlaɪt/ /twɑ:let/ 5. around /əraʊnd/ /ərɑ:nd/ 6. down /daʊn/ /dɔ:n/ 7. snake /sneɪk/ /snek/ 8. taste /teɪst/ /test/ 9. so /səʊ/ /so/ 10. wake /weɪk/ /wek/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 77 from the table, it could be seen that most of different pronunciation occurred because the vocalist did not pronounce the glides /j/ or /w/ clearly. it occurred because there are only five vowels in japanese vowels inventory (kenworthy, 1987). he pronounced the words rolling, cold, and twilight as /lɔ:lɪŋ/, /kɔ:ld/, and /twɑ:let/ in which he only pronounced the vowels. one example came from the word down. in the word down, /a/ becomes /aʊ/ since /a/ is added with /w/ glide so the word is pronounced as /daʊn/. however, the singer pronounced it as /dɔ:n/. the singer did not pronounce the glide clearly, so that the sound was like /o/ in lax which becomes /ɔ/. another example is snake. /e/ became /eɪ/ since /e/ is added with /j/ glide, so the word is pronounced as /sneɪk/. however, the singer only pronounced the tense vowel [e] without the [j] glide and it became /snek/. the different pronunciation also occured in the other words such as so and wake. the words should be pronounced as /səʊ/ and /weɪk/. yet, the vocalist pronounce them differently and the words became /so/ and /wek/. it happened since there are no vowels which are added with the glides in japanese vowel system. it is supported by okada’s statement (1991, p.94) which is showed in the vowel chart that the vowels of standard japanese are only [ä], [i], [ɯ], [e̞], and [o̞]. they only have simple vowels usually called as monophthongs (fromkin, rodman, and hyams, 2007). the data result indicated that the singer did not pronounce the diphthongs clearly. in this case, the singer had produced the diphthongs only in one sound which means that the glides were not produced directly after the vowels. for example, when the singer said the word down, he pronounced that word as /dɔ:n/ instead of /daʊn/. therefore, it is different from what fromkin, rodman, and hyams (2007) had stated in their book that diphthong is two sounds containing vowel and glide which are produced in a sequence. 3. liquids from the two videos, the researcher found sixty four single words and word groups containing liquids. each word had the liquids which were different in place. the liquids were placed at the beginning, within, and the end of the words. even there were some words containing cluster with /r/ and /l/. even though japanese has liquids, there are no specific differences in producing the liquids because of the lack of a separate /r/ and /l/ sound and the difference in place of articulation between japanese and english /r/ sound. it means that in english, /l/ is an alveolar lateral or approximant and the /r/ is a post-alveolar approximant, yet suski described “the japanese produce a single liquid voiced consonant that combines the two sounds of /l/ and /r/ as it is produced by a very quick tap (also called a “flap”) of the tongue tip on the alveolar ridge” (as cited in smith, 2012, p.202). akamatsu (1997) also stated that /r/ is an apical postalveolar flap undefined for laterality. therefore, it is specified as neither a central nor a lateral flap. thus, it raises some evidences from the videos. the examples of evidences are provided in the table 5. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 78 table 5. liquids production no. words phonetic transcription standard variation 1. rolling /roʊlɪŋ/ /lɔ:lɪŋ/ 2. asphalt /ᴂsfᴂlt/ /ᴂsfɑ:t/ 3. your /jɔ:(r)/ /jᴈ:/ 4. dare /der/ /dᴈ:/ 5. grown /groʊn/ /glon/ 5. blood /blʌd/ /bʌd/ 6. survive /sərvaɪv/ /səpɑ:/ 7. holding /hoʊldɪŋ/ /hodɪŋ/ the table showed that the singer had difficulty in pronouncing /r/ and /l/. when the liquids at the beginning of the word like the word rolling, the vocalist pronounced it as /lɔ:lɪŋ/ in which the liquid /r/ became /l/. the singer even sounded like omitting the liquids when they were within and at the end of the words. for example, survive and holding, the words should be pronounced as /sərvaɪv/ and /hoʊldɪŋ/ yet the singer pronounced the words without the liquids. therefore, the pronunciation became /səpɑ:/ and /hodɪŋ/. it also occurred in the words your and dare in which the singer pronounced them as /jᴈ:/ and /dᴈ:/. other examples are the word grown and blood. in the word grown /groʊn/ the singer sounded like pronouncing /r/ as /l/ which became /glon/. in addition, the vocalist could not produce the liquid clearly in the word blood /blʌd/ then it became /bʌd/. the inconsistency happened because of the absence of exact sound for liquids in japanese consonants system. thus, it can be concluded that the singer which is a representation of japanese speaker had problem in pronouncing /r/ and /l/. the singer often exchanged /r/ to /l/ or even he did not pronounce /r/ or /l/ sound. this problem raised because of a great deal of difficulty for japanese speakers as represented by the singer both in producing and distinguishing /r/ and /l/ which is caused by the lack of a separate /r/ and /l/ sound in japanese (smith, 2012, p. 202). from the results, it can be concluded that the japanese singer produced tense vowels, diphthongs, and liquids in different ways. in english his pronunciation can be clear, yet he produced non-standard pronunciation. the criticism on the use of songs in english teaching using songs in teaching english is believed to be effective and fun, in this case teaching pronunciation. as kramer (2007) said, songs are funny and interesting for students. the students can learn english pronunciation very easily by singing the songs. paul (2003) also stated that by listening to the song, the students can remember the pronunciation easily and draw more deepl y into the lesson. in addition philips (1993) said that by imitating the singer in singing the song, it can help the students know how to pronounce english words correctly. despite the effectiveness of using songs in teaching english pronunciation, the findings of the study gave the caution for the teachers in selecting the english songs for the students. the findings provided the cases showed in the table 6. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 79 table 6. mispronunciation cases the cases showed in the table 6 can be indicated that the singer did mispronunciation in the words containing tense vowels, diphthongs, and liquids. considering these findings, the teachers should be more careful in selecting the songs. the teachers must listen and pay more attention to the singer’s pronunciation in singing the english songs whether the singer pronounce the words correctly or not. this is important since the students will listen to the songs and imitate how the singer pronounce the english words. therefore, choosing a singer with good pronunciation will lead the students to produce correct pronunciation in english words. conclusion the study concluded that the japanese speakers, as represented by the singer of a group band, have different pronunciation process from english speakers in producing english words containing tense vowels, diphthongs, and liquids. these differences are caused by the non-existence of some sounds in their phonological system. when the singer produced english words containing tense vowels the data showed that the singer pronounced them in lax because the vowels in japanese phonology system do not have contrast sounds in nature as the english lax or tense vowel pairs (vance, 1987). the singer also produced the diphthongs without pronouncing the glides /j/ or /w/sue to the limited vowels of japanese which only have five vowels ten sounds compared to english with five vowels twenty four sounds (tsujimura, 2007). in addition, when the singer pronounced the liquids /r/ or /l/, he did not pronounce them clearly. this problem occurred because of the dilemma experienced by the singer since there is no clear separate /r/ and /l/ sounds in japanese (suski, 1931) cases words standard pronunciation mispronunciation tense vowels street /stri:t/ /strɪt/ knee /ni:/ /nɪ/ heavenly /hevnli/ /hevənlɪ/ eternity /ɪtᴈ:nəti/ /etᴈ:nətɪ/ venality /vi:nᴂləti/ /vənalətɪ/ diphthongs rolling /roʊlɪŋ/ /lɔ:lɪŋ/ cold /koʊld/ /kɔ:ld/ no /noʊ/ /no/ twilight /twaɪlaɪt/ /twɑ:let/ around /əraʊnd/ /ərɑ:nd/ liquids dare /der/ /dᴈ:/ grown /groʊn/ /glon/ blood /blʌd/ /bʌd/ survive /sərvaɪv/ /səpɑ:/ holding /hoʊldɪŋ/ /hodɪŋ/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 80 based on the findings, the researcher wants to give the insights of the diversity in english accent to the efl (english as a foreign language) teachers. nation and newton (2009) stated that the efl speakers often have pronunciation problems in speaking english influenced by the first language of the speakers. the researcher hopes, the efl teachers can consider the barriers faced by japanese learners when they speak in english because of their first language. therefore, this will help efl teachers not to misunderstand the words uttered by the japanese learners. finally, the study criticized the use of songs in english teaching. in spite of some beliefs in the effectiveness of using songs in teaching english pronunciation (kramer, 2007; paul, 2003; & philip, 1993), this study gave the caution for the teachers in using songs to teach pronunciation in english. the teachers have to consider the singers first when they want to use the songs as the teaching media. the teachers have to listen and pay more attention to the pronunciation of the singer whether it is correct or not. as a result, this consideration can lead to the better understanding of the students in pronouncing the english words correctly.. references akamatsu, t. (1997). japanese phonetics: theory and practice. münchen: lincom europa. ary, d., jacobs, l. c., & razavieh, a. (2002). introduction to research in education. (6th ed.). belmonth, ca: wadsworth/ thomson learning. avery, p., & ehrlich, s. (1992). teaching american english pronunciation. oxford: oxford university press. crystal, d. (2003). english as a global language. (2nd ed.). cambridge: cambridge university press. fromkin, v., rodman, r., & hyams, n. (2003). an introduction to language. massachusetts: thompson cooperation. jenkins, j. (2000). the phonology of english as an international language. oxford: oxford university press. kenworthy, j. (1987). teaching english pronunciation. london: longman. kramer, d. j. (2007, january 11). using songs in teaching english classrooms. retrieved on october 6, 2017, from http://www.topenglishteaching.com ladefoged, p. (1982). a course in phonetics. new york: harcourt brace. mcmahon, a. (2002). an introduction to english phonology. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. nathan, g. s. (2008). phonology: a cognitive grammar introduction. philedephia: john benyamin publishing. nation, i.s.p., & newton, j. (2009). teaching esl/efl listening and speaking. new york: routledge. ohata, k. (1994). phonological differences between japanese and english: several potentially problematic areas of pronunciation for japanese esl/efl learners. pennsylvania: indiana university of pennsylvania press. okada, h. (1991). journal of the international phonetic association. japanese, 21(2), 94–96. paul, d. (2003). teaching english to children in asia. new york: longman. philip, s. (1993). young learners. china: oxford university press. roach, p. (2009). english phonetics and phonology: a practical course. cambridge: cambridge university press. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 134–150 81 smith, b. (2012). pronunciation patterns of japanese learners and their implications or teaching. polyglossia, 23, 202. suski, p.m. (1931). the phonetics of japanese language. routledge library edition. vol. 59. london: routledge. tsujimura, n. (2007). an introduction to japanese linguistics. (2nd ed.). ma: blackwell publishing. vance, t. (1987). an introduction to japanese phonology. albany: state university of new york press. veen, l. v. d., & mve, p. m. (2010). theory and practice of data collection for phonological. leiden: 3l sumer school. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 103-110 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 103 promoting indonesian tourism to chinese tourists through journalism strategies in wechat hendy yuniarto beijing foreign studies university hendyyuniarto@yahoo.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010111 received 20 july 2016; revised 30 july 2017; accepted 2 august 2017 abstract indonesia is one of the top ten destinations for chinese people. in fact, chinese tourists contributed the highest number of foreign tourists to indonesia. the innovative access to information facilitated them to plan itinerary in indonesia. the indonesian government who aimed at increasing chinese tourists can implement digital tools. this brief study elaborates the use of journalism to review destinations which were disseminated through wechat. various destinations in indonesia can be informed to more than 800 million of wechat users. the reviews of a tourism destination are not limited to general or popular destinations, but also to new destinations that have not been known widely. the news structure is divided into 6 sections, including location details, the history, the attraction, how to get to the place, useful information, and the cost. some obstacles related to translation and the dissemination of the news can be solved by working with some parties to promote this strategy. keywords: strategy, increasing chinese tourists, tourist journalism, wechat introduction in 2016 indonesian government targeted three million chinese tourists (asdhiana, 2016). indonesian tourism industry contributes greatly to increase the income as well as provides more employment opportunities in different areas, such as transportation services, tour guides, crafts, and food. the tourism industry in indonesia currently contributes 4 percent of total gdp (indonesiainvestments.com). there were 11.5 million foreign tourists in 2016 who visited places in indonesia. the number is less than the number of the tourists who travelled to thailand (30 million in 2015). the government official website (kemenpar.go.id) mentions that the highest number of foreigners who visited indonesia is from china. the list is followed by singapore, australia, and malaysia. the indonesian government continues to boost the tourism sector by improving infrastructure and developing various promotions to attract foreign tourists. many indonesian-themed festivals in several countries were held to introduce indonesian tourism. nowadays, some new tourism destination promoted. in beijing, indonesia-themed festival fascinates local people. mailto:hendyyuniarto@yahoo.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 103-110 104 indonesian cultural festival is also performed by indonesian students at many universities in china to attract students to know about indonesia. there are still many chinese who only know few things and places about indonesia, such as bali and jakarta. bali is famous for its culture and natural beauty. some chinese celebrities married in bali. this phenomenon also attracted other chinese people. having a honeymoon and getting married in bali are considered the dream of chinese couples. research conducted by su an zhi (2017) inspired this brief paper. the study was conducted by involving 342 random respondents among 18-45 years old whose monthly income varied from 600 usd to 4000 usd. there were 22% of respondents who visited to bali. more than half of them (60%) visited jimbaran beach, kuta beach and tanah lot temple. besides those places, they also visited nusa lembongan island, puri saren agung ubud, pura tirta empul, tegallalang rice terrace, and nusa dua. bali is viewed as a place with beautiful beaches, wedding places, special culture, and friendly people. beautiful beaches, special culture, and friendly people were common impression that foreign tourists know about. bali as a wedding place is strongly influenced by the news of various media in china about celebrities who are married and honeymoon in bali. some factors that support chinese tourists coming to bali is its natural beauty. another factor is its tropical climate. because china has four seasons, chinese often travel to the south during winter. furthermore, visa-free is also an important factor to attract these respondents who visited bali. in addition, the hospitality is also an important aspect to impress the tourists. indonesian hospitality, indeed, has been well-recognized in many countries. the last factor found in that study is balinese culinary is very tasty. in order to support the increasing number of tourists from china to indonesia, several airlines have opened direct flights. some direct flights come from various cities, such as beijing, shanghai, hongkong, guanzhou, and chengdu (bayu, 2017). besides bali, many tourism destinations should be promoted to attract chinese tourists. the growth of tourism in indonesia has entered the world's top 20 and the second in asean (ramadhanny, 2017). indonesian president, joko widodo, asked the tourism minister to increase the growth of tourism. in order to improve the growth of indonesian tourism, various strategies can be developed. this brief paper attempts to propose a strategy to increase chinese’s interest in indonesian tourism. through digital information on the wechat, tourism information in indonesia can be delivered quickly and effectively. the information can be displayed through innovative journalism methods. travel journalism serves tourism information as well as composing a story that flows to readers in a travel record style. in an article written by fitraya ramadhanny (2015), travel journalism contributes greatly to tourism in indonesia (ramadhanny, 2015). travel journalism is composed based on the rules of journalism, highlighting objectivity. many new destinations appear due to the viral on social media. therefore, travel journalism can be used as a method to inform tourist in order to increase the attractiveness of readers to indonesian tourism. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 103-110 105 method wechat is china's largest social media with an active number of more than 800 million people (wan, 2017). although most wechat users are chinese, there are 70 million users ‘non-chinese’ in the world. chinese people do not only use the wechat app for friendship communication, but also spread the news and business purposes. various news portals are created and disseminated via wechat. in addition, wechat becomes popular for business marketing. therefore, wechat can now be used to disseminate any information according to the purpose of its users. wechat has a wider range of features than many other chat apps. wechat can be used to deposit money and make online payments to someone or to various street vendors. if we want to buy snacks at the roadside we do not need to use cash if the seller receives payment via wechat. in addition, wechat can be used to make money transactions quickly and convenient. the next interesting feature is we can do various kinds of online payment for various purposes, such as buying transportation and cinema tickets or to rent a bike on the roadside. to maximize wechat's feature as a broadcasting media, it needs a creative strategy to attract readers. one of the strategies to provide attractive information is by using travel journalism. fundamentally, travel journalism is one type of journalism that focused on travelling (arismunandar, 2010). travel journalism begins with diaries written by explorers such as marcopolo who travelled to east asia in the 13th century, xuanzang's journey from china to india in the 7th century, and also cheng ho's maritime expeditions in the 15 th century. fürsich and kavoori (2001) described five important factors of studying travel journalism. first, the tourism industry is growing. second, there have not been so many studies of tourism and its impact on the social life. third, tourism is a social activity that is now commonly done by a lot of people. fourth, travel journalism is as important as international communication that provides knowledge. fifth, travel journalism can be potential in the future. the study of travel journalism is possible with a variety of purposes (folker, 2010:68-82). the main objective in travel journalism is to describe and inform the public about tourism destinations in an interesting way and cling on the journalistic principles. the method of travel journalism is considered to become more flexible with a focus to inform the truth about the place and community (hill-james, 2016). this concept can be applied to record all forms of the travel activity. it can be served in the form of tourism news informing target audience. many topics can be written via travel journalism, such as mountains, oceans, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, grasslands, and caves. in addition, we can also write about cities, historical places, culinary, social life, and cultural traditions in certain places. the willingness of journalists to be able to go into the fields and interact with the local community is a must. local and foreign language skills also are important to communicate and write a report about the destination. searching for information through other sources such as the internet and related expert interviews can also be made to add or compare the results of direct observations. some places have been summarized and reported by previous journalists. but in the previous report we can find outdated information, such as ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 103-110 106 the change of bus lines and the change of living costs, such as the cost spent for hotels, restaurants, phone numbers, and other information. therefore, updated information will complement the news that has been written previously. the information presented in the wechat platform is expected to get many readers so that it becomes viral. wechat is a very effective app to introduce various interesting destinations to chinese people about tourism in indonesia. the main obstacle in the delivery of information is language. the chinese use mandarin as the national language. therefore, all the information compiled must be translated into mandarin. findings and discussion choosing a potential tourism destination is considered to be more effective than reviewing widely known places. a freelance journalist, jill starley (2012) says that a travel journalist can review less popular destinations (starley, 2012). in fact, some people are very interested in new destinations that are not popular yet. the result will attract the attention of readers to be more curious to visit new destinations. in yogyakarta, prambanan temple, king palace, and parangtritis beach is a place that is commonly known by tourists. besides popular tourist destinations, there are many other places that are much more interesting. in fact, in yogyakarta there are various kinds of tourism destinations such as mountains, museums, beaches, shopping centres, newly opened art performances. so far, the availability of such information is still limited to the chinese tourists. introducing new destinations is the proper strategy to increase foreign tourists. i take the example of three new tourism destinations in yogyakarta. first, mount nglanggeran as a new tourism destination in the east of yogyakarta. the mountain that has an elevation of 700 meter is often called the ancient volcano because 60 million years ago, it was an active volcano (pramesti, 2012). this brand new destination has attracter hikers. tourists can climb the mountains and walk around countryside while enjoying the beautiful natural scenery. information about mount nglanggeran is available on internet pages. considering all facilities have been sufficient, then the destination has been feasible to be promoted internationally, especially to the chinese tourists. beside mount nglanggeran, many beaches in gunung kidul region are also worth to be reviewed and presented to the online media. recently, the beaches in gunung kidul are increasingly visited by domestic tourists. new beaches have been opened to public and more facilities were added in order to make the visitors more comfortable. the popularity of parangtritis beach seems to be increasingly faded due to the number of new beaches in gunung kidul. in 2017, former president of america, obama visited a new tourism destination in yogyakarta, namely becici peak in bantul region (diah, 2017). becici peak is a 4.4 hectare pine forest where tourists can hike while enjoying the cool air. therefore, this new destination can also be reviewed into attractive news and presented in wechat. the news that is presented on wechat platform is a kind of informative and attractive short news. besides the news report, various interesting photos and videos can be added. photography skills are indispensable in travel journalism to enhance a positive image. therefore, one piece of news can contain 3 forms of information: reports, pictures, and videos. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 103-110 107 the news contains all reviews related to tourism destinations. the structure of the news content in this paper is divided into 6 sections, including: location details, the history, attraction, how to get to the place (direction), useful information, and the cost. the location details can be shown with images from maps to make it easier for readers to know the location of the destination. the history of the destination, for example various temples in java and some other historical places, should also be displayed. the attraction includes what tourists get at the location. for example, in kotagede, yogyakarta, there are many silver craftsmen and silver handicrafts promoted in eksotisjogja.com. visitors can see how to make accessories or jewellry from silver and buy them directly at that location. how to get to tourist destinations is indicated by the availability of transportation to the location, especially public transportation. useful information aims at informing the readers of general conditions related to geography, social, and general circumstances in tourism sites. all the recommended information regarding lodging, food and shopping also can be informed to the readers. the cost estimation is an optional aspect in tourism news. it facilitates visitors to know the range of expenses to get to the destination. therefore, the structure of news content can be presented as follows. the location details are the earliest aspects featured in the news. locations are not only described by showing the address clearly, but also telling the easiest ways to identify surroundings. to show malioboro street as a shopping centre in yogyakarta city, we can add a description of the prominent places near malioboro street, for example post office, train station, and hotels. by telling the distance between the nearest places to the malioboro street, it is easier for tourists to find locations on the map with the additional places. although malioboro street is located in the centre of the city and clearly visible on the map, but tourists come from various directions. therefore, showing places around is very important to make it easier for visitors to search the places. the history of the destinations can be explained briefly and informatively. the explanation depends on the place's history. yogyakarta palace can be explained together with the history of various kingdoms and kings in the past. descriptions can be written by revealing history in the form of general and interesting facts. for example, the yogyakarta palace keeps various precious art treasures. therefore, by looking at the various relics of the kings, the visitors can imagine the past royal life in yogyakarta. by writing an interesting history, surely, the reader will consider the place as a tourist destination. news content 1. location detail 2. the history 3. attraction 4. how to get to the place 5. useful information 6. cost ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 103-110 108 the aspect of attraction is arranged by explaining the advantages of the tourism site. it will not be adequate to describe the beaches of gunungkidul as places with beautiful scenery only. journalists should be able to describe in more details by adding fine white sand, calm waves, clear water, and chilly breeze. in addition, on-site facilities such as comfortable hotels, cheap restaurants, and friendly service can be highlighted as a way to attract visitors. the aspect of attraction is the most important part of the news so it can really affect the readers’ trust, especially when there are photos and videos which are made to support the news. the aspect “how to get to the location” can be composed by providing transportation routes leading to the location. first, the location can be reached by taxi from the airport. second, journalists should notify bus or train lines to get to the location. third, if the distance of the location is very close, then the author can recommend walking. special transportation which is the main attraction in yogyakarta is the horse-cart and pedicab. those transportations can also be an alternative transportation to the destinations. each kind of transportation has advantages and disadvantages. at certain times there is also traffic jam to be explained so tourist can anticipate it. the aspects related to useful information are presented in the form of interesting tips about the destination. in malioboro visitors can bargain the price offered by the sellers. in addition, visitors can enjoy live traditional music performances for free at night. surrounding malioboro street, there are many lodging in affordable price. if visitors want to eat on the roadside, remind them to ask information of the price first. all these tips are gained from previous experiences. therefore, journalists should be sensitive to various tips on location to make tourists more comfortable. cost estimation becomes a very useful aspect for the readers as it is related to the financial plan that will be considered when visiting certain destination. the costs include transportation, hotels, food, tickets, and other expenses. although some places have been included in the tour package with a fixed price, but new places do not have any information regarding cost estimation. as a result, many tourists experienced when finding information related to accommodation and other costs. therefore, given the approximation cost, readers can plan and manage the expense easily. the responsibility of journalists is to write the truth details of the tourism sites. the geography and temperature of the sites are very important to be informed so that tourists can prepare themselves before going to the location. a journalist is also expected to become more sensitive to the social conditions of a community at the location. the customs of a society that have become traditions and prohibitions should be informed to avoid misunderstandings between local people and tourists. for example, tourists who visit the temple of borobudur are not allowed to climb or step on the stupa because the temple of borobudur is a place of worship for buddhists. therefore, balanced reporting becomes the foundation of journalists in making their travel reports. the first obstacle and challenge are ways to review new destinations and translate the information in mandarin. therefore, to attract chinese tourists, the journalist is expected to review tourist destinations in mandarin and spread it on ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 103-110 109 wechat. indeed, journalists can seek help from translators or compose the news by themselves. news can also be written in english, but the number of readers will not be as satisfying as the number of readers when the news is translated into mandarin. secondly, it is vital to think of ways to disseminate the news to chinese society. wechat is considered as the most popular social media in china. the news can be disseminated from one's account to another through the sharing feature called “moment”. in addition, we can also create a special news platform in wechat to load the news. it can be updated regularly or even anytime. this platform can be used by a journalist to publish news about tourism. to spread the news, we need to cooperate with various parties in order to reach broadly. some parties that are considered effective to be invited to cooperate in supporting the dissemination of the news including student groups, embassies, the study centre of indonesia, tourism groups, and national or international media. the last obstacle and challenge are how to support the production of the news financially. the funding can be done by joining with various parties. travel agents can be invited to work together to fund the creation and translation of news. in addition to travel agents, government agencies can also be invited to work together to support the dissemination of news in wechat. although without financial support, news production activities can be done independently, but it will be not effective due to financial limitation. therefore, to implement tourism in wechat, some of these obstacles must be solved. finally, the strategies to increase chinese tourists can be well realized. conclusion creative and innovative strategies are expected to be effective in promoting indonesian tourism and inviting larger number of tourists. tourism journalism presented in the news on wechat can promote indonesian tourism. the reviews of tourism sites do not only cover famous destinations offered by travel agents. on the other hand, new destinations should be introduced in tourism news. the structure should consist of 6 parts including the location details, the history, the attraction, the directions on how to get to the place, useful information, and the cost. since the target audience is chinese, the news should be translated into mandarin before exposed in that world wide web. therefore, the main obstacle that should be anticipated and solved is the ability of journalists to write in mandarin. an alternative way to overcome these obstacles is to work with translators. to spread the news, journalists should work together with various parties, such as the embassies, the centre of indonesian studies, some media, and indonesian students in china. references anonymous. 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(2017). faktor-faktor daya tarik pariwisata bali dari sudut pandang orang tiongkok (thesis). beijing foreign studies university. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 213 reinforcing and repulsing the stages of life’s way: a kierkegaardian reading of philip roth’s sabbath’s theater (1995) *jan raen carlo mijaro ledesma1 and aldrin enciso manalastas2 1,2university of santo tomas, españa, manila, philippines *correspondence: jmledesma@ust.edu.ph https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.3768 received 10 october 2021; accepted 21 february 2023 abstract this paper unveils the postmodernist patina of philip roth’s novel sabbath’s theater through the affairs of its main character morris “mickey” sabbath—a 64year-old puppeteer who finds absolute delight in pursuing the base pleasures of life and one who also indulges himself in the american world bringing him to a state of alienation and destruction. we attempt to present sabbath as the “aesthete” who greatly wallows in the fleshly pleasures of life. his sexual trysts generate the grounds for discoursing on the matter of sex as a potent postmodern site of disorder, self-cognizance, and reflexivity that leads towards annihilation of the self. in our analysis, we present him akin to an animal wallowing in base pleasures. bounded by the “finite” from the perspective of the philosopher soren kierkegaard, his sexual trysts, ethnic displacements, and the juggling between home (jewish origins) and host (american landscape) are factors that make it not possible for sabbath to acquire a true self. capitalizing on the descriptive-analytical research design, the paper leans on the critical concepts expounded by the philosopher soren kierkegaard particularly his three stages of life and the discourse on finitude in further making sense of mickey sabbath’s untamed pursuit of worldly desires. we present sabbath greatly wallowing in the aesthetic stage of life. the ethical and religious stages are depicted only as specters that persistently confront the novel’s hero. the findings highlight sabbath as the aesthete and pleasure-seeker who wallows in sexual pleasures as well as the person who immerses himself in art and other intellectual pursuits. all the worldly feats that affect the disposition of sabbath compel him to spurn the ethical stage. this leads to the assertion that there is no commitment to virtue and integrity on the part of the sabbath that can lead to the religious stage of life. keywords: aesthete, finitude, infinitude, postmodernity introduction philip roth’s sabbath’s theater is markedly noted for its robust depiction of alienation, subversion, degeneration, and disillusionment. through his extremely libidinous and antagonistic disposition in life, mickey sabbath, the novel’s gargantuan hero, concretizes the postmodern depiction of the self—one with a mailto:jmledesma@ust.edu.ph https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.3768 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 214 multiphreniac patina making it possible for the authentic self to recede from focus validating the idea that one does not get to be a single and consistent body in a world that is highly postmodern. kenneth gergen (1991), in the saturated self, plainly substantiates such a postmodernist disposition stemming from the character of the sabbath. to echo kenneth gergen (1991), “for everything that ‘we know to be true’ about ourselves, other voices within respond with doubt and even derision. this particularly resonates with the titular “theater” attached to the name sabbath. the word “theater” highlights the idea that the protagonist greatly depends on the feat of puppetry to earn a living. in the context of the novel, “theater” can also be understood as a projection of the references to various shakespearean plays as roth chronicles the particular negotiations and deadlocks of sabbath with troubles, chaos, and disorders. moreover, the titular sabbath’s theater also moves in consonance with the main character’s world which is remarkably built on the illusory, strange, and unreal. echoing the postmodern in sabbath, his “theater” is also a signification of the dominant multifarious self-devoid of any other layers of meaning. in his worldly exploits, sabbath incites the postmodern dictum concerning human nature – “we are what we say we are.” in the case of sabbath, one sees a self that has no clear essence and coherence—one that is only animated by madness, absurdity, and selfdestructive tendencies. sabbath is in a constant state of flux and flow, always being redefined, and constantly experiences and capitalizes on various scripts and modes of beings. aware of this dilemma, one can affirm that there is no enduring “i” on the part of sabbath. through these varying dispositions of sabbath, one can see how his self and his states can be reminiscent of postmodernity’s problem when speaking of identity—the problem of the concurrent continuance of discontinuity of the self. (stan & colipcă, 2012) the departed yiddish mother of sabbath had been a resilient spectator of sabbath’s decentered and multiphreniac existence making her compel sabbath to consider suicide as a means of ending his disastrous life. sabbath’s mother still communicates with her son and reminds him to consider the afterlife as a viable option for averting the dismantling of his self. it is seen that sabbath always ends in a terrible collision with his surroundings—the kind of collision and suffering that will make possible his rapid degeneration, from social mortification to alienation and mental sickness as a result of his character. such are the reasons that compel sabbath’s mother to consider putting an end to his life. before the formation and rise of a postmodern society, the self plays an instrumental role in ensuring that ideas, concerns, feelings, and fantasies blend well with each other through a complex but meaningful process of sense-making which markedly includes “narrative construction, story-telling, self-interpretation, rationalization, and inner dialogue” (sloan, 1994). the postmodernist patina of mickey sabbath is astonishingly captured by philip roth in the form and structure of his novel. in postmodernity, the self is presented as a composite of various forces (mehrabi and maleki, 2010). this is accentuated by these two features of the novel. as roth chronicles the worldly realm and skirmish of sabbath with death, it is noteworthy that he renders the novel distinctly structureless employing techniques such as convoluted flashbacks, unfocussed narrations, and the apparent inclusion of spontaneous actions that espouse the very precept of the stream of consciousness. such employment of the “structureless” in the novel makes the novel distinctive ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 215 and also an astonishing means of capturing the self-reflexive disposition of mickey sabbath. roth puzzles his audience with what is transpiring within the mind of sabbath as he was faced with the “desire-not-to-live-any-longer” right down the station stairway when he was on his ride downtown. this employment of the stream of consciousness by roth is a clear validation that sabbath, no longer rendered as an autonomous individual, is convincingly inhabited with manifold actions, views, thoughts, and behaviors of the people he observes and mingles with. sabbath’s thoughts become the concretization of what postmodernity calls “social saturation”—the kind of personal and social permeation that results in the loss of the independent self (gergen, 1991). in this case, mickey sabbath is being modeled by his complex yet fleeting relationships affirmative of a “pastiche personality.” to quote a passage from the novel about this: a blur whizzing blur why now most unpleasant invention nobody thinks ticker tape like this i don’t head coming down here stupid find what i lost idiocy greek village gyro sandwich souvlaki sandwich baklava you know nikki gypsy clothes spangles beads angelically on victorian boots never a fuck without a rape (roth, 1995). this senseless projection of what lies within the mind of mickey sabbath makes him a marvelous and repugnant character. such absurd patina is significantly associated with the vanishing days of sabbath—loose and amorphous. in the novel, mickey sabbath is a 64-year-old puppeteer of jewish origins. he was once a theater director and street artist who possess arthritic fingers. he resided in massachusetts for almost 30 years. his wife roseanna supported him but the woman that made him extremely libidinous is drenka. drenka is sabbath’s croatian concubine. this woman is noted for her massive sexual energy which had greatly satisfied sabbath and other partners from the past. the sullenness and depression of sabbath begin after the death of drenka due to pancreatic cancer. his solitude, separation from roseanna, and his condescension for contemporary life bring him to his final journey in new york which is emblematic of his final journey or his death trip. in his final sojourn, the american dream, viewed in the light of postmodernity, together with the death of his beloved mistress, turns out to be horrendous and bizarre for sabbath. what we see in sabbath is a lucid indication that part of the postmodern patina of the self is that it is comprised of “fragmented, situational images that result in emotional flatness or depthlessness” (kenneth, 1997). the self and its very core are remarkably erased (gergen, 1991). roth powerfully creates the image of a person who possesses no center but one who is drawn in various routes and roots— perpetually changing and being delineated by the manifold external relations that he has with others most importantly that of women. the diversity of coreless selves erases the “i” of the cartesian marque. from the vista of postmodernity, the complete concept of the human person is communally constructed. such is not a simple distinct exercise for the reason that we recognize individual bonds in the fashioning of identities but the results are that of multiphrenia and the decentering of the self. the postmodern american dream is rendered atrocious as he appeared as “one-time puppet master of the indecent theater of manhattan” (roth, 1995)— ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 216 an enticing street performer who was able to obtain reputable fame and infamy in the good old days—now rendered a kind of a depthless wanderer emerging like “a visitor from dogpatch, either like a bearded character in a comic strip or somebody at your doorstep in 1900” (roth, 1995). the novel of roth merges jewishness with religious discourses and references. taking the cue from the religious vantage point, the word “sabbath” is associated with a ceremonial endeavor where all jews stop working on the seventh day and allot a day for rest and worship. ironically, roth powerfully projects the sabbath as a site of destruction and demise making him traverse a reckless, crazy, and unwise quest for worldly pleasures and demise. sabbath remarkably wallows in concupiscence, self-pleasure, hedonism, and the unbridled pursuit of worldliness emplacing his life in a frenzied state. armed with a gargantuan worldly and sexual appetite, the character of sabbath also projects what postmodernism calls the “protean self.” as one who does not possess capitalize on consistency in forming the self, sabbath is seen to bestride conflicting scripts and modes to suit the current circumstances where he is emplaced constantly being tossed to and fro by jewish and american foregrounds. regarding this luring construction of life, we argue that the existence of the sabbath can best be substantiated by soren kierkegaard’s three stages in life. as this paper attempts to examine sabbath in the light of the stages of life’s way, we see sabbath’s postmodernist disposition “awaiting individuals in every situation and every situation is a multi-situated activity system” (goflinan, 1961). kierkegaard’s stages of life shall make intelligible how the self is fashioned through various interactions rendering sabbath as “trans situational” and “coreless.” in this regard, we attempted to answer the following questions: • how does mickey sabbath construct himself? • how do his actions validate the postmodern discourse on the dismantling of the human self? through sabbath, roth has wonderfully presented sex as a postmodernist contraption of disturbance, uproar, self-reflexivity, and self-awareness that paves the way to the destruction of the self and expressive disillusionment. the sexual trysts not only dismiss understanding and intimacy but also disclose a degrading mortification of the characters that play a role in the life of sabbath. the activities of sabbath in the novel can be rendered as a resounding springboard to engage the issues and trends related to postmodernity. viewing sabbath’s undertakings in the light of postmodernity, one can affirm and confirm that reality itself is not merely and easily reflected and paralleled in the human comprehension of it. in the case of the sabbath, we can see the unveiling of the postmodern dictum that the mind can freely create, fashion, and understand its realities on markedly personal heights. in a more specific sense, sabbath, in his relative theater, becomes the living exposition of the postmodern condition that is strikingly interesting to explore. in this paper, he becomes the concretization of how an individual perilously can adhere to his relative truths becoming extremely skeptical of other reasons and justifications that can be considered valid as well for his race, tradition, and culture. this is an interesting tenor to explore concerning postmodernity and postmodern existence in particular. sabbath establishes a resounding postmodern truth as he is emplaced in his theater. in the light of postmodernity, sabbath’s relative interpretations and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 217 expositions become the compass in navigating his feats in his theater. from his sexual and worldly enterprises, it becomes interesting to explore the problems of postmodern existence. in the case of the theater of sabbath, we see it as heavily anchored on the concreteness of the experiences of sabbath being the principal actor who distinctly veers away from abstract principles and ruminations. the power and calling of his phallus are a clear concretization of how experience can certainly be relative and fallible when viewed from the perspective of postmodernism as opposed to it being universal and particular. we can also espouse that sabbath becomes the symbol of a certain “lack” specifically the absence of optimism for a philosophical, scientific, or even a religious and sacred truth that can demarcate and justify everything for an individual. like the hallmarks of postmodernity, sabbath can also be viewed as an individual that resists definition—veering away from the notions of unity and grounded and further delineated by the differences and intricate conflicts emanating from his worldly means of knowing and being. sabbath’s affairs expound clearly on the postmodern tenors of placing a belief in a crisis of representation. this is seen in how he immerses himself in deformation in the caribbean whorehouses, his frequent masturbation in both public and private spaces as his means of countermanding death, and the futile attempt to engage meaning and impose it in his life. grounded on these assertions, we also attempt to unveil how literature can participate in postmodern discourses as reflected in philip roth’s sabbath’s theater as our reading of the novel further fleshes out the universal qualities and truths of postmodernity which include the multifaceted illogicality and ludicrousness of contemporary life, the loss of faith in ethical and dogmatic authorities, estrangement from society, disaffection and the embracing and acceptance of distortions and fragmentations. method in this theater of sabbath sprawling in the rays of postmodernity, it becomes interesting to see how sabbath, being a postmodern rendering of the human person, constructs himself amidst the various forces that render his existence extremely disputed. the novel is seen foregrounding the notion of idiosyncratic fragmentation (harper, 1994). cleverly and delicately, the novel also explores the intricacies of jewish ethnicity moving in consonance with to present sabbath, the ethnic subject in the novel, in the light of the flux and flow enveloping current american society (royal, 2000). this paper capitalizes on a descriptive-analytical method. we look for instances in the life of mickey sabbath and exchanges between sabbath and other characters in the novel that can make us validate the hallmarks of the three stages of life posited by soren kierkegaard. concerning this, we espouse the fact that the existence of mickey sabbath is a remarkable site of contestation. invoking the postmodern delineation of the danish philosopher soren kierkegaard and that of content analysis, mickey is to be regarded as the individual who fashions himself through encounters and reflections thereby imposing meaning and order in his life. in this paper, we problematize the existence of mickey sabbath—how he exists as an individual who strives, chooses, decides, and most importantly, how he makes commitments as he is emplaced in a postmodernist setup of life (obinyan, 2014). in propounding mickey’s sabbath as the gargantuan hero, extremely antagonistic and libidinous, it is evident that he noticeably lurches in the pleasurable, forbidden, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 218 disgusting, banned, illegal, and the things that horrify the bourgeoisie faction of the society. with sabbath deriving delight in the outlawed aspects of life, sabbath’s feats and the way he forms and regards relationships incite remarkable contingencies concerning the stages of life mentioned by kierkegaard in the book stages of life’s way—particularly the aesthetic, ethical, and religious stages with the first one being the stage where he greatly wallows and derives worldly pleasures being a finite being. to quote kierkegaard regarding the “finite being”: for a finite being, and that, after all, is what human beings are as long as they live in temporality..., the negative infinity is higher, and the positive is a dubious reassurance. spiritual existence, especially the religious, is not easy; the believer continually lies out on the deep, has 70,000 fathoms of water beneath him. however, long he lies out there, this still does not mean that he will gradually end up lying and relaxing on shore.... (storm, n.d.) it becomes interesting to examine how mickey sabbath constructs himself in the novel. he is a contradicted character who operates from the experiences of the absence of layered and meaningful grounds in his life (heidegger, 1962). one can regard him as a creating self from the point of view of kierkegaard. sabbath perpetually resides in the worldly and temporal with a strong disregard for the spiritual valuing only the satanic side of earthly and physical pleasures. in this light, it becomes interesting to highlight how for mickey sabbath human existence becomes a particular kind of task (amilburu, 1988 in obinyan, 2014). capitalizing further on the descriptive-analytical method, we capitalize on the three stages of life as posited by the philosopher soren kierkegaard. to expound further on these stages, the first stage is called the aesthetic stage. the aesthetic sphere of life is demarcated by immediacy. in this regard, immediacy means that the individual has no special regard for rumination concerning the nature and way of their living. people who are trapped in this stage are the people who cannot be trusted because of their disposition to disappoint people in various ways (onwuatuegwu and ebelendu, 2020). they do not ponder about the future because they are trapped within their desires and worldly engagements. the person will instantly grasp any opportunities that will bring him enjoyment. he lives a life of pleasure. as the aesthete, the core of his life becomes an amalgamation of scrappy and disconnected spasmodic moments (lawhead, 2002). the absence of a decision is the underlying characteristic of this stage of life. it is essential to note that sabbath as the aesthete immerses himself and markedly shifts from pleasure to pleasure. grounded on these precepts from kierkegaard, we look at the feats of the sabbath that make him experience this worldly pleasure. these include his sexual trysts, ethnic displacements, and the juggling between home (jewish origins) and host (the american landscape). these are the forces that make it not possible for him to acquire a true self in his undertakings. from these noteworthy activities of sabbath in the novel, we affirm the fact that he becomes a person delineated by immediacy and not seriously committed to any higher goal in his life. he will simply change his direction and orientation once he sees a more alluring alternative in his theater of pleasure. correlating this assertion with postmodernity, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 219 existence becomes associated with manifold possibilities that can be tentatively savored rather than in terms of projects or objectives that can be fulfilled in the long run (watts, 2007). it is from this claim that we come up with a springboard to validate what kierkegaard said: “boredom is the root of all evil” (kierkegaard, 1971). in this theater of debasement by the sabbath, the ethical and the religious stages of life remain only as specters that perpetually haunt sabbath in his life. sabbath settles upon nothing, no commitments, and moral choices. as the aesthete who wallows in the aesthetic sphere of life, he will never be able to have an authentic direction in his life. we validate this by the show that he is only committed to himself being the aesthete who is only committed to worldly affairs in his theater. the ghost of his dead mother becomes the reminder that he could have gone far beyond the aesthetic sphere of life. the messages of his dead mother are the echoes that he can also possibly have an assortment of social roles in his theater resulting in him at least possessing an authentic existence. they are the lingering reminder that he could and must establish a true commitment with himself and with others as well. this is the main precept posited by the ethical stage. with the aesthetic disposition presented as the more dominant aspect of his life, it becomes evident that his identity will never be summed by the so-called “series of universals” that can further put meaning in his aesthetic life. in his undertakings, it is clear that his fleshly passions become the yardstick that he adheres to in his life. the norms, societal regulations and principles, divine providence, and faith in god are all factors that he had significantly shunned in his life. the religious sphere becomes a herculean task for mickey sabbath to achieve. the aesthetic is the only sphere that dynamically animated the life of the sabbath. as part of our method in this paper, we attempt to show how sabbath had convincingly spurned these two stages—with sabbath showing that he does not possess the qualifications to become the “completely real man” that kierkegaard is espousing in his philosophy regarding the ethical stage and the veering away from the act of having faith in and trusting god as stated by the religious stage (kierkagaard, 1968). the aesthetic stage makes the person greatly wallow in the various pleasures of the world. the ethical stage affirms the importance of commitment. the religious stage entails having an authentic self armed with the very goal of committing himself to god and divine providence. findings and discussion confinements and wallowings: the aesthetic stage kierkegaard’s aesthetic stage of existence regards the person as someone who lives on the level of the senses, impulses, and emotions with a sort of childlike intimacy (obinyan, 2014). echoing the tenets of this stage through the novel’s hero, sabbath is persistently emplaced in the quest for gratifying moments. he is the pleasure-seeker who wallows in sexual pleasures as well as the person who immerses himself in art and other intellectual pursuits. we can give an image of sabbath as someone who enjoys intellectual and sexual ideas like fine wines but without any commitment coming from him to any of them. sabbath delights in the forbidden, the illegal, and the disgusting. it was said that he feels remarkably elated after “making people uncomfortable, comfortable people especially” (roth, 1995). to validate the disposition as an aesthete person, the novel chronicles the youth of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 220 sabbath as teeming with energy, dynamism, intensity, and desires. norman, one of the characters in the novel, who showed his admiration and regard for the mannish glamour and aura of sabbath averred “to look at you was to die… ‘there’s a bull in sabbath. he goes all out. he says people could not take their eyes off you. a force. a free spirit” (roth, 1995). mickey sabbath is not an attractive character but his remarkable virility makes him appealing to women. in an illusory epitaph, he sees himself as the “destroyer of morals, ensnarer of youth” but he has no intentions of harnessing his gifts and talents from the very start. as seen as how sabbath helped his father after his brother morty died, his desire “to escape his mother’s tyrannical gloom and his father’s pathetic brokenness,” (roth, 1995) and his not attending college for him to be able to go on a journey to new york along with his friend ron metzner escorting in an unforeseen and astonishing intermezzo of leaving the country, one can see mickey sabbath seeing his life as a frenzied endeavor of countering boredom and doldrums. sabbath fills his life with newfangled experiences. whereas rene descartes affirmed, “cogito ergo sum,” sabbath’s actions transpire because “boredom is the root of all evil” (kierkegaard, 1971). rendered as an aesthete, he sees boredom as a kind of threat because of the transitory nature of his feats and experiences in life. his life wallows in sexual pleasure. the forbidden, filthy, and illegal are how he makes sense of his emptiness. in the same way that kierkegaard sees don giovanni as the paradigmatic exemplification of the aesthetic stage (amilburu, n.d.), the novel presents mickey sabbath as someone who for the immediate gratification of his senses particularly his penis. he becomes the exemplar of a person who makes himself perform in the light of his senses. sabbath simply enjoys himself specifically his penis—the part of his body that makes him experience various heights of sexual pleasure and brings him from one conquest to another. this is a lucid postmodernist affirmation of the masculine power of the sabbath as reflected in his worldly activities. in the case of the sabbath, the aesthetic existence is thus an inconsistent kind of phenomenon that wafts here and there in a transitory world (amilburu, n.d.). as an aesthete, sabbath prominently enjoys “the satanic side of sex” and sees himself as a “villainous abominable misleader of youth, falstaff, that old-white bearded satan” (roth, 1995). roth (1995) greatly captures in detail the psychoneurotic preoccupation of sabbath—a distinctive, ironic, and disastrous fixation of mickey sabbath as an aesthete: you must devote yourself to fucking the way a monk devotes himself to god. most men have to fit fucking in around the edges of what they define as more pressing concerns: the pursuit of money, power, politics, fashion, christ knows what it might be-skiing. but sabbath had simplified his life and fit the other concerns in around fucking. there is a natural tendency to yearn for more and to pursue the excesses, to seek oneself, and a restless urge to find something stable to be committed to (obinyan, 2014). in the aesthetic stage, the search for physical gratification and hedonism is always the prominent feats being pursued. correlating this thought from kierkegaard with sabbath’s actions, it is seen in the novel that he does not permit any inhibitions to put a hindrance to his actions. sabbath only heeds the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 221 ephemeral imperatives of his extreme lust for pleasure sending him in “a perpetual pursuit of fresh sensations” (amilburu, n.d.). as an aesthete, sabbath is seen to be putting variations in his actions but still traversing the path that will make him wallow in pleasure and all its glamours. his means of immersing himself in pleasure is markedly blunted by the emotional whirlpool that envelopes him. in the light of kierkegaard’s philosophy, he is trapped in the aesthetic stage of life as “he seeks ever more intense sensation to quench his thirst for enjoyment” (l'equilibrie de l'esthetique in amilburu, n.d.). a clear example of this extreme wallowing by sabbath is seen as how to desecrate the grave of drenka with his self-pleasuring feat. one cannot wrangle over the fact that it is anxiety that makes sabbath pursue such forbidden and defiling pleasures. to quote from the novel: smiling invitingly, she replied, “first you’ll have to die,” and raised silvija’s dress to reveal that she was without underpants—dark stockings and a garter belt but no underpants. even dead, drenka gave him a hard-on; alive or dead, drenka made him twenty again. even with temperatures below zero, he would grow hard whenever, from her coffin, she enticed him like this…he came on her grave many nights (roth, 1995). this is the kind of postmodern character that philip roth has created in the novel—the kind of character makes us sex as a weapon to be employed in countering death ultimately consigning him to the eternal darkness of oblivion— also making possible the dehumanization of other characters as well in the novel. pleasure can still be found in the here and now even after the death of his beloved mistress drenka. this is a clear validation of one of the conclusions that kierkegaard posited in his philosophizing: "the best expression of the aesthetic existence comes down to saying that it lies in the moment" (kierkegaard in l'equilibrie in amilburu, n.d.). in the case of the sabbath, restraint, control, and delay do not have a hold on him as he continuously wallows in the aesthetic stage of life. capitalizing always on his penis, sabbath becomes a clear projection of the notion of emptiness as he attempts to protect himself from death and oblivion. as he is manipulated by his phallus and his arthritic hands, sabbath remarkably creates his subjectivity. through sabbath’s various hedonistic feats, one can read that roth is provoking others to scrutinize the genuineness of a self that changes and replaces— throwing his expressions and dispositions unto others, particularly that of women. sabbath is best typified by his manipulative disposition. in the novel, such movement and exploitation are remarkably shown by roth as sabbath also takes control of the women in his life. the aesthete sabbath has the capacity and charm to make his women agree with the immoral and the ignoble. in the feats and mind of sabbath, there is a notable subject-object schema that makes sabbath treat women as sex objects making him counter the oblivious power of death. in sabbath, there is an imaginative and personal kind of fiefdom that roth clearly shows through his undertakings. this is greatly validated by the role of drenka in the life of the sabbath. debra shostak (2004) puts in the limelight the croatian mistress of sabbath and how she becomes a unique instrument of wantonness in the life of the novel’s gargantuan hero: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 222 nikki, the malleable actress to sabbath’s willful director serves as his instrument, his implement, the self-immolating register of his readymade world, nikki, whose name echoes mickey’s to suggest a doubling of him, a sameness with a difference, leaves a tangible absence where there was always an ontological absence. sabbath evidently and frivolously resides in the present making him still see drenka as the ultimate object of his lust even after her death. sabbath the aesthete’s existence is a spectacle of phallic juggling—a shameless, agile, outgoing, and extremely libidinous one. sabbath is markedly enveloped by despair trying to make sense of his life after the death of drenka and his many encounters with women in the past. aesthete mickey sabbath is shown at all times poking his erected phallus into places it should not be such as in the mouth of the lover of his niece and the anus of the house cleaner of norman cowan. furthermore, he even pleasures himself many times at any place like in the grave of drenka, the photograph of the daughter of norman cowan, and also the many recorded conversations that he had with the young lasses from athena college. with these feats comprising the foreground of the life of 64-year-old sabbath, roth cogently presents the body of mickey sabbath slowly being shrouded by its mortality bringing him to a great state of angst and ultimately to his demise. examining his feats, kierkagaard has this to say to mickey sabbath wallowing in the aesthetic stage of life: so it appears that every aesthetic view of life is despair, and that everyone who lives aesthetically is in despair, whether he knows it or not. but when one knows it (and you indeed know it), a higher form of existence is an imperative requirement (academy of free ideas, 2015). sabbath is aware of such despair in his life and it is a force that powerfully compels him to become like mozart’s don giovanni—one who exists for the immediate gratification of his senses and the relentless pursuit of hedonism as informed by the power of his phallus. it is in this regard that we can label ourselves as trapped in a state of despair. in the philosophy of kierkegaard, the person who lives at this level is desperate, whether he/she knows it or not, regardless of any attempt to conceal it (amilburu, n.d.). mickey sabbath and the spurning of the ethical and religious stages in the philosophy of kierkegaard, the ethical stage of life is the life stage where the individual is said to create selections. in this stage, the morality of one’s decisions needs to be essentially taken into account as the person is continuously being tossed to and fro by the good and bad decisions that he had created in life. if perchance the path of morality had been pursued by the hero of the novel, mickey sabbath can start to naturally devise and articulate moral principles that can deliver him from the aesthetic stage of life. the institution of marriage further strengthens one stays in this stage of life. in the context of this stage, marriage is not merely regarded as an avenue for experiencing the heights and excesses of love it also entails making a special and essential commitment. the idea of commitment ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 223 requires a distinctive kind of continuity within the individual from moment to moment (obinyan, 2014). in kierkegaard’s view, the adherence to such a promise renders the individual as a self that can transcend the here and now. he does not just ground himself on the fractal instances that the aesthetic stage has to offer. he decides for himself allowing him to build his self for in the words of kierkegaard: “the self cannot be itself unless it is creating itself. so, the fact that people have to form themselves means that human existence is a task” (kierkegaard, 1984 in amilburu, n.d.). furthermore, kierkegaard espouses the very prospect of obtaining and securing a history for the self (kierkegaard, 1941). put simply, the human person has the ethical disposition to create and embrace the values that will bring him to a good and delivering experience of life. regrettably, these precepts are blatantly rejected already by sabbath as seen in the opening scenes of the novel particularly his conversation with drenka regarding fucking and their forbidden affairs outside the bond of marriage. department and moral conduct are markedly absent in the life and mindset of mickey sabbath. to quote from the opening conversation in the first chapter of the novel: “one monogamous mate isn’t enough for you?” he asked drenka. “you like monogamy so much with him you want it me too? is there no connection you can see between your husband’s enviable fidelity and the fact that he physically repels you?” pompously he continued, “we who have never stopped exciting each other no vows, no oaths, no restrictions, whereas with him the fucking is sickening even for the two months he bends you over the dinner table and does it from behind (roth, 1995). in these opening lines alone, it is evident that the novel’s hero does not possess the tenacity to become a real man. this is a man who did not possess moral self-sufficiency as he reached the latter years of his life. he is still evidently enveloped by despair. in the words of mickey sabbath as he was talking to drenka: “i am confused by you. i can’t follow you. what exactly is happening here today? it’s not i but you who propose this ultimatum out of the fucking blue. it’s you who presented me with either/or. it’s you who is getting rid of me overnight unless, of course, i consent to become overnight a sexual creature of the kind i am not and never have been” (roth, 1995). echoing kierkegaard, he can choose between good and evil, but in the case of sabbath, the evil and the high regard for the lower orders of life are the paths that sabbath had chosen in his existence thereby spurning the ethical stage—allowing himself to treat relationships superficially and letting his mind be swayed by his phallogocentric endeavors (lobo, 2013). mickey sabbath can never immerse himself in the act of remorse, even back into his family as he persistently spurns the edifying pieces of advice from his departed mother who frequently visits, back into his race as he had already indulged in the cultures of the americans enabling him to also disregard his jewish roots, and the path that will bring him to order, harmony, rationality and good relations which are emblematic of god himself. he can never repent himself “out of the whole existence” (lobo, 2013). one can posit that transgression cannot be recognized by sabbath himself for the reason that sabbath cannot yield to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 224 repentance and reparation of himself. the hero of the novel himself substantiates this claim concerning his unrepentant disposition in life which was also felt by his beloved croatian mistress drenka. sabbath affirms his take on “luxurious seriousness” to his paramour: “yes, yes,” he replied. “luxurious unseriousness was what the outsmarter often felt the greater the seriousness with which he conversed. detailed, scrupulous, loquacious rationality was generally to be suspected when morris sabbath was the speaker (roth, 1995). the so-called “teleological suspension of the ethical” (kierkegaard, 1968) evidently cannot transpire in the persona of mickey sabbath. sabbath can never associate itself with a transcendent source for the reason that angst greatly forms the very core of sabbath even in the latter years of his life. when he was in manhattan, the ghost of sabbath’s mother appeared to him and gave him a resounding reminder that life is shaped by and grounded on despair: “this is human life. there is a great hurt that everyone has to endure” (roth, 1995). for kierkegaard, reaching god in the last stage of life entails disavowing the worldly, becoming detached, and being indifferent to the finite itself. the ordeal that sabbath has to face is to cut his connections with the finite. it is noticeable in the novel that sabbath is heavily immersed in the world’s pleasures and disappointments. he remarkably departs from the kierkegardian dictum: “he lives in the finite but does not have his life in it” (academy of ideas, 2015)—unalterably impervious to its failures and sorrows. to further propound on this, sabbath existence is best delineated by his phallic clownings, mournful recollections of the memories of departed loved ones, discarded responsibilities, the straining process of disconnections, the death of drenka and morty giving him the feeling of being finished, his stranger-like disposition in the american environs where he is emplaced in, the struggles to overturn the cultural effects of the jewish depiction in the society, and the decision of roseanna, his wife, to replace him with a lesbian lover—all render sabbath as a resilient finite being floundering in the finitude avenue of life. all the worldly feats that affect the character and action of sabbath compel him to spurn the ethical and the religious. there is no commitment to morality on the part of the sabbath that can lead to the third stage of life. the religious person’s relationship to anything finite and relative is always governed by his commitment to the absolute god (obinyan, 2014). sabbath is thrown in the world, living in it, and is very much dependent on it. the finite things of life render the sabbath desperate. not only sabbath but also most of the characters are also experiencing the challenges of the finite to their lives. nikki experienced humiliation at the hands of his violent and wicked father. the mistress drenka is frantically reduced to a secret prostitute because of the impotence of her husband. matija, drenka’s husband, conceals his furtive stain of being sexually duped. norman, the friend of mickey, remains open-minded about his unfaithful wife without marrying his jeopardized status. echoing the thoughts of kierkegaard in fear and trembling, sabbath possesses the “security that makes him delight in it as if finitude were the surest thing of all. he resigned everything infinitely, and then he grasped everything again under the absurd” (academy of ideas, 2015). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 213-227 225 conclusion in general, one can say sabbath and the multifarious nature of his existence make him a reverberating example of a vulgar aesthete. his feats in life render him akin to an animal wallowing in base pleasures. bounded by the finite and in the vista of kierkegaard, one thing in particular—his sexual trysts, ethnic displacements, and the juggling between home (jewish origins) and host (the american landscape) make it not possible for sabbath to acquire a true self. in this case, roth can be seen as underscoring the claim to an identity that refuses ethical organization and social construction and instead seeks the favoring of its own worldly and protean narratives (neelakantan, 2007). such forces do not allow him to place himself on morally bounded commitments and associate himself with the transcendent. ergo, sabbath is a clear illustration of failure as a human being from the point of view of kierkegaard. nevertheless, it is still important to note that mickey sabbath is still cognizant of himself as an individual. he remarkably engages in base pleasures and becomes communally interrupted because of the social order in which he is enmeshed. as he tries to make sense of his existence as an aesthete, one can see that he is still “hyper-aware of possibilities” (academy of ideas, 2015). such are the possibilities that make he tremendously revolve around sex and self-pleasure. roth (1995) confines his hero in the first stage as he says: since masturbation had all but taken charge of his life, a dream that overflowed in scenarios of perversity and excess but that he now, in a seaman’s suit, was to encounter thigh-to-thigh, mouth-to-mouth, faceto-face: the worldview of whoredom, the tens of thousands of whores who worked the docks and the portside saloons wherever ships made anchor, flesh of every pigmentation to furnish every conceivable pleasure. the titular theater is the drama of his youthful impetuosity and promiscuity, his deformation in the caribbean whorehouses, his frequent masturbation in both public and private spaces, countermanding death, and the struggle for meaning. his theater is the site where art is created—the art of pleasure in particular. in this theater of debasement, the ethical and the religious remain only as a specter that perpetually haunts sabbath in his life. sabbath settles upon nothing, no commitments, and moral choices. he is the perfect example of a person who refused to put his utmost loyalty and devotion to anything. he pursues the people and pleasures in the very heat of the moment, his disposition lusty and antagonistic being at the age of 64. be that as it may, roth never fails to bring into the limelight the gravity of commitments, morality, and seriousness—factors that will lead to the fruition of the authentic self—the self that grounds sabbath on a definitive avenue that animates his life with existential purpose and moral duties. in the case of sabbath, this remains as a shadow that irrevocably follows him as symbolized by the ghost of his mother who habitually visits him convincing him to 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(2012). deconstructing and reconstructing identity: philosophical frames and literary experiments. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 63, 325–330. retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s1877042812047787 \ storm, d. a. (n.d). second period: indirect communication (1843-46): an explanation and a little more. retrieved from http://sorenkierkegaard.org/stages-on-lifes-way.html watts, m. (2007). kierkegaard. oxford: oneworld publications. https://doi.org/10.47191/ijsshr/v3-i10-05 https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/dissertations/aai3017861/ https://www.jstor.org/stable/i40139042 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s1877042812047787%20/ http://sorenkierkegaard.org/stages-on-lifes-way.html ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 28-40 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 28 beyond the pastoral: environmental imagination in o.a bushnell’s ka’a’awa kristiawan indriyanto universitas gadjah mada, yogyakarta, indonesia correspondence: kristiawanindriyanto@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i1.2255 received 29 november 2019; accepted 17 june 2020 abstract this paper explores the environmental imagination in o.a bushnell’s ka’a’awa through his representation of pastoralism. a hawaiian novelist, bushnell conceptualizes his idea of pastoral based on the hawai’ians’ traumatic experience with the western colonial powers. different with the anglo-american discourse of pastoralism which emphasizes more on the individual self and the reorientation toward the natural world in rural area, bushnell foregrounds the far-reaching impact of colonialism which affects even the periphery of o’ahu island. the titular village of ka’a’awa, previously a sacred place where the inhabitants with the blessing of hawai’ian gods lived bountiful with nature also suffers the outbreak of western diseases. employing postcolonial ecocriticism as the framework, this paper argues how instead of a place for reorientation and rejuvenation, bushnell’s concept of pastoralism in ka’a’awa evokes the traumatic experience of the islanders in which the picturesque landscape of hawai’i is the silent witness. to reiterate, this paper argues how bushnell orients his work within the socio-historical background of hawai’i and his conception is pastoral functions as a critique towards the impact of colonialism for the hawai’ian kanaka maoli ethnicities. keyword: pastoralism, environmental imagination, hawai’ian literature introduction pastoralism, the idea of returning toward simple and rustic village life as contrasted with the decadent of urban center is one of the most long-lasting themes in literature. pastoral narrative, as summarized by hamilton & jones, (2013, p. 12) calls forth the rural world, the locus amoenus or place or delight, a middle place of balance and harmony that is neither civilized or totally wild. western literature as early as the greco-roman period criticizes the rapid urbanization of mediterranean city-states and glorifies the idyllic -which come to represent situation of rural escapeof the village shepherds. the theme of nostalgia, yearning for the innocence of bygone era is one characteristics of pastoral narrative, along with the spatial distinction of town as ‘frenetic, corrupt, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 28-40 29 impersonal’ on contrary with the ‘peaceful’ and ‘abundant’ resources of the village. (garrard, 2004, p. 35) (sweet, 2010, p. 422) starting from the renaissance period, christian imagery and trope begins to be associated with the idea of pastoralism, the shepherds of the earlier pagan period are replaced by the good shepherd, jesus christ. worster (1977) underlines how the shifting from the arcadian pastoralism into the christian pastoralism also evoke the changing perception of humankind toward nature. drawing from the genesis story of creation and gods’ command than the world is humankind’s domain, christianity induces a mechanistic picture of nature to be altered as human sees it fits. this anthropocentric paradigm fueled the industrial revolution of the early modern era and the rapid transformation of landscape. in addition to the gift of objectivity, christianity may also have contributed to science a technological and mechanistic picture of nature. by denying to nonhuman entities a soul or indwelling spirit, christianity helped reduce man’s perception of nature to the status of a mechanical contrivance.(worster, 1977, p. 29) as a critique toward disruptive changes brought by modernity, the commodification of nature and alienation of modern people towards their surroundings, pastoralism becomes a central genre during the american romantic period. (gatta, 2005, p. 23) several notable writers such as ralph waldo emerson in nature (1836) and henry david thoreau’s walden pond (1854) expounds their ideas of pastoralism as a counter to modernity and rampant capitalism. emerson’s philosophy is imbedded in christian belief, exploring symbolism of human’s alienation with nature as their estranged relationship with god, and how nature is the ‘organ’ throughout the universal speaks into the individuals. (hamilton & jones, 2013, 112) he explores how human’s true nature, the inner self is revealed by living in tranquil and serene place instead of urban cities. similarly, thoreau criticizes the modern lifestyle in burgeoning metropolis and advocates for simple living in the rural area. to thoreau’s mind, the ‘progress’ of civilization was ruining the frontier spirit, which led him to utterly, famously, that majority of humankind “lives of quiet desperation.” (newman, 2005, p. 188) his book walden (1854) narrates his two-years account spend in a massachusetts wood cabin near walden pond in which he self-sufficiently supports himself from the surrounding landscape. “more than just a factual account of life in the woods, walden is now justly regarded as a classic of american nature writing. as a parable of human experience, it offers an extended meditation on the value of a simple lifestyle, along with profoundly insightful observations of the natural world that foreshadow many aspects of modern ecological thoughts.” (mckusick, 2010, p. 142) pastoralism remains a prevalent theme in modern american environmentalist discourse in this anthropocene era, an era marked by the advent of humankind as ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 28-40 30 a globally transformative species with detrimental impact toward the world. in the vastly changing world and the rapid advancement of technology, “when the comfortably mythopoetic green world of pastoral is beset by profound threats of pollutions, despoliation and diminishment” (love, 1992, p. 196) american ideal of pastoral brings forward the possible apocalyptic future due to technological misuse. one of the seminal works of american environmentalism, rachel carson’s silent spring conveys the devastation brought by the ddt pesticide in a small rural town in america. her novel starts with an idyllic depiction of a rural area with “prosperous farms”, “green fields”, “ferns and wildflowers” which is a common figuration in pastoral narrative. the narration later shifts into a macabre tone in which the idyllic paradise is shattered by the use of pesticide which is originally intended to eliminate the pets but it results in an ecological catastrophe. then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. everywhere was a shadow of death. (carson, 1962, p. 21) pastoralism’s association with anglo-american environmental discourse and the eco/environmental criticism is subjected into several criticisms. pastoral narrative is accused of being culturally and geographically confined into america and conveys a ‘distinctive, unique american experience’, which is locally rooted. (buell, 2007, p. 229)this unique american experience, in buell’s argumentation can lead into nation-centered discourse instead of a transcultural understanding, which in the lens of global environmental crisis is too narrow oriented. heise (2008)puts forward the idea that what considered to be ‘american pastoralism’ is actually only taking a limited perspective of the white settlers. the representation of a ‘single, mostly male individuals encountering wild landscapes or homesteading’ agricultural one’ (heise, 2008, p. 385) silences other voices such as the female and indigenous people by not even acknowledging their presence. moreover, by overemphasizing on the ‘rural’ and the ‘wilderness’ or ‘nature’ instead of urban environments with their environmental issues, the first wave of ecocriticism is trapped in a narrow perception of environment only as nature instead of environment as all than encompassed us.(bennett, 2001; buell, heise, & thornber, 2011a; marland, 2013)this myth of pastoralism and wilderness limits the scope of canonical environmental literature during the early period of ecocriticism which is underlined through oppermann’s question, “how regional literary narratives that are spatially located can, at the same time, produced meanings of global significance.” (2012, p. 401-402) this study offers a reading on o.a bushnell’s ka’a’awa : a novel about hawai’i in the 1850’s (shortened to ka’a’awa) by underlining how bushnell explores his environmental imagination of hawai’i pastoralism. this term, originally theorized by buell and broadened in scope by james explores how the subjective imagination of the writer reflects on his/her narration, especially concerning the environment. different with anglo-american environmental outlook which is criticized of being ahistorical and apolitical due to mainly focusing on individual self, bushnell underlines his idea of pastoralism which is shaped the historical circumstances of hawai’i and their interaction with the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 28-40 31 western settlers. the titular hamlet of ka’a’awa, a small enclave on the north coast of o’ahu is conceptualized as a haven and refugee for the protagonists, saul bristol and hiram nihoa as the area all around o’ahu is devastated by pestilence. the myth of pastoral narrative as a place for rejuvenation, rebirth and rediscovery is shattered as ka’a’awa also borne the impact of the devastating plague and instead become a valley of sorrow and despair. bushnell foregrounds how the picturesque representation of hawai’ian landscape borne witness into the trauma of colonial violence, ravaged by diseases through the native’s interaction with the foreigners and the islanders’ high rate of mortality. theoretical framework the term environmental imagination is first coined by lawrence buell in his 1995 book, the environmental imagination: thoreau, nature writings and the formation of american cultures. he argues that the current state of environmental degradation is caused by the anthropocentric paradigm that designates nature merely as commodity instead of having their own intrinsic values. in buell’s view, the entrenched anthropocentrism within western philosophical thoughts argues for a re-conception in how nature should be perceived, and literature functions to provide an alternative view of positioning human and non-human relationship: if, as environmental philosophers contend, western metaphysics and ethics need revision before we can address today’s environmental problems, then environmental crisis involves a crisis of the imagination the amelioration of which depends on finding better ways of imagining nature and humanity’s relation to it. (buell, 1995, p. 2) buell’s idea of environmental imagination expands of the capability of literature to reorient humanity in a more ethical outlook. the arts of imagination and the study thereof—by virtue of their grasp of the power of word, story, and image to reinforce, enliven, and direct environmental concern—can contribute significantly to the understanding of environmental problems. (buell et al., 2011, p. 418) although he is recognized as one of the seminal theorists of ecocriticism among with glotfelty and fromm’s the ecocriticism readers (1996), buell’s early work remains rooted in the anglo-american pastoral and wilderness narrative as the basis of his concept of environmental imagination. buell himself acknowledges that his conception of environmental imagination is based on his reading of canonical american literature, as seen in the following passage “even since the american literary canon begin to crystalize, american literature has been considered preoccupied with country and wilderness as setting, theme, and value in contradiction to society and the urban.” (1995, p. 33) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 28-40 32 expanding on buell’s seminal concept of environmental imagination, erin james (2015) on the storyworld accord: econarratology and postcolonial narrative employs this term to explore the environmental imagination of the third-world writers. building her argument from the third-wave of ecocriticism that began to explore interconnection between ecocriticism and postcolonial theories, (cilano & deloughrey, 2007; huggan, 2004; marzec, 2007; nixon, 2005), james asserts that writers coming from the third-world countries conceptualizes different environmental imagination from the anglo-american idea of pastoral. she asserts that environmental imagination should not only be concerned on anglo-american discourse of pastoralism, wilderness or rural area but instead is a “subjective, siteand culture imagination of life in particular spaces and times. storyworld can expose us to a new environmental imagination, or conception and experiences of place based upon a subjective understanding of a particular environmental site.” (james, 2015, p. 7) through her conception of storyworld that recognizes the subjectivity of an environmental imagination, james challenges the supposedly universalism of anglo-american discourse of pastoral through reading on third-world writers. she underlines the example of a sublime view atop the mountain which is perceived differently by writers of differing historical background. the same landscape, which might evoke a glorious response of the sublime and celebrating the unspoiled nature can be perceived as a landscape saturated with trauma by caribbean writers, as their slave ancestors walked the path into the plantation. (james & morel, 2018, p. 359) the difference of socio-historical circumstances, as james asserts is important in underlining an environmental imagination, a view which is also echoed by deloughrey and handley. certainly there are important distinctions, for example, between what lawrence buell has famously called the “environmental imagination” as it has been produced by privileged subjects in the northern hemisphere, and the “environmentalism of the poor” (guha and martinez-alier varieties of environmentalism) associated with the global south. (2011, p. 9) summarizing the prior argument, it can be said that the term environmental imagination which originally employs the romantic idea of pastoral to challenge the anthropocentrism of western culture has encompassed distinctive take of pastoralism from other literary tradition. the writers coming from third-world and formerly colonized countries convey pastoralism as something which is shaped by the impact of colonialism, which is not merely a sublime sight but evoke legacies of loss and tragedy. this environmental imagination of pastoralism is also reflected in hawai’ian literature, such as o. a bushnell’s ka’a’awa in which the protagonist, hiram nihoa is having to dealt with the devastation of his home island in o’ahu by western-introduced diseases. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 28-40 33 methodology this study is a qualitative research in which ka’a’awa, a novel written by o.a bushnell is positioned as the primary data. qualitative research aims to explore and to understand individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem. (creswell, 2009)as proposed by given, qualitative research is designed to explore the human elements of a given topic, where specific methods are used to examine how individuals see and experience the world.(2008, xxix) the analysis is conducted through postcolonial ecocriticism framework that seeks to underline the disruption of the colonized ecology through the impact of colonialism. arnold (2015, p. 5) conceptualizes that the core argumentation of postcolonial ecocriticism is underlying the intertwined nature between empire and environment. through reading on o.a bushnell’s ka’a’awa, this paper posits that instead of a picturesque landscape of pastoralism in western tradition, bushnell foregrounds the desolation in hawai’ian rural area which is directly caused by colonialism. findings and discussion the novel ka’a’awa, written by o.a bushnell in 1972 charts the journey of hiram nihoa –a member of hawai’ian aristocracy as the guardian (kahu) of prince alexander liholiho – on his passage alongside the coastline of o’ahu island. narrated from nihoa’s point of view, bushnell conveys the rapid changes in hawai’ian society, culturally and ecologically in years following the arrival of the anglo-saxon settlers by focusing on the island of o’ahu. nihoa is entrusted by king kamehameha iii to chronicle the vast changes brought by western settlers especially in the valley of ka’a’awa where a white man (haole), saul bristol resides. while at first bristol remains rooted in western colonial discourse that disparages the local natives as brutish savages, an outbreak of influenzas in ka’a’awa changes his outlook to be more caring toward the villagers. this novel concludes with nihoa and bristol works together to establish a training school in ka’a’awa. the training school which posits the possibility of harmonious living between human and the environmental, and also humans of different racial background highlights bushnell’s intention of creating a novel culture, from indigenous and settler perspective as an avenue of sustainability living in hawai’i.(indriyanto, 2020, p. 9) in ka’a’awa, bushnell foregrounds the rapid changes in hawai’ian society, culturally and ecologically in years following the arrival of the anglo-saxon settlers by focusing on the island of o’ahu. being the center of hawai’ian and western interchanges, this island is the most affected by the presence of western traders, missionaries and freeloaders especially after the abolishment of kapu (taboo) system by queen regnant ka’ahumanu in 1819. (haley, 2016, p. 6) as a defining symbol, honolulu which was a small fishing village in the era of king kamehameha i (pre-1820) were transformed into a vibrant trading center to accommodate the vast demand of the western traders. honolulu’s transformation is followed by a rapid ecological shift, the surrounding areas which consist of marshes, forests, agricultural areas and ponds were drained of waters and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 28-40 34 deforested, an act of ecological imperialism, to quote oppermann. (2007, p. 179) the changes of honolulu into a modern, westernized city only benefits the hawai’ian ruling class and the white settlers from the influxes of commerce, while the quality of life deteriorated for the hawai’ian natives (kanaka maoli). (ireland, 2011) they are slowly being phased out into lower-quality neighborhood in unhealthy slums which causes them to be prone towards endemic outbreaks. the outbreak of diseases, which is a recurring event in the novel devastated both hawai’ians living in honolulu and the rural area all around the island of o’ahu. ka’a’awa chronicles the journey of hiram nihoa, a member of the hawai’ian upper class as a guardian (kahu) of future king kamehameha iv on his quest to chart the situation in o’ahu island. through nihoa’s travel all around o’ahu, bushnell’s environmental imagination foregrounds the impact of western colonialism towards the landscape of hawai’i and the local islanders as the inhabitants. nihoa is first introduced as taking refuge with his family above honolulu to escape an outbreak of sickness --“the latest of the new plague the foreigners have brought among us-the influenza” -in this city. (bushnell, 1972, p. 9)as the novel later express, the diseases are not only an isolated incident in honolulu but is an island-wide situation instead. criticizing the impact of modernity toward honolulu, bushnell represents honolulu as an unsanitary urban area, crowded and polluted in stark contrast with the remaining green area surrounding it. who would think, looking at punchbowl from the sea, that this little pocket of greenness, hidden in the cleft of the mountains, lies so close to the dirty, dusty sprawl of houses which is honolulu? (bushnell, 1972, p. 73) although several patches of greenery remain in the close proximity of hawai’i’s capital with the rapid growth of honolulu it is inevitably that this city will eventually engulf its surrounding area. bushnell laments how the hawai’ian islanders is exempted from all the benefits and comfort brought by modernity, as they are constrained in poor hovels outside honolulu. and on ka papakolea's lowest slopes i saw the latest of these signs of change: scattered among the dry rocks and thirsting weeds, like rubbish blown by the wind, were the hovels of those kolea among men—the poor, the sick, the outcasts of honolulu. (bushnell, 1972, p. 73) through his portrayal of honolulu, bushnell scorns how modernity, which is supposed to bring progress and easier life for the hawai’ian natives actually subjects them into marginalization in their own capital city. the kanaka maoli is segregated in unhealthy, dirty and polluted living areas which is vulnerable towards the outbreak of diseases. while nihoa’s venture away from honolulu into the open rural area in o’ahu is supposed to represent a nostalgia toward the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 28-40 35 unspoiled hawai’ian landscape, the far-reaching colonial presence has affected the entirely of o’ahu island. i am leaving the dirty town for the clean country fly the rank city, shun its turbid air: breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke volatile corruption. (bushnell, 1972, p. 76) bushnell conveys the rapid changes in hawai’ian landscape and the outbreak of diseases as the narration moves from honolulu into the rural areas in o’ahu. prior study on the novel ka’a’awa by indriyanto (2020) emphasizes how the protagonist, hiram nihoa is forced to adapt to the rapid societal changes due to the arrival of western settlers. the lush forests of hawai’i are slowly being deforested, as the local woodcutters are no longer having respect towards nature and preferring quick cash by the traders in honolulu. this is in line with huggan and tiffin’s (2010, p. 11)elaboration on the ontological and epistemological shift in indigenous people’s interaction with the environment. as belligerent and industrializing western nations extracted raw materials from the periphery, both colonists and indigenous peoples bore witness to significant environmental transformations. (clark, 2014, p. 576) bushnell laments this needlessness destruction that conceptualizes how the green landscapes of hawai’i will soon resemble the arid climate of california: each year the edge of the forest moves farther away. soon these hills, these mountainsides and ridges, will be robbed of their trees. then the grass and the ferns will turn brown in the sun, as are the hills of california, and honolulu will be no different to look upon than are san pedro and san diego. (bushnell, 1972, p. 45-46) bushnell’s vivid description on the ecological devastation brought by the arrival of western people in hawai’i highlights the intertwined nature of postcolonialism and environmentalism. as seen in deloughrey, gosson and handely’s statement regarding “addressing the historical and racial violence of the environment is integral in understanding literary representations of its geography,” (2005, p. 22), the ecology of colonized countries has been shaped by colonialism. this line of argumentation is further echoed through kamada’s statement that underlines how “the landscape that they write about is necessarily politicized; their own subjectivity are intimately implicated in both the natural history as well as the traumatic history of the place” (2010, p. 3) another changes of hawai’ian ecology as a post-colonial ecology which has been shaped by colonialism is the entrance of non-native flora and fauna, or invasive species in crosby’s (1986) terminology. the entrance of hawai’i into the world stage results in the introduction of western pests, mosquitos, cockroaches, scorpions and centipedes that does not reside in hawai’i pre-colonial times. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 28-40 36 bushnell sarcastically denotes mosquitoes as “a new kind of demon are they; another presents from our generous foreigners.” (bushnell, 1972, p. 22)the people living in the rural areas, with their grass houses and lack of pest-control prove to be particularly stung by the presence of invasive species. the creeping, jumping, flying farley in that house were beyond belief! mosquitoes, fleas, lice, bedbugs’ bit for our blood; cockroaches nibbled at our hair and at the nails of fingers and toes; centipedes clattered frantically over the mats. (bushnell, 1972, p. 249) furthermore, bushnell contextualizes the rapid depopulation of the hawai’ian villages due to various kind of diseases. although influenza and smallpox are considered a common sickness in the western world, hawai’ians, being the most isolated people in the world pre-colonial contact has no natural immunity towards western diseases. (miyares, 2008)nihoa’s voyage brings himself into many empty villages, where the majority of the people already succumbs to sickness. contrary with the celebration of pastoralism in anglo-american discourse, bushnell presents a morbid idea of pastoral, in which the villages are depopulated as a result of western diseases. it is a terrible thing, i tell you, to ride through valley after valley, district after district, and to find them almost empty of people where once people lived in plenty. the graveyards are full, but the villages are emptying or are gone, and weeds are the only crop in the fields. (bushnell, 1972, p. 395) the titular ka’a’awa, the isolated pastoral area in the northern shore of o’ahu, a sacred place in hawai’ian lore due to its close proximity to ka’io’o mountain the dwelling-place of the godsis not exempted from the outbreak of diseases that devastated o’ahu. the narration conveys a nostalgia of ka’a’awa in the pre-colonial era, a peaceful enclave in which the islanders treat it with respect, free from diseases and sickness. this affirms with the hawai’ian philosophy of aloha aina which positions themselves as “the caretaker of the land that maintains his life and nourishes his soul.”(gupta, 2014, p. 394) bushnell’s narration imagines the bygone era in the following passage do not forget: for many generations have our people dwelled here in ka'a'awa, in peace and happiness. no battles were fought in this sacred valley, no sicknesses leaped like warriors among the people to strike them down (1972, p. 566) moreover, bushnell depicts several chants, voiced by nihoa and his companion -eahouthat exalt the beauty of hawai’i nei, their home island, especially the area around ka’a’awa. this interconnection between hawai’ian culture and their surrounding nature as embodied in the cultural artifacts that celebrates their earthly paradise is in in contrast with western demarcation of nature and culture. (emerson, 2007; mohs, 2018) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 28-40 37 beautiful is ka'a'awa, beautiful beyond compare," "high are the mountains which enfold it," eahou continued the ageold chant, "but mightiest of all, most sacred, is the one standing alone, the peak set apart, the one which divides above from below. for there, there in the heights, is the dwelling-place of the god." (bushnell, 1972, p. 269) the idealized image of ka’a’awa as sanctified rural area for the kanaka maoli, and a supposedly place for comfort and refuge in the end of nihoa’s voyage is shattered by the current state of ka’a’awa. similar to many villages all around o’ahu, bushnell represents the desolated circumstances of ka’a’awa through nihoa’s monologue, “gone, vanished with the dead were the habitations of the people who once had lived in this peaceful valley.” (bushnell, 1972, p. 272)while ka’a’awa in the pre-colonial era is romanticized as a place full of mana (spiritual power) due to the blessing of hawai’ian gods in nearby ka’oi’o mountain, ka’a’awa also suffers from the impact of the entrance of modernity to hawai’i. only a small percentage of ka’a’awa villagers remain, working for the ranch of saul bristol, a shipwrecked american who reside in ka’a’awa which becomes the second protagonist that complete bushnell’s narration. through bristol’s depiction in ka’a’awa, bushnell represents the figure of a deterritorialized western person, someone who is alienated from the landscape and surround them and unable to perceive their environment where they reside as a place. (heise, 2008b) ka’a’awa becomes a place for bristol to reorient himself, through his journey on the surrounding jungle, an untamed area, unclaimed by his pasture-land. his exposure toward the sublime sight of ka’io’o mountain, and his resulting climb to the peak to witness the landscape surround ka’a’awa is a pivotal event for his reorientation with the natural world. bushnell narrates bristol’s acknowledgement of his surrounding place as, “and then.. as i gained the top of the hill, and came out upon the valley’s plain: oh, the beauty of it made me cry in wonder!” (1972, p. 355 )it is important to underline that immediately after recognizing the beauty of the landscape of ka’a’awa, bristol immediately recognize another important aspect, the lushness of ka’a’awa is marred by desolation, the aftermath of an outbreak of diseases. from that vantage, where once chiefs and priests must have gazed out upon fertile fields and hundreds of happy people, today i saw only desolation. the people are gone, dead and vanished into the earth, and among the smothering weeds only the stone platforms upon which once their houses rose, only a few sagging, rotting grass huts, remain to show that this was a thriving community. (bushnell, 1972, p. 339) the pastoral area of ka’a’awa, instead of a place for refugee, rejuvenation and reorientation with the natural world is depicted as a ‘valley of sorrows and griefs’(bushnell, 1972, p. 513) instead. instead of joyful bliss and peaceful coexistence between the islanders and the landscape surrounding ka’a’awa which is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 28-40 38 a common trope in pastoral narrative, bushnell’s narration underlines lamentation as the picturesque terrain becomes the background for the rapid mortality of the kanaka maoli. this village is particularly affected as “twenty-five of the valley’s six-score inhabitants had died” in a smallpox outbreak. (bushnell, 1972, p. 526) different with anglo-american discourse of pastoral that emphasized the purity of unspoiled nature, bushnell’s environmental imagination represents a rural area which is saturated by legacy of colonial encounters in form of diseases. conclusion it can be concluded that bushnell’s environmental imagination, particularly concerning his idea of pastoral is shaped by the hawai’ians’ experience in interacting with the western colonial power. bushnell represents a landscape which is shaped by trauma of colonial legacy of diseases and sickness. from nihoa’s voyage around the island of o’ahu, bushnell underlines the impact of colonialism on the kanaka maoli, being marginalized in their own capital city, suffering from the introduction of invasive species and being particularly prone towards western diseases. ka’a’awa, which in the pre-colonial era is a sacred place where the local islanders live bountiful under the blessing of their gods is not exempted by the impact of diseases. instead of becoming a place for recovery, rejuvenation and reorientation towards natural world for both protagonists, ka’a’awa is depicted as a valley of sorrow and griefs where the picturesque landscape represents the traumatic experiences of vast mortality of the islanders. to reiterate, bushnell orients his work within the socio-historical background of hawai’i and deliver a critique towards the impact of colonialism towards the islanders through his conception of pastoral. references arnold, d. 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(1977). nature’s economy : the roots of ecology. sierra club books. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 88-98 88 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia can historical sites in manado be an educational tourist attraction? *dimas ero permana1, benny irwan towoliu2, agustinus lumettu3, jufrina mandulangi4 politeknik negeri manado, indonesia dimasero01@gmail.com, benny.tourism@gmail.com, agus.lumettu@gmail.com, jufrinam@gmail.com *correspondence: dimasero01@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i1.2788 received 3 february 2020; accepted 12 july 2020 abstract manado, as the capital of north sulawesi province, has become one of the leading destinations for chinese tourists visiting indonesia in the past four years. one of the things that has not yet been explored well is cultural and historical tourism. though this can be a special attraction when managed properly, it can be an alternative to tourism other than marine tourism. but based on observation, the sites were not used as a means of learning culture and history for the people of manado. the purpose of this study is to investigate the use of historical sites as educational tourism. the analytical method used is descriptive by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. the research instruments used were interviews, observation and questionnaires. the analytical method used is the assessment using a likert attitude scale. the results showed that the manado community agreed that the various sites were used as educational tourism. keywords: cultural and historical site, manado, tourism education attraction introduction one aspect of indicators that shows the progress of a country or region is an increase in the number of tourists visiting. this means that an increased number of tourist visits reflects the progress of the country / region. the concept of marketing which is considered good that can improve destination is city branding. this concept is considered to strongly influence the number of tourists visiting a destination (ramadhan, 2015). currently there are many things that have been done by the indonesian government to make tourism a leading sector, but the policy that is considered quite radical is to encourage all related sectors to support tourism development as a leading sector (karlina, & iskandar, 2017). this policy is currently implemented in almost all regions in indonesia, which places tourism as the main depositor in terms of increasing regional income. to support the regional tourist destination, the government has improved the accessibility of infrastructure and opening various communications lines, increasing the amount of accommodation, as well as empowering the ecological and social –cultural potentials of the community to serve as a tourist attraction. http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 88-98 89 manado, as the capital of north sulawesi province, has become one of the leading destinations for chinese tourists visiting indonesia in the past four years. marine tourism with the bunaken national park as its icon, has become a leading destination of the city of manado. however, there are still many natural and cultural potentials that have not yet been developed as tourist attractions. one of the socio-cultural potentials of the community which so far has not been explored properly is cultural and historical tourism. though this can be a special attraction when managed properly, it can be an alternative to tourism other than marine tourism. associated with historical and cultural heritage in the city of manado, megumi abadi (2010) states that it is estimated that there are 46 historic sites found in the city of manado, but there are only two historical sites that still provide a surprise value to be visited by tourists. these are the ban hin kiong temple, and manado centrum church. whereas the other 44 sites such as the provincial museum and the struggle museum were not in demand. specifically, the china town manado area which still survives with old buildings in the form of a temple that is hundreds of years old and the cultural traditions of chinese descendants. of various sites, these historic sites have been damaged, lost, used as trash, even there are certain old buildings from the colonial era lost and replaced with new model buildings. compared to surabaya, a city known as the city of heroes, various historic sites have been made as tourist attractions and included in the city tour package. (indryanto, 2008 and rozaan, et.al 2018). in the socio-cultural context, the historical heritage tourism attraction category is included in the cultural heritage attractions (nuryanti, 1996). in the indonesian heritage conservation charter (2003), it has been agreed as a heritage. indonesian heritage includes: natural heritage, cultural heritage, and cultural landscape heritage, which is a combination of natural and cultural heritage in the unity of space and time. cultural landscape focuses on culture and nature which is a complex phenomenon with tangible and intangible identities. based on the explanations, it can be understood the various traditions that live in the community such as: folklore, dance, culinary, traditional music, and others fall into the category of cultural heritage. in developing tourist destinations, there is a need for assessment from tourists or local people to see the readiness of a location as a tourist attraction. community or tourist perception is needed in the development of tourism to assess the uniqueness of attractions, accessibility, amenities and ancillary so that tourism can attract tourists to visit (towoliu, & takaendengan, 2015). yang (2012) stated in his research that the perception of tourists shows that they are very satisfied with the culture and authenticity of heritage items from the han dynasty, and that there are only concerns from tourists about the loss of the authenticity of the local culture. other forms of disappointment are business arrangements, inadequate tourist facilities, poor service, and limited tourism programs. while irandu, (2004) emphasized the importance of the role of tourists to conserve cultural tourism. in conjunction with the history and character education, it is very possible that the various locations and historical sites including museums therein can be used as an educational tourist attraction (satyawati, 2016). however, so far the cultural and historical sites have not been given a serious attention from the city government for making them educational tourism. based on this background, the purpose of this study is to examine if various cultural and historic sites in the city of manado are used as educational tourism. method the research method used is descriptive method by combining qualitative and quantitative elements. the type of data in this study is qualitative data such as the condition of historic sites in the city of manado. while quantitative data is the number of historic cultural sites that are still recorded in the city of manado. the research used purposive sampling technique while data collection methods in this study were interviews, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 88-98 90 observation and surveys. the questionnaires were distributed to the local community including school teachers and parents of students and students with a total of 100 respondents. the measurement method used was a likert scale. (riduwan, 2009). likert scale is a scale used to measure the attitudes, opinions, and perceptions of a person or group about social events or symptoms. respondents were asked to give their perceptions with alternative answers in the form of a weighting score from the largest given value: answers from items that have gradations from very positive to very negative, such as “strongly agree”, “agree”, “neutral”, “disagree” and “strongly disagree”. findings and discussion manado is the capital of north sulawesi province, which is strategically located facing the pacific ocean and surrounded by mountains. the city has quite a lot of various forms of historical relics from prehistoric times to the dutch colonial era and japanese occupation. one form of historical relics that is still seen today is a form of building that is unique to the architectural style of several ethnic groups scattered in several regions that have strong historical values and influences. the historic area is one of the potentials that can be developed into attractions that contain elements of education and history through existing heritage buildings (tonapa, et.al, 2015). historical building is a building with physical appearance because of construction work which is integrated with the place of domicile, partly or wholly on top of or in land or water, which functions as a place for humans to carry out their activities, both for residential and religious, business, social, cultural, as well as special activities. (uu.no 28/2002). then in law number 11 year 2010 regarding cultural heritage it is stated that: “cultural heritage buildings are built structures made of natural or man-made objects to meet the needs of walled and / or non-walled spaces and roofed. in addition, it has characteristics such as: a) aged 50 years or more, b) representing the shortest period of style aged 50 years, c) has special meaning for history, science, education, religion, and or culture, d) has cultural value for strengthening the nation's personality. then it is also explained in article 7 that cultural heritage buildings can be single or multiple elements and free standing or united with natural formations. while in article 7 it is explained that the cultural heritage building can be: a. single or multiple elements; b. freestanding or merging with natural formations. here's one illustration of the state of historical sites in the city of manado that are not well maintained. figure 1. condition of japanese cave (goa japan) source: data researcher ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 88-98 91 in picture 1 you can see the former world war ii cave, which is not maintained which has become the location of community waste disposal even though this site is located in the manado city center. in table 1 it also illustrates showing the state of historical and cultural sites in the city of manado. table 1. cultural and historical sites in the city of manado no name the location the circumstances 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 waruga (stone tomb) ancestral graves centrum church– dutch heritage ban hing kiong temple crocodile stone (batu buaya /batu bihua) kuangan stone (batu kuangang) five stone (lima batu) rana / lana stone (batu rana /batu lana) sumanti stone (batu sumanti) bantik stone (batu bantik) the seven well (parigi tujuh) princess well (parigi putri) dutch grave (kubur belanda) the old dutch heritage building (gedung tua peninggalan belanda) vell box wanea vell box pakowa velbox bumi beringin vellbox kompleks gereja abraham ancient cannon (meriam kuno) old tower (menara tua) wanea light house (mercu suar) gunung wenang japanese cave (goa jepang singkil) japanese cave goa jepang gunung wenang japanese cave goa jepang pikat japanese cave goa jepang pakowa japanese cave goa jepang tikala japanese cave goa jepang kairagi japanese cave goa jepang tuminting japanese cave goa jepang lawangirung the grave of kanjeng (kuburan kanjeng keturunan hamengkubowono) gedung tua belanda frater don bosco besides sekolah eben heiser manado city center “ sea malalayang “ malalayang 2 tikala malalayang & gubernuran malalayang dendengan dalam singkil jalan kartini wanea kel pakowa kel. bumi beringin kel sario utara kantor gubernur wanea eks rs. gunung wenang singkil tanjung batu eks rs gunung wenan kel sario utara kel pakowa kel tikala kairagi tuminting bumi beringin pusat kota manado no maintenance well maintained still used as a place of worship “ no maintenance “ “ “ “ “ “ well maintained no maintenance no maintenance “ “ “ maintenance no maintenance maintenance no maintenance maintenance no maintenance lost no maintenance no maintenance lost no maintenance no maintenance “ “ lost / change change source: final report on the preparation of a study of tourism and culture potentials in manado city (2006) of the 30 historical sites above, 6 sites tend to be maintained because they are within the reach of government offices, included in religious buildings because they are used as places of worship, and then there is a relationship with the needs of human life such as wells (parigi) sites. in addition, it is only marked as a site but not maintained / maintained even tends to be the location of the landfill or even shrubs arise even as the location of graffiti (alien gravity) or lost to change like the old dutch building brother don bosco turned into a school building, with a minimalist model, boxed building. from the results of reports and findings in the field of the condition of historic sites, it can be seen that there is something missing from a civilization at the presence of a capital. there seems to be no way out for what this site is or is noticing. the stakeholders don't ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 88-98 92 seem to understand what this historic site is for, even though this is an educational tourism potential that is able to tell of the circumstances of the time when this historic site was created. this inability to empower inanimate objects comes alive, as a regional asset that can provide added value to the community when the site is given a touch of art to be brought to life. the following is the response of the local community when the historic site in the city of manado was made as an educational tourism site. from the results of a survey of 100 respondents representing the citizens of manado. the number of respondents taken is only for the sake of getting information (antara, 2009). the intended information is related to the description of the appropriateness of the condition of the historic sites in the city of manado when used as a historical education laboratory, as well as educational tourism. profile of respondent as follows. table 2. profile of respondents respondent variable (n= 100) number per cent gender male 57 57.0 women 43 43.0 age 15 20 48 48.0 21 30 17 17.0 31 40 21 21.0 > 41 14 14.0 level education high school equivalent 35 35.0 college 65 65.0 occupation private 17 17.0 professional workers 6 6.0 government employees 22 22.0 student 16 16.0 college student 39 39.0 source: processed data based on table 2. it can be seen that the gender of respondents who were asked for responses on historical sites in the city of manado, was dominated by 57% men while women 43%. indeed, in this data collection there is no priority or data collection must be the same as 50% between sexes, meaning that gender does not affect the assessment of statements or questions contained in the questionnaire. furthermore, the ages of respondents are as follows: 15 to 20 years by 48%, 21 to 30 years by 17%, 31s / d40 years by 21% and more than 41 years 14%. age is also believed not to affect respondents in answering statements / questions given. at the level of high school education, there is 35% and higher education 65%. the percentage shows that the college level is greater than the secondary school level. so, it can be assumed that the analytical power of the respondents will influence them in answering the statement given because of the high level of education. next is the employment status, where private sector is 17%, professional workers are 6%, civil servants (pns) 22%, students are 16% and students are 39%. from these data shows that respondents who are professionals while studying a total of 61% while the rest are scattered according to their respective professions in the data. next is the employment status, where private sector is 17%, professional workers are 6%, civil servants (pns) 22%, students are 16% and college students are 39%. table 3 shows the respondents' answers on cultural and historical sites to be used as educational tourism. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 88-98 93 table 3. respondents' answers to cultural-historical sites to serve as educational tourism no indicator mean sd 1 the historical sites in manado are unique and rare 4.4800 .50212 2 historic sites in the city of manado in a state of wellmaintained 4.3300 .91071 3 these sites can provide historical knowledge of the existence of manado 4.5000 .50252 4 the sites can be a learning laboratory for historical education. 4.8600 .34874 5 learning history comes from historical sites rather than learning from books. 4.5700 .49757 6 learning history at a historical location is more memorable and compared to learning from books. 4.7200 .45126 7 historic sites in the city of manado used as an educational tourist location 4.6500 .47937 8 at the historical site in the city of manado there is an explanation board that gives information about the site. 4.0600 .95155 9 the condition of historical sites in the city of manado is organized and clean 4.1200 .76910 10 the surrounding community helps clean up historic sites. 3.5800 1.12976 11 communities around the site understand about the existence of historical sites that are located in their places. 3.2400 .71237 12 access roads to various historic sites in the city of manado are cleanly arranged. 3.8100 1.01200 13 safe road conditions leading to the site location 4.1400 .66697 14 historic sites are easy to reach either by foot or driving. 4.0500 .82112 source: processed data the following is an explanation of the results of the responses of respondents as shown in table 5.3. from the first statement of the uniqueness and scarcity of respondents, the average respondents answered agree with the value of 4.48. this proves that the respondents considered there is a uniqueness of the various historical heritage sites in the city of manado. then the statement the two historic sites in the city of manado in a state of well-maintained. on the average, respondents answered on agree with the value of 4.3. indeed, from observations there are a number of historic sites that are included in religious tourism, the condition is maintained due to positive interactions in worship, so that the tendency of historic sites is well maintained for example: ban hin kiong temple, and manado centrum church, where both sites are of old age. over 300 years, and are still well maintained. the third statement mentions that the site provides historical knowledge of the existence of manado. averagely the respondents an agree answer with the value of 4.50. from observations supporting the answer positively means that the presence of a historic site that has hundreds of years old proves that there has been a civilization that has become the forerunner of the formation of the city of manado. then for the fourth statement whether the site can be a history education learning ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 88-98 94 laboratory, the responses of respondents consist of 4.86 agree and almost approach the strongly agree answer. from theses answers, it can be interpreted that there is expectation from respondents to maximize historic sites as part of a place of learning for students, empowered to learn local content. the fifth statement of learning history comes at the site of history rather than learning from books, it seems that the average respondents agree with the average values of 4.57. this shows that the learning system usually applied in class is also implemented outside the classroom. in the sixth statement, studying history at a historical location is more remembered rather than learning from a book, the answers agree has an average value of 4.72. the introduction of stories directly at the scene will make someone remember the story behind the events that occurred in the past. this means that it has its own meaning, different from just reading from writing without knowing the location where the incident occurred. by looking at respondents' answers it is time for historical sites to be empowered as part of the learning process. furthermore, in the seventh statement, namely the historic site in the city of manado used as an educational tourism location, the respondents' answers are on average agree with the value of 4.65 which can be interpreted that historic sites can be developed as educational tourism sites. by way of synergy between educational institutions, cultural and ancient institutions and tourism agencies. furthermore, in the eighth statement of the historic sites in the city of manado whether there is an explanation board that provides information about the site. respondents' answers are on average agree with the value of 4.06. indeed, from the results of observation average historic sites there are boards that provide an explanation of the existence of the site, but there are also some sites that only say the name of the site and do not provide an explanation of the site. examples of sites that just name the object include japanese cave and vell box. in the ninth statement whether the condition of historical sites in the city of manado is organized and clean, the average respondents agree with the value of 4.12. this means that various sites located in the city center are still in a well-maintained state, but there are also historical sites that are not neatly organized and even tend to become trash bins, for example japanese cave in the sario pikat building (see figures 1). local governments need to re-arrange the location considering that the location is a historic site. then in the tenth statement the surrounding community helped clean up the historic site, the average respondents' answer is neutral or hesitant with a value of 3.58. from observations where there are some sites that are not clean and become rubbish bins, it shows that people do not care about the existence of historic sites, but on the other hand there are also historic sites that look like a palace in places of worship of buddhism and protestant christianity, look clean because there is human interaction with that place. in the eleventh statement people around the site understand about the existence of historical sites that are in their places, the average respondents' answers are neutral (doubtful) with an average value of 3.24. with this answer, there are doubts from the respondents that the public knows or not about the existence of the site, indeed they know the name of the place but they do not understand the detailed explanation of the existence of the site. for the twelfth statement, access roads to various historic sites in the city of manado are cleanly arranged. respondents' answers are generally neutral (doubtful) with a value of 3.81. indeed, from observations there are several clean road access sites. this is also because the site is in the middle of the city. but there are also sites located on the edge of the city where the roads are not organized and unclean. of the three statements with an average of doubtful answers with an average value of three, the results of respondents 'answers fluctuate meaning that there are agree, doubtful and disagree answers. it can also be seen from the standard deviation value showing 1, meaning the answers of respondents are scattered and uneven. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 88-98 95 furthermore, in the thirteenth statement the condition of the safe road leading to the location of the site, on average the respondents answered agree with the average value of 4.14. indeed, the results of observation show that the average roads leading to the location are relatively safe, showing the existence of the community guarding guests or visitors to the location of the historic site. on the fourteenth statement, historical sites are easy to find either on foot or by car, the respondents' answers are on average agree because indeed from the results of observation there have been signs pointing towards the historic sites. the results of statements made to 100 respondents with positive answers agree indicate that although there are three statements with neutral results, but overall the respondent's answers are good (agree), providing understanding that historic sites can be used as locations or laboratories or tourist attractions for education students. positive prevalence of the results of research on cultural historical sites in the city of manado shows that the object received special attention by the local community used as educational tourism (navrátil, et.al, 2010; poria, et.al, 2009). in some places, historical tours are not only thematic monument but also raised the local culinary history, to explore the whole of the uniqueness of the community, which is specifically designed to evoke the values of nostalgia and familiarity, (ginting & wahid, 2015; lee 2015; lu.et.al 2015). cultural and historical heritage sites in the city of manado have a great opportunity to be made as a special tourist attraction, by combining local culinary packed with themes of ruling nostalgia, the legacy will feel alive. moreover, it will receive strong support from the local community. it must be recognized that cultural-historical sites have high value when declared as world heritage. the world heritage brand seems to make people curious and interested in coming to the location, unesco with heritage world has become a brand and become a best-selling merchandise, (io, 2011; dewar, et.al, 2012; poria, 2013). to manage and develop these sites, the manager must have the ability to find every uniqueness that exists in each of these relics, raise and make them as icons. so even though a site location is difficult to get recognition as a heritage world, because it has strict requirements, but when the manager is able to package all the uniqueness that is owned it will be attractive to tourists. themes such as the remnants of the second world war, slavery and others are still interesting to be packaged by creating an interesting epic story. (vong, & ung, 2012; yankholmes & akyeampong, 2010; winter, 2015; gelbman & timothy, 2010). when the manager has found a unique niche to be presented to the outside, then communication through promotional channels must be done by the manager, but there are also other ways to be considered which is very influential today, that is, through the film industry. movies have been shown to influence tourists to visit tourist sites, in many places where attractions suddenly become famous, many visitors come due to the film, (horrigan, 2009; buchmann, et. al, 2010; light, 2017; park, 2018). the development of cultural-historical sites can adopt all the elements of excellence in managing heritage tourism in various places, meaning that even though the development in manado is on a small scale, it is not impossible when the management is carried out professionally, the site area will become famous, attractive to a visitor. strong community support is the main capital in the development of cultural history tourism. it must be admitted that success is not absolutely managed purely by the community, because of limited education, knowledge, managerial ability in managing. but the important role of the community is absolutely needed because the local community is the owner of a tourist destination, (garrod, et.al 2012). cooperation partners between stakeholders by carrying out the local wisdom model of the region in managing tourism will strengthen the managerial organization in managing tourism. the management model which involves all tourism stakeholders by carrying out local wisdom is very good for the development of tourism in areas where tourism is still not fully developed. the culture of "ejido" owned by maya coba, then "tri hita karana bali", successfully raised the image of local tourism ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 88-98 96 to appear on the international stage, litka, 2013; roth & sedana, 2015). a big question is whether the historical cultural sites in the city of manado can be used as an educational tourism facility, has been answered by respondents where the cumulative average answer is "agree", learning from the location of the atomic bomb events in hiroshima and nagasaki, which are now the locations of historical education tours. in the context of the past as a reminder of a tragic event, but for the context of the future provides learning in the form of a message of peace for the world, (yoshida, et.al, 2016). unique thematic needs to be explored in developing historical cultural sites, so that not only local people, but also tourists from outside. it is interesting for the development of historical cultural education tours in the city of manado to learn from studies previously presented that the success of a historical cultural tourism destination lies in the uniqueness, managerial ability, commitment of the local community as well as the right marketing strategy in communicating all elements in the heritage cultural history. in the end, with the existence of a cultural-based educational tourism tour in the city of manado, it will become another alternative tourism besides marine tourism, with bunaken national park as the main destination. conclusion from this research, it can be concluded: (1) on the average, historical sites in the city of manado have been recorded as can be proven by the presence of site signs and directions to the location of the sites. (2) sites that enter the city area tend to be well maintained, especially sites that are still used by the community as a means of certain activities such as churches and temples. (3) the response of the local community to the site is used as an educational laboratory or educational tourism site, they answer in agreement with the average answers with a score of 4 which means to agree. thus, with these results, it is hoped that the regional government will form a team to develop educational tourism attractions, which will consist of representatives from the education and tourism offices, as well as experts in the field of tourism who can formulate a historical and educational tourism master plan. specifically, in the field of regional education services, it is recommended to include educational history tours in the education curriculum. this research is a simple analysis about the local community’s perception towards the historic the cultural and historical sites development into educational tourism. the further research can be an analysis of educational tourism management model. references antara, m. 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(2010). tourists' perceptions of heritage ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 88-98 98 tourism development in danish‐osu, ghana. international journal of tourism research, 12(5), 603-616. yoshida, k., bui, h. t., & lee, t. j. (2016). does tourism illuminate the darkness of hiroshima and nagasaki?. journal of destination marketing & management, 5(4), 333-340. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 48-57 48 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia eco-psychological analysis of bimbo’s belalang song lyric: a discourse perspective *idha nurhamidah1, sugeng purwanto2, katharina rustipa3 universitas islam sultan agung1, universitas stikubank (unisbank) semarang2,3 idhanurhamidah@unissula.ac.id, drpsugeng@yahoo.com, and katrin@edu.unisbank.ac.id *correspondence: idhanurhamidah@unissula.ac.id doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i1.2788 received 6 march 2020; accepted 18 august 2020 abstract the current study investigated bimbo’s song lyric entitled ‘belalang’ in a discourse perspective. it has come to be known that bimbo is a senior music group, specializing in deep philosophical touches of romantic songs. belalang is a song attempting to create an analog of an insect (mantis) with special mating behaviors to human love affairs tied in dangerous wedlock. the lyric was analyzed in two ways, (1) to find out the field, tenor and mode of the discourse, employing the analytical framework of systemic functional linguistics (sfl) in a macro sense, and (2) to find out the eco-psychological phenomena, employing the analytical framework of eco-psychology. the findings show that both mantis (with its special mating behavior) and humans (in showing true love to the “destructive” wife) have a similar pattern—to preserve the ecosystem or in other words to create a conducive environment. the moral teaching seems to support the old saying that to love does not necessarily own despite the presence of love-chemistry. a seemingly peaceful marital life has to come to its end due to an unexpected mystical curse of bahu laweyan. yet, secondary love can be made possible in search of peaceful lives, to avoid self-destruction. keywords: discourse; eco-psychological phenomena; love-chemistry introduction life and nature cannot be separated from each other. they are just like two sides of a coin. this kind of symbiosis between life and nature has formed a system commonly known as ‘ecosystem’ in which one cannot go without the presence of the other. in practice, the ecosystem exists in favor of the sustainability of a particular cycle of life (mirabella et al., 2019). belalang (mantis) has a special feature in terms of its species’ sustainability. mantis practices sexual cannibalism in which during mating, the female mantis bites off the male’s head to be devoured for nourishment for healthier eggs to produce more mantises (wilcox, 2019). in an evolutionary sense, such a process occurs for life sustainability. bimbo as a distinctive music group, specializing in romantic philosophical songs tried to make an analog of mantis' mating behavior to a man's loving behavior with all his sacrifice for love in a romantic song entitled 'belalang’ which lexically means praying http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs mailto:idhanurhamidah@unissula.ac.id mailto:drpsugeng@yahoo.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 48-57 49 mantis. in this analog which finally forms a discourse, the man has to leave the woman he loves most to get along with another woman with moderate love, ending up in strange lovemaking behavior (murdoch, 2019). research on song lyrics has been widely conducted for various purposes. rhoma irama's malam terakhir was compared with pance pondaag’s satukan hati kami to investigate the level of romance and religiousness as both songs refer to the same discursive practice (purwanto & rahayu, 2019). bimbo’s song lyrics have also been researched in terms of language styles and educational values (ulfa, 2018). the current research differs in some ways from previous studies of similar research objects in the sense that it tries to focus on discourse perspective by relating the study to other disciplines of science. the discourse formation of the current study was investigated by means of the macro analytical framework of sfl to arrive at the field, tenor and mode of the discourse concerning bimbo's belalang song lyric (keller, 2006). furthermore, the discursive practice generated from bimbo’s belalang song lyric was then matched with the principle of eco-psychology to arrive at phenomena of love affair under study. in short, the current study attempted to investigate the discourse formation generated from bimbo’s belalang song lyric as manifested in the loving behavior viewed from ecopsychological phenomena to answer the research questions (schryer & spoel, 2005), namely (1) what are the field, tenor and mode of the discourse generated from bimbo’s belalang song lyric? (2) what are the eco-psychological phenomena that can be found in the loving behavior reflected in belalang song lyric? scientific collaboration the spirit of collaboration in sciences can be seen from several critical investigations of language use viewed from different angles of look, even combined perspectives of two or more disciplines of studies (myers, 2019). the current study made use of systemic functional linguistics (li, 2019) and eco-psychology to analyzed a song lyric to find out the generic structure and moral values within the spectrum of eco-psychological framing (doherty, 2018). on discourse viewpoints the linguistic analytical framework, especially for systemic functional linguistics (sfl) has been used to analyze texts of literary works (de oliveira & smith, 2019). it is logical to do so as claimed by halliday that sfl can deal with literary texts (steiner, 2018). analysis of literary texts say poems or song lyrics employing sfl analytical framework (marhamah, 2014) is geared to establishing field, tenor and mode of the discourse (three register variables) of the text under study by examining the language metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal and textual). the field of the discourse is associated with the ideational (experiential) meaning of language meta-function through which the core content of the text can be identified, including the long and short term goal of the discourse (lan, 2018). this can be undertaken by highlighting the verb processes, participants and circumstances around each clause of a text. in a macro sense, it is not necessary to do clause parsing. instead, a systemicfunctionalist can easily make an intelligent analysis (of the text) to produce the field of the discourse along with necessary supporting linguistic pieces of evidence. meanwhile, the tenor of the discourse (hidayati, 2019) refers to the relationship between the writer (poet) and the audience (reader, listener). it can be identified through mood analysis, consisting of mood and residue. in a clause, mood consists of subject plus finite verb to find out the verbal operations (tense, aspect, modality). the residue is the rest of the clause, consisting of object, goal, recipient, and circumstances (of time, place, manner) and any other necessary information. completeness of information can be accomplished through sufficient residues. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 48-57 50 furthermore, mode of the discourse (bryant et al., 2019) functionally refers to text engineering whether it is descriptive, argumentative, procedural and the like. theme-rhyme development is structured in each paragraph of a text. cohesive devices have to be correctly put between one sentence and another to create one unified whole paragraph. ideas in one text also have to be coherently constructed to guarantee that they are chronologically arranged to produce an overall understanding of the text in question. in a literary text, the mode of the discourse is a bit fixed (zapf, 2019), adopting a poetic style with all necessary generic structures or prose or play styles with all necessary generic structures. on eco-psychological viewpoints eco-psychology assumes that ecology and psychology are two disciplines that can collaborate into one meaningful and significant thought before acts in that what any individual does shall be based on the sustainability of humans and nature (plesa, 2019). meanwhile, lexically speaking, ecology is a cyclic system of lives (of all on earth) in which everything starts from non-existence to existence, to finally non-existence. furthermore, psychology deals with the human mind. thus, it is logical to assume that eco-psychology addresses ecological sustainability and psychological well-being (meillon, 2019). at one time or another, there are some strange ecological processes around the world. for example, the ecological process of a praying mantis. it has somehow strange mating behavior (at least to human thoughts). the female mantis, during courtship, cut off its male counterpart for self-nourishment. it is believed that some praying mantises practice cannibalism (nishank & swain, 2019); some others, therefore do not. those who practice cannibalism can lay eggs twice as many. a praying mantis (translated as belalang in indonesia) has been adopted as the title of an indonesian song belalang by bimbo, a senior music group, specializing in philosophical and romantic songs. why the word belalang was used as the title of the song becomes the issue addressed in the study. the theoretical framework is therefore that the mating behavior of belalang is reflected in love affairs belonging to acil (bimbo)'s wife with so many other previous husbands bitten off (put to death) one after another. how acil avoided being the victim of his wife becomes the central point of the current study concerning eco-psychological analysis. bahu lawehan mystical curse on women in javanese mythology, there is a myth that, due to one thing or another, a woman may suffer from bahu laweyan curse. the curse is that when the woman gets married to a man, the man will die at no clear cause (tribunjogya.com, 2019). this may happen several times, depending on how many men with whom she has got married. this is relevant to the mating behaviors of praying mantises in which the female mantis will cut off the male counterpart's head to suck the brain for the nourishment of the future baby mantises (ayala, 2018). analytical framework with respect to the sfl analytical framework, it is argued that discourse is formed by text constructed according to the principles of three register variables. from these three variables, the meaning (contents) of the text can be construed to be able to relate to the principles of eco-psychology. it was theorized that human has been equipped with 'in-built' connection with the natural environment. such a connection is thereby explored in order to restore the problem (schein, 2017). the field, tenor, and mode of the discourse were examined in order to find out the ground for such a social discursive practice (hatim, 2009)—how human's love affair tied in seemingly dangerous wedlock is connected to the mating behavior of a praying mantis, which is belalang, as the title of the song lyric. method ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 48-57 51 the current study is qualitative and interpretative in nature we employed the analytical framework of systemic functional linguistics (sfl) to find out the field, tenor and mode of the discourse (deng, 2019) created from bimbo’s song lyric ‘belalang’ of which it has been translated into english for the sake of comprehension. the ecopsychological analysis was also applied to the song lyric to find out how the song as related to a praying mantis (belalang) represented the eco-psychological process (andreou et al., 2019). in other words, how the human mind viewed ecology (ecosystem) of a praying mantis toward its relevance to acil bimbo’s song belalang. we downloaded belalang song lyric from google search engine and presented it a format ready for analysis. in this study, we performed two types of analyses. one was to analyze the lyric (text) in terms of field, tenor, and mode of the discourse. this was conducted by looking at the macro sense of transitivity (verb process, participants, and circumstances); mood (finiteness, and residues) and mode (textuality—cohesive and coherence devices, including the thematic development of the text). the other was to examine the three register variables of the discourse in relation to the perspectives of ecopsychology. that is to say, the construed meaning of each line of the lyric is highlighted with respect to relevance to the cyclic process of the ecosystem. at the same time, psychological aspects were also examined (panov et al., 2019) in relevance to the event(s) created within the three variables of the discourse. findings and discussion described below are the results of the discourse analysis of the song lyric 'belalang’ employing sfl’s analytical framework at a macro scheme. belalang 1 1. 2. 3. 4. jalan di depanku debu di kakiku kabut yang kelabu dan angin yang menderu, praying mantis the path ahead of me, dust on my feet gray mist, and breeze blowing the first stanza serves as an orientation to the whole discourse in which the essence (gist) is to forget the unhappy situation of one particular marital life—the path ahead, dust, mist, breeze igniting laughter (mocking) over the crying soul. this symbolizes the author (singer)'s a marital relationship with the one he (singer) loves very much, which is not in the good ground due to an unexpected mystical curse of bahu laweyan. belalang 2 5. kemelut deraikan tawa 6. usangnya rintihan jiwa 7. aku harus lupa 8. dan leburlah cinta, praying mantis ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 48-57 52 the problem brought about mocking laughter of old crying souls i had to forget and so (my) love dissolved… the modality ‘harus’ [had to] indicates ‘internal obligation’. there is no other choice otherwise he shall die like the previous husbands of his wife. the third stanza describes a flashback of what the ‘author’ (singer) had done—opening a new life with his wife. despite he knew that he had married a widow suffering from bahu laweyan mystical curse. belalang 3 9. aku akan buka hari baru, buku baru 10. hari baru buku baru 11. akan kutulisi dengan tinta air mata 12. dengan tinta air mata praying mantis i was going to open up a new day, a new book (on which) i would write in ink of tears, the third stanza serves to describe a flashback describing how difficult it was to start a new life, symbolized as a new book on which he would write on the ‘book’ in ink of tears. the fourth stanza continues to describe the suffering as follows: belalang 4 13. dengan tetesan darah 14. saksi arti kau bagiku 15. aku harus lupa 16. dan leburlah cinta, praying mantis with drops of blood to witness how much you mean to me i must forget and so (my) love dissolves… it is clearly seen that drops of blood witness how much both of them, despite their mutual love, had been suffering a lot in remembrance of the previous husbands of his wife who died at no clear cause, one after another. in other words, marital life was not easy at all (tears and blood) but he loved his 'unfortunate' wife very much. be that as it might, life had to go on. he did not want to die like his wife's previous husbands. he had to leave his wife and gradually forget his love for her. another flashback (the fifth stanza), far behind, was that there was a widow who came and soon fell in love with the author, and so did he. however, he finally ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 48-57 53 learned that the previous husbands of the widow had actually died one after another at no clear cause. belalang 5 17. lalu kau di sini 18. segeralah jatuh cinta 19. pada sejuta 20. untuk kau hempaskan lagi, praying mantis “then, you were here to quickly fall in love with millions (of men) for you to ‘kill’ before and again.” [the author said on learning the fact he had loved and married a ‘widow whose husbands had died one after another] it is the fifth stanza that expresses an utterance produced by the author "then you were here to quickly fall in love with millions of men for you to kill before and again." this is the climax of the song in which the woman as a widow whose ex-husbands died one after another came for another man (the singer). this is similar to the life of belalang [praying mantis] in which the female cuts off her male mating partner’s head for the nourishment (of their babies). this is probably the reason for the song to be entitled ‘belalang’. the sixth stanza (the last) is to represent what the author (singer) will do when he finally finds another woman to marry despite the fact that he still loves his ex-wife (the woman with bahu lawean mystical curse). belalang 6 21. aku kan segera jatuh cinta dan bercinta 22. akan kuciumi bibirmu lewat bibirnya 23. akan aku gumuli hangatmu lewat tubuhnya 24. lalu aku lupa dan leburlah cinta praying mantis soon i will fall in love and make love i will kiss your lips by her cheeks i will enjoy your warmth by her body then, i forget and so my love (to you) dissolves… the author (singer) has some plans upon divorcing and leaving his ex-wife. he plans to fall in love again, of course, with a different woman. when the first plan comes true, he is going to, as though, kiss his ex-wife’s lips by kissing his new wife’s lips. this is to show that he still cares for his ex-wife as noted that kissing lips is the most precious ignition of sexual encounters. then, when he, later on, makes love, he, as though, enjoy her ex-wife’s warm body by his new wife’s body. thus, that he divorced his bahu laweyan wife was not due to his insincere love. instead, he left her because he does not want to be the next victim of bahu laweyan mystical curse—death for nothing. field, tenor and mode of the discourse ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 48-57 54 based on the above macro analysis, the three register variables can be further developed into field, tenor, and modes of the discourse as elaborated below: field of the discourse a man, who has just developed his love chemistry with his wife in seemingly happy wedlock—as he married a widow, must leave her because it turns out that she suffers from bahu laweyan mystical curse by which her ex-husbands had died one after another. he has no other choice. if he continues his marital life with her, he will die like her previous husbands. however, so strong is his love chemistry to her that, even though he must leave her, he promises (1) to, as though, kiss her by his new girlfriend’s lips and (2) to, as though, make love with her by his new girlfriend’s body; just before his love to her terminates. the two verbs (kiss, enjoy) are materially processed but weakened by the modality ‘will’ indicating ‘as though’. thus, the activities of kissing and enjoying are not really performed. he does not really kiss his ex-girlfriend, let alone his new girlfriend as he is only planning as evidenced (1) ‘i will soon fall in love and make love.’, (2) i will kiss your lips by her lips (3) i will enjoy your warmth by her body. there are also one mental process (forget) and one behavioral verb (dissolves). tenor of the discourse the text under study assumes that the author or the singer lets the readers become passive audiences. this can be seen in the use of (a)ku meaning (i) and (ka)mu, meaning (you). the use of the first and the second person singular in a story, however, can be interpreted in two ways. firstly, the audience can participate in the story representing (ka)mu, this applies when (ka)mu represents a favorable role in the story. secondly, the reader (audience) may also act as an audience to be an observer or on-looker. as an audience, therefore, the readers are supposed to critically read the text (song lyric) which is not easy as it was written in a poetic style with carefully-selected words to represent analogical and philosophical beauty. the readers are amused by the music to company the song lyric as sung by acil of bimbo music group. modes of the discourse with respect to the mode of the discourse, the text under study was clearly written in a poetic style. there are six stanzas, each of which has four lines. the first stanza is the theme that is locked up by the rheme represented by the second stanza. at the same time, not only do these two stanzas represent a summary of the discourse in question, but also the macro (hyper) theme in need of macro (hyper) rheme which is developed in the next four stanzas. thus the textual (generic) structure of the song lyric can be visualized in the following exhibit. figure 1. thematic structure of the song lyric the song lyric is entitled ‘belalang’ which lexically means ‘praying mantis’. as ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 48-57 55 discussed above, the climax of the song is in the fifth stanza, consisting of two lines in which the marriage ends in the deaths of (millions of) husbands one after another. this is similar to a praying mantis that kills its male counterpart upon mating for the nourishment of their future babies. this supports the ecosystem as the recycling of the life of praying mantis. psychologically speaking, praying mantises have got such an instinct of reproduction. the male mantis realizes that he is going to die but for reproduction which is eco-systemically acceptable and instinctively performed. however, biological studies also show that not all female mantis kill their mating counterpart. a male mantis is killed by the female mating counterpart upon courtship only when the female is hungry (lack of nutrition for the baby-mantis) or irritated by the male counterpart. is the above eco-psychological phenomenon (instinctive behavior for eco-systemic (cyclic) life of praying mantises similar to humans? with respect to humans, as the song suggests, the man leaves his wife upon being aware that she has cut (ended) her previous husbands in deaths one after the other. this is done in response to a possibility that he will, sooner or later die as another victim of her lustful love and bahu laweyan mystical curse which mostly belongs to extremely beautiful women. with respect to the song lyric under study, it is possible and logical to highlight that the man married a widow, a very attractive and beautiful woman whose ex-husbands died at no clear cause. thus, it is clear that the woman has suffered from bahu laweyan mystical curse. several men have died one after another upon one or two years of marriage; all at no clear cause. that is why the first stanza tells about the problem (path, dust, breezes) to justify that the marriage is not at all a happy one. knowing this, the man must divorce the woman (although he loves her very much) otherwise he will die at no clear cause after one or two years of marriage. he still remembers his true love for his wife despite the difficult marital relationship, revealed in the sixth stanza. in the new life, he suffers a lot because of still loving his ex -wife. but again he has to forget everything. the fifth stanza gives evidence that the woman suffers as saying that she may immediately fall in love again with millions of men only to find that they will be killed. the man swears, as revealed in the sixth stanza, to fall in love and make love (with a different woman upon marriage). to show his love to his ex-wife, he promises that he will kiss the ex-wife's lips by his new wife's cheeks (the analog is that lips are more romantic than cheeks). during lovemaking with his new wife, he will act as if to make love with his ex-wife—enjoying the warmth of his ex-wife by that of his new wife. but, he will soon forget, and his love to his ex-wife melts to nothing left. he will live happily with his new wife. however, it is all still in is imagination due to the fact that he is using modality (akan ‘would’) to weaken the materially processed verb, ‘kiss’. no act of kissing has been performed. thus, this song lyric can be interpreted as dealing with a married couple of whom the woman has suffered from bahu laweyan mystical curse. by this curse, any man getting married to her will die at no clear cause. the man is afraid that he also will die. before things get worse, he divorces his wife, but he loves her ex-wife so much that he will kiss his new wife as if to kiss his ex-wife. eco-psychologically speaking, his decision to leave (divorce) his wife is for the sake of ecosystem sustainability in the sense that he does not die only for the marriage with a bahu laweyan-cursed woman. he is aware that something has to be done to save his life or to get back to the correct course of his life. conclusion ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 48-57 56 we have so far analyzed a song lyric ‘belalang’ dealing with marital problem of bahu laweyan-cursed woman divorced by her husband to return to the proper course of life (field of the discourse) in a poetic (lyrical) style with a number of figurative expressions, positioning the audience as audience (tenor of the discourse). the lyric is well texted in terms of thematic development and with logical cohesive and coherent devices tied up in one unified whole (mode of the discourse). as well, we have discussed eco-psychological points of view in which there lies a bit of difference. male praying mantises are quite willing to die for the sake of nourishing the future baby mantises. meanwhile, the man as illustrated in the song refuses to die by divorcing his bahu laweyan-cursed wife in order to return to his normal life—then, getting married to another woman despite his love chemistry with his ex-wife does not dissolve quickly. he, therefore, kissed his ex-wife's lips by his new wife's cheeks, including the warmth of his ex-wife is enjoyed by his wife's body. this is against the law of any religion where it is forbidden to imagine another individual when making love to a spouse. we are also determined that belalang is a good and suitable title for the song as the analog is very clearly defined. both a female mantis and a bahu lawean cursed woman kill their mating counterparts—one (mantis) is due to the need for nourishment while the other (woman) is due to bahu laweyan curse where she will have to stop marrying men to stop further victims. references andreou, a., silva, m., benevenuto, f., goga, o., loiseau, p., & mislove, a. 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(2019). literature and/as cultural ecology. in green matters (pp. 52–73). brill rodopi. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 71-83 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 71 idioms containing the word hati and transitive verbs in indonesian language praptomo baryadi isodarus indonesian letters department, faculty of letters sanata dharma university, yogyakarta praptomo@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010108 received 11 june 2016; revised 21 april 2017; accepted 3 august 2017 abstract this article presents a research result on idioms containing the word hati and transitive verbs in bahasa indonesia. this article is a part of a research on idioms containing hati in bahasa indonesia. through this research, it is found that transitive verbs which can be combined with hati are transitive verbs that are formed in me(n)-+word base+(i/kan) so the idioms containing hati and transitive verb having the me(n)-+word base+(i/kan) structure. other than that, this research also found 77 idioms containing hati and transitive verbs. from its meaning, those 77 idioms consist of (i) 16 idioms whose meaning is ‘to persuade or to look for attention’ (ii) 11 idioms whose meaning is ‘to make happy’ (iii) 8 idioms whose meaning is ‘lifting up the mood’ (iv) 5 idioms whose meaning is ‘to tolerate’ (v) 8 idioms whose meaning is ‘to make feeling better’, (vi) 8 idioms whose meaning is ‘to make angry’, (vii) 5 idioms whose meaning is ‘to terrify’, and (viii) 16 idioms whose meaning is ‘to make feeling sad or to feel bad’. keywords: idiom, the word hati, transitive verb, bahasa indonesia. introduction the word hati is one of the most productive idiom-forming elements in bahasa indonesia. in kamus ungkapan bahsa indonesia by badudu (1981), there are at least 78 idioms that have ‘hati’ as an element. in kamus idiom bahasa indonesia (indonesian idiom dictionary) by chaer (1984), there are at least 296 idioms that have hati as its element. nowadays, idiom’s formation involving hati is more productive. we often hear idiomatic expressions, for example, “berbicara dari hati ke hati” (talking heart to heart), “memimpin dengan hati” (leading with the heart), bekerja dengan hati (working with the heart – working sincerely), melayani dengan hati (serving with the heart – working wholeheartedly) etc. based on its form, an idioms containing hati could be in a form of word, phrase, clause, and sentence. idioms which come in the form of a word are prefixes (for example, memperhatikan (pay attention), diperhatikan (being concerned), perhatian (attention)), repetition (for example, hati-hati (caution), berhati-hati (be careful)), and compound (for example, setengah hati or doing something half-heartedly (chaer 1984:174)). idiom which comes in a form of a mailto:praptomo@usd.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 71-83 72 phrase is dari hati ke hati or ‘talking heart to heart’ (chaer 1984: 53). idiom which comes in a form of a clause, for example, is mengambil hati (taking the heart – winning the heart) (chaer, 1984, p.17). by its classification, hati can join any other word category to form an idiom. hati can be combined with verb (for example, mengambil hati ‘make someone so happy that they will love us in return’ (chaer, 1984, p.17)), adverb (for example, rendah hati or ‘humble’ (chaer, 1984, p.148)), and noun (for example, jantung hati or ‘sweetheart/the loved one’ (chaer, 1984, p.78)). idioms containing hati and transitive verb in bahasa indonesia will be discussed in this article. there are two things that become the concerns of this article. the first was the form of transitive verb that can be joined with the word hati to form an idiom. for example, a verb that is formed in me(n)-+word base just like membakar (burn) can join hati so that it formed idiom membakar hati (to make somebody jealous, envy) (chaer, 1984, p.25). therefore, the first problem that will be discussed is “what kind of transitive verb can the word hati combine to form an idiom?” the second thing that will be discussed is the meaning of idioms containing hati and transitive verb in bahasa indonesia. there is a group of idiom that belongs to the same semantic field. for example, membesarkan hati (to enlarge the heart) or ‘to encourage’ (chaer, 1984, p.34), membuka hati (to open the heart) or ‘to make somebody realize’ (chaer, 1984, p.38), membulatkan hati (to round the heart) or ‘having a strong willingness to do something’ (chaer, 1984, p.40). so, the second problem that is discussed in this article is “what is the semantic field of idiom which involves hati and a transitive verb in bahasa indonesia?” these two problems are described in an integrated manner. theory some literatures have discussed idioms in bahasa indonesia. based on its discussion scope, literature which had discussed idioms in bahasa indonesia can be differentiated into three groups, those are (i) literature that had discussed idioms generally, (ii) literature that had discussed idiom specifically, and (iii) literature that reviewing idioms containing hati as its part. literatures that discussed idiom in bahasa indonesia in general are by hartati and wijana (2003), sari (2010), abdul khak (2011), and suyatno (2012). hartati and wijana (20003) examine idioms in indonesian from the aspects of form, category, and type of idiom. sari (2010) was reviewing idioms in the novel sang pemimpi from the point of grammatical units, categories, and types of idioms. abdul khak (2011, pp.141-153) talked about idiom in bahasa indonesia in terms of structure and meaning. suyatno (2012) was researching idioms in the indonesian language extensively, namely the constituent elements, reference sources, scope of use, patterns of meaning, culture, use motives, and the phenomenon of its development. literatures which discussed idioms in bahasa indonesia from specific aspects are kridalaksana (1998), kurniawati (2005), anjarwati (2005), kristina (2006), baryadi (2013), and haiyan (2016). kridalaksana (1998, pp.131-132) discussed idiomatic phrases that have a verb as its element, like angkat tangan “to raise hands” (give up), membawa diri (present ourselves), and membanting tulang ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 71-83 73 “to crush the bones” (drudge). kurniawati (2005) had discussed idiomatic plurals which are found in fantasy magazine of 2003 in terms of category and types of idiom. anjarwati (2005) researched about idioms that have human body part as its element from the constituent elements. kristina (2006) studied about animalbased idioms in the indonesian name of the type of animal name that can form an idiom, a category of words that can join the animal name, and its pattern. baryadi (2013, pp.46-62) researched the idioms containing verbs in bahasa indonesia from the aspect of verb form and any other word category that fit with verbs to form an idiom. haiyan (2016) compared animal idioms in mandarin and bahasa indonesia from its definition, origin, linguistic aspect, and cultural anthropology. literature which discussed idioms containing hati in bahasa indonesia is baryadi (2016, pp.18-26). baryadi (2016, pp.18-26) discussed about idioms containing hati and adjective in bahasa indonesia from aspect of referents. from that research, 83 idioms containing hati and adverbs in bahasa indonesia were found. based on the referent, the idioms of the word hati and the adjective consisting of 25 idioms that express good characters, 16 idioms that express bad characters, 14 idioms which state good conscience, and 28 idioms that state bad conscience. from those literatures reviewed, it is revealed that there has been no research on idioms containing hati and a transitive verb in bahasa indonesia yet. this is the reason why idiom containing hati and transitive verb becomes the main discussion of this article. in addition to the reasons, idioms containing hati and transitive verb becomes the object of research because there is an aim to be achieved, (i) to reveal the transitive form which could join with the word hati to make idiom and (ii) idiom’s semantic field involving hati and transitive verb in bahasa indonesia. this part will explain the basic terms used as the conceptual basis for analyzing idiom data in terms of conscience and transitive verbs in the indonesian language. the terms in question are idioms, the word hati, transitive verbs, and semantic fields. idiom is a ‘language unit (can be words, phrases, and sentences) whose meaning cannot be predicted from the elements’ lexical meaning or grammatical meaning (chaer 1990, p.76). based on the definition, idiom has two characteristics, (i) a language unit that can be in the form of a word, a phrase, and a sentence and (ii) idiomatic meaning cannot be predicted only from its lexical or grammatical meaning of its element. the word burung (bird) in kabar burung (rumors) (chaer 1984:82), plural patah hati (broken-hearted) (chaer, 1984, p.134), phrase dari hati ke hati or ‘talking directly heart to heart’ (chaer, 1984, p.53), clause membakar hati (to burn the heart) ‘to cause somebody jealous’ (chaer, 1984, p.25), and sentence terbuka hatinya (to open the heart) or ‘realizing something’ were included as idioms because the meaning cannot be predicted from its lexical or grammatical units. there is a formula which can be used to differentiate the construction of idiom and non-idiom. the formula of idiom is a+b that will mean c, while the construction of non-idiom is a+b that will have meaning ab (alwi, 2003, p.151). this formula could be presented by examples of word combining mencuri hati (to steal the heart) and mencuri uang (to steal money). the combination of mencuri ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 71-83 74 ‘to steal’ (a) and hati (b) would be mencuri hati which does not mean ‘mencuri (a) and hati (b)’ but it means to cause someone to feel love or affection (c). (chaer, 1984, p.49). the combination of mencuri uang isn’t an idiom because the combination of mencuri ‘stealing’ (a) and uang ‘money’ (b)” means to steal money literally. the establishment of idiomatic meaning is based on tacit agreement of language users. there are at least seven meanings of hati based on kamus besar bahasa indonesia pusat bahasa edisi keempat (the fourth edition of indonesia dictionary) (2008, pp.486-487). first, as an anatomical term, the words hati means ‘reddish-colored organs in the upper right portion of the abdominal cavity, it is usually used to absorb the juices in the blood and produce bile’. second, the word hati means ‘meat from the liver as food (especially from animal hearts slaughter)’. third, the word hati means ‘heart’. fourth, the word hati means ‘something that is in human body that is considered as the place for all feelings and a place to store understandings (feelings etc)’. fifth, the word hati means ‘the deepest part (about fruit, branches, plants, etc)’. sixth, the word hati means ‘human characteristic’. seventh, the word hati means ‘everything that is feeling inside’. from those seven meanings, the meaning which is relevant to this research object is the fourth, sixth, and seventh meanings, namely ‘batin’, ‘jiwa’(soul), or ‘perasaan’ (feeling) transitive verb is a verb which (i) begins with me(n)-, (ii) has verbal balance begin with di-, (iii) demands an object in a clause. for example, the word memberi (giving) in the idiom memberi hati “to give the heart” (giving affection) (chaer 1984:33) is a transitive verb because it begins with me(n)-, has a verbal beginning with diwhich is diberi (given), and demands an object in its clause, i.e. the word hati. in this discussion, the semantic field was understood as an abstraction of the similarity of meaning between linguistic units. semantic field can be symbolized using one of the language units. one of the language units has more abstract meaning or more general than any other language units. this language unit that has abstract meaning is known as hypernym or superordinate. the language unit that has more specific meaning is known as hyponym or subordinate. method this research was conducted by collecting data, analyzing data, and presenting the result of the data analysis. metode simak (observation method) was employed in this research by observing idioms containing hati and a transitive verb in bahasa indonesia from data sources. then the method was executed by taking note technique, which means writing idioms containing hati and transitive verb in bahasa indonesia on the data record. indonesian idiom dictionary by caher (1984) was used as data sources. after being collected, the data was classified based on its meaning. later, the data that has been classified is being analyzed using metode distribusional (distributional method) and metode padan (equivalence method). distributional method is a data analysis method whose instrument was part of the language itself (sudaryanto, 2015, p.15). distributional method applied by teknik markah (mark-up technique), teknik parafrasa (paraphrase technique), and teknik ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 71-83 75 perluasan (expansion technique). those three techniques are used to give evidence whether the word that follows hati is a transitive verb or not. mark –up technique was applied to give evidence that the transitive verb has me(n)as its prefix, for example, memberi, melapangkan, and melukai. by applying the paraphrase technique, it could be proven that transitive verbs are equivalent with the transitive verb that has prefix di-, for example, diberi, dilapangkan, and dilukai. from the expansion technique, it is proven that transitive verb is indeed demanding an object which in this case is hati itself so it forms idioms memberi hati, melapangkan hati, and melukai hati. this expansion technique is also used to give evidence to a language’s idiomatic unit (wijana, 2016, p.34). an idiomatic language unit cannot be expanded by giving attribute to its idiom, for example makan hati or ‘sadness’ cannot be expanded to makan hati ayam or ‘to eat chicken’s liver’ because the meaning will be different and not idiomatic. metode padan or equivalence method is a method which the instrument is outside and regardless to a language that correspond (sudaryanto, 2015, p.15). metode padan that was applied on this research was metode padan referensial, which is a method in which the source is a referent or a fact that was shown by its language or language referent. (sudaryanto, 2015, p.15). in this research, metode padan is used to give evidence of the meaning of idioms containing hati and a transitive verb. for example, memikat hati or ‘to be appealing’ (chaer, 1984, p.139), mengikat hati or ‘impressive’ (chaer, 1984, p.73), menghampiri hatinya or ‘to impress somebody’ (chaer 1984:68), menyanjung hati or ‘to give somebody compliment/ to make somebody happy’ (chaer, 1984, p.154), and menawari hati or ‘to persuade’ (chaer, 1984, p.170) have a similar meaning, that is to persuade or to look for attention. data analysis shows lists of idioms containing hati and transitive verbs in bahasa indonesia and its meaning. the idiom lists and its meaning will be shown in tables. the method of data analysis report is called formal methodology (sudaryanto, 2015, p.241) findings and discussion through this research, there are 77 idioms containing the word hati and a transitive verb as its element in bahasa indonesia. transitive verbs that can be combined with the word hati to make idioms consisted of three parts. first, is transitive verb that is formed by me(n)-+word base, for example mengetuk (knock) in mengetuk hati (to knock on someone’s heart) or ‘lifting up somebody’s consciousness to help people’ (chaer, 1984, p.91). second, transitive verb that has me(n)-+word base+kan, for example melembutkan (soften) in melembutkan hati (to soften the heart) or ‘to make somebody happy/to get rid of anger’ (chaer, 1984, p.108). third, transitive verb of me(n)-+word base+i, for example melukai (hurt) in melukai hati ‘to hurt somebody’s feeling’ (chaer, 1984, p.108). those three transitive verbs could be combined in one formula, me(n)-+word base+(i/kan). therefore, idioms containing hati and transitive verb has me(n)+word base+-(i/-kan)+hati structure. idiom which has me(n)-+word base+-(i/kan)+hati is considered as a clause with me(n)-+word base+-(i/-kan) as its predicate and hati as its object. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 71-83 76 based on its semantic field, idioms containing the word hati and a transitive verb consist of 8 types, there were idiom that means (i) persuade or to look for attention, (ii) to make somebody happy, (iii) to lift up the mood, (iv) to tolerate, (v) to make feeling better, (vi) to make somebody angry, (vii) to scare somebody, (viii) to make somebody feel sad. the examination of each idiom containing the word hati and transitive verb is provided below. there are 16 idioms which mean ‘to seek for attention’. the idioms explained are shown on the table below. table 1: idiom whose meaning is ‘to persuade or seek attention’ no idiom meaning translation 1 mengambil hati “to take the heart” mempersenang hati orang supaya disukai (disenangi, dicintai) (chaer, 1984, p.17) to make somebody happy so they will like us. 2 mencuri hati “to steal the heart” berbuat baik (merayu) sehingga orang lain menjadi cinta, sayang, suka (chaer, 1984, p.49) to make somebody feel the love or affection 3 menghampiri hatinya “to drop by someone’s heart” membujuknya atau merayunya (chaer, 1984, p.68) to persuade 4 mengikat hati “to tie someone’s heart” membujuk dan mempengaruhi supaya orang lain mengingini atau terkesan (chaer, 1984, p.139) to persuade somebody to give impression. 5 mengetuk hati “to knock on someone’s heart” membangkitkan kesadaran untuk menyumbang atau menolong orang (chaer, 1984, p.91) to make people realize to help others willingly. 6 melemahkan hati “to weaken the heart” menggiurkan to desire 7 memikat hati “to captivate the heart” membujuk dan mempengaruhi supaya orang lain mengingini atau terkesan (chaer, 1984, p.139) to persuade somebody to give impression. 8 meruntuhkan hati “to crumble the heart” melemahkan hati karena sifatnya yang menggiurkan (chaer, 1984, p.150) 9 menyanjung hati “to praise someone’s heart” membujuk; membuat orang lain senang(chaer, 1984, p.154) persuading, to make somebody happy. 10 menyentuh hati “to touch someone’s heart” kena di hati seseorang sehingga mau mengubah kelakuannya (chaer, 1984, p.157) heart-touching so people change their behavior. 11 menawan hati “to capture someone’s heart” membangkitkan perasaan agar orang memperhatikan menyukai, menyenangi (chaer, 1984, p.170) to impress somebody so he/she likes us. 12 menawari hati “to offer the heart” membujuk (chaer, 1984, p.170) persuade ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 71-83 77 13 mengumbut hati “to attract the heart” melakukan pekerjaan atau perbuatan supaya mendapat pujian (chaer, 1984, p.38) doing something to get compliments. 14 mengurut hati “to massage the heart” membujuk; merayu (chaer, 1984, p.189) persuading somebody. 15 membelenggu hati “to chain the heart” tidak bisa berbuat apa-apa karena hati sangat tertarik atau terpikat (chaer, 1984, p.31) feeling paralyzed due to the affection 16 menarik per(hati)an “to attract attention” menyenangkan orang karena indah atau cantik (chaer, 1984, p.169) to make somebody happy because of something beautiful/impressive. idioms (1) to (16) could be classified into idioms whose meaning tends to ‘persuade’ (mengambil hati, mencuri hati, menghampiri hatinya, mengikat hati, memikat hati, mengetuk hati, menyanjung hati, menyentuh hati, menawari hati, mengumbut hati, mengurut hati) and idioms whose meaning tends to ‘seek for attention (melemahkan hati, membelenggu hati, menawan hati, meruntuhkan hati, menarik perhatian). there were 11 idioms whose meaning is ‘to make somebody happy’. this kind of idiom is provided in table below. table 2: idiom whose meaning is ‘to make somebody happy’ no idiom meaning translation 1 memberi hati “to give one’s heart” memanjakan; menurutkan kemauan (keinginan, kehendak) (chaer, 1984, p.33) to spoil somebody 2 melapangkan hati “to extend the heart” membuat sabar; menyenangkan (chaer, 1984, p.98) to be patient, exciting. 3 melegakan hati “to relieve the heart” menyenangkan; menggembirakan (chaer, 1984, p.100) to relieve 4 melembutkan hati “to soften the heart” menggembirakan; menghilangkan kemarahan (chaer, 1984, p.101) exciting, to get rid of anger 5 melengah-lengah hati “to cheer up the heart” menghilangkan kesedihan (chaer, 1984, p.102) to let go of sadness. 6 melepaskan hati “to let the heart go” memuaskan; menurutkan hasrat atau hawa nafsu (chaer, 1984, p.103) to have the impulse 7 melipur hati “to console the heart” menggembirakan; menyenangkan; menghilangkan kesedihan (chaer, 1984, p.107) to relieve 8 menaruh hati “to put the heart to mencintai atau menyukai (chaer, 1984, p.170) to love ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 71-83 78 someone” 9 meraih hati “to reach one’s heart” menyenangkan orang lain (chaer, 1984, p.145) to make somebody happy. 10 menambat hati “to tie one’s heart to someone else’s heart” membuat jadi senang (chaer, 1984, p.166) to make somebody feel the love or affection 11 menurutkan hati “to follow one’s heart” mengikuti kehendak (chaer, 1984, p.84) following the will if these idioms are classified into groups, the idioms whose meaning is ‘to make happy’ consist of (melapangkan hati, melegakan hati, melembutkan hati, melengah-lengah hati, melipur hati, menaruh hati, meraih hati, menambat hati) and the idioms whose meaning is ‘to make somebody happy’ (memberi hati, melepaskan hati, menurutkan hati) there are 8 idioms whose meaning is ‘encouraging’. those idioms are presented in table 3. table 3. idiom whose meaning is ‘encouraging’ no idiom meaning translation 1 membesarkan hati “to enlarge the heart” menjadikan bangga, girang, gembira (chaer, 1984, p.34) to encourage 2 membuka hati “to open the heart” menyebabkan timbul kemauan, keinginan, kegairahan (chaer, 1984, p.38) to desire 3 membulatkan hati “to round the heart” meneguhkan kemauan, niat, kehendak (chaer, 1984, p.40) to determine 4 menggerakkan hati “to move the heart” membangunkan perasaan sehingga mau atau berani untuk berbuat sesuatu (chaer, 1984, p.64) to drive someone 5 menguatkan hati “to strengthen the heart” meneguhkan; mengokohkan pendirian (chaer, 1984, p.92) to determine 6 menabahkan hati “to toughen the heart” membuat kuat menghadapi persoalan atau penderitaan to bear, to endure 7 memaku hati “to nail the heart” tidak dapat ditawar lagi; tidak bisa berubah lagi pendiriannya (chaer, 1984, p.130) to be persistent, to be firm 8 menggantungkan hati “to hang the heart” menaruh harapan cinta kepada seseorang (chaer, 1984, p.61) to fall for someone idioms whose meaning is ‘encouraging’ can be grouped into (i) idioms whose meaning is ‘strengthen up the will’ (membuka hati, membulatkan hati, menguatkan hati, menabahkan hati, memaku hati, menggantungkan hati) and (ii) and idioms which mean ‘to encourage bravery/pride’ (membesarkan hati, menggerakkan hati). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 71-83 79 there were 5 idioms whose meaning is ‘to tolerate’. those idioms are explained in table 4. table 4: type of idioms whose meaning is ‘to tolerate’ no idiom meaning translation 1 mengajuk hati “to play with one’s heart” menduga isi hati (chaer, 1984, p.15) to conjecture 2 menjaga hati “to guard one’s heart” menenggang perasaan (chaer, 1984, p.76) to withstand, to put up with 3 memelihara hati “to preserve the heart” menjaga agar orang lain tidak tersinggung, marah, kesal, sedih (chaer, 1984, p.136) to be considerate 4 menimbang hati orang “to weigh someone’s heart” menaruh belas kasih; tidak kejam (chaer, 1984, p.178) to be considerate / deliberate 5 menjolok hati “to play with one’s heart” ingin mengetahui isi hati seseorang (chaer, 1984, p.80) to be curious about someone’s feeling idioms whose meaning is ‘to tolerate’ can be divided into idioms whose meaning is ‘to tolerate’ (menjaga hati, memelihara hati, menimbang hati orang) and idioms whose meaning tends to be ‘understanding one’s feeling’ (mengajuk hati, menjolok hati). there were 8 idioms whose meaning is ‘to make feeling better’. that kind of idiom is provided on the table below. table 5: type of idioms whose meaning is ‘to make somebody/condition better’ no idiom meaning 1 membersihkan hati “to clean the heart” menghilangkan rasa benci atau dengki (chaer, 1984, p.33) casting out hatred/envy. 2 menahan hati “to contain the heart” mengekang diri sendiri (chaer, 1984, p.163) to keep ourselves from something/somebody. 3 melunakkan hati “to soften the heart” menghilangkan kemarahan atau kejengkelan seseorang (chaer, 1984, p.108) to cast away hatred 4 merendahkan hati “to lower one’s heart” tidak menyombongkan diri (chaer, 1984, p.148) to be humble 5 menyejukkan hati “to cool off the heart” menghilangkan kegelisahan atau kejengkelan (chaer, 1984, p.156) to get rid of worry/anger. 6 menyucikan hati “to purify the heart” menghilangkan rasa benci atau dengki (chaer, 1984, p.33) to purify the soul 7 menenangkan hati “to calm the heart” menghilangkan rasa ketakutan atau keresahan (chaer, 1984, to let go of worry. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 71-83 80 p.173) 8 membelokkan hati “to divert the heart” memberi petunjuk yang benar (chaer, 1984, p.31) give the right advices there were 8 idioms whose meaning is equivalent to ‘to make angry’. in this table below, a list of idioms is shown. table 6: type of idioms whose meaning is ‘to make angry/insulting’ no idiom meaning translation 1 menganguskan hati “to burn the heart” menyebabkan marah (chaer, 1984, p.21) to insult 2 mengasah hati “to sharpen the heart” membuat orang jadi marah (chaer, 1984, p.22) to provoke 3 membakar hati “to burn the heart” membuat orang menjadi marah, jengkel, kesal, penasaran, cemburu (chaer, 1984, p.25) to irritate 4 membawa hati “to carry the heart” menjadikan marah (kecewa, jengkel) (chaer, 1984, p.29) to disappoint 5 menjadikan hati “to make the heart” menyebabkan marah atau kurang senang (chaer, 1984, p.76) to aggravate 6 memanaskan hati “to heat the heart” membangkitkan amarah karena cemburu (chaer, 1984, p.130) to make someone angry due to jealousy 7 menikam hati “to stab the heart” menjengkelkan atau menyusahkan (chaer, 1984, p.178) to aggravate. 8 menunu hati “to aggravate the heart” membuat jadi marah (chaer, 1984, p.183) to make somebody angry there are 5 idioms that were found whose meaning is “to terrify/scare”. these kinds of idiom are shown in table 7. table 7. type of idioms whose meaning is ‘to terrify somebody’ no idiom meaning translation 1 mendahsyatkan hati “to scare the heart” menakutkan (chaer, 1984, p.52) terrify 2 mencabarkan hati “to bland the heart” menghilangkan keberanian; menjadikan takut (chaer, 1984, p.44) to make somebody scared. 3 menganji hati menakutkan, menyeramkan (chaer, 1984, p.84) scary, terrifying 4 mengecilkan hati “to make the heart small” menjadikan agak takut; menjadikan hilang keberanian (chaer, 1984, p.86) to cause somebody scared. 5 menduakan hati “to double the heart” menjadikan bimbang atau ragu-ragu (chaer, 1984, p.55) to make somebody doubt. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 71-83 81 there were 16 idioms found whose meaning is equivalent to ‘to make somebody feeling sad/bad’. the lists of idiom mentioned before is provided in the table below. table 8. types of idioms whose meaning is ‘to make somebody feeling sad/bad no idiom meaning translation 1 melukai hati “to hurt the heart” menyakiti batin atau perasaan (chaer, 1984, p.108) to hurt somebody 2 mengasami hati “to spread acid on the heart” menyakiti perasaan (chaer, 1984, p.22) hurt someone’s feeling 3 mengganggu hati “to disturb the heart” merusuhkan hati; menyusahkan hati (chaer, 1984, p.61) to offend someone 4 menggores hati “to scratch the heart” menyakitkan hati (chaer, 1984, p.65) offensive. 5 menggunting hati “to scissor the heart” menyakiti hati (chaer, 1984, p.65) hurt somebody’s feeling. 6 menghancurkan hati “to break the heart” sangat menyedihkan (chaer, 1984, p.68) sorrowful 7 menghanyutkan hati “to drown the heart” menyedihkan; terbawa sedih (chaer, 1984, p.68) sadden. 8 meracun hati “to poison the heart” menyebabkan hati menjadi terasa tidak enak (chaer, 1984, p.145) to make somebody grieve. 9 merawankan hati “to make the heart vulnerable” memilukan; menyedihkan (chaer, 1984, p.147) heart touching. 10 menyakiti hati “to hurt the heart” menyebabkan jadi tidak senang (dendam, benci) (chaer, 1984, p.151) causing revenge. 11 menyakitkan hati “to cause pain to the heart” menyebabkan tidak senang atau tersinggung perasaannya to cause somebody 12 menyayat hati “to slit one’s heart” memilukan; membuat sedih (chaer, 1984, p.68) heartbreaking 13 menyebelahkan hati “to set the heart aside” membagi cinta (chaer, 1984, p.31) share the love 14 menikam hati “to stab the heart” menjengkelkan atau menyusahkan (chaer, 1984, p.178) annoying. 15 menusuk hati “to puncture the heart” menyakiti hati; menyinggung perasaan (chaer, 1984, p.186) offensive. 16 (me)makan hati “to eat the heart” menderita sedih karena perbuatan orang yang dikasihi (chaer, 1984, p.113) broken heart. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 71-83 82 conclusion from this research, 77 idioms containing the word hati and a transitive verb are found as the element of idioms in bahasa indonesia. transitive verbs that can be combined with the word hati to form an idiom consist of three types. first, transitive verbs with me(n)-+word base structure, for example, mengetuk (knock) in mengetuk hati (to make someone realize to help other people) (chaer, 1984, p.91). second, transitive verb with me(n)-+word base+kan structure, for example melembutkan (soften) in melembutkan hati or to make happy, to cast out anger (chaer, 1984, p.101). third, transitive verbs with me(n)-+word base+i structure, for example melukai in melukai hati (to hurt somebody’s feeling/to make somebody angry) (chaer, 1984, p.108). those three types of transitive verbs can be formulated into me(n)-+word base+(-i/-kan). therefore, the structures of idioms containing hati and transitive verb is me(n)-+word base+(-i/-kan) + hati. idiom which has me(n)-+word base+-(i/-kan)+hati is considered as a clause with me(n)-+word base+-(i/-kan) as its predicate and hati as its object. based on its meaning, 77 idioms containing hati and a transitive verb in bahasa indonesia consisting of (i) 16 idioms whose meaning is ‘to persuade’ or ‘to look for attention,” (ii) 11 idioms whose meaning is “to make happy,” (iii) 8 idioms whose meaning is “to lift up the mood,” (iv) 5 idioms whose meaning is ‘to tolerate’ (v) 8 idioms whose meaning is ‘to make the feeling better,’ (vi) 8 idioms whose meaning is ‘to make angry,’ (vii) 5 idioms whose meaning is ‘to terrify,’ and (viii) 16 idioms whose meaning is ‘to make feeling sad or to feel bad’. references anjarwati, l. 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(2012). idiom dalam indonesian language (postgraduate dissertation, fakultas ilmu budaya). universitas gadjah mada, yogyakarta. wijana, i. d. p. (2016). metode linguistik: identifikasi satuan-satuan lingual. yogyakarta: a.com press. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 237-245 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 237 a detailed overview on sociolinguistic competence in pedagogical applications dedy subandowo pázmány péter catholic university correspondence: subandowo.dedy@hallgato.ppke.hu https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.4411 received 24 february 2022; accepted 30 april 2022 abstract the purpose of this paper is to develop a general understanding of sociolinguistic competence in the pedagogical field. the discussion starts with an examination of communicative competence, which highlights some key components of communicative competence, as well as theoretical debates from experts. following the discussion, there is an overview of sociolinguistic competence. some linguists have developed a detailed explanation in this section, as well as the critical importance of distinguishing characteristic distinctions from other competences. the final section discusses how sociolinguistic competence can be applied in language pedagogy, such as academic writing and the roles of functional language in classroom discourses. keywords: sociolinguistic competence, pedagogical application, research methods introduction for decades, some applied linguists have focused on the study of sociolinguistic competence. the term "sociolinguistic competence" refers to three frameworks for analyzing communicative competence: hymes' (1972), canale and swain's (1980), and bachman's (1990). one of the most powerful lines of attack on chomsky's competence-performance concept is hymes' (1972) concept of communicative competence. according to hymes, acquiring language competence entails more than just linguistic form (grammatically correct sentences), but also awareness of language use in various contexts, such as knowing when and where to use the sentences. according to hymes, rather than simply rejecting chomsky's concept, he attempts to develop and redefine it within his framework of communicative competence. he argues that equating children's knowledge of a language with linguistic competence ignores issues such as appropriacy. in this sense, hymes contends that children acquire knowledge not only as grammatical but also as appropriate. it means that children learn when to speak and when not to speak, as well as what to talk about with whom, when, where, and how (hymes, 1972). in response to chomsky's theory, hymes divides competence into two types: linguistic and communicative competences. linguistic competence is concerned with the creation and comprehension of grammatically correct sentences. conversely, communicative competence is concerned with the mailto:subandowo.dedy@hallgato.ppke.hu https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.4411 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 237-245 238 appropriateness and acceptability of what a person says in a given situation. this idea has been so prevalent that dell hymes is regarded as one of the forefathers of sociolinguistic theory (weidemann, 1988). hymes, according to dittmar (1976), was the first linguist to coin the term "communicative competence" with his demand for qualitative extensions of linguistic theory that included aspects of functional communication. furthermore, rhymes incorporate the social context dimension (matola, 1993). this idea then supports the emphasis on communicative competence, which is primarily paid to native speakers' ability to produce and understand context-based sentences as well as communicate effectively in socially diverse settings. in other words, communicative competence cannot be excluded from environmental situations such as speaker-hearer relationships. canale and swain created a comprehensive theoretical framework of communicative competence (1980). their communicative competence is comprised of three major components. first, grammatical competence is concerned with mastery of language code, specifically phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntax, semantics, and orthographic rules (furkó & mónos, 2013). it focuses on learners' abilities to construct sentences or utterances based on appropriate rules. second, sociolinguistic competence is concerned with two sets of rules: socio-cultural rules and discourse rules. this ability is required for interpreting utterances for social meaning within a specific sociocultural context, depending on contextual factors such as topics, participant roles, settings, and interaction norms. it could be argued that someone who lacks this competency will find it difficult to interact with others (fikron, 2018). third, strategic competence is concerned with both verbal and nonverbal communication. this strategy may be used to compensate for communication breakdowns caused by insufficient competence. it includes paraphrasing unfamiliar grammatical forms and addressing strangers when they are unsure of their social status. furthermore, this competence appears to aid in communication issues and difficulties. in essence, it appears that solving problems within the interaction is not possible unless grammatical and sociolinguistic competence is applied (schmitt & rodgers, 2020). bachman and palmer propose a constructive approach to communicative competence (1996). they refer to communicative competence as "communicative language ability." according to their definition, communicative language ability focuses on two broad areas: language knowledge and strategic competence. organizational and pragmatic knowledge are the two main integrative components of language knowledge. knowledge of organizational units corresponds to knowledge of linguistic units and the rules for connecting them at the sentence and text levels. pragmatics knowledge is divided into two categories: illocutionary competencies and sociolinguistic competencies. illocutionary competence is the understanding of communication and how to carry it out. in addition, sociolinguistic competence includes the ability to use language appropriately in a given social context. bachman and palmer's (1996) model places a premium on strategic competence, in contrast to canale and swain's (1980) emphasis on sociolinguistic competence. they define it as a set of metacognitive components or strategies that can be viewed as higher-order executive processes that provide cognitive ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 237-245 239 management in language use. canale and swain's (1980) framework is relatively simple and accessible in comparison to bachman and palmer's (1996) model. as a result, in many places today's esl/efl classes, this simplicity serves as a central reference (furkó & mónos, 2013). in contrast, bachman and palmer's (1996) model places communication skills in the context of language tests rather than instructions. celce-murcia and thurrell developed another concept of communicative competence after being dissatisfied with both bachman and palmer's (1996) and canale & swain's (1980). (1995). they argue that because communicative competence is essentially theoretical, it cannot be used as the foundation of a communicative language teaching syllabus. in doing so, emphasis has been placed on discourse competence as a key component. this component interacts with other critical elements such as lexico-grammatical building blocks (linguistic competence), actional organizing skills of communicative intent (actional competence), and sociocultural context (sociocultural competence) to shape the discourse, which in turn shapes the other three elements. celce-murcia, dörnyei, and thurrel's (1995) model proposes five major components that are conceptually similar to bachman and palmer's (1996) framework. discourse, linguistic, actional, sociocultural, and strategic competences are among them. discourse competence is concerned with the selection, sequencing, and arrangement of words, structures, sentences, and utterances in order to produce a coherent spoken or written text. linguistic competence refers to the fundamental elements of communication, such as sentence patterns and types, constituent structures, morphological inflection, and lexical resources, as well as the phonological and orthographic systems required for communication. action competence is concerned with a speaker's understanding of how to express messages appropriately within the larger social and cultural contexts of communication, in accordance with pragmatic factors relating to variation in language use. strategically competent people have a set of skills that help them negotiate messages and solve problems, or they can compensate for flaws in their other skills. the viewpoint of celce-murcia, dörnyei, and thurrel (1995) has become a standard in applied linguistics research and language teaching in general. this concept is useful in that it emphasizes the dynamic and interconnected nature of communicative competence. aside from its applicability, it is also chosen as an underlying theoretical framework for current research projects, particularly those focusing on pedagogical aspects. sociolinguistic competence sociolinguistics is defined broadly as the study of language in society. according to trudgill (1983), sociolinguistics has a close relationship with the social sciences. sociolinguistics, according to coupland and jaworski (1997), focuses on languages as social and cultural phenomena, such as societies, social groups, speech communication, language dialect varieties, and styles. sociolinguistics, in particular, investigates linguistic indicators of culture and power (llamas, 2007). furthermore, the study emphasizes not only language but also the social force of language events around the world. it covers grammar, vocabulary, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, and phonology, as ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 237-245 240 well as the impact of ethnicity, gender, ideology, and social rank on language events (purba, 2016). the primary goal of sociolinguistics research is scientific objectivity, which includes the social complexity of language in the real world. this means that this branch of linguistics tries to connect language in three different ways (stern, 1983). first, it investigates general theoretical linguistics in the context of a study of language in society. second, sociolinguistics refers to the concept of linguistic competencies of native speakers within the context of communicative competence. third, sociolinguistics places a premium on the study of speech communities. in the preceding statements, the concept of sociolinguistics as communicative competence appears to include a component of language proficiency (newell, caccamise, boardman, & holcomb, 1983). language proficiency invariably implies the processing of linguistic elements as well as social and cultural knowledge. this means that when we communicate with a particular community, we must be aware of some sociolinguistic rules and social factors that may influence communication. this knowledge is essential for appropriately supporting our language use in the community. sociolinguistic competence is the understanding of people's ability to use language appropriately (janet holmes, 2008). according to canal (1983), sociolinguistic competence is influenced by contextual and socio-cultural factors. setting, participants, goals and outcomes, forms and contents, manners and spirits, norms of interaction and interpretation, and genres are all examples of these characteristics (saville-troike, 1982). the time and location of the event, as well as the physical circumstances, are referred to as the setting. participants range in age, gender, ethnicity, social status, and relationship status. the purposes of interaction are addressed by goal and outcome. form and content in speech include options such as oral versus written forms. manner and spirit highlight which speech act is performed. interaction and interpretation norms refer to specific speaking behaviors as well as common knowledge or shared understandings. genre refers to different types of events, such as a conversation, a lecture, a greeting, and so on. sociolinguistic competence can be found in a variety of contexts, including multilingual, monolingual, and migrant communities (soler & jordà, 2008). people in multilingual communities may use codes and language styles from a distinct language within their own language. children in these communities, for example, tend to learn their first language while also continuing to learn another language for purposes such as education and communication in a broader range of contexts. it is worth noting that children appear to gradually develop and learn linguistic codes and varieties based on domains in their speech communities. acquiring sociolinguistic competence in a monolingual community is concerned with learning to use the community language in a way that signals one's membership in various overlapping social groups and enacts a variety of social identities (holmes, 2008). it has been demonstrated that linguistic features can appear in monolingual speech. pronunciations, vocabulary, and grammar are all part of the feature. another example of sociolinguistic competence can be found in immigrant generations who change their language while developing a broader range of context. when children move to a new community and only have a small domain, such as their family, they lose their heritage language. as a result, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 237-245 241 acquiring sociolinguistic competence in this context appears to be recognized as a part of being a community member (stone, 2002). one important aspect of sociolinguistic competence is appropriateness. according to canal (1983), there are two types of appropriateness: meaning and form categories. appropriateness of meaning is concerned with the extent to which specific communicative functions, such as apologizing, commanding, refusing, attitudes (including politeness and formality), and ideas are deemed appropriate in a given context. appropriateness of forms, on the other hand, refers to how well a given meaning fits into a given form. it consists of communicative functions, attitudes, and ideas. this is true in both verbal and nonverbal forms, as well as within a specific sociolinguistic context. developing sociolinguistic competence entails learning how to use language for various functions, such as getting things done in various contexts. in this sense, the ability to use language effectively and politely is regarded as crucial. when people from different communities come together, they appear to apply their own set of rules. according to holmes (2008), this situation creates some challenges and even problems for them. as a result, embarrassment or misunderstandings are unavoidable. for example, how do we know when to respond to complex meanings expressed through indirect speech, such as "i am a little tired," with a direct question, such as "do you want to come to a music concert?" how do we know when and how many small talkers to use at work, as well as what topics are appropriate? thus, the concept of sociolinguistic competence sensitizes a broader range than linguistic structures. constructing gender and identity, on the other hand, is allegedly considered part of sociolinguistic competence (holmes & meyerhoff, 2003). recognizing the distinctive features of women's and men's interaction in a community, according to this viewpoint, has been one of the characteristics of sociolinguistic competence. sociolinguistic competence in pedagogical applications the use of sociolinguistic competence can be divided into two major categories: written and spoken forms. this competence is frequently applied in written forms of scientific writing. conversely, communicative language teaching (clt) in the classroom has focused on spoken forms, including how sociolinguistic competence is acquired. written forms "writing is an activity that involves the expansion of ideas." writing, according to hyland (2008), is an important aspect of social realities, institutions, and personal identities. it pervades all aspects of life, including professional and academic sciences. writing in the academic sciences is synonymous with academic writing. this is regarded as an active, tumultuous engagement with the facts and principles of disciplines (rose, 1985). furthermore, kaur and singh (2015) contend that academic writing appears to present difficulties and challenges when it comes to organizing ideas, defending claims, and addressing readers. some academic writers use technical vocabulary to distinguish themselves from other writers. some people, on the other hand, may struggle to understand the meaning of a register related to a specific discipline, such as ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 237-245 242 health, nutrition, energy, communication, biology, sociology, and restricted fields such as robotics, radiology, physics, and so on. it is clear that english is the language of choice for writing publications in those fields, and people who use english as a first or second language may face some difficulties in finding the meanings. in this regard, sociolinguistic competence may aid them in comprehending the context's technical vocabulary (matola, 1993). according to nida's (1992) comparison of language and anthropologist journals, authors impose several technical requirements on their writing, such as difficulties in vocabulary, attributive phrases, series of prepositional phrases, highly generic expressions, adverbial redundancy, parenthetical expressions, and sentence length, in which readers must understand the meaning based on sociolinguistic competence. nida then examines those technical vocabularies using features such as right-hand versus left-hand extension. a right-hand extension of a related series of words or phrases, such as in a key dimension of the human mind in its natural habits, in the middle of social life, for example, appears to be easier to understand the meaning than a left-hand extension, such as in culturally orchestrated experimental schemata. other aspects of acquiring sociolinguistic competence in the study include the use of footnotes, summaries, appendices, and mathematical formulas. these characteristics indicate that authors attempt to develop specialized and professional dialects through technical language and content, which for some journal editors can improve the publication's reputation. nida (1992) stated that specialization in technical languages can make people feel superior to others. spoken forms the rise of sociolinguistics has influenced a shift in language learning interest from linguistic competence to communicative competence (savignon, 2017). as a result, this shift has resulted in a new situation in which learners who learn a new language must acquire a new vocabulary as well as a new set of phonological and syntactic rules, as well as speaking rules. thus, the growth of sociolinguistic interest has made a significant contribution to the teaching of second language (l2) (yu, 2005). as the desired goal of language teaching, this teaching emphasizes communicative competence (matola, 1993). l2 teachers have focused on the development of language learning through communicative language teaching. this means that this method is solely intended to engage students in pragmatics, or the functional, authentic use of the target language for meaning purposes (wolfson, 1989). as a result, students may achieve greater fluency and communicative confidence in the l2 (lightbown and spada, 1990). as previously explained in relation to sociolinguistic competence and cultural contexts, l2 learners must acquire this competence in order to integrate their studies. according to yu (2005), sociolinguistic competence assists l2 learners in becoming successful in causing offense or misunderstanding in cross-cultural understandings. furthermore, acquiring this competence may result in less negative first language (l1) transfer as a result of a large divergence between l1 and l2 sociocultural norms. some foreign language courses have included instructions on sociolinguistic competence for non-native speakers in order to avoid embarrassment and misunderstandings in cross-cultural communications (kasper and blum-kulka, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 237-245 243 1993). however, incorporating sociolinguistic competence into a pedagogical curriculum may be more difficult than it appears. it appears that teaching sociocultural rules to l2 learners will be a difficult task. yu (2005) found that the instructor paid little attention to teaching sociolinguistic competence in four intermediate-level college freshman english classes in taipei, taiwan. after a four-month session of class meetings, the students show no significant improvement in acquiring sociolinguistic competence. the study found that, despite the fact that culture teaching has been advocated for many years by foreign language experts, it is still insignificant and sporadic in most l2 classrooms. conclusion the concepts of sociolinguistic competence and communicative competence are inextricably linked. linguists add a functional language to linguistic competence as a result of the development of theoretical frameworks relating to linguistic or grammatical competence. language learning, according to this viewpoint, is not only the process by which learners successfully acquire a new language with standard grammar, but also understand meanings and use the language appropriately and effectively. as a result, the concept of sociolinguistic competence is proposed. the implementation of sociolinguistic competence is reflected in written and spoken forms, both of which have made a significant contribution. some aspects of understanding technical vocabularies are dependent on contextual interpretation. sociolinguistic competence in spoken forms, on the other hand, enables functional communication. it tries to emphasize that foreign language courses can be used to impose sociolinguistic competence. as a result, individuals learning a new language may benefit from this competence in order to avoid offense or misunderstanding in cross-cultural communication. it is worth noting that the incorporation of sociolinguistic competence into language pedagogy has ushered in a new era of communicative language teaching, particularly for l2 teachers. references bachman, l. f., bachman, p. a. l. l. f., palmer, a. s., & of oxford, u. 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(2018). grammatical competence within l2 communication. language production, monitor hypothesis, and focus on forms instruction, 7(1), 101–112. https://doi.org/10.25037/pancaran.v7i1.140 furkó, b. p., & mónos, k. (2013). bálint péter furkó & katalin mónos the teachability of communicative competence and the acquisition of pragmatic markers – a case study of some widelyused. business english coursebooks, 9, 132–148. holmes, j. (2008). an introduction to sociolinguistics. harlow: pearson education limited. holmes, j. (2008). an introduction to sociolinguistics. (g. leech & m. short, eds.), the modern language journal (fourth edi, vol. 77). new york: routledge. https://doi.org/10.2307/329116 holmes, j., & meyerhoff, m. (2003). the handbook of language and gender. the handbook of second language acquisition. berlin: blackwell publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756492.ch13 hyland, k. 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(2008). intercultural language use and language learning. minerva ginecologica, 66. castellon: springer. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 237-245 245 stone, g. l. (2002). the lexicon and sociolinguistic codes of the working-class afrikaans-speaking cape peninsula coloured community. in r. mesthrie (ed.), language in south africa (pp. 379–397). cambridge: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/doi: 10.1017/cbo9780511486692.020 wolfson, n. (1989). the social dynamics of native and nonnative variation in complimenting behavior. the dynamic interlanguage, 219–236. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0900-8_14 yu, m. (2005). sociolinguistic competence: an often neglected and deemphasized aspect of foreign language teaching. hong kong journal of applied linguistics, 10(2), 71–76. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 120–131 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 120 lexical and syntactic ambiguity in humor intan nur charina sanata dharma university intancharina.ic@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2017.010113 received 27 march 2016; revised 24 march 2017; accepted 25 june 2017 abstract ambiguity occurs when a sentence has more than one meaning. ambiguity can be caused by the ambiguous lexicon in which one word has more than one meaning and it can also be caused because of the way the sentence is structure (syntactic). the context also determines whether the sentence can be interpreted differently and become ambiguous. ambiguity often causes confusion, and has become one of the phenomena in language studies, especially semantics. this study investigates ambiguity in creating humors. the data were taken from electronic sources in forms of newspaper headlines, jokes, riddles and anecdotes. the number of the data collection includes 25 cases of ambiguity. 12 sentences were lexically ambiguous, while the other 13 sentences were syntactically ambiguous. the results showed that lexical ambiguity and syntactic ambiguity were the language devices used to create puns in humor. the results also suggested that the ambiguity could be an effective source of humor when it particularly involves dual interpretations in which one interpretation gives a serious meaning and tone, whereas the other interpretation gives a humorous meaning which is not likely to occur in normal contexts. keywords: lexical ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity, humor introduction sentences containing jokes and humors often find their humorous power through ambiguity apparent in the english language (seewoester, 2009). ambiguous sentences have more than one meaning and sense. the different meanings can elicit different and humorous senses in certain contexts. in many humors and jokes, this kind of wordplay is often used. therefore, ambiguity is an important means of creating puns in jokes, or riddles. ambiguity is also deliberately employed in many contexts to elicit a sense of wit and to make a sentence more attractive, or to make people curious about it. in some newspaper headlines and advertisement slogans, ambiguous sentences are sometimes used. ambiguity as a language device commonly used to create puns in humors gives some insights into how word play can manipulate the interpretation of meaning resulting in humorous and witty senses. this suggests that due to the multi interpretations, certain different senses of a single sentence can confuse the mailto:intancharina.ic@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 120–131 121 meanings and give different comprehensions which may elicit humors in certain contexts. there has been previous studies conducted to analyze this process, such as duffy, kambe, & rayner 2001, giora 2003, gorfein 2001, macdonald, pearlmutter, & seidenberg 1994, tabossi 1988 and translation issues antonopoulou 2004, laurian 1992, lew 1996, ptaszynski & mickiewicz 2004, zabalbeascoa 1996. these prior studies found that ambiguity is a source which is often used to create humor. there are two types of ambiguity commonly used as the source of humors, i.e. lexical and syntactic ambiguity. the former one refers to ambiguity conveyed through polysemous words or homonymous strings, while the latter refers to phenomena of ambiguous word order, referential ambiguity, and prepositional phrase arrangement (e.g. hirst, 1987: 131–162; gibson & pearlmutter, 1994), for example. this study is limited to the discussion of those two kinds of ambiguity since they are the most employed types of ambiguity found in humors. the purpose of this study is to indentify the types of ambiguity used in the ambiguous sentences which elicit humors, whether it is lexical or syntactic ambiguity. the study will also investigate the process on how the pun is created due to the multi interpretations of the sentence by analyzing the meanings and senses that it elicits. the study attempts to explore ambiguity of sentence meanings and the interpretation of meanings in puns and humors. theory types of ambiguity which often create humorous meanings include lexical, and syntactic/ structural ambiguity. lexical ambiguity in humors refers to the ambiguity that occurs in lexical level which involves a manipulation of legitimate and meaningful morpheme/ lexeme that elicits a serious and humorous interpretation (seewoester, 2009). lexical and syntactic ambiguity as a mechanism of eliciting humors this ambiguity utilizes homonymy, and polysemy in creating the ambiguity, and can involve word class change. homonymy refers to the unrelated senses of the same phonological word (kreidler, 2002). homonymy can include homographs, senses of the same written word, and homophones, senses of the same spoken word. polysemy is similar to homonymy because both deal with multiple senses of the same phonological word, but polysemy is invoked if the senses are judged to be related (kreidler, 2002). the examples of lexical ambiguity and the dual meanings can be shown below: (i) i saw a tall tree outside the house. from this single sentence, we can interpret two meanings because the lexeme ‘saw’ have more than one single meaning. ‘saw’ can be the past tense of the verb ‘see’ and it can also belong to a different verb ‘saw’ which means to cut something using a saw. although saw also can belong to a noun, meaning a tool for cutting woods (longman dictionary), the possible interpretations are limited to the verbs due to the syntactic (grammatical) requirement of the sentence. thus the sentence can mean either ‘i saw (past tense of see) a tree’ or ‘i saw (cut using a saw) a tree’. this ambiguity is classified into lexical ambiguity, because the dual interpretations are cause by the multiple meanings of the lexeme ‘saw’. the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 120–131 122 contexts of the word occurrence also make it possible for the meanings to be both interpreted. as oaks (1994: 378) states, lexical ambiguity is “a word with more than one possible meaning in a context.” the second type of ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity occurs in a sentence level. this ambiguity occurs because of the structure of the sentence. on the surface, syntactic jokes depend on “a duality of interpretation motivated by the structural patterns of the language system” (lew, 1996 p.128) and ambiguity not of any lexical item but of the sentence of the syntactic level (attardo et al. 1994b, p.35). the example of syntactic ambiguity is the ambiguous meanings of the sentence: (ii) i shot an elephant in my pajama. this sentence can have more than one interpretation. in the first interpretation, the sentence is interpreted as ‘in my pajama, i shot an elephant’ and in the second interpretation it is interpreted as ‘i shot an elephant (which is) wearing my pajama or (which is) in my pajama’. the multiple interpretations are caused by the structure of the sentence. this ambiguity is not caused by the meaning of the lexeme, but it is because of how the words are structured in the sentence. ‘in my pajama’ can either modify ‘i’ or ‘an elephant’ as a reduced clause. the structure does not violate any grammatical/ syntactic requirements and both interpretations have a solid ground. since the ambiguity is caused by the structure/ syntax of the sentence, thus the ambiguity is classified into syntactic ambiguity. lexical and syntactic ambiguity overlap the lexical and syntactic ambiguity can overlap when there is word class change. word class change occurs in lexical level, yet the word exhibit different syntactic functions, and thus has different meanings which invoke multi interpretations. to cope with the boundary fuzziness in this study, ‘syntactic ambiguity resolution’ proposed by macdonald et al. (1994) is employed. in his proposed model, he states that “lexical and syntactic information in sentence comprehension is governed by common lexical processing mechanism and syntactic ambiguities are based on ambiguities in lexical level” (1994, p.682). chiaro (1992) also places word class change in the lexical realm, while distinguishing syntactic ambiguity based on not any single of lexical item, but of (parts of) sentences at the syntactic level. thus, in this study, the ambiguity caused by the different word class will be classified into lexical ambiguity. however, for the purpose of this study, compound nouns and noun phrase will be considered as syntactic ambiguity. an example of the lexical and syntactic ambiguity overlap is shown in the sentence below: (iii) reagan wins on budget, but no more lies ahead. the ambiguity occurs in the use of ‘lies’ in the sentence above. although the cause of the ambiguity involves only one lexicon, however, in this study the ambiguity is classified into syntactic ambiguity instead of lexical ambiguity. this is done by the consideration that the word ‘lies’ is ambiguous in this contexts because of the word category (noun-verb ambiguity) which leads to the different meaning. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 120–131 123 method the research is qualitative research. as stated by fraenkel and wallen (2009, p.422), in a qualitative study, the researcher is supposed to understand the holistic description of the phenomena. this research is a document-based study. document or content analysis is a research method applied in written or visual materials (ary et al, 2010, p.457). the data that were analyzed consist of 30 ambiguous sentences occurring in newspaper headlines, advertisement slogans, and jokes all of which were taken from electronic sources. the data were taken from various internet sites, as follows: http://linguisticanthropology.org/blog/2013/12/09/ambiguity-jokes-and-trickquestions/, http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html, http://www.quora.com/what-are-some-great-lexical-ambiguity-jokes, http://www.cog.brown.edu/courses/cg7/11_ambiguity.pdf, http://www.alta.asn.au/events/altss_w2003_proc/altss/courses/somers/headlines.ht m, http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/contents.html, http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/lexicalambiguityterm.htm, http://olgakagan.blog.com/2012/02/12/syntactic-ambiguity-in-cartoons/, and http://norvig.com/bls88.html. the definition of the words is taken from longman dictionary (longman dictionary). the analysis is done through interpreting the possible multiple meanings in the sentences by describing the definition or the syntactic requirements in the contexts in which the ambiguity occurs. findings and discussion the collected data were analyzed; the data findings involved the classification of ambiguity and the analysis of meaning interpretations. from the total 25 data, 12 were lexically ambiguous while the 13 counterparts were syntactically ambiguous. the data were in form of sentences, or phrases taken form newspaper headlines, riddles and short story/ anecdotes. each of the type of ambiguity is discussed respectively in this section including the analysis of how humorous meaning is created in each pun due to the dual interpretations the findings of this study listed a total of 13 lexical ambiguities from the data collection in form of sentences and phrases. some data were taken from newspaper headlines and advertisement slogans, therefore the data were not only in the form of sentences, but also phrases. however, both sentence and phrase forms in the data contain multiple meanings because of the ambiguity of the lexemes employed. the multiple interpretations result in the humorous elicitation. (1) the hay farmer drank through a straw. (taken from: http://norvig.com/bls88.html) from the sentence above, the sentence is ambiguous because the word ‘straw’ has more than one meaning. based on longman dictionary, ‘straw’ can mean the dried stems of wheat or similar plants that animals sleep on, and that are used for making things, such as baskets, hat, etc. it is synonymous to hay. another meaning of hay is a thin tube of paper or plastic for sucking up liquid from a bottle or a cup. these are two meanings of ‘straw’, which, especially in this context, create ambiguity. http://linguisticanthropology.org/blog/2013/12/09/ambiguity-jokes-and-trick-questions/ http://linguisticanthropology.org/blog/2013/12/09/ambiguity-jokes-and-trick-questions/ http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html http://www.quora.com/what-are-some-great-lexical-ambiguity-jokes http://www.cog.brown.edu/courses/cg7/11_ambiguity.pdf http://www.alta.asn.au/events/altss_w2003_proc/altss/courses/somers/headlines.htm http://www.alta.asn.au/events/altss_w2003_proc/altss/courses/somers/headlines.htm http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/contents.html http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/lexicalambiguityterm.htm http://olgakagan.blog.com/2012/02/12/syntactic-ambiguity-in-cartoons/ http://norvig.com/bls88.html http://norvig.com/bls88.html ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 120–131 124 this sentence becomes ambiguously humorous because the subject of the sentence is ‘the hay farmer’. thus the sentence can mean either the farmer drank by using straw (plastic tube) or the farmer drank through straw (hay). (2) ross was told what to do by the river. (taken from: http://norvig.com/bls88.html) the humor in this sentence is created by the ambiguous meaning of the word ‘by’. the first meaning refers to the agent of the passive sentence and the second refers to the spatial information/ location. the noun ‘the river’ makes the ambiguous sentence humorous because it is not likely that the inanimate thing could tell ross what to do. the serious meaning means that ‘ross was told what to do (by someone) by the river (showing the location)’, while the humorous sentence means that ‘ross was told what to do by the river (the river is the agent of a passive sentence).’ (3) prostitutes appeal to pope (newspaper headline) (taken from: http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html) the ambiguous sentence is created by the word ‘appeal’. ‘appeal’ can be interpreted as ‘to make a serious public request for help, money, information, etc’ (longman dictionary). however, appeal can mean ‘be attractive (if someone or something appeals to you, they seem attractive and interesting)’ (longman dictionary). the serious meaning implies that prostitutes make a public requests to pope, while the humorous meaning implies that pope finds prostitutes attractive and interesting. what makes the sentence more hilarious is the subject and object of the sentence that is pope and prostitutes. (4) stolen painting found by tree (newspaper headline) (taken from: http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html) similar to the case of sentence (2), the ambiguous meaning is caused because of the word ‘by’ which can be interpreted as the agent of passive sentence as well as the location information. the humorous meaning is created because it is unlikely that the tree found the stolen painting. this result also support the result of prior study on ambiguity and humor conducted by bucaria (2004) which states that the humorous version of the meaning is created by the interpretation of ‘by’ as an agent of passive sentences instead of its intended spatial meaning. (5) miners refuse to work after death (newspaper headline) (taken from: http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html) the humor is created because of the multiple interpretation of the word ‘death’. ‘death’ can be interpreted as ‘the end of the life of a person’ or ‘a particular case when someone dies’ (longman dictionary). the serious meaning implies that the miners refuse to work after a particular case of someone’s death. this is very possible that miners work with high risks that may cause accident. however, the humorous meaning implies that miners refuse to work after they die. http://norvig.com/bls88.html http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 120–131 125 this interpretation is humorous because it is impossible that they can work after they die. (6) take your mother-in-law out back and shoot her (kodak advertisement). (taken from: http://www.cog.brown.edu/courses/cg7/11_ambiguity.pdf) the ambiguity is formed due two the dual meaning of the word ‘shoot’ that can be interpreted in this context. the first and intended meaning of the word ‘shoot’ is ‘to take photographs or to make a film of something.’ this definition is the intended meaning, since the sentence was taken from kodak advertisement. the second possible and humorous meaning is ‘to fire a gun/ to deliberately kill or injure someone using a gun’ (longman dictionary). (7) farmer bill dies in house (taken from: http://www.alta.asn.au/events/altss_w2003_proc/altss/courses/somers/head lines.htm) this sentence becomes ambiguous because of the words ‘bill’ and “house’ which have more than one meaning. this context makes it possible for multi interpretations. ‘bill’ can be interpreted as ‘a name of a person’ or ‘a written proposal for a new law, that is brought to the parliament so that it can be discussed” (longman dictionary). the second ambiguous word is ‘house’ which can mean ‘a building where someone lives in’ and ‘a group of people who make the laws of a country, e.g. the house of commons/ representatives’ (longman dictionary). thus, this sentence can mean that the bill (written proposal) for farmer is declined by the house (parliament) when interpreted figuratively. on the other hand, it can also mean that farmer bill dies in house (where he lives). (8) q: river ravi flows in what state? a: liquid. (taken from: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/contents.html) this riddle is humorous because of the ambiguous meaning of the word ‘state’. the answer of the question seems to be based on the different interpretation. the first, intended meaning of ‘state’ is country and the second meaning is ‘condition/ physical or mental condition that someone or something is in’ (longman dictionary). because of the different interpretation, the answer is not the expected answer of the question. (9) "i have a really nice stepladder. sadly, i never knew my real ladder." (english comedian harry hill) (taken from: http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/lexicalambiguityterm.htm) the ambiguous meaning of ‘stepladder’ is the source of humor in the sentence made by harry hill, an english comedian. ‘step-‘has two possible meanings that can be used to interpret the sentence. the first meaning is ‘stair/ a flat narrow piece of wood or stone , especially one in a series, that you put your http://www.cog.brown.edu/courses/cg7/11_ambiguity.pdf http://www.alta.asn.au/events/altss_w2003_proc/altss/courses/somers/headlines.htm http://www.alta.asn.au/events/altss_w2003_proc/altss/courses/somers/headlines.htm http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/contents.html http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/lexicalambiguityterm.htm ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 120–131 126 foot on when you are up or down, especially outside a building (longman dictionary). the second possible meaning is a prefix which is ‘used to show that someone is related to you not by birth, but because a parent has married again (longman dictionary). the second definition of step is the definition that is used to create a humor in this context. therefore, the comedian stated ‘i never know my real ladder.’ (10) she is looking for a match (taken from: http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/lexicalambiguityterm.htm) the ambiguity is created by the ambiguous meaning of the word ‘match’. the word can be interpreted as ‘a marriage’ or ‘a good opponent’. this sentence becomes humorous because of the different interpretations of the sentence. (11) "you know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. they left a little note on the windscreen; it said, 'parking fine.' so that was nice." (english comedian tim vine) (taken from: http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/lexicalambiguityterm.htm) the comedian creates the humor by the ambiguity that is formed from the word ‘fine’. the first meaning refers to the noun which means ‘money that you have to pay as a punishment’ (longman dictionary). the second meaning of the word ‘fine’ functions as an adjective, which means ‘very good or a very high standard’ (longman dictionary). the humor is strengthened by the context in which the sentence occurs. the comedian, tim vine, led people to find humor in his mistaken interpretation in which he interpreted the parking fine (a form of punishment) as the compliment that somebody gave because he parked well. in terms of meaning, the punishment is the opposite of the complement, because punishment is given when someone does something wrong, meanwhile a compliment is given when someone does something very well. the meaning relation makes the humorous sense even stronger. therefore, the ambiguity is used by the comedian to elicit humor. (12) iraqi head seeks arms (newspaper headline) (taken from: http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html) in this sentence, ambiguity is formed because of the multiple meanings of the word ‘head’ and ‘arms’. ‘head’ can have more than one meaning because of polysemous meaning relation. ‘head’ literally can mean as ‘the top part of your body that has your face at the front and is supported by your neck’ (longman dictionary). the second meaning refers to ‘the front or the most important position/ leading position’ (longman dictionary). the second ambiguous word in the sentence is ‘arms’. in its first meaning, ‘arms’ refer to ‘the two long parts of your body between your shoulders and your hands’ (longman dictionary). the second meaning of ‘arms’ refer to ‘weapons used for fighting wars’ (longman dictionary). http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/lexicalambiguityterm.htm http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/lexicalambiguityterm.htm http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 120–131 127 the sentence can thus, be interpreted as ‘an iraqi leader seeks weapons’ (the serious interpretation). however, because of the lexical ambiguity, this sentence can also be interpreted literally as ‘an iraqi head (the top part of human body) seeks arms (the part of human body).’ the interpretation of the ambiguous meanings become humorous because of the meaning relations of ‘head’ and ‘arms’ in which both are the members of the same hypernym of a human body. the findings of this study listed 18 data of syntactic ambiguities from the collection of sentences and phrases. these ambiguous sentences and phrases were taken from newspaper headlines, advertisement slogans and other electronic sources. the sentences elicit humorous senses due to the dual interpretations of each sentence. the discussion and analysis of each ambiguous sentence are as follows: (13) a: i saw a man-eating shark at the aquarium. b: that’s nothing. i saw a man eating herring at the deli (taken from: http://linguisticanthropology.org/blog/2013/12/09/ambiguityjokes-and-trick-questions/) the humor is created because of the ambiguity of the phrase ‘a man-eating sharks’ and ‘a man eating herring’. these phrases can have dual interpretation due to its syntactic form. ‘a man eating shark’ can mean a man who eats sharks or sharks which eat a man. both interpretations can be accepted in terms of meaning because those possibilities are likely to represent what the speaker intends to convey. however, the same structure with only a different noun can create a humorous ambiguity. the humorous interpretation is strengthened by the b response ‘a man eating herring’ which can also be interpreted as ‘a man who eats herring’ or ‘herring (small fish) which eats a man.’ this ambiguity becomes the source of humor because from the same sentence with this structure, the interpretations can be very different, yet both interpretations are based on the way the sentence is structured. (14) complaints about nba referees growing ugly (newspaper headline) (taken from: http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html) this headline is humorous because of the ambiguity in the phrase. the structure of the phrase makes it possible to be interpreted in two different meanings. the interpretation, which is the serious intended interpretation, describes the complaint (about the nba referees) which grows ugly, meaning that the complaint becomes worse or bigger. however, it may also be humorously interpreted that the complaint is about nba referees who grow ugly. (15) dealers will hear car talk at noon (newspaper headline) (taken from: http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html) the sentence above can be ambiguous because of the way the sentence is structured, especially in the phrase ‘car talk’. the arrangement of the sentence makes the sentence have two possible meanings and interpretations. the first http://linguisticanthropology.org/blog/2013/12/09/ambiguity-jokes-and-trick-questions/ http://linguisticanthropology.org/blog/2013/12/09/ambiguity-jokes-and-trick-questions/ http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 120–131 128 interpretation of car talk is the talk about cars, as in the noun phrase. the second interpretation, however, implies that dealers will hear car talk in which the car is an agent which can talk. this interpretation is humorous given that the car, as an inanimate object is not likely to talk. the result of the analysis is also in line with the finding of the previous study which analyzed the same data by bucaria (2004). in the paper bucaria states that the humorous meaning occurs because of the possibility of interpreting ‘talk’ as a noun or a verb. (16) drunken drivers paid $1,000 in ’84 (newspaper headline) (taken from: http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html) in this sentence, the ambiguity lies in the possible meaning of the word ‘paid’. ‘paid’ can either be the past tense of ‘pay’ or the past participle of ‘pay’. the difference can lead to the construction of an active or a passive sentence. although the ambiguity is mainly caused by the meaning of a word, that is ‘pay’, in this sentence. the ambiguity is classified into syntactic ambiguity, based on the consideration that is discussed in the previous discussion. the ambiguity is created because the word belongs to different categories or syntactic function in the sentence. the different syntactic possible functions of the word make it possible for the sentence to be interpreted in an active or passive construction. (17) man eating piranha mistakenly sold as pet fish (newspaper headline) (taken from: http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html) the ambiguous sentence becomes humorous because the phrase ‘mistakenly sold as pet fish’ structurally possible to explain both the ‘man’ and ‘piranha.’ the serious, intended meaning describes a man who eats piranha which is mistakenly sold as pet fish, whereas the humorous interpretation implied that the man who eats piranha is mistakenly sold as a pet fish. (18) include your children when baking cookies (newspaper headline) (taken from: http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html) in this sentence the humorous meaning is created because the sentence in form of imperative sentence above can be interpreted as a command to ‘include your children when you bake cookies’ and it can also be interpreted as ‘you should include your children in the cookies that you bake.’ this humorous interpretation can be made because of the verb ‘include’ and the reduced form after ‘when’, which can mean that ‘you should include your children (in the time) when you bake cookies’ or ‘include your children in the cookies when (if) you bake.’ (19) squad helps dog bite victim (newspaper headline) (taken from: http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html) this sentence is ambiguous because of the way words in the phrase ‘helps dog bite victim.’ syntactically, following the use of the word ‘help’, an infinitive verb can be used. ‘help’ can be followed by either a direct object or an infinitival http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 120–131 129 complement (a reduced form, in this case). thus, the sentence can be interpreted in two ways: the first, which is the serious intended meaning, is ‘squad helps the victim of dog bite’. the phrase is in the form of noun phrase. the second, humorous interpretation means ‘squad helps dog to bite victim.’ this ambiguity is also formed by the possible function of ‘bite’ as a noun and verb. (20) stud tires out (newspaper headline) (taken from: http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html) the sentence becomes ambiguous, especially because there is a different spelling of english and american english. allowing the american spelling of ‘tyres’ (in british english it is usually known as ‘studded tyres’). the ambiguity is structural because the of the noun-verb ambiguity of ‘tyres’. this ambiguity becomes more confusing due to the lexical ambiguity of ‘stud’. based on longman dictionary, ‘stud’ can mean ‘the use of animal, especially horses for breeding. it can also mean ‘a round piece of metal that is stuck into a surface for decoration. it is particularly confusing because typically, a newspaper headline does not necessarily include the main verb. (21) hospitals are sued by 7 foot doctors (newspaper headline) (taken from: http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html) the ambiguity lies in the ‘7 foot doctors’ noun phrase. this phrase can be interpreted as 7 ‘doctors who are specialized in foot’ or doctors who are 7 feet tall. the syntactic requirement of a noun phrase requires a singular form of foot as in ‘a 3 year-old child.’ thus, the sentence is syntactically ambiguous. (22) the village blacksmith finally found an apprentice willing to work hard for long hours. the blacksmith immediately began his instructions to the lad, "when i take the shoe out of the fire, i'll lay it on the anvil; and when i nod my head, you hit it with this hammer." the apprentice did just as he told. now he's the village blacksmith. (taken from: http://www.quora.com/what-are-some-great-lexicalambiguity-jokes) the joke is created because of the dual interpretation of pronoun ‘it’ in ‘… you hit it with this hammer.’ two nouns which can be replaced by the pronoun ‘it’ are previously stated; they include ‘the shoe’ and ‘my head.’ in this anecdote, the listener misinterprets what the blacksmith says and hits the blacksmith’s head instead of the shoe. this ambiguity occurs due to referential ambiguity represented by the pronoun. (23) come meet our new french pastry chef. (taken from: http://www.cog.brown.edu/courses/cg7/11_ambiguity.pdf) the sentence is ambiguous because of the noun phrase ‘french pastry chef’, which can mean ‘a chef who is french’ or ‘a chef of french pastry.’ http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html http://www.fun-with-words.com/ambiguous_headlines.html http://www.quora.com/what-are-some-great-lexical-ambiguity-jokes http://www.quora.com/what-are-some-great-lexical-ambiguity-jokes http://www.cog.brown.edu/courses/cg7/11_ambiguity.pdf ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 120–131 130 (24) one morning i shot a huge lion in my pajama (taken from: http://olgakagan.blog.com/2012/02/12/syntactic-ambiguityin-cartoons/) the sentence is ambiguous because or the prepositional phrase ‘in my pajama’, which can function to modify the noun ‘i’ or ‘a huge lion.’ the ambiguity can create humor especially because in its humorous interpretation, a huge lion can be in one’s pajama. (25) the chicken is ready to eat (taken from: http://olgakagan.blog.com/2012/02/12/syntactic-ambiguityin-cartoons/) this structure often causes ambiguity. in english one can say, for example, ‘the book is hard to understand’ to convey the meaning the content of the book is complex or confusing. it is not necessary to say ‘the book is hard to be understood’. in this context, therefore, the sentence can mean either ‘the chicken is served’ or ‘the chickens are ready to be fed or to eat something.’ conclusion from the analysis of the ambiguous contexts, humors are created because the ambiguity offers possible dual interpretations that the reader can conclude from the sentences. the types of ambiguity that can form puns in humors are lexical and syntactic ambiguity. lexically, the multi lexical meanings can confuse the reader and at the same time can create a mind-blowing possible interpretation, and thus can be a language device used to create puns in humor. syntactically, the syntactic requirements and the way the words are structured in the sentence can also create ambiguity. in details, syntactic ambiguity can be forms by the syntactic requirement based on its functions and forms, such as ambiguity in prepositional phrase of the sentence, noun phrase, active-passive construction, pronouns, different word categories which lead to different meanings, etc. the ambiguity can strengthen the humorous meaning especially when the possible interpretations involve a serious meaning and a humorous counterpart. the contexts and the choice of words also influence the process of how the humor is created. ambiguity can occur only in certain contexts with relevant choice or words or with certain syntactic orders (by also considering the syntactic requirements). thus, the contexts play an important function to make it possible for the sentences to be interpreted in different ways. references anatonopoulou, e. (2004). humor theory and translation research: proper names in humorous discourse. humor, 17(3), 219-255. ary, d., jacobs, l. c., & soronsen, c. (2010). introduction to research in education (8 th ed.). belmont, ca: wadsworth cengage learning. attardo, s. (1994a). linguistic theories of humor. berlin: walker de gruyter. attardo, s., attardo, d.h., baltes, p., & petray, m.j. (1994b). the linear organization of jokes: analysis of two thousand texts. humor, 7(1), 27-54. http://olgakagan.blog.com/2012/02/12/syntactic-ambiguity-in-cartoons/ http://olgakagan.blog.com/2012/02/12/syntactic-ambiguity-in-cartoons/ http://olgakagan.blog.com/2012/02/12/syntactic-ambiguity-in-cartoons/ http://olgakagan.blog.com/2012/02/12/syntactic-ambiguity-in-cartoons/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 1, september 2017, pp. 120–131 131 bucaria, c. (2004). lexical and syntactic ambiguity as a source of humor: the case of newspaper headlines. humor, 17(3), 279-309. chiaro, d. 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(1994). creating structural ambiguities in humor: getting english grammar to cooperate. humor, 7(4), 377-401. ptaszynski, m. & mickiewicz, a. (2004). on the (un)translatability of jokes. perspectives: studies in translatology, 12(3), 176-193. seewoester, s. (2009). linguistic ambiguity in language-based jokes. college of communication m.a. thesis. retrieved on march 15, 2016, from http://via.library.depaul.edu/cmnt/3 tabossi, p. (1988). accessing lexical ambiguity in different types of sentential contexts. journal of memory and language, 27(3), 324-340. zabalbeascoa, p. (1996). translating jokes for dubbed television situation comedies. the translator, 2(2), 235-257. http://via.library.depaul.edu/cmnt/3 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 58-68 58 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia types and trust systems based on the ideology of bugis community culture on local interest values in cenning rara spells muhsyanur iai as’adiyah sengkang muhsyanursyahrir85@gmail.com *correspondence: muhsyanursyahrir85@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i1.2788 received 14 june 2020; accepted 25 august 2020 abstract this research analyzes the type and belief system based on the bugis cultural ideology of the values of local wisdom in the cenning rara spells. this research is descriptive qualitative by having two sources of data, which are the spells and responses or opinions of the bugis people about spells. this type of research data analyses the form of words, phrases, expressions, and statements, both from the contents of the spell and from the opinion of the bugis community about spells. the design used is the ethnographic approach. where the researcher is directly involved in the field or the bugis community environment to obtain more accurate data. the data analysis technique used for the data collected is cultural interpretation. the results showed that there are three types and cultural ideology contexts of the bugis community in the cenning rara spells, namely (1) the enchanting cenning rara spells that are considered effective in capturing the hearts of the opposite sex, (2) the power cenning rara spells which are considered as thickeners, and (3) cenning rara spells treatment that are considered a young preservative. keywords: cenning rara spells, cultural ideology context, buginese ethnicity, enchantment, thickener, and medicine introduction the bugis tribe is one of the tribes in indonesia, especially eastern indonesia. based on real data in the field, the bugis people not only spread and live in various regions within indonesia, but also many who spread and live outside the country of indonesia, such as in malaysia and singapore (muhsyanur, 2015, p. 1). however, the bugis ethnic community mostly resides in the south sulawesi region. based on statistical data, the bugis have the most population compared to other tribes in south sulawesi (muhsyanur, 2015, p. 3). the bugis tribe has many inhabitants as, it is also known for its rich cultural heritage. like other ethnic groups, the bugis community has a variety of relics of oral literary works. oral literature or oral tradition has an important role as a foundation in the development of indonesia in general. therefore, oral traditions must be preserved by future generations. bearing in mind the age as it is today, it has entered the age of globalization or modern times. certainly the oral traditions left by the ancestors come to compete with modern traditions which are currently growing rapidly in line with the development of science, http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs mailto:muhsyanursyahrir85@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 58-68 59 technology, and art. the existence of oral traditions in indonesia competes with modern values offered by the outside world as a result of modernization, globalization of information, and the speed of tourism flows. the competition carries risks for the existence of oral traditions. in effect, some of the types of oral traditions in indonesia to be lost or start to be forgotten by the community owner (badrun, 2014, p. 3). as part of the indonesian oral tradition, bugis oral literature includes values that must be empowered and strengthened because they are part of identity and identity. therefore, preserving and introducing ancestral heritage to the generation is very important to be in stilled. the values, will also be a means of developing indonesia to compete globally and can sustain identification from foreign cultures that begin to infect, particularly life patterns of the generation itself whose effects emphasize alienation rather than indonesian attitude (muhsyanur, 2015, p. 9). (tuloli, 1991, p. 2) explains that efforts to preserve oral literature, as cultural property, need to be carried out because the change and loss of a variety of oral literature will never stop. if the oral wealth is allowed to continue and no research is carried out, the process of change and disappearance of the oral literature will continue. at the same time, the cultural wealth contained in it will also become extinct or change. it is precisely in the present and future that the contents contained in oral literature need to be explored, to be beneficial for the development of the indonesian nation. oral literature can be expressed in terms of its shape and contents to enrich the cultural treasures of the indonesian people. disclosure of oral literature in indonesia has the advantage that, in addition to being able to show the diversity of cultural wealth, it can also lead to mutual understanding between ethnic groups through values reflection. muhsyanur (2015, p. 10) states that preserving cultural products, in this case oral literature, can be done in various types of activities as a form of community concern for the region. striving to preserve oral literature is one of the efforts to support development in indonesia in the future and to further elevate the indonesian nation as a country that is not only rich in natural resources but also rich in cultural products owned by each region in its territory. (supratno (2010, p. 1) adds that regional culture as an element of national culture needs to be fostered and developed to preserve and enrich the cultural diversity of the indonesian people. national culture arises as a result of the efforts of the whole nation of indonesia. concerning regional discourse, (devung, 2004, p. 45) outlines, that there are two categories which are usually highlighted, namely: local culture and local general culture. local culture is the culture of another ethnic group in an area. whereas local general culture is culture in an area consisting of or originating from more than one ethnic group culture in the area. teeuw (1984, p. 330) says that the life of oral literature changes according to the dynamics of the owner's society. there is a portion of oral literature in indonesia that has been lost because it was not documented. oral literature that still exists, both those that have been saved through past and present research or those that have not been studied, survive, but some are changing. (teeuw, 1982, p. 10) goes on to explain that in indonesian oral literature revealed extraordinary language creativity; in it revealed how indonesian people tried to express themselves from the past until now. for modern humans, creation still has value and function, as long as they try to usurp the meaning for themselves. this is in line with the statement of otiwi & onchera (2014, p. 184) that oral literature is a tradition of a group of people consisting of a series of words expressed from mouth to ear (moving and repeating). the type of oral literature that results from community activities can be in the form of oral narratives, songs, proverbs, riddles, spells, language games, and other similar expressions. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 58-68 60 as a cultural product, oral literature needs to be preserved. oral literature provides living proof of ancient human life specifically the relationship between practitioners of oral traditions with the interests of stakeholders and other communities. thus, oral literature also has value over various phenomena that occurred in the previous human period. not only that, but even oral literature also describes matters relating to humans and their environment (showren, 2014, p. 153). oral literature as one of the local products of an area has an important role. one of the important roles of oral literature is as a pillar and cultural image for the nation. thus, it is seen that the progress of an area depends on the steps taken to maintain and preserve a cultural product. therefore, cultural products in every region in indonesia are enshrined. many ways can be done to perpetuate it, namely providing recognition, understanding, and implementation in life (sudikan, 2013, p. 1). in the modern era and globalization at this time, it is time for the understanding and investment of knowledge about the meaning of cultural values to be borne by the next generation from an early age. this is an initial introduction before recognizing foreign cultures, especially foreign cultures, namely the culture of westerners who have mixed with indonesian culture. not only that, but it has a negative influence on the wider community, especially the next generation. indonesian traditions and culture today have or are currently competing with western traditions and culture. if it is neglected and its existence is not considered, it will bring many negative impacts and high risks. the impact is that it will cause most of indonesia's traditions and culture to begin to disappear, to be ignored, even to be forgotten so that indonesia's progress will be hampered. oral literature was born since humans existed, that is, when humans in the past did not recognize writing as it is today. the same thing is meant by (r. finnegan, 2012, p. 1) that the concept of oral literature was born from culture and is one thing that is foreign to most people like the contemporary period, which only knows and is stressed on literacy and written. furthermore (r. h. finnegan, 1978, p. 3) explains that oral literature is one of the cultural symptoms found in educated and uneducated societies. the variety is also very much and each variety has very large variations as well. the contents may be about various events that occur or the culture of the literary owner community. oral literature according to taum (2011, pp. 21–22) is a group of texts distributed and handed down orally, which intrinsically contains literary tools and has an aesthetic effect concerning the moral and cultural context of a particular group of people. identification and interpretation of oral literary discourses can be done adequately if we have had several historical-literal experiences regarding oral literature in a particular cultural environment. because oral literature is a legacy from the ancestors, it can be said that oral literature is part of history, even oral literature is a document that records the course of history. not only that, oral literature is also a reflection of the activities, behaviors, and thinking patterns of the creators. oral literature can be regarded as one of the ancient literature traditions. if traced in its origins, oral literature emerged in line with the birth of the first human in the world and appeared before humans in the past did not know the writing or written literature. the previous statement regarding the origin and existence of oral literature, especially oral literature in indonesia, was also confirmed by semi (1993, p. 3), that oral literature found in indonesian ethnic communities had long existed, even before the development of written the tradition. oral literature in indonesia is very diverse, both types, functions, and forms that circulate throughout the archipelago. besides, it cannot be denied that each region or region has its oral literature. oral literature in circulation throughout indonesia proves that indonesian people, in general, have extraordinary creativity. the existence of oral literature until now also proves that the indonesian people are very concerned about it. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 58-68 61 as a cultural heritage, most of them consider that oral literature has a high value that must be maintained and preserved. how to maintain and preserve oral literature, as described by muhsyanur (2018, p. 21), namely (1) continuing to present it based on its function in various social activities, such as community events or traditional ceremonies, (2) presented as teaching material in language and literature learning regions (local content), and (3) provide guidance to people who still understand the oral literature for regeneration. the process of spreading oral literature, namely from time to time or from speaker to listener and or from generation to generation. endraswara, 2003, p. 151) states that oral literature is literature whose dissemination process is conveyed by word of mouth. this is further emphasized by hutomo (1991, p. 1) that oral literature is literature which includes the literature of a culture that is transmitted and passed down orally (word of mouth). sudikan (2001, p. 16), more detailed the main identifying characteristics of oral literature, namely; (1) oral distribution, (2) village style, (3) has many versions, (4) anonymous, (5) describes the cultural characteristics of the community, (6) uses a dialect, and fantasy. based on the previous opinion, the essence of oral literature for the community is as one of the cultural heritage or heritage. oral literature is generally distributed because it contains local cultural wisdom values that can be used as a way of life for the community. in addition to the values of local cultural wisdom, oral literature also has a variety of functions. therefore, oral literature must be preserved and maintained. one type of oral literature that circulates from several other oral literature is oral literature in the form of a mantra. historically, the mantra is the oldest genre of oral literature when compared to other oral literary genres and even exists in almost every region within the territory of indonesia. this is in line with the affirmation of anita et al. (2015, p. 2) that spells are found in all levels of indonesian society that are used by every community in their respective regional languages. based on its origin, spells are not created by certain people or groups of people. therefore, the time and place of its appearance are uncertain, the inventor is not even clear. thus, the mantra is born without clarity of time and creator or anonymous (no name and without creator). the mantra in general belongs to the community. that is, the mantra is born based on the traditions of the community and of course its purpose for the community itself. thus, it can be guessed that the appearance of the spell stems from people's trust. through this trust, considered sacred and need to be upheld by the local community. then spread from generation to generation or generalized. also, the survival of mantras in the community as a connoisseur is caused by the process of certain traditions by using mantras by being tried repeatedly and finally considered to have a function that is considered beneficial. the main introductory media used in mantras or chanting mantras is language. the interesting thing is the delivery of spells by using language unlike ordinary language. however, deliver in aesthetic language. aesthetically speaking is conveying a mantra by trying to create a beautiful sound by presenting a style of language (stylistic). the voice with the style of language as part of the appreciation process when the mantra is revealed. by conveying a spell using language style, the dimension of the dimension is an oral literary work of old poetry genre. modern poetry or old poetry, the location of its power that can captivate the listener is in the arrangement of the beauty of sound accompanied by language style. kurniadi et al. (2014, p. 2), explained that the mantra as one of the forms of oral literature, namely in the form of poetry that has diverse uses in society. in addition to spells having the beauty of language, based on content, spells contain mystical cultural elements, contain rituals, and are considered to have magical powers. according to rozak (2004, p. 53), spells include old poetry and every word contained in the spell contains magical powers. mantra is usually uttered by the handler or shaman to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 58-68 62 influence the power of the universe and animals. this is in line with the statement of syam (2010, p. 41), that a mantra is a word or expression which has expressive, rhyming, and rhythmic elements whose contents are considered to be able to bring magical power when read by a handler. like other tribes in indonesia, the bugis also have a variety of oral literary spells. the existence of spells in the bugis tribe is not much different from the spells that exist in other tribes. in addition to the bugis mantra, the language of language is based on content, based on the content, the bugis mantra also has magical powers that are believed by the bugis community. therefore, mantras still exist and are still preserved by the bugis community. the type of mantra used as the main object in this study is the cenning rara spells. concretely, the focus of this research is the type and system of beliefs based on the bugis cultural ideology of the value of local wisdom in the cenning rara spells. there are three spell terms used in bugis language; 1) read-read which means an expression; 2) paddoangeng which refers to the meaning of prayer; and 3) using massubbu refers to hidden weapons. the term ¬ read-read which means expression, not just an expression like an expression in general. thus the term paddoangeng which refers to the meaning of prayer, is also not just a prayer in general, and the use of terms that refer to hidden weapons, is also not ordinary hidden weapons. mantras in the bugis tradition are prayers or expressions that contain special rituals and contain supernatural powers. with this magical power, the bugis people believe it to be a powerful weapon. besides, even spells are often used as a repellent or in the bugis language known as pattollak balak. in connection with this research, the type of mantra that is used as the main object as a source of data is the cenning rara spells. based on the bugis etymology, the word cenning rara consists of two words, namely cenning and rara. cenning means moon and “cendra” or “cendrara” which means moon or sun. the moon and sun essentially refer to something that has light. in the context of bugis culture, the sun refers to the peak of natural beauty during the day due to the shining sunlight. the moon refers to the peak of natural beauty at night due to the charming moonlight. cenning rara as a mantra of bugis ancestral heritage which is an ideal form of culture or tradition. as the use of massubbu (hidden weapons) from the nature of the meaning of the mantra, then cenning rara according to hasnita sari (2018, p. 1) is to have an abstract nature, which cannot be touched and seen with the eyes. the location is also stored in the memory or in the minds of the people where the culture concerned live. because the cenning rara spells are abstract, the medium of introduction is only to use language which consists of words that contain magical powers. the cenning rara spells for the bugis community is very valuable because it has local wisdom values. the values of local wisdom are that are based on the mindset and behavior that becomes a habit for a community and is considered valuable in social life. because it is considered valuable, it will always maintain its continuity in a long period of time. the process of detention was carried out from generation to generation. thus the values of local wisdom include traditions that become habits and have cultural values. therefore, the values of local wisdom grow and become part of the culture of the community. local wisdom is basic knowledge obtained from the results of life activities. this is related to the culture of a society that is accumulated and passed on. this wisdom can be abstract and concrete, but an important characteristic is that it comes from experience or truth obtained from life. wisdom from real experience integrates body, soul, and environment. this emphasizes respecting past parents for their life experiences. because besides that, it contains more moral values than material (mungmachon, 2012, p. 174). the same thing was also explained by hastuti et al. (2013, p. 1) explaining that local wisdom is a custom that has become a tradition of the community hereditary by regional customs in various regions. so, local wisdom is a reflection of every habit carried out by ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 58-68 63 every community or community group that lasts long, even since the days of ancestors. local wisdom has characteristics in the three dimensions of time, namely the past, present, and future. the three periods are certainly interconnected, in the sense of continuing in the process of its application, from the past, that is, since it was first carried out by the previous person. the present time, the sustainability process from before and the future to continue to be preserved and hereditary. sutarto (2007, p. vii), that local wisdom contained in cultural products is generally associated with at least five activities in culture. first, as a religious nation, local wisdom is related to attitudes and behaviors in communicating with the creator, god almighty; second, related to ourselves, namely how to organize themselves and control themselves so that they can be accepted by other individuals outside ourselves; third, how to get along or communicate with the wider community because we are part of it. here local wisdom (local wisdom) will be associated with a sense of justice, tolerance, and empathy, which boils down to how to please the feelings of others to accept us as the most important and needed part; fourth, attitudes and behaviors related to our family members and relatives. we must respect our parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, and other relatives. local wisdom (local wisdom) associated with the work ethic will lead us to become productive and creative human beings. our creativity is not only helping ourselves but also helping others, if we can give something to the community, we will become a more meaningful part of society, and fifth, local wisdom related to the environment will make life safe and secure, and comfortable because the environment that we maintain and maintain will provide positive benefits to human life. the damaged environment will make our lives become damaged. in general, haba (2007, pp. 7–8), describes the characteristics of local wisdom along with its functions as follows: (1) as a marker of the identity of a community; (2) as an adhesive element of social cohesion; (3) as a cultural element that grows from below, exists and develops in society, not a cultural element that is forced from above; (4) serves to provide a colour of togetherness for a community; (5) can change the mindset and reciprocity of individual and group relations by putting it on a common ground; and (6) able to encourage the creation of togetherness, appreciation, and joint mechanisms to defend themselves from the possibility of interference or destruction of group solidarity as a whole and integrated community. method based on the data analyzed, this research is a descriptive qualitative study. told qualitative descriptive because more data acquired an intangible word in the field to be described and analyzed based on objective research. the approach used in this study is ethnographic. an ethnographic approach is a process that is carried out by being directly involved in the community to obtain accurate data. there are two sources of research data, namely spell and statement and the opinion of the bugis community against the cenning rara spells, while the research data is in the form of words, phrases, expressions and statements or discourses, both originating from spells and bugis society. data collection techniques carried out were interview techniques and documentation. the interview technique is done by asking questions in a planned, structured, and systematic manner that is addressed to the community as a source of data relating to the focus of the research. documentation technique is the process of collecting data obtained from books or references and various media. this documentation technique is a supplement, supplement, and support for collecting data. the collected data was analyzed using cultural interpretation techniques. cultural interpretation techniques are interpreting and describing data based on the real conditions of bugis people or based on traditions carried out by communities in their environment or their daily lives. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 58-68 64 findings and discussion based on the analysis of the data relating to the cenning rara spells in bugis society, then the type and system of belief are based on the cultural ideology of the bugis community towards the values of local wisdom in the cenning rara spells, namely as follows. cenning rara spells is considered effective for captivating the heart of the opposite sex based on the type, cenning rara spells were found as teasers. the belief system based on the cultural ideology of the bugis people towards local religious values in the cenning rara spells of the teaser is considered effective to attract the hearts of the opposite sex. therefore, cenning rara teaser spells are spells in the form of expressions or rituals that are used to attract one's attention. this kind of cenning rara can be used by men to attract women's hearts. vice versa, it can be used by women to attract men's hearts. the following is one of several data types of cenning rara spells that are attractive in bugis society. nabikku, nabi muhammad muhammad makkarawa bainene ipatimang ipatimang ikarawa iyapa namanyameng nyawana yanu ……. narekko is yes naita mabbarakka ' kunfayakun the meaning: my prophet, prophet muhammad muhammad touched his wife fatimah touched fatimah actually he will feel calm ... if i see it blessings so it happened the cenning rara spells teaser in the culture of bugis society are believed to have magical powers that can captivate one's heart. if a man reads it, it can attract the desired woman's heart. and vice versa, if a woman who reads it can attract the desired heart of men. the statement "enticing the heart" means being able to get him interested and fall in love. in addition, the cenning rara spells of the teaser shown will be effective if in the process of reading it in solemn circumstances. certainly based on deep conviction. deep conviction is proven because of the introduction as an expression by giving a picture of the prophet muhammad. it emphasized this enduring, enchanting way, like the way of capturing the prophet muhammad to his wife, fatimah. also, the last array on the spell cenning rara data as above, ending with the expression "kunfayakaun" taken from the qur'an. it is an affirmation to bring people who are spell to deeper convictions by surrendering that if god wills, then be. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 58-68 65 cenning rara spell of strength are considered as binders based on the type, cenning rara spells were found for strength. the belief system based on the cultural ideology of the bugis community towards local religious values in a cenning rara spells is that power is considered to be able to give strength. the cenning rara spells of strength in the bugis language is also called cenning rara aseggereng and akebbengeng. kara "aseggereng" means bully, while "akebbengeng" means balancer. both terms refer to the meaning of giving strength to the body. the body becomes resilient and has strengths such as steel and iron. the following is one of several data types of cenning rara spells that are powerful in bugis society. bismillah, fuakku terni uju’ nennia tenri irita utiwi’i ujukku makkebessi ufarewe’i faimeng makkebessi iyya’fa nacau, narekko cauna fuakku the meaning: by mentioning the name of god god is intangible and cannot be seen i carry a form of surviving like iron and i bring back my form as well as iron he will give up, if god also gives up the cenning rara spells of the riot shown above is a type of cenning rara spells which is a force. in bugis culture, such cenning rara spell are believed to have magical powers that can be annoying. immune or annoying indicates that weapons are not capable or cannot be hurt by any weapon. based on the results of the interviews of researchers with one of the bugis community leaders, that type of cenning rara like that was generally used by ancestors during the colonial period when the bugis heroes wanted to confront the dutch colonizers in bone bay (1859-1860). the type of spell is believed to be able to give strength or to thicken the body that is never hurt by any weapon. that is, by reading the mantra then physical or physical strength such as the strength of steel and iron. this is shown in the phrase ujukku bessi (my body is iron) and iyya'fa nacau, narekko cauna my fakku (he will give up, if god also gives up). the two expressions refer to the body as iron and will be paralyzed to surrender if my own lame god gives up. in addition, the profound meaning contained in the expression iyya'fa nacau, narekko cauna my fuq (he will surrender, if god also gives up) is actually in my body my lord. my body will never die and give up because god himself never died and gave up. the parable taken is iron. iron is a hard and strong metal, and can even be made for weapons. cenning rara spell treatment that is considered to make a person ageless according to its kind, found cenning rara spells treatment. the belief system is based on the cultural ideology of the bugis people towards local religious values in a cenning rara spells treatment that it can be used as a medicine for the body or face so that it always looks young or stay young. ageless refers to two things, which are youthful because they always look young even though they are old and young because they have a charming and attractive appearance for anyone who looks at them. the following is one of several data types of cenning rara incantations for the treatment of young preservatives in bugis society. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 58-68 66 beddakna fatimah uwabbeddak upaenre ri rupku however, there is a hand-held sheet barakka laailaha illallah the meaning: the powder is fatimah that i use i wear it on my face and glowing like a full moon may allah grant the one between cenning rara shown above is one of the cenning rara spells used as a young preservative. based on data collected from interviews, cenning rara spells of treatment for young preservative can be read when using the powder or when flushing the body with water in the bath. the expression that shows the youthful meaning of the data above is in an array that reads namattappa pappada peanut butter (and glowing like a perfect moon). in the context of the ideology the culture of the bugis community, so if it is expressed with full sincerity, it will emit magical powers, which can be visible body, body, and face young or young. ageless, in this case, means the physical appearance always looks charming and has a light like a perfect moon. also, it can also be seen in the following cenning rara spells data. mekka uwwae pole jenne'pole ri suruga upatoppoang ri rupak mattappa keteng seppuloeppa the meaning: water from mecca ablution from heaven i wash in my face as bright as a full moon the cenning rara spells data shown above is also one of the cenning rara spells used as a young preservative. based on data collected through interview activities, the cenning rara spells of the treatment for easy preservatives can be read when using water to wash face. the depiction given in the cenning rara spells above is by reading the mantra, then the form or the physical will always look beautiful as beautiful and as bright as a full moon. the raising of the moon's name has a deeper meaning, namely that by reading the mantra, it will give magical powers. the type of supernatural power in question is physical and the body looks perfect like a moon that looks full and perfect. conclusion during this time, the cenning rara spells that exist in bugis society are only general, this is based on the influence of the modern environment so that things that have cultural values or have values of local wisdom seem neglected. however, based on the research carried out, three types of cenning rara spells were found, namely cenning rara spells from heart-lure, giving a strength of balding, and treatment for young preservatives. the essence ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 58-68 67 of the meaning of the word cenning rara spells does not only focus on the sun and the moon which means glowing which is charming. however, it also means that the light that cannot be penetrated with the meaning in is invulnerable. besides, the meaning of luminous also refers to the meaning that it is not carried away by age and physical so that it is always charming and 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(1991). tanggomo: salah satu ragam sastra lisan gorontalo. jakarta: intermasa. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 153 on investigating the symbolic power of educational enterprises in ntt province: a literature review yulius nahak1, markus budiraharjo2 1,2sanata dharma university, indonesia anaksulung508@gmail.com; mbudiraharjo1@gmail.com correspondence: anaksulung508@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.4362 received 8 february 2022; accepted 17 march 2022 abstract from a bourdieuan perspective, the production of knowledge in the form of empirical studies validates the symbolic power of certain groups. it is arguably proposed that the more empirical studies published in particular groups of people, the more robust the symbolic power of the respective group is. this study is set to reveal the degree of academic productivity of east nusa tenggara as a symbolic power owned by scholars in the area, as demonstrated by empirical studies conducted to investigate educational issues. two research questions were proposed namely: (1) what areas of inquiries did the researchers pursue; and (2) what are their major findings? sixty-four scholarly articles related to the english learningteaching (published from 2016 to 2021) were analysed using document analysis methods to identify the most up-to-date research themes. the findings indicated that teaching strategies and material innovations were the most often researched topics (41 articles), followed by variables affecting english language learning (14 articles), perceptions of english learning-teaching (5 articles), and teaching competences (4 articles). the conclusion is that academic production is low, crossvalidating that low symbolic power correlates to more concrete components (i.e., high-degree of poverty). keywords: educational enterprises, review of literature, ntt province, symbolic power introduction the rationale of this study is grounded on a bourdieuan perspective of “symbolic capital as a crucial source of power” (cattani, gino, ferriani, simone & allison, 2014) in the form of socio-cultural artifacts of certain groups of people. a realist, bourdieu sought to elaborate the interplay among social, economic, and cultural capital as symbolic power accumulation (bourdieu, 1984), which will decide actors’ ability to impose on their cultural replicas. he claims that a symbolic system like this is critical to the perpetuation of dominant social institutions. mailto:anaksulung508@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.4362 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 154 in depth, bourdieu (1984) contends that the aspects of social, economic, and cultural capitals have interacted with one another and established the way how people perceive and react to the social world, which is also called habitus. a habitus reflects on how group culture and personal history affect the body and mind; and it “contributes towards reproducing the power relations” (bourdieu & passeron, 1977, p.31). according to bordieu (1984), the struggle for symbolic dominance takes place between groupings, which are characterized by specific sets of capitals and their relationships to one another. further elaborations on symbolic power, especially with regards to the academic productivity of scholars in a particular place, gain more relevance in today’s knowledge-based society. on the one hand, given the vast amount of information available at the moment, the knowledge transmission model of learning is no longer relevant to the coming generation (betts & smith, 2005). central to the knowledge-based society is the notion of academic literacy skills, i.e. the capacity to problematize certain issues found in society, frame them within certain conceptual frameworks, and write them in academic papers (lillis & scott, 2015). looking into the indonesian context, we discover various discrepancies across provinces. the provinces in java, bali, and sumatra islands have been considered to get more privileges than others. this has been proven by the researchers that the provinces in java are more developed than provinces outside of java, which can be ascribed in part to earlier development plans that typically focused on java, especially under suharto’s rule (frankema & marks, 2010). furthermore, kurniawan, de groot, and mulder (2019, p.90) stated that in terms of socioeconomic development, indonesia is split into two primary divisions: a reasonably developed western region (sumatra, java, kalimantan, and bali) and a relatively undeveloped eastern region (sulawesi, maluku, papua, west nusa tenggara, and east nusa tenggara). this study focuses on one of indonesia's poor eastern areas, the east nusa tenggara (ntt) province, in terms of academic production, as a means of bolstering the region's symbolic power. to begin with, a variety of elements influence ntt province's symbolic strength, including socio-economic, sociocultural, human resources, and, most notably, a lack of academic production. east nusa tenggara province was characterized by barlow & bellis (1991) in barlow, bellis, & andrews (2017, p.1) as one of the poorest areas of indonesia due to its arid environment, inadequate communications, and poorly constructed infrastructure. this fact is proven by the socio-economic data from the central bureau of national which showed that ntt province ranks 3rd lowest out of 34 provinces nationally (human development index of 2019 was 65.23). this high degree of poverty affected the other aspects of life including the educational condition of ntt province. for example, barlow & gondowarsito (1991) in barlow, bellis & andrews (2017, p.22) on socio-economic features and potentials, noted that educational facilities in the ntt province are once again underdeveloped, with most rural people seldom completing primary school and illiteracy being a severe problem in remoter areas. consequently, human resource in ntt is one of the weaker aspects. for instance, siburian (2017) found that for the residents of belu regency in ntt, the shackles of poverty, caused mostly by “the low quality of human resources” are obstacles for hem to be more creative, innovative, and productive. these are the reasons why ntt is categorized into the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 155 3t (tertinggal, terdepan dan terluar) areas which means the most left behind, the foremost, and outermost (cf. ntt, muhammad, hafizha, setyaningrum & zahra, 2020). these facts prove that ntt province still has daunting challenges to be faced. one of the powerful solutions proposed by barlow & bellis (1991) in barlow, bellis, & andrews (2017, p.4) is that to achieve the potential for change and growth in ntt province, the people of ntt require assistance in the form of better technology, guidance, and improved infrastructures, both physical and social. although these remedies have been applied, the task of improving ntt's educational quality continues. when contrasted to educational circumstances in other regions of indonesia’s western hemisphere, sanda, setyosari, widiati, and kuswandi (2016) contended that the ntt region's educational conditions may be judged to fall short of national norms. one of the realities is that ntt consists of 67 higher education institutions: 14 universities (public and private), 2 institutes, 36 colleges, 6 polytechnics, and 9 academies (dunia perkuliahan, 2021). moreover, data posted by sari (2015) revealed that the huge majority of higher education institutions are accredited b and c, and there is only one institution accredited a (s1-pendidikan theology-stkip santo paulus, ruteng – manggarai, flores). besides the accreditation grade, the empirical studies produced by those higher education institutions are still very low. thus, one of the intentions behind this research is to encourage researchers and educators to produce more empirical findings in the ntt context that functioned as the decision-making in strengthening the educational quality of the area. to proceed to a deeper elaboration of academic productivity as a basic element of symbolic power, the bourdieuan perspective of symbolic capital is applied. drawing from such a realistic perspective, this study sets out to reveal how symbolic power is exercised in terms of academic research in the english language learning and teaching process. we now refer to it as “knowledge-based society”, a society in which knowledge is utilized to empower and improve people’s lives on a cultural and material level, as well as to develop a more sustainable society (world science forum budapest, 2003). that means knowledge is constructed through a systematic effort (research) that can be validated or falsified. moreover, in the knowledge-based society, the idea, like information, is not only fundamental, but it also takes precedence, manifesting itself as ineffable and tangible, necessary and real, useful and productive (world science forum budapest, 2003). therefore, we claim that in the context of a knowledge-based society nowadays, scientific research becomes a symbolic power to confirm how the transformation of the socio-cultural aspect exists in society. if in case, the research is lacking then the one that takes charge of the decision-making in the area is not the empirical findings but rather, the traditions (environment and indigenous leaders) and the authorities (states offices and religious leaders). in clarifying the issues raised in the rationale part, the support theories regarding the role of scientific research are explored. then, the notions of the knowledge-based society, self-actualization, and the relevance of english language acquisition in the context of educational development are explained. symbolic power in the form of scientific research ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 156 the concept of “symbolic power” may be backtracked to the idea of mistaken consciousness proposed by friedrich engels. according to engels, things and social ties are endowed with a societal worth that is established by the persons participating in interactions (marx and engels correspondence, 1893). it was further expanded by louis althusser in his writings on ideological state apparatuses, in which he argued that the latter’s authority is partially founded on symbolic repression (althusser, 1972). that is to say, power is assessed in terms of material possession; the more you possess, the more powerful you become. initially, the notion of symbolic power, also known as symbolic dominance, was first proposed by pierre bourdieu to argue that cultural roles matter more than economic reasons in determining how power hierarchies are positioned and reproduced across cultures. maintaining supremacy in a system involves both status and economic prosperity, rather than merely possessing the means of production. bourdieu believed that symbolic power is the basic goal of social existence, and that it is depicted as an endeavour to achieve everything, namely notoriety, respect, honour, glory, authority, and everything else that is associated with symbolic power as acknowledged power (bourdieu, 1984, p.251). according to bourdieu, cultural reproduction is the major role of the education system. therefore, to have more influence in an area, its educational system needs to be improved. with this in mind, scientific research becomes one of the aspects that helps to develop the symbolic force of a region’s educational culture. knowledge-based society a knowledge-based society is imaginative and devoted to lifelong learning (world science forum budapest, 2003). according to lungu (2019), the knowledge society is a grace condition in which people’s imaginations blend reason with passion, calculus with inspiration. in a knowledge-based society, where all types of knowledge are disseminated in innovative ways, the population’s equitable access to knowledge is critical. in terms of society and environment, research and scientific knowledge must remain ‘human’, including moral responsibility and the preservation of humanity’s cultural and linguistic past, as well as variation in creativity. concerning ourselves with the rights and duties of other living creatures in the environment is also an ethical aspect of the study (world science forum budapest, 2003). self-actualization in his book the organism (1939), goldstein coined the word “selfactualization,” which he defined as “the impulse to actualize, as much as possible, individual potential.” later in his hierarchy of requirements, maslow (1968) coined the term “self-actualization” to represent human beings' ultimate wants and highestlevel desires. however, as self-actualization is a lifetime process (rogers, 1961), a way of life (gowan, 1972), and a challenge of living, several supportive variables should be addressed (kerr, 1991). maslow (1968) believes that in order to realize oneself, one must first meet one’s basic needs (e.g., physiological, safety, belonging, and esteem). while according to hanlon’s (1968) point of view, schools as the principal educational organizations, are accountable for equipping students to broaden their worldview ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 157 and picture their self-actualization aspirations. gopinath (2020) went on to say that the willingness to become self-actualized should start in the classroom. in brief, maslow (2011) maintained that self-actualization refers to a person’s “full human development,” and thus, “self-actualization improves and impacts the quality of life” (tripathi, 2018) that lead to the possessing of symbolic power as individuals or collective. the role of the english language in educational development today, the english language appears to have become a required skill for students and professionals alike since it is an international language to utilize while talking across countries. crystal (2005) said in this regard that english is used as a foreign language to communicate between countries, particularly in the domains of political, social, educational, and economic development. hence, in the context of ntt province, which is neighbouring to the country of east timor, the english language is very useful as a means of interaction. noge, wau & lado (2020, p.2), the researchers from ntt, argued that english is not an enhancer in life, but it is obligatory, without good skills, proficiency, and good knowledge of english, then one will experience various difficulties in achieving success. moreover, in academic literacy studies, widyawati (2021) noted that the majority of high-quality literature is written in english and has not been translated into indonesian. consequently, to expose more to the original texts written in english, one should understand better the english language that is used. based on these values, then learning english is beneficial for self-actualization. we now claim that the more english language is practiced in an area, the better educational development of that area is enhanced. this is a way of establishing symbolic power by learning english as an international language that opens for a broad insight and knowledge gaining (reddy, 2016). method research design this is a review that synthesized some of the scholarly articles from which the conclusions were taken in a holistic interpretation based on the reviewers’ own experiences, beliefs, and models (campbell, 2001). a qualitative approach was applied in this study which tried to examine anything based on the data gathered (darmalaksana, 2020, p.5) or to study the content or message of various published article documents. the researchers reviewed all relevant articles on the context of english language learning and teaching reality in the east nusa tenggara (ntt) province. journal articles articles taken were published in the period from 2016 through 2021, to identify the most up-to-date research topics/themes as suggested by bowen (2009) that when conducting qualitative document analysis, we collect a variety of quality documents. data collection ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 158 data collection techniques were performed through google scholar search, by searching per-regencies (in 22 regencies of ntt). the total number of publications related to english language learning and teaching in ntt was sixty-four (64), based on the articles received. data analysis the researchers used document analysis to analyse the data. in doing so, the data processing was done by analysing each abstract in the articles collected. to gain a deeper understanding, each article was read multiple times to gain a more comprehensive understanding of them. the findings of the analysis were organized into relevant themes and validated by the second researcher to guarantee that its interpretation was accurate. findings there are a total of 64 basic results of previous studies linked to the english language learning and teaching reality in the ntt province, (see figure 1). figure 1. topic distributions overall discovery, learning strategies, and materials are 41 articles (64%); socio-cultural context is 14 articles (22%); teachers’ competencies are 4 articles (6%); students’ perceptions on english learning are 5 articles (8%). table 1. the summary of major findings no. author(s) major findings learning-teaching strategies and developing learning materials 1 balan & djuniadi, (2016). the purpose of a computer-based english subject test for 2nd grade students in vocational high schools near the border with east timor is to develop familiarity with computers and the internet. 2 yanpitherszon (2016). cow (collect, organize, write) strategy was used to enhance the 11th graders of sman 1 soe, tts 64% 22% 6% 8% topic distributions learning strategies cultural context teachers compotencies students perception ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 159 3 erfiani (2017). in universitas timor, a storytelling technique can help second-semester students enhance their speaking skills. 4 pada, setyosari, degeng & widiati (2017). when compared to the direct learning model, the interactive learning model for english discourse reading comprehension grade viii in kupang is superior. 5 ribak, syamsiyah & lema (2017). at sma muhammadiyah, maumere, there is a favorable effect of using image series in teaching writing method text to students in the 10th grade. 6 salem (2017). the use of mind mapping effectively improved 10th grade of sma n. 4 kupang student’s writing ability. 7 tafuy & banu (2017). strategies of stkip soe in translating short stories: literal, direct and free translation, transposition, omission, modulation, compensation by splitting even doing google translate. 9 yumelking (2017). students at kupang’s state secondary schools can improve their listening skills by using a storytelling method. 10 benu (2018). code-switching (english indonesian, and viceversa) is effective in enhancing a meaningful english learning. 11 janggo (2018). the cooperative script technique helped 8th grade students at smp n kewapante in maumere improve their reading comprehension. 12 leoanak & amalo (2018). teachers at rijalul ghad islamic school in kupang used waste products (papers and mineral water bottles) to teach english utilizing instructional media. 13 leoanak & bonik (2018). high school instructors in kupang apply pedagogical values of code-switching in efl teaching and learning processes. 14 neno & erfiani (2018). at timor university in ttu regency, the jigsaw method can improve students’ interactions with teachers and other students. 15 ota (2018). the importance of communicative learning resources for flores university’s elementary teacher study program students. 16 yanpitherszon (2018). interview strategies is helpful to teach simple present tense at sman 1 soe, tts. 17 yumelking (2018). under frater private junior high school, maumere, instructional materials in the bilingual model include both english and indonesian as mediums of instruction. 18 basoeki, sari & saragi (2019). students at kupang state polytechnic can enhance their english skills by listening to english songs or viewing english movies. 19 bire, bustan & semiun (2019) the english language learning framework was created using sabunese folklore and realized as a learning media in the form of a learning preparation plan (lpp). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 160 20 daar (2019). for the three learning styles, students at health vocational schools in ruteng use a medium language learning strategy: cognitive strategy, metacognitive strategy, and social strategy. 21 dheghu & rosdiana mata (2019). it was adequate to produce an english textbook for junior high school students that was based on the social-cultural of ngada flores and included photos and illustrations. 22 liunokas (2019). think-pair-share strategy to develop english vocabulary among 4th-semester students of english education department, undana, kupang. 23 malelak, eky, bargaihing & plaituka (2019). the english games method assisted students in class 8th at smp negeri 6 kupang in learning activities and improving their english-speaking ability. 24 rahas (2019). at sman 2 kupang, the fishbowl approach was used to assist students enhance their speaking abilities. 25 sakan & utanto (2019). students’ learning motivation is increased using audio learning at junior high school, kupang. 26 taka (2019). grade 10th’ students in sma kristen mercusuar kupang used pair-teaching to expand their vocabulary. 27 yanpitherszon (2019). the english education department at nusa cendana university, kupang, used a think-pair-share technique to help 4th-semester students improve vocabulary. 28 hamidah (2020). the use of flashcards in the classroom to teach english vocabulary to grade vii students at smpn 2 kupang has had a favourable impact. 29 jimun, ilyas & nasar (2020). in smp negeri 1 ende, learning activities employing the gallery learning technique contribute to students' learning outcomes. 30 lao (2020). when made english composition, students at sma negeri 1 kupang used translation techniques by mentally translating indonesian into english. 31 maromon (2020). using elicitation strategies in the classroom can help students in west timor become more engaged, raise their concentration, stimulate involvement, and improve their understanding. 32 metboki & hambandim (2020). in kupang, using the grammar-translation method, contextual language teaching, and total physical response can help housemaids improve their basic english. 33 napitupulu (2020). google classroom was used to help with online learning throughout the pandemic covid-19 at universitas timor. 34 noge, wau & lado (2020). fun tutoring is a way to improve children’s ability to understand english at sdi kolokoa, ngada. 35 nomleni (2020). employed direct method in teaching vocabulary to the 1st year of sma sudirman kupang has served a positive influence. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 161 36 sadipun (2020). the english language abilities of ende’s english lover community (elc) participants improved as a result of the community service activity. 37 sampebua, marisa & sampebua (2020). an english vocabulary learning application to enhance meaningful learning among students at the liliba public state elementary school, kupang. 38 semiun & luruk (2020). the content validity of an english summative test administered at a public junior high school in kupang was high. 39 tanau, tosi & metboki (2020). children at kupang city have followed the initiated tutoring and show good performance in basic english. 40 liwun & alinda (2021). at sma negeri 1 maumere, using pictures media might successfully improve students’ speaking abilities. 41 pali, mbabho & wali (2021). english for the beginners through joyful learning methods have a positive impact on learning interest and improved english skills for participants at sdi turekisa, ngada. factors that influence the english language learning and teaching 1 sudaryono (2016). the low ethnic complexity in the belu regency and south-central timor border region represents a natural linguistic phenomenon in social life dimensions. 2 jempol (2017). for 11th-grade students with high achievement of sma n 4 kupang, social elements as compromising variables to succeed in english learning. 3 lao (2017). the interference of the first language (l1) in 12th grade students of sma negeri 1 kupang english writings resulted in mental processes in the students' brains. 4 malaibui (2017). common problems encountered by the 7th semester students at tribuana university, alor in doing translation text were the lexical problem, syntactical problem, and the cultural problem. 5 noge (2017). different systems between utetoto (nagekeo regency) and english verbal sentences that caused some difficulties for utetoto students in learning english. 6 vinhas & darmawan (2017). students in the 8th semester at ikip muhammadiyah maumere made a variety of grammatical mistakes, including: interlingual error, intralingual error, learning context, and communication strategy are all terms that can be used interchangeably. 7 jem & semana (2018). because of the surroundings, narrative scenario, cultural linkages, and lack of english understanding among manggarai senior high school students, common interference in phrases and tenses arises. 8 darmawan & suryoputro (2019). final stops and sibilants, initial and final affricates, and interdentals were the most common pronunciation problems among sikka maumere efl participants. 9 latupeirissa & sayd (2019). identification of grammatical errors in preparations, pronouns, and pluralization, articles, conjunctions, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 162 and subject-verb agreements by students of state polytechnic in kupang. 10 malaikosa & sahayu (2019). the challenges in implementing efl curriculum 2013 in alor regency: making lesson plans, implementing the scientific approach in the classroom, doing authentic assessment, and lack of learning resources. 11 rafael (2019). interference, intra-lingual, and developmental mistakes by first semester english education department students at stkip cbn, kupang are among the reasons of pronunciation difficulties. 12 daar & ndorang (2020). students mainly undertake the teacher-designed english learning activities, but they are not involved in learning autonomy, which leads to a self-learning habit. 13 do nacimento (2020). only one out of every eight atambua students had a multilingual background, using three languages to achieve the highest level (3), despite learning english during the golden period. 14 malaikosa & taopan (2020). too many students, inadequate time, and a lack of teaching resources were all issues with applying scientific processes to teach english in junior high school in rural locations (especially alor). the teaching competencies and the role of english language teachers 1 ja (2017). in the efl class of ende’s public senior high schools, all english teachers have a little part in encouraging learners’ learning autonomy. 2 lao, kaipatty & jeronimo (2017). at sma negeri 2 kupang, four english teacher competencies were identified. 3 ginting & kuswandono (2020) a favorable attitude about creating hots tasks among flores island instructors, as well as the problems they confront. 4 sulaiman (2021). the role of english teachers at sma negeri 1 kupang is enough to help students explore their potentials to master english competencies. perceptions on the english language learning and teaching 1 penton & abor (2017). students in the english study program at tribuana university, alor, contended that singing english songs might help them improve their english vocabulary. 2 lawa & liwulangi (2019). differences between 10th-grade students of boys and girls in learning english in terms of scores, discipline, self-confidence, and home assignments at a private high school in kupang. 3 lomi & mbato (2021). pre-service english teachers in an ntt undergraduate program were motivated by altruism to become english instructors. 4 taopan & siregar (2021). the preparatory period english teachers at a university in ntt get an understanding of the importance of technology by observing their lecturer’s usage of technology. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 163 5 wanti, alur, oktaviana & daar (2021). sdi karot manggarai regency pupils were ecstatic to participate in english learning activities involving vocabulary games. discussions based on the published research articles investigated, it is clear that: first and foremost, the themes that had been raised tend to be micro-level in nature (english learning: strategies and materials, socio-cultural context influences, teacher’s roles, and students’ perceptions). surprisingly, there is no discussion that raises discourse more broadly to the field of policy framework, such as curriculum policies, etc., that situated a less connection with the national discourse. in fact, one of the key issues encountered by efl teachers is the conflicts in the application of the latest efl curriculum (2013) in rural parts of ntt province. for instance, in alor regency, the researchers have proven that there were some problems in implementing the efl curriculum 2013: teachers have difficulties in making lesson plans, implementing the scientific approach in the classroom, doing an authentic assessment, and lack of learning resources (malaikosa & sahayu, 2019). in addition, malaikosa & taopan (2020) found that other problems in using the scientific steps on teaching english were too many students, limited allocation time is given, and lack of teaching sources. therefore, the competencies of efl teachers in ntt need to be promoted and developed in order to improve the quality of education in the area. secondly, a number of relevant research topics for today, perspective educational psychology, haven’t been explored much by the researchers or not even considered as urgent to be emphasized, such as learner autonomy, metacognitive strategies, self-regulated learning, self-efficacious learning, and learning motivation. there were two papers referenced autonomous learning (ja, 2017; daar & ndorang, 2020), but this material was insufficient to promote awareness about the relevance of autonomous english language learning methodologies in the ntt environment. the fact is that learning autonomy in the area is still lacking that needs to be promoted since it emphasizes learners’ motivation to achieve their goals. according to wulandari (2017), autonomous learning refers to students' readiness to undertake learning activities that are motivated by a force inside them in order to reach goals that are deemed worthwhile and beneficial. autonomous learning is connected to the metacognitive strategy which is stated by daar (2019) as lower than cognitive strategy in english learning. therefore, being an effective learner means being autonomous, metacognitive, efficacious, regulated and a motivated learner as well. all these values will be contributed to learning success when the learners are informed and recommended to do so. third, the sexy issues since 2015, such as character education (ce), and technology adoption (tpack) were also less explored. there are indications related to progress (relevance) of the use of technology, such as google classroom (napitupulu, 2020), audio learning (sakan & utanto, 2019), pictures media (liwun & alinda, 2021), english vocabulary learning application (sampebua, marisa & sampebua, 2020), computer-based test (balan & djuniadi, 2016), listening to english songs or watching english movies (basoeki, sari, & saragi, 2019; penton & abor, 2017), technological awareness in elt (taopan, & siregar, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 164 2021). but basically, the use of technology has not been developed much. in reality nowadays due to the pandemic situations, technology plays an important role in the educational system which can be over regarded by neither teachers nor students. hence, it is critical to provide competent teachers with the necessary technical skills in order for them to lead their students. fourth, some topics used in the field of english learning and teaching of ntt context are already outdated, such as first language (l1) interference (lao, 2017; jem & semana, 2018), the bilingual model of english learning (yumelking, 2018), and grammar translation method (metboki & hambandim (2020). these approaches are no longer used since we have been living in the post-method era (kumaravadivelu, 1994) since the 1990s, which has forced us to rethink our approach to language instruction and teacher education (kumaravadivelu, 2006a). therefore, this review is important to give a critical viewpoint that raises awareness to update our english learning and teaching methods based on the post-method era. fifth, the number of 64 articles for publication on the field of efl studies in 22 regencies of nnt province is considered as low empirical studies. therefore, symbolic power has become an issue that needs to be strengthened to support selfactualization. that means the traditions and authorities were dominant means of decision-making. the problem is that the traditions can be biased by the claims, not empirical data. because of that, the truth can be manipulated by the authorities and traditions. in other words, the cultural transformation is very much hampered because of traditions and established power in the area. that is why scientific data are more valid and accurate in relation to decision-making since they speak of data findings. therefore, when scientific research is lacking, then the symbolic power of the area is also weak. finally, the total number of them is sixty-seven (67) higher education institutions in the east nusa tenggara province-indonesia (14 universities, 2 institutes, 36 colleges, 6 poly techniques, and 9 academies) haven’t been much instrumental in creating research habitus (in bourdieu’s point of view). moreover, the majors of these institutions in general, are accredited b and c, except one major that is credited a. this confirms what sanda, et.al claimed that the ntt region’s educational conditions are below national norms (sanda, et.al., 2016). looking at these realities, the urgency for more scientific studies is demanded of the higher education institutions to be developed to improve the education quality in ntt province. because, according to bourdieu’s realism, the more scientific research outputs are developed, the more symbolic power in a particular area is established and developed. conclusion this review was held to find out the area of inquiries that the researchers pursued; and to discover their empirical findings related to english learning and teaching reality in the east nusa tenggara provinceindonesia. the document analysis data revealed that there were 64 publications published between 2016 and 2021, which were divided into four categories: first, the highest number is in the area of teaching strategies and material developments with 41 articles; then, the socio-cultural context which affects the english language learning is the second highest with 14 articles; followed by the students’ perception of english language ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 153-171 165 learning and teaching consisted of 5 articles; and concluded by the teaching competencies and the role of teachers with 4 articles. to sum it up, ntt’s high level of poverty, lack of human resources in different areas, get along with a limited number of scientific researches, resulted in a low symbolic power that impacts other components of self-actualization. the findings of this study should serve as a reminder to teachers, lecturers, and researchers of the relevance of the english learning and teaching process in the educational setting as it relates to the ntt province's symbolic power. references althusser, louis (1972). 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(2018). the implementation of bilingual education system (indonesia–english) in frater private junior high school maumere. at-tadbir: jurnal manajemen pendidikan islam, 2(2), 1-12. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 120 an ecocritical discourse analysis of anthropocentrism in the cameroonian press walter abo acha department of english, university of yaounde 1, and government high school bessi-awum, batibo, cameroon correspondence: achawaltz@yahoo.co.uk https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.4202 received 17 january 2022; accepted 8 march 2022 abstract the manner in which the media presents nature matters a lot. the media legitimises abusive beliefs. on this basis, this work investigated the ecologically oppressive ideologies reinforced by the cameroonian english newspaper. analysis focused on uncovering-to-resist discursive patterns that activated anthropocentrism (human dominance over nature). the data comprised thirty-five newspaper articles randomly selected from nine english language newspaper publishers in cameroon. ecocriticrical discourse analysis (ecocda) is the theoretical framework adopted in this study. the descriptive statistical method (dsm) was used to analyse the data. analyses subsumed identification, quantification and interpretation of discourse entities. findings revealed that the cameroonian press used diverse language patterns to manipulate agents, processes and aftermaths of environmental depletion. the press, thus, encoded anthropocentric ideologies in discursive forms like pronouns, verbs, transitivity, personification and jargon. ecological injustices uncovered and resisted included deforestation, consumerism and growth, mineral extraction and construction, inter alia. cognizant of the sustenance nature that offers earthly life, it was recommended that press [wo]men should refrain from manipulative language forms and stories that downplay efforts to conserve nature. they should rather cover nature-conserving stories regularly, and in language forms that align with and reinforce global efforts to protect and conserve the biophysical environment. keywords: anthropocentrism, ecocritical discourse analysis, ecology, ecolinguistics, ideology introduction discourse is a repository of varied strata of social meanings. it is [re]produced to transmit a desired ideology, notably to reinforce or debunk a political, cultural or ecological construct or thought. its meaning-driven structure and texture, according to murtaza and qasmi (2013), explains the reason that discourse producers adopt unique strategies. in tandem with griffiths (2006), the use of different discursive styles is not fortuitous, nonetheless, they are meant to make the producer (speaker) as communicative and ‘persuasive’ as much as possible, and the interlocutor (listener) to be as ‘interpretative’ as intended (p. 9). persuasion in discourse, therefore, is an offshoot of the textual and contextual pattern(s) woven by the https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.4202 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 121 producer. in essence, text producers make tactful use of linguistic and pragmatic styles that activate intended meanings and change. utterances convey different meanings in different contexts. the sensitivity of ideologies to language use accounts for the suspicions and different interpretations that addressees give a particular utterance. to buttress this line of thought, grice (1975) postulates that the ideology-welded nature of language (discourse) has rendered it ‘non-neutral’ and fluid in different contexts (yule, 1996, p. 36). in alignment with the latter, jørgensen and philips (2002) argue that language use in every human endeavour is seldom neutral to different identities, social relations, and environment, as it plays a pivotal role in constructing and striving for social change. the incongruity between language use and meaning in different contexts justifies the reason most interlocutors fail to interpret the intended meaning of an utterance. when listeners breach an interpretation, the consequence is that they would be incapable of identifying, and therefore, complacent with destructive, hegemonic ideologies in discourse. amid other discourse genres, van dijk (2015) considers the media the most powerful conduit of social meaning. it is a tool used by political and capitalist elite to manipulate social meaning. in line with fairclough (2001), the media institutionalises social inequalities or dominance of minority and less powerful groups via the propagation of discriminatory ideologies: racism, gender (sexism), class, and many others. the dominance advocated by the media is not just [hu]man[wo]man, but equally human-nature. like other discourse practices, the media, via stories and language choices, has potentials that legitimise human dominance over nature, thus, anthropocentrism (stibbe, 2015). in the relationship between the material and the symbolic (semiotic); and the textual and the ideological, peeples (2015) describes the media a social practice wherein language and signs (images) are deployed subjectively to refer to the “environment or the natural world”. in this light, the function of the media is considered to overlap with that of rhetoric, as both are persuasion-oriented. the texts and textual categories in the media that evoke the environment, in fact, serve as persuasive strategies to effect what burk (as cited in peeples (ibid) refers to as reflecting, deflecting or selecting a particular reality or belief. deluca 1999, p. 14) perceives language and signs that are ideological referent as “mind bombs” that shape public opinion, and so, must be checked. in clear terms, the intensions of the ‘stories’ evoked by stibbe (ibid) take manifest in the discursive resources and the abusive ecological frames mushrooming from them. in halliday’s (2001) seminal paper, “new ways of meaning”, he forebodes that there are victimising and dominance-inspiring resources of grammar that coexist “to construe reality in a certain way; and it is a way that is no longer good for our health as a species”. (p. 103) “new ways of meaning”, in essence, underpins the use of novel discourse practices that legitimise inequalities between humans and other biospecies. grammatical constructions, mühlhäusler (2003) adds, are some of the language habits that have exacerbated the contemporary ecological collapse. deviant discourse practices that blur an agent(s) or doer(s) of environmental injustice are accused of acting in furtherance of the same act(s) committed by eco-aggressors. language uses suchlike, in fact, telltale an attitude of domination, and thus, nonchalance towards the conservation and/or survival of the natural environment, thus anthopocentric. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 122 fairclough (1989) considers discourse as a “social practice” invested with ingroup (institutional) ideologies; and this convinces fill and mühlhäusler (2001) that language is a vector of ecological meanings: devastation or conservation. as pointed hitherto by halliday (op.cit.), language has lexical and grammatical potentials that [re]produce and reinforce ecological [in]equality. this encompasses the use of what stibbe (2001) considers manipulative lexico-syntactic and pragmatic resources; which will be the subject of analysis in this work. in furtherance of the thoughts above, stibbe (2014; 2015) considers language (discourse) as having potentials that can either drive motifs of nature protection and conservation, or facilitate the devastation and eventual destruction of the biophysical environment. in these ambivalent agenda, the media, being a circuit of social meaning, plays a prominent role to transmit and institutionalise ecological ideologies. the media reports natural disaster, policy actions on conservation, and nonetheless, propagates capitalistic ideologies. in this light, the media influences public opinion by framing reality to reflect imaginary or possible worlds (fairclough, 2003); to advocate conservation or consumerism. the production of an imaginary world(s), therefore, implicates the proliferation of bias-welded language constructs that culminate in abusive ecological meanings in the media. this manipulation has inspired ardrèvol-abreu (2015) to impugn the objectivity of the media in the framing of reality (p. 429). it is on this premise that this work investigates the hidden and transparent discursive tools that realise anthropocentrism in the cameroonian newspaper of english expression. language, ecology and ideology contemporary discourse has been very concerned with the current state of the natural environment. in his seminar publication, “language ecology” (1972), einar haugen was the pioneer scholar who galvanised global theorisation on the connection between language and its environment of use [language(s) contact]. albeit the euphoria that embraced this shift from structuralism, haugen’s (ibid) paradigm was criticised by contemporary linguists, cf. mühlhäusler (1996; 1998); fill and mühlhäusler (2001); fill (2002); who refuted haugen’s (ibid) “metaphorical definition of environment as “the society that uses it as one of its codes” (p. 325). this was considered an ontological flaw, considering that its inbuilt was silent, and therefore, indifferent to the plights (devastation) of the natural environment. the lapses of the haugenian [metaphorical] paradigm sparked the emergence of environmental policy approach (policy-oriented approach) to environmental discourse analysis championed by luisa maffi and peter müwhäusler, and lately, arran stibbe. this novel scientific experience has led to a unique, innovative linguistic field called ‘ecolinguistics’. steffensen and fill (2014) define ecolinguistics as investigation of “language-nature relations” in discourse (p. 9); otherwise, the symbiosis between culture (language) and nature. this paradigm shift termed ‘ecolinguistics’ has caused science and society to experience what stibbe (2012) brands an “ecological turn” in linguistics, thus, the “ecolinguistic turn” (p. 1). the “ecolinguistic turn” is marked by global consciousness vis-à-vis the role language plays in reinforcing nature conservation or depletion. singer (as cited in stibbe, 2001, p. 149) postulates that “the english language, like other languages, reflects the prejudices of its users”. in this regard, it is established that the distinction between “animals and people” gives room for ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 123 ‘speciesism’; which is an out-group cognition that discriminates and, eventually, detaches the human environment from the non-human environment. this takes into cognizance the fact that [eco]discourse is rife with surreptitious power ideologies: dominance, discrimination, oppression and exploitation of the non-human environment. power (disciminatory) ideologies in discourse take diverse forms. anthropocentrism is the superordinate ideology that reflects or manifests the discrimination between homo sapiens and other biospecies. the concept of “linguistic anthropocentrism” was first postulated in michael halliday’s ‘new ways of meaning’ (2001). chen (2015), thus, discusses “linguistic anthropocentrism” from two perspectives: firstly, as discourse trends that construct culture-nature relations, foregrounding the usability of the nature to humans; and secondly, the advocacy of environmentally unsustainable practices (consumerism, construction and natural resource exploitation) in discourse. like speciecisism, anthropocentrism is an ecologically biased concept that privileges human animals the centre of the ecosystem, and therefore, and vests them with powers to exercises absolute control, domination and use of non-human animals for their survival. anthropocentric discourses are human-centred, and as mcnenny (2018) expatiates, use extenuating language constructs (notably metaphorical frames) that conceal or downplay environmental abuses perpetrated by humans. the anthropocentic ideologies (forest exploitation, fishing, hunting and mining, inter alia) that are seated in anthropocentric discourse, as mcnenny (ibid) warns, frustrate sustainability education and/or ventures in great proportions. maffi (1998) advances that environmentalists have always considered christianity as the pioneer doctrine and catalyst of anthropocentrism. in line with the premise above, environmentalists have tagged christianity a hegemonic movement that places the human race over the control (dominance) of nature. this opinionated centre position, maffi (ibid) explains, gives humans the pretext to plunder nature for their comfort. jowett (1921) refutes the thought that anthropocentric language constructs are limited to christianity, for aristotle is equally culpable for propagating the environmentally dangerous ideology that birds, animals and plants “exist for the sake of man” (p. 10). in essence, this ecosophy rather expedites the rate of environmental degradation by subjugating the biophysical environment to human exploitation. moreover, acute anthropocentrism also revrberates in an ecosophy stibbe (2015) has identified with the coinage ‘cornucopianism’ (p. 12). this ecosophy that is qualified as “politically conservative”, thus, priorities human creativity and technological innovation and advancement over the biophysical environment. ‘cornucopianism’, in fact, defends the view that it behoves the human race to expedite industrial progress in order to satisfy their biological and social needs (ridley, 2010). this ideology is insouciant to the harm (notably natural resource exploitation, consumerism and pollution) industrialisation causes the natural environment. industrialisation, which ridley (ibid) considers a pretext of economic growth, has provoked ambivalent feelings in baker (2006) who counsels that growth drives should go in tandem with environmental protection. baker (ibid), thus makes a very optimistic projection that economic growth that is accompanied by environmental consciousness vis-à-vis conservation leads to the ecosophy stibbe (op. cit.) terms “sustainable development”. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 124 adams and gruen (2014) aver that ecofeminists, in parallel stance with socioecologists, have rather created a link between what stibbe (2015) qualifies as men’s “oppression of animals and the environment, and [equally] men’s domination of women” (p. 12). it is strongly argued that the conservation and stability of nature can be feasible only if women are liberated from male dominion, and given an equitable social position and recognition; like that arrogated their domineering male counterpart. the epistemological position of ecofeminists is that if women are not emancipated from male domination, they will never be able to add their voices to environmental advocacy, and so, man’s (human) domination and oppression of the biophysical environment will continue to thrive. anthropocentrism in the media negative discourse, rather, projects and reinforces damaging constructs about the natural environment (caspa, 2014). in accordance with the above, ensuing discussions would dwell on the varied constructs that political and public media circuits assign to nature (biophysical environment) and ecological catastrophes (climate change and global warming). the media discourses under review, as fairclough (1995a) categorises, subsume ecological constructs in news, advertisements and music. stibbe (2003) blames the media for [re]producing and reinforcing the subjugation and shameful constructs that mainstream cultures and pork wear on pigs. the constructs imposed on the pig, as a useable resource, take manifest in the stigmatising language (metaphors, similes and idioms) connected to pigs in discourses. expressions and clusters like “happy as a pig in the mire”, “lucky pig”; “greedy pig” and “capitalist pig”, inter alia, are referential to derogatory porcine attributes accorded human entities in discourse. the grammatical vehicle “adjective + pig” (fat pig; filthy pig, for instance) is the linguistic currency in cultural models that identify pigs with false, unpleasant and abusive meanings. the adjectival “filthy pig” implies pigs are filthy, and so mappings of pig metaphors into human entities have as perlocution to abuse. the latter abusive metaphor above infringes the existential rights of the pig as a natural entity. this presupposes that the media frames pig slaughter as an environment tidying plan. in the investigation of media language during an environmental crisis, alexander (2012) states that corporate bodies deploy highly manipulative discursive resources that obfuscate or mitigate environmental dangers that threaten their reputation. the language used in the face of an environmental disaster is effective in “saving of face”, promoting self and restoring the credibility of corporations as nature protection partners. media constructs that fail to conscientise public opinion on the environmental dangers of industrial disasters have provoked frandsen and johansen (2010) to accuse corporate bodies of hijacking and “instructing communication” in the media at the expense of nature (p. 544). it could be inferred that the use of “terminological control” (selective registers) to obscure the environmental damages of industrial disasters is a discursive enhancement of hegemonies that override and oppress nature. in the study of ecological conscious in the nigerian media, japhet and komolafe (2015) indict the nigerian press for erasing the environment in their publications. in spite of the current environmental problems (deforestation, pollution and soil erosion) to which the nigerian rural and metropolis are victims, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 125 the nigerian press has displayed robust insensitivity to environmental preservation by devoting unwavering attention to events and debates in politics, sports and entertainment. even when the environment is selectively evoked, it is rather a postdisaster report(s) that exposes the press as lacking in proactiveness to natural disasters. analysts have appraised the aforementioned framings as utter complacency with the ecological threats hitting nigeria and the entire globe. citing ityavyar and tyav (2013), japhet and komolafe (ibid) are critical to the fact that the nigerian press is wanting in its mission to raise an alarm and educate the populace on environmental stakes apropos of adequate measures to restoring ecological sanity. lakoff (2010) expresses dissatisfaction with the skimpiness of environmental frames in the media and politics. the lack of suitably adequate frame to capture the reality of environmental depletion is what lakoff (ibid) refers to as ‘hypocognition’ (p. 76). environmentalism in media and political discourses is appraised as ‘hypocognitive’ on account of the dichotomy that is created between nature and humanity. when discourses frame the human environment as separate from the global physical environment, it thus, engenders an aura of anthropocentrism in humans; wherein they exhibit authority and dominance over nature. in effect, the media is cautioned to be environmentally proactive by framing “environmental action”: using less energy, driving less, and walking more, et cetera. stibbe (2009) categorises advertising as a form of media discourse that undermines environmental sustainability. advertising language is perceived as dangerous to the nature, as it employs catchy language constructs that manipulate the cognition of audience. this highly manipulative language whets the appetite for products, thus promoting the over-consumption of manufactured products that are considered ‘unnecessary’ (stibbe, ibid, p. 38). language patterns that boost unsatisfactory consumption are referred to as “pseudo-satisfier discourse”. advertising language that conditions human psyche to over-consume spurs production, which in turn elicits cumulative environmental risks in the form of overexploitation of natural resources and pollution. the media has been proven, therefore, to frame consumerism by adopting manipulative language (notably metaphors) and semiotic resources that transfer the virtues of natural entities to a manufactured product. the modelling of corporate products with the image or values of an environmental entity is what cox (2006) refers to as “green marketing” (p. 373). ecolinguistics is still a nascent field in cameroon. to the best of the researcher’s understanding, most indigenous cameroonian researchers, cf. fai (2018); tabe and fieze (2018); soh (2020), continue to take keen interest in the investigation of political ideologies in the media. even when a glimpse of awareness is displayed about the effects of media constructs and the current ecological state, most cameroonian researchers still shun from conducting a content analysis of ecological meanings (frames) [re]produced and reinforced by the cameroonian media to focusing on the frequency of nature stories (discourse); cf. kengoum 2011); angwah (2019). insofar as the cameroonian experience is concerned, this work is unique and, thus, marks an innovation, complementary to ubanako and acha (2022)1 in that it conducts an ecocrtical discourse analysis of 1 upcoming paper: an ecocritical discourse analysis of erasure in cameroonian media discourse ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 126 ecologically abusive language constructs in the cameroonian newspaper of english expression. theoretical considerations in a bid to uncover what abdul jabar and kaariah (2017: 358) consider “hidden and transparent” discursive categories (p. 358) that realise biased ecological constructs (anthropocentrism) in the cameroonian newspaper, ecocritical discourse analysis (ecocda) was adopted as the framework of analysis for this work. critical analysis of “green discourse” (environment-related newspaper articles selected) will adopt fairclough’s (1989) tributary approach to the cda. lechevrel (2009) describes the pursuance of fairclough’s (ibid) critical approach to investigate hidden ideologies of dominance in environmental discourse as the “eco-critical discourse analysis” model (p. 8). in effect, this analytical model questions the disproportionate power (oppressor-oppressed) relationships between men and women, and by implication, humans and the larger ecological systems that sustain terrestrial life. hidden and biased ecological meanings in discourse activate the asymmetry in the existence between culture and nature. it is in this regard that milstein (2008: 173) reckons the epistemology of the ecocda a powerful “mediating force in [the] human-nature power relations”. as an analytical framework that is disposed with tenets that are sensitive to power differences in discourse, it effectively resists by uncovering pragma-linguistic entities that resonate with varied forms of ecological (power) inequalities (human hegemony or anthropocentrism) that are embedded in nature writing (green discourses). this capacity to mediate and reshape ecological relations has sparked the emergence of a critical paradigm to ecological linguistics, thus, ecocda (stibbe, 2014). the application of the cda to environmental discourse is in prompt response to singer’s (1990) caution that “the fundamental objections to racism […] apply equally to speciesism” (p. 6). the analytical parameters of the cda in ecodiscourses have inspired resistance to injustices against nature (stibbe, 2014; 2015b). this paradigm that is still in its gestation phase has not got a succinct approach and definite scope yet. nonetheless, stibbe (2014) shapes and delimits the approach that is in vogue by stating that it: […] consists of questioning the stories that underpin our current unsustainable civilisation, exposing those stories that are clearly not working, that are leading to ecological destruction and social injustice, and finding new stories that work better in the conditions of the world that we face (p. 117). invested with potentials to probe, expose and question the ecologically unfriendly “stories we live by”, the ecocda prescribes wholesome ideologies and practices that are instructive of ecological inclusion and parity, and sustainability. in essence, the ecocda is in pursuance of justice via the search for novel stories (discourse trends) that have potentials to safeguard the survival of the biophysical environment, and in addition, remedy or assuage the current ecological strife: climate change and global warming. cognizant of the existence of destructive discourses that institutionalise ecological inequalities, the ecocda has been chosen because of its efficacy in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 127 uncovering and resisting surreptitious hegemonic ideologies in the environmental texts selected. being a rich toolbox for the analysis of biased and abusive constructs (language) in discourses, the ecocda has potentials to create awareness on the dangerous symbiosis between ecologically abusive language and the progressive wearing out of the biophysical environment. approaches to ecolinguistic theory may vary, but the goals and importance remain the same. as far this work is concerned, the relevance of the ecocda, which stibbe (2014) rather considers characteristics (pp. 4-5), includes the fact that:  it draws public attention to discourses that profoundly impact man’s treatment of fellow [wo]man, and their relationship with the larger ecological systems.  the ecocda analyses linguistic patterns that are encoded with particular worldviews or culture-rooted ideologies.  it is within the purview of the ecocda to interpret the explicit or implicit ecosophies based on the social meaning (world view) projected. this is judged from the depth of interaction between human and non-human animal; and how this interaction fuses with and relates to the physical environment.  ecocda has the epistemological wherewithal to expose natureendangering discourses, which harré et al. (as cited in stibbe, 2015, p. 29) derogatorily label ‘greenspeak’. ‘greenspeak’ is a manipulative language pattern that has as function the simplification, mitigation or concealment of agents (causes) of environmental hazards, environmentally harmful activities, behaviours and/or their effects.  this model is effective in creating public awareness about ecologically aggressive discourses that should be abandoned, and in remedy, encourages the conception and transmission of [positive] ‘stories’ that advance ecological sustainability efforts at [inter]national levels. method methodology can be considered the directory of every research piece; it stipulates the task(s) at every stage of this research piece. methodology, alternatively labelled ‘procedure’, refers to the entire research plan and/or steps that were followed in this research work (singh, 2006, p. 26). in essence, this research work was conducted in pursuance of ebim’s (2016) prescription that “a good, sound and logical research output should be governed by a well-defined research methodology based on scientific principles” (p. 5). these scientific principles (steps) subsume choices of type, source and collection of data; theoretical framework; techniques of statistical analyses of data; and presentation of results. singh (2006) describes population as people, animals, trees, vehicles, books or objects manifesting or are affected by a problem under study. this study that investigates anthropocentric undertones in cameroonian media discourse has as population, newspaper articles (in english expression). it is worth emphasising that population chosen for this research piece is not an entire newspaper, but suitable articles that framed the environment. the data, so to speak, constituted thirty-five (35) newspaper articles extracted from nine (09) newspaper publishers of english expression. the corpus analysed in this work is classified table 1 below. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 128 table 1. statistics of anthropocentric newspaper articles used s/n newspaper publisher number of newspaper: issues analysed articles analysed 1 cameroon tribune 03 04 2 cameroon business today 04 07 3 municipal updates 02 04 4 the sun 04 04 5 the eden 03 03 6 the star 03 03 7 the median 02 03 8 the green reporter 03 05 9 eco-outlook 02 02 total 25 35 these articles were collected between march 2019 and july 2020. considering that time is not a factor sustained in this work, the data does not represent a synchronic or diachronic survey, but rather, simply an arbitrary selection that suits the purpose of this study. it is to this effect that the judgemental sampling technique was used to select the newspaper. each edition of the newspapers was selected based on the availability of an environmental article(s) advocating an ecologically abusive ideology: consumerism, natural resource exploitation (deforestation, fishing and hunting, etcetera) and industrialisation. while most of the data were news articles of general interest, a few others were advertorials. the data was analysed using the descriptive statistical method (dsm). this is a quantitative and qualitative method that involved selecting suitable environmental newspaper articles; building a mini-corpus; classifying the articles, identifying and interpreting discursive categories encoded with abusive ecological ideologies. the quantitative method involved giving the frequencies (numerical values) of the discursive categories identified, meanwhile, qualitative aspect related to giving the ecological bearings (undertones) of the discursive entities identified in the corpus. in all, data analysis involved three tasks: identification, interpretation and discussion of discourse patterns. findings and discussion analysis was conducted on textual and contextual component that knit ecological inequalities in cameroonian newspapers. in the thirty-five (35) environmental newspaper articles analysed in this part of the corpus, six (06) discursive patterns were identified. the pursuance of analysis was geared at interpreting and discussing the abusive ecosophy (ecological philosophy) each of these categories engenders vis-à-vis the ecosystem they evoked in their usage. pronouns the seven (07) main types of pronouns identified in this part of the corpus included we, our, us, all, their, i and my. these pronouns that were personal and possessive singular and plural forms were classified apropos of the meanings encoded in them. these pronouns are classified as follows. table 2. frequency of pronouns used ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 129 pronoun type frequency percentage (%) we /our /us/ all 14 70 their 03 15 i and my 03 15 total 20 100 the most dominant pronouns were inclusive pronouns, mostly of the third person plural category: we, our and us. this dominant category, with a frequency of 14 (70%), is exemplified in the excerpts below. [1] paul biya … had implored cameroonians to “produce what we consume and consume what we produce” (cameroon business today, no. 162 of 01-07/07/2020, p11) [2] we will … shape the assessment and work for the benefit of all (the eden, no. 1146 of 26/03/2020, p7) [3] reducing our use of plastics … should be seriously considered (the green reporter, vol. 1, no. 020 of october 2019, p4) as seen in the instances above, plural pronouns, most especially, of the third person category were used as a manipulative tool to unjustly blame everybody for the deteriorating environment, and in turn, call for a general environmental response. the use of we and our is a shifting and including device that considers innocent, but victimised masses, as accomplices in nature erosion. the false inclusion of innocent masses in different nature restoration, protection and conservation ideologies and/or activities with recourse to plural pronouns, in effect, shifts the blame and burden of environmental degradation from the economic (capitalist) elite to the entire society. to add, i and my, and their are at par with very scanty occurrences of 03 (15%). the main peculiarity with the use of their is that it downgrades nature to a resource owned by humans. see the examples that follow. [4] … eating habits changed with the destruction of their forest … the community can no longer fish with … invading of their water by largescale fishermen (the median, no. 391 of 15/06/2020, p6) [5] when i go back to maroua, i return to my meat (the sun, no. 0613 of 23/07/2020, p6) the phrases destruction of their forest; and invading their water by largescale fishermen in [4] above, thus, subjugate nature to the ownership, use and control of human communities. this ownership and what can be termed “resourcification” accounts for the persistence in abusive and unsustainable exploitation of nature by human beings. the use of my in [5], like the case with their, also disparages nature as an ordinary object that is subject to ownership. this accounts for the different exploitative tendencies and/or abuses perpetrated against nature and her entities. verbs activating anthropocentrism the use of verbs that reinforce ecological inequalities was prominent in the newspapers selected. in essence, these verbs literally mean actions that inflict pains on the biophysical environment. out of the forty (40) erasing verbs identified, twenty-seven (67.5 %) majority epitomise [violent] actions that wear-out the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 130 country’s natural environment in the forms of exploitation, industrialisation and construction, as exemplified in the following instances: [6] the affected zone was still emitting smoke (cameroon tribune, no. 11856/8055 of 03/06/2019, p4) [7] the plastics eventually find their way into water bodies, causing harm to aquatic animal (the green reporter, vol. 1, no. 020 of october 2019, p4) [8] the oil spread downriver, first along the coca river … eventually even reaching peru, contaminating water, soils, plants and wildlife along the way (eco-outlook, no. 031 of 20/07/2020, p12) from these utterances, it could be observed that the use of verb forms like was still emitting, have been threatening, destroyed/ were completely destroyed, burn, spread, contaminating, unleashed and aggravated are semantically loaded with violent, and therefore, ecologically erasing actions that decimate nature in one way or the other. they are literally expressive of environmental aggression; or the aggressiveness and harshness of nature provoked by depletion. these natural hazards that endanger human existence are still anthropogenic, as evident in the verbs above. in effect, these verbs realise the exploitation of the natural resources. moreover, verbs that reproduce the consumption and marketisation of nature (economic growth) come second, with a frequency of 08 (20 %). reporters’ growth interests, thus, account for the use of verbs that reverberate with the consumption and commercialisation of nature. such verbs that are commonplace in the discourse type stibbe (2015: 29) derogates as “green advertising” (marketing of natural entities) refer to ecologically devastating actions imbued in the italicised verbs that follow. [9] quality and standard is another issue that pushes cameroonians to import products (cameroon business today, no. 127 of 1622/10/2019, p24) [10] … the tusks had disappeared from their keeping without their knowledge (municipal updates, vol. 3, no. 082 of 13/07/2020, p6) [11] … growth this year will fall to its lowest rate (cameroon business today, no. 127 of 16-22/10/2019, p24) like other verbs in this category, the use of pushes and import in [9] above, thus, are markers of precipitated urges to consume natural entities unsustainably. while disappear in [10] denotes exploitation, will fall in [11] activates calls for increased or heightened consumerism that boosts growth plans. in varied patterns, so to speak, verbs in this category advocate the unsustainable exploitation and consumption of plants and animals; that face threats of extinction. the scantiest in this part are verbal constructs that are suggestive of actions directed towards the exploitation of the country’s forest riches. below are some examples from the corpus. [12] cameroon’s legal framework has organised the forestry sector into 3 categories (cameroon business today, no. 107 of 22-28/05/2019, p11) [13] the forestry policy seeks … to promote and diversify the use of locally processed products (cameroon business today, no. 107 of 2228/05/2019, p11) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 131 [14] … the project manager … lamented that … we noticed an area lost 2.21 ha of tree cover (the median, no. 391 of 15/06/2020, p6) while the verbs has organized, promote and diversify are telling of concerted, gang-up exploitation of the country’s forest with the complicity of policy makers, the verb lost intimates the disappearance of cameroon’s forest, without stating the causes. mode of transitivity this is a grammatical (syntactic) aspect that relates to the directness of the action (effect) of the verb on a direct object. in this segment of the corpus, it was manifest that cameroonian newspaper reporters manipulated, thus downplayed, the impact of deleterious environmental actions and/or activities by concealing the natural entity directly affected by such actions. with the motif to project the process in lieu of the agent, reporters used two modes of transitivity to manipulate meaning, viz; nominalisation and ergative. nominalisation by nominalisation, focus was on language uses involving the conversion of ecologically erasing action verbs into nominal or noun [groups]. the nominalisation of destructive environmental actions was expedient and efficacious in covering the agency (doer) of the action. eighty-seven (87) such instances were found downplaying on varied environmentally harmful actions, as considered in the table below. table 3. nominalisation of biosphere eroding actions eco-abuse nominalised frequency percentage (%) biosphere degradation/ pollution 43 49.43 forest exploitation (deforestation) 29 33.33 nature exploitation/ consumerism/ marketisation 15 17.24 total 87 100 table 3, in fact, testifies of the preponderance of language constructs that realise the nominalisation of mineral extracting, industrialising and constructing actions that wear-out the biophysical environment. some instances of nominalisation extracted from the corpus, in which journalists hid the agents of the aforementioned ecological abuses are illustrated below. [15] sonara intends to maximise the use of crude oil produced in cameroon … it [sonara] only buys from extraction companies (cameroon tribune, no. 11856/8055 of 03/06/2019, p4) [16] … investigations into the socio-environmental impact of the construction of the dam says … ha have been destroyed (cameroon business today, no. 110 of 19-25/06/2019, p2) [17] … eating habits changed with the destruction of their forest, they are faced with a loss of their cultural identity with the destruction of the dengdeng forest that hosted their cultural rituals (cameroon business today, no. 110 of 19-25/06/2019, p2) [18] ... natural resource extraction and processing account for more than 90% global diversity loss and water stress, and … global greenhouse gas emissions (the green reporter, vol. 1, no. 023 of march 2020, p10) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 132 [19] these oil spills are as much a threat to their physical health as it is to their spiritual well-being (eco-outlook, no. 031 of 20/07/2020, p12) extracted from the excerpts above, tactful verb-to-noun [group] conversions like use of crude oil, extraction companies, construction of the dam, destruction of their forest, destruction of the dengdeng forest, natural resource extraction and processing, global greenhouse gas emissions, oil spills and a threat, inter alia, were strategic linguistic tools to transform concrete ecologically abusive actions (verbs) into processes and/or phenomena (nouns) whose causes were covered or unknown. in the nominalisation instance extraction companies from [15] above, in fact manipulates the construct clear accusation “companies extract minerals”. in other patterns like destruction of their forest and greenhouse gas emissions from [17] and [18] respectively, the journalist strengthen ecological abuses by transforming ecologically abusive [action] verbs into nouns to shade their agents. the suppression of the agents in these instances is robustly manipulative, thus ecologically erasing. second in occurrence are nominalising patterns and groups that cover perpetrators of forest exploitation (deforestation). twenty-nine (29) instances were found nominalising abuses perpetrated against the country’s forests and forest resources. from the foregoing statistics, 33.33% of the eighty-seven (87) nominalisation threads found in the corpus downplayed acts of violence orchestrated on cameroon’s forest reserves. such nominalising instances are presented below. [19] local communities adjacent to forest zones are reaping … the exploitation of the natural resources (cameroon business today, no. 107 of 22-28/05/2019, p11) [20] … inhabitants generated revenue … for the exploitation of 1,096 cubic metres of sawn wood (cameroon business today, no. 107 of 2228/05/2019, p6) [21] a delegation of wood exploiters operating in cameroon will take part in the wood fair (cameroon business today, no. 110 of 1925/06/2019, p2) [22] the study identifies areas of intact forest … for protection … and survival of threatened species (the green reporter, vol. 1, no. 020 of october 2019, p5) among others, the deployment of lexico-syntactic patterns in the corpus like destruction to madagascar’s eastern rainforest; overharvesting; threatened species; freshly cut wood; wood exploiters; log processing; exploitation of the forest; processing (value addition) of timber; sawn wood; and exploitation of the natural resources, thus, were manipulative tendencies meant to soften punishable acts of forest destruction. the structures exploitation of the natural resources and wood exploiters, from [19] and [21] for instance, respectively nominalise the active verbs (actions) “… exploit natural resources” and “a delegation that exploits wood”. with this, journalists displayed guilt and/or bias for these abuses as they were projected as mere occurrences that have no or unknown causes. this follows the tactful evasion or non-existence of the agency of this environmental abuse in the utterance. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 133 to add, linguistic patterns that nominalise the exploitation, consumption and marketisation of nature were equally ocular in the corpus. fifteen (17.24 %) of the nominalisation instances identified masked and blunted actions that expedite the erosion of nature. these patterns are instantiated in the excerpts that follow. [23] … for whom animal ownership ensures varying degrees of sustainable farming (cameroon tribune, no. 11931/8130 of 19/09/2019, p19) [24] … 11,000 ha of hydro agriculture and fish farming sites will be established (municipal updates, vol. 3, no. 082 of 13/07/2020, p7) [25] a notorious wildlife trafficker has been arrested for unlawful possession of ivory tusks (eco-outlook, no. 029 of 22/06/2017, p4) the use of nominal construct like animal ownership; consumption; imported goods; food-industry products; food products; fish farming sites; and wildlife trafficker, manipulate ecologically oppressive actions into phenomena-denoting nouns. this manipulation is an act of complicity with ecological injustice, as it blurs the identity of perpetrators of exploitation, consumption and commercialisation of nature. ergative also remarkable in this segment was the use of abstract nouns denoting environmental calamities as the subjects of utterances. it equally involved ambiguous subjects and/or objects that obfuscate the agency (human causes) and media of varied abuses on the ecosystem. the fifty-one (51) instances of ergative identified are classified in table 3 that follows. table 4. occurrences of the use of ergative eco-abuse obfuscated frequency percentage (%) mineral extraction/ industrialisation/ construction 25 49.02 forest exploitation (deforestation) 17 33.33 consumerism/ economic growth/ marketisation of nature 09 17.65 total 51 100 with a frequency of twenty-five (49.02%), the majority of ergative forms identified in this segment are obfuscating agencies that wear-out biosphere via activities like mineral extraction, industrialisation and construction. some excerpts of ergative forms extracted from the corpus are given below. [26] the project … will involve the drilling of an appraisal well to target gas (the eden, no. 1146 of 26/03/2020, p7) [27] a report published by saild …reveals that the realisation of the hydroelectricity dam project … is bringing untold socio-environmental destruction (the eden, no. 1146 of 26/03/2020, p7) [28] … the total economic damage to the world’s marine ecosystem amounts to at least 13 billion dollars yearly (the median, no. 391 of 15/06/2020, p6) [29] most of these plastics are … disposable plastics which create even more problems by clogging the drainage system, littering the streets and environment (the green reporter, vol. 1, no. 020 of october 2019, p4) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 134 [30] one way to reduce greenhouse gases is the use of recycled and environmentally friendly building materials (the green reporter, vol. 1, no. 023 of march 2020, p8) [31] … a landslide ruptured three pipelines along the coca river, spilling at least 15,800 barrel of crude oil in a region long affected by a history of toxic dumping (eco-outlook, no. 031 of 20/07/2020, p12) in utterance [26], for example, the reporter used an evasive subject (the erasing activity itself) that performs a non-action verb, thus, obscuring the image of mineral exploiters that wear out the biophysical environment. moreover, by presenting disposable plastics as a subject that create even more (environmental) problems in [29], the journalist constructs plastic litter as agents of pollution in the environment, shading the identities of producers and consumers of the products in plastic containers being littered. the reporters deployed ergative to safeguard the public image of mineral extractors and capitalist; who desire profit at the malevolence of the biophysical environment. in essence, the use of ergative exposes the complacency of the media in harbouring capitalistic drives that exacerbate the degrading state of the biophysical environment. forms that manipulate the identity of forest exploiters, on their part, attained a prominence rate of seventeen (33.33%). the manipulation of agency is instantiated in the following utterances: [32] “… trashing the rainforest and natural habitats is what makes zoonotic diseases like covid-19 spread more easily” (municipal updates, vol. 3, no. 083 of 20/07/2020, p5) [33] the dense curtain of trees … grows thinner until eventually, it opens on a bare patch of land, the size of three football pitches (the green reporter, vol. 1, no. 020 of october 2019, p5) [34] around two thirds of russian logging are going to china, where factories process it into furniture and flooring (the green reporter, vol. 1, no. 022 of january 2020, p2) just as in [33] in which the journalist uses a more stative and/or descriptive verb, grows, acting on a compliment, without revealing the cause, [34] on its part uses an abstract [the proportion of exploited russian wood (two thirds of russian logging)] and inanimate nouns (factories) as metaphorical nouns that perform the actions of going to china and process it into furniture and flooring. these syntactic constructs, thus, cover the identities of persons (companies) that abuse (unsustainably exploit, export and transform) forest potentials. this shading tendency, in fact, minimises the repercussions of the activities of forest exploiters on the ecosystem. the least occurrence in this segment is recorded by syntactic forms that cloud the face of consumers and marketers of nature. this scanty occurrence of seven (17.65%) also adduces the complicity of cameroonian reporters in eco-oppressive practices like consumerism and commercialisation. some instances are exemplified below. [35] … livestock, fisheries and dairy products often get short in supply in some parts of cameroon (cameroon tribune, no. 11931/8130 of 19/09/2019, p19) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 135 [36] even if growth picks-up in 2020, the current rift could lead to changes (cameroon business today, no. 127 of 16-22/10/2019, p24) [37] the sdo said it is disgraceful for … kumba to harbour chunks of household refuse (the median, no. 396 of 20/07/2020, p3) considering [36] above, reporters cover stakeholders (consumers and producers) by presenting the abstract noun growth as an animate that resuscitates and advances, thus, covering agents of growth. to add, the reporter of [37] unjustly incriminates by shifting the blame to ‘kumba’ (an environment) for harbouring (hiding/ keeping) waste. as a discursive technique aimed at manipulating, physical space is rather blamed for unrestrained refuse disposal, not those who litter the town. ergative is a powerful device used to shade persons and companies that pollute the environment. personification sixteen (16) instances of personification were found framing different forms of environmental abuses. as would be presented and analysed subsequently, this involved the use of language patterns that transfer to the environment human attributes that engender violence and equally inflict pain. moreover, reporters effected manipulation by using abstract nouns (states of degraded environment) to cover agency of violence. the statistics of the use of personification is presented as follow: table 5. use of personification abuse personified frequency percentage (%) consumerism/ economic growth/ marketisation of nature 06 37.5 forest exploitation (deforestation) 05 31.25 mineral extraction/ industrialisation/ construction 05 31.25 total 16 100 the results in table 5 stipulate that the personification of acts of consumerism, economic growth and marketisation of nature are the most abusive, with a frequency of six (37.5%). these abusive tropes are exemplified below. [38] today, even more of the world economy is moving in synch, this time, growth is decelerating (cameroon business today, no. 127 of 1622/10/2019, p24) [39] the food industry … has grown significantly from 764-2,564 companies (cameroon business today, no. 162 of 01-07/07/2020, p11) in the tropes “the world economy is moving” and “food industry … has grown significantly” in [38] and [39] respectively, reporters construct economic growth as a person moving forward. economic growth is constructed to as an improvement or progress in the lives of consumers (cameroonian). this construct is manipulative as it shoves to the background, the effects of unsustainable exploitation and consumption of the country’s natural resources expedited by (economic) growth motives. in addition, the personification of exploited mineral and forest resources follow suit with an occurrence of five (31.25%) each. the anthropocentric meanings transmitted could be analysed in the following excerpts: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 136 [40] … much of bamenda’s waste is dumped at random (cameroon tribune, no. 11863/8062 of 13/06/2019, p4) [41] oil representatives may not care whether oil kills nature or the people, but the icc does (eco-outlook, no. 031 of 20/07/2020, p12) [42] … the stressed taiga faces a multiplicity of threats (municipal updates, vol. 3, no. 083 of 20/07/2020, p5) in utterance [40], the reporter deploys personification to arrogate the origin and/or ownership of filth (urban decay or pollution) to a physical environment (bamenda). the possessive [construct] bamenda’s waste unjustly lays blames of waste emission and disposal on natural space, therefore, manipulating the identity of the real polluters. as concerns [41], exploited natural resources are personified as agency of violence against humanity. the devastated state of the biophysical environment is rather incriminated with acts of killing. by so doing, mineral extraction is constructed/ justified to be a defence mechanism against and remedy for the aggressiveness of nature against human animals. in [42], the endangered forest is presented as ‘stressed’ to manipulate the notion and/or gravity of abuse. in essence, the attribution of abusive human attribute to natural entity was meant to hide the human agent. technical register the use of technical register (jargon) was also found to be of great significance in the realisation of abusive ecological frames. on the whole, fifteen (15) technical registers were found in this segment. the use of technical (specialised) diction in news discourse was to attain a manipulative aim; as it clouded anthropocentric ideologies. in most cases, the lexical composition of these specialised words displays semantic neutrality in the lay reader. the semantically void content of these registers, in effect, covered ecologically erasing activities: consumerism, industrialisation and economic growth, as quantified below. table 6. statistics of technical register abuse shaded technical register abuse shaded frequency percentage (%) aquaculture livestock projects gdp finished products economic patriotism ecocide ecosystem ecocide ecocide consumerism/ growth/ marketisation of nature 09 60 processing value addition finished semi-finished products export by-products mineral extraction/ industrialisation/ construction 06 40 total 15 100 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 137 majority of the technical registers in this segment were those that blurred acts of consumerism, economic growth and marketisation of nature, with a frequency of nine (60 %). the use of specialised, uncommon registers and expressions like aquaculture, livestock projects, gdp, finished products, economic patriotism and ecocide, etcetera, were lexical devices rather used with a manipulative intent; they are semantically laden with ideals. see the illustrations below. [43] the country has a favourable climate and ecology … for different types of aquaculture and livestock projects (cameroon tribune, no. 11931/8130 of 19/09/2019, p19) [44] it [sonara] also exported some of its finished products to cemac countries and markets (cameroon business today, no. 110 of 1925/06/2019, p11) the register livestock projects in [43] gives the false implication that the rearing and eventual consumption of animals is, so to speak, a developmental initiative. the notion of ‘projects’ is development driven. as for [44], finished products leaves the [lay] reader with the swayed view that meat adds quality (more meaning) to human life. in essence, reporters project injustices (inequalities) perpetrated againg nature in distorted patterns that mitigate and/or conceal the dangers of consumerism and economic growth on the biophysical environment. also visible in this part of the corpus are technical registers relating to the mineral extraction and industrialisation; that have an occurrence of six (40 %). the distribution of specialised diction, for instance processing of timber, by-products, semi-finished products, finished products and export, label industrial products in relation to the state and stages of industrial processes. this conceptualisation activates the omission of the dangers caused by industrial activities on the biophysical environment. the use of jargon that watered down the deleterious consequences of industrial activities was, in fact, intended to distort meaning, and so, wield dominance. recommendations on the basis of the key findings vis-à-vis the ecological dangers engendered by and unique to some language patterns analysed above, it behoves the researcher to make some recommendations that could improve upon nature reporting in the [inter]national media landscape. the natural environment is a collective asset whose care, protection and conservation require a collective effort, and so, it is important for linguistics to conduct frequent enquiries on novel and routine discursive patterns that enact anthropocentrism. the results of such studies should be used to caution cameroonian journalists against manipulative language uses that reinforce ecological domination. cameroonian linguists could frequently organise or take part in workshops and seminars organised by other stakeholders to train journalists on ideal journalistic practices. it is in such fora that linguists should illustrate concrete instances and/or examples of pragma-linguistic (syntactic, lexical, metaphorical and euphemistic) patterns in media discourses that respectively enhance environmental freedom and oppression. in a nutshell, to play a concrete role in environmental activism, linguists should be more concerned with the types of environmental frame transmitted by the cameroonian media, and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 120-140 138 equally liaise with media regulatory organs in the country to enact environmental justice. in espousal of stibbe’s (2015) argument that the biophysical environment is pliable to the “stories we live by”, it is worth emphasising that the media should propagate stories that idealise natural entities. as a powerful circuit of social meaning, frequent projections or coverage of media stories about the intrinsic values of nature to humanity would be both entertaining and educating. such stories would weave enormous ecological meanings if nature-idealising metaphors, resisters, proverbs and idioms are used. lastly, the national communication council should take the responsibility to organise frequent workshops and symposia for journalists, with the environment being a regular item on the agenda. different partners and specialists (ecolinguists, environmentalist, horticulturists, socio-anthropologist, zoologist and botanists) involved in environmental protection should be invited to share conservation experiences and/or train journalists on techniques of positively framing nature and related phenomena . conclusion the critique of destructive discourses was intended to expose and create awareness about manipulative (eco-abusive) discourse practices that should be resisted. i was found that cameroonian newspaper journalists weave and transmit ecologically destructive ideologies (consumerism, forest exploitation, mineral extraction, industrialisation and economic growth, among others) with recourse to hidden and transparent pragma-linguistic categories. in this regard, pronouns, verbs, transitivity (nominalisation and ergative), personification and technical register were uncovered to be potent and efficacious manipulative (discursive) devices that activated human dominance over nature, thus anthropocentrism in the cameroonian newspaper. in essence, this research work complements others to galvanise resistance against ecologically biased language patterns and/or anthropocentric constructs seated in newspaper discourses. so, it was found that the enactment and reinforcement of speciesism (human dominance and devastation of the biophysical environment) in the cameroonian press was constructed by dint of lexico-syntactic and pragmatic resources, and therefore, should neither be read nor interpreted with levity nor complacency. finally, it was found that the media is a powerful conduit of diverse and polar ecological frames. for the media to play a constructive (rather than destructive) role in the cameroonian landscape, it should sympathise with concerted efforts that advocate nature protection and sustainable development, by projecting nature in patterns that are idealizing and conserving. in other words, the cameroonian media should refrain from the advocacy of consumerism, exploitation/ extraction and economic growth. it should embrace and engage in environmental activism; nature protection and preservation, and sustainable development. references abdul jabar, n. & kaariah, y. 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(1996). pragmatics. oxford: oxford university press. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 1-14 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 1 new age atheism movement: a vanishing mediator into a futuristic secular society niñoval f. pacaol independent researcher, philippines correspondence: ninoval.pacaol05@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i1.2627 received 29 may 2020; accepted 19 august 2020 abstract the progress of natural science together with some of the vicious crimes committed by religions were central to the new age movement of atheism since the first decade of the century. their atheistic evangelicalism is for the secularization of society and the dissolution of religions in every aspect of human life. this paper hinges on kahambing’s development of the concept ‘vanishing mediator’ and applies its synthesized framework as methodology. the application of the concept: a.) retroactively traces an intervention, b.) evaluates the intervention, c.) identifies the mediator, and d.) locates the vanishing point. applying this to new age atheism, the discussion of the study is divided into three parts. first, it introduces the historical origin and atheistic interventions on religions. second, the movement is treated as a vanishing mediator or transition from religious to secular society. lastly, it gives a futuristic account of a secular world that is rooted on the influence of new atheism in the era. keyword: atheism, science, religion, secularism, vanishing mediator introduction the new age of atheism is often conceived as an attempt to obliterate the influence and power of religions. in countries where religion is a powerful and dominant force in every aspect of society, atheism is regarded as a taboo and acquires negative connotation. however, the concept of atheism is not a new invention of man out of nothing. rather, it emerged from a long and gradual process of development. many of its fundamental principles and ethos are rooted in history. the term new atheism was coined to refer to the antireligious movement commenced by richard dawkins (2006), daniel dennett (2006), christopher hitchens (2007), and sam harris (2004) – collectively named as ‘the four horsemen of the apocalypse’ – yet its progress and success are not only exclusive to the four of them. it comprises an ongoing list of other known scientists, philosophers, and public speakers who entered into the public square to openly challenge religions. likewise, atheists are also classified as naturalists and irreligionists (oppy, 2017). naturalists are people who believed that everything that exists has its ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. pp. 1-14 2 natural causes and effects and nothing beyond it. on the other hand, irreligionists reject all kinds of religion and consider them to be social pathologies. since the contemporary atheist movement is not an established ideology, a common defining feature is hardly presented. but a general point of agreement could be framed on behalf of the movement, which is that new atheism is an “attempt to carry out a more aggressive fight against religion’s influence on political and social life, especially when religion comes into conflict with science” (schulzke, 2013, p. 780; emphasis added). the great awakening of new atheism movement highlights a revolutionary interest in religion and theism. identical to several movements in the history of the word, the movement is not only working for a short-range achievement and pursuit. any reader and social spectator should not treat and see this social and intellectual intrusion of atheists as mere cheap shots to the structures of religions within the present-age consequences. in basic terms, one should try to foresee its fate and providence while considering the occurrences and instances happening in the modern era for an evenhanded appraisal. moreover, many studies have been conducted to analyze this social and intellectual phenomenon within the frame of the present time, and only a few attempts to envisage the significant role of the movement in the future and whether its intent and purpose will be achieved. consequently, this study endeavors to critically examine and account the new age of atheism not only as a radical move to dismantle the dominance of religion in the world but also a bridge or conduit for the possibility of a novel social order characterized by atheistic principles and ethics. method the paper utilized kahambing’s (2019a) development of the ‘vanishing mediator’ as a theoretical framework and applied this is a methodological paradigm. in an earlier prima facie synthesis, the vanishing mediator is commonly the “mediating principle between two opposing terms, usually employed in historical phases where equally diverging ideas grapple at some point in an interaction catered by an intermediary” (kahambing, 2018, p. 5). the mediator makes considerable changes in the former phase and vanishes, like a ghost1, after its task is done. however, vanishing does not mean total annihilation since it is still a subsumed aspect of the new phase (kahambing, 2019a; 2019b). under the new phase and in locating the vanishing point, the mediator is now incorporated but not completely removed. following the aforesaid concept of a vanishing mediator, new atheism’s movement was treated as an active or vigorous transition into the secularization of society. also, for a logical and organized pattern, four processes of vanishing mediator were utilized as proposed by kahambing, namely: a.) retroactively trace the intervention, b.) evaluate the intervention, c.) identify the mediator, and d.) locate the vanishing point. within the framework and scope of the study, the paper will provide, initially, the historical background and origin of atheism to methodically locate the place of contemporary atheism in the history of thought as a dialectic between science and religion. afterward, the researcher entered into a discussion of the intervention made by new atheists since the inception of the 21st century as an extension of its historical origin. next, new atheism was treated as a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. pp. 1-14 3 vanishing mediator. lastly, the researcher gave a futuristic account of atheism as an effort to establish the probability of a secular world. findings and discussion the dialectic of atheism and the new age movement historically speaking, atheism – contrary to common perception – is not an antagonism or enmity that exists between science and religion (ledrew, 2012), but rather is an emergence from an internal inconsistency within theism itself. this makes theology turn to science for scientific footing.2 “in the seventeenth century, not only was science…not opposed to confessional christianity; it often believed that it could and should do the foundational thinking for christianity” (buckley, 2004, p. 32). hyman (2007) used the former’s concept to emphasize that the notion of god in early modernity as “specifiable substance” in an “identifiable location” in the world departs from the pre-modern theological of god as an ontologically transcendent mystery. this shift in understanding god becomes the focus of scientific inquiry. meanwhile, the history of scientists intervening was encouraged by theologians to look for empirical evidence in their theological claims (ledrew, 2012). in effect, men of science during the scientific revolution integrate their theological principles with their scientific theories (henry, 2010). newton’s discoveries and the formulation of his theory of gravitation led to the likelihood of answering the questions that were previously under the domain of theology. through science, he transformed the perspective of the mysterious universe into a system of lucid forces. nonetheless, as scientific inquiry advanced during the 18 th century, scientists discarded the idea of a static universe wherein its laws originate from god and considered the latter as unnecessary to explain the cosmos (hampson, 1968). a significant transformation and alteration of roles have been done to explain the nature of reality from religion to science. such modification on the function of religion heralds the advent of atheism. for buckley (2004), a negation was not engendered to theism itself as a result of scientific discoveries. that is, “atheism did not so much provide an external challenge to theism, but rather a revolution within theology itself is what gave rise to atheism. this is to claim that the origins of modern atheism are ultimately theological” (hyman, 2007, p. 40; emphasis original). there are paradoxes and interreligious misunderstanding among religions and within a religion (kahambing, 2014, 2015a, 2015b), which makes one question the freedom of believers (kahambing, 2016). it is important to take note that this historical event did not eventually lead to atheism but a form of “skepticism of revelation and a belief in ‘natural religion’ or deism” (ledrew, 2012, p. 5; emphasis original). and the enlightenment’s dominant response was that “religion which could not be established by reason was no religion at all – it was superstition” (thrower, 2000, p. 100). baron d’holbach, considered to be the first professed atheist in the western tradition, enumerated three distinct criticisms against religion: a.) religion’s teachings are contrary to scientific truth; b.) religions support a corrupt social order; and c.) it is not a functional foundation of morality (thrower, 2000). these could be classified as epistemological, political, and moral critiques which are ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. pp. 1-14 4 apparent descriptions reflective of casanova (1994), namely: cognitive, practicalpolitical, and subjective expressive-aesthetic-moral. scientific and humanistic atheism ledrew (2012) in his careful study on the historical development of contemporary atheism argued that there are two major historical episodes in atheistic thought, specifically: scientific and humanistic atheism. believers of scientific atheism centered their argument of religion on science. it is a struggle between explanation and knowledge against ignorance. in this case, scientific education could displace and eliminate religion. the most remarkable factor and cause of this division of theism is the formulation of the darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection precisely because it challenges the ‘argument from design’ of religion and the question on the existence of life. the theory sustained atheism with an answer to fill the void that exists for thousands of years. equally, natural science is not only the main province of scientific atheism. it is also important to take note that even intellectuals from sociology and anthropology posited religion as the lower stage in humanity’s evolution. conversely, humanistic atheism focuses and criticizes religion as a social phenomenon and as an indication of alienation and oppression or human suffering, in general terms. berman (1988) called this atheistic move as an “anthropological approach” and people in this division of atheism offered gripping description of the causes and what sustains the belief that makes religion possible. this approach surfaced largely as a response to discontent with the promise of the enlightenment that modernity would lead to greater prosperity for all, as well as a recognition that the rationalist cognitive critique of religion did nothing to address the non-rational sources of religious belief, which include alienation, suffering, infantile neurosis and insecurity, and fear of death. (ledrew, 2012, p. 9; emphasis added). the materialist philosopher feuerbach (1957[1841]) declared that man creates an antithesis of himself as he place god above him via religion. the classical conception of god (primarily of christianity) was the “best and highest attributes of humanity” (hyman, 2007, p. 36). the sudden transference from theological claims to the human condition and the stress of religion as a false explanation about the nature of reality is, for ledrew, the true essence of humanistic atheism. for marx (2002[1845]), nietzsche (2003[1895]), and freud (1989[1927]) – contemporaries of the so-called ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ – religion is an illusion that serves as an escape from the reality of suffering. for instance, moderate religions allow for the legitimization of implausible beliefs, like “the belief that by killing apostates you will be rewarded in heaven” (mcanulla, 2012). conclusively, ledrew maintained that new atheism is primarily, though not entirely, an extension of these two flights yet giving more prominence to the former. that is, though the atheistic movement is best understood as an extension of scientific atheism, the latter [humanistic atheism] still plays a role. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. pp. 1-14 5 biblical and social critique on religion and its incompatibility with science the historical origination of atheism and its divisions help and sustain the current atheism movement of the century. similarly, two major reasoning and bases of the profound critique of “new atheism” on religion could be established based on the aforesaid discussion, explicitly: a.) religion as the cause of serious social problems; and b.) incompatibility of religion on the success of natural science (emilsen, 2012; schulzke, 2013). d’holbach’s criticisms of religion during the period of enlightenment seem to ricochet from this categorization. the first critique could be grounded on echoing the influence of humanistic atheism whereas the second is a reflection of scientific atheism. before advancing into the next section, it is worth mentioning that atheists of the new age movement are an amalgam of former religious believers (e.g. michael shermer, and dan barker) and scholars raised within an atheist environment (e.g. peter singer, and sam harris). here, it can be seen that the critical intervention of new atheism against religions is both from insider and outsider perspectives. meanwhile, as maintained by ledrew (2012), new atheists are more likely a product of scientific atheism and apply the victorian dialogue on the eternal conflict between religion and science in pressing forward the proposition that religion is the haunting character of pre-modern times. this is in contrast with the modern age, which is characterized by science that religion and magic are precluded (segal, 2004). scientific advancement, evidence, and rationality are integral in the atheism movement that tends to overthrow and show irrationality of religious faith. atheists are very much critical and sensitive to the term faith; it is, according to them, a belief without evidence. science, and not religion, is the only way to truth. science is often apprehended as the only discipline that can offer a satisfactory explanation of the world which tends to override other worldviews (sieczkowski, 2018). moreover, the alleged irrationality of religion is always at the core of the writings and speeches of new atheists. for them, the spread of religious doctrines contradict with the known laws of science. there is a tendency of religion not to help us to better understand the world around us but ironically project a pagan universe where everything can be justified (kahambing, 2019c). some even presume that the “darkness of religious ignorance and superstition would fade away when exposed to the lights of reason” (casanova, 1994, p. 31; emphasis original). hence, such an atheistic movement is keen to supplant superstitions with science and reason. krauss (2012) argued that theologians are experts at nothing and when it comes to understanding the universe, religion, and theology are always irrelevant. christianity as a religion, for example, employs methods of interpretation that are controlled by its magisterium (kahambing, 2019g) and its sacraments like reconciliation have undergone crises (kahambing, 2020c). he went even further by declaring that theology does not have any contribution to human knowledge for the last 500 years. in godless, barker (2012), a former evangelical christian and now a leading atheist, equate every achievement we have to science whereas theology gives us hell. perhaps the underlying rationale for this confident statement of krauss and for other men of science could be inferred from the evidenced-based theory of evolution and modern discovery of physicists and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. pp. 1-14 6 cosmologists about the mysteries of the universe, which for many atheistscientists are proofs (at least in their so much inclination to science) of the nonexistence of god or the impossibility of the concept’s reality. additionally, most of the non-believers of divine providence are critical to the unwarranted acts and culture of god’s followers. within the history of religion and its mutineers, new atheism identifies two opposing traditions: religion is treated as universally harmful (e.g. promotion of genocidal suicide) and a countertradition of various skepticism was developed during the enlightenment’s outright attack on superstition and liberating phase of science (johnstone, 2018). atheists correlate religion as one of the prime sources of human suffering which opens the possibility of violence and promotes extremism (robbins & rodkey, 2010). congruently, a shared approach of new atheists is to recount and make some direct quotation from the bible or koran and claim that any holy book should not be the judge as to the only source of morality. instead, great literary writings, poetry, and philosophy could provide us better moral and ethical principles (mcanulla, 2012). the most reasonable driving force why atheists of the era questioned the credibility of religions was the 9/11 attack on world trade center (mcanulla, 2012), a tragedy done by isis, a muslim affiliated group, “who claimed to be acting in the name of islam” (khalil, 2017, p. 33). such atrocity of the isis put the entire islam and even judeo-christian religions on trial and turns the attention of the public domain into the purpose of the atheistic movement. hitchens (2004) regard 9/11 as the hinge event in history; however, for amis (2009) the incident was a day of de-enlightenment, an attack on morality, a massive geohistorical jolt, which will resound for years. the notorious reproach of new atheism is wholly disposed to challenge the structural system of religion, its power and influence from individual liberty to global issues. dennett (2006) made some caveat that those who administer religions, especially those who aestheticize them, “must be held similarly responsible for the harms produced by some of those whom they attract and provide with a cloak of respectability. an adaptation of fundamentalist religion would “return to the dark ages” (grayling, 2007, p. 39), an oratorical gambit used by atheists to warn the general public of such possibility. the new age movement of atheism as vanishing mediator religious identity and patterns have been systematically attacked by new atheism. unlike the reformation, the movement is not keen on rebuilding and reevaluation of religious structure and practice to gain its moral status again. rather the endeavor is the dissolution of religion, as a social institution in the society and replaced it with secular principles and ethics. retrospectively, some of the success of new atheism creates the reality of increasing numbers of nonreligious, persisting decline support for organized religion, and “the future prospects for the broader atheist, secular and humanist community” (kettell, 2013, p. 69). irreligious attack on the irrationality of religious beliefs is mainly grounded and seen as an omen in putting forward the chance of secularism in society (cimino & smith, 2011). from this framework, new atheism functions as a vanishing mediator between religious and a purely secular society. as was synthesized, a vanishing ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. pp. 1-14 7 mediator is a mediating catalyst between two concepts and vanishes or ceases when its task is complete (kahambing, 2019a). seeing secular society as a direct result of new atheism, the latter could be deduced as an active interference since it causes a great change and modification on the features of the mediating phase (religion). one of the propositions advanced in the development of the concept is that: “the vanishing mediator has an agency that is active, rather than passive, in permitting exchanges of exclusive terms” (p. 476). the act of vanishing, however, does not mean total annihilation (kahambing, 2019), since it is still a subsumed aspect of the new phase (secular society in this case). under the new phase and in locating the vanishing point, the mediator is not completely removed. meanwhile, borer (2010) envisages the place of new atheism movement in a secular society: if we lived in a secular world, their writings would be trite and unnecessary. that is, there would be no need for such writings or such a movement if most people were not religious in some way or another. there would be no need for their ferocious attacks on religion if there were no opposition. (p. 126). figure 1. basic schema of new atheism as vanishing mediator nevertheless, since secular society is not yet self-evident globally, one should not postulate instantly that the new age of atheism has already done its job and it vanishes from the picture. hence, the researcher is not committed to asserting that we are living already in a secular world. the study, however, is to approach this futuristically. the movement (or the transitory phase) is still active and should and must continue its atheistic intervention against the prevailing influence of religions if it is really into an absolute secularization (see figure 1). patent insignia of the active intercession of atheism movement are the upsurge in the number of atheistic organizations in the orient and occident regions of the world. this is then a start says slavoj žižek, an atheist-christian philosopher, while dismissing and doubting the efficacy of the present crusade of atheists. in his film the pervert’s guide to ideology, žižek (2012) states that the only way to be an atheist is to go through christianity. he even radically declared that christianity is much more atheist compared to the usual concept of atheism. following this argument, there is no need to vehemently claim that there is no god. if this is the case, then secular ideals have already been present for centuries and only need some nudge from atheists to squarely advance such a proposition. hypothetically, even christian believers begin to hold this revolutionary idea and yet the consistent involvement of atheists in the public domain is essential., the next juncture explores the futuristic possibility of the secular world and in religion/ religious society new age movement of atheism secular/ secularization of society ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. pp. 1-14 8 what instances do new atheism, as a vanishing mediator, would cease to exist and what are its traces under the new phase. thus, the inexorable question still remains: would religions really vanish? the future of atheism and religion in the next centuries the prominence of public atheism has risen throughout the globe as a consequence of the publication of best-selling atheistic books and the increased usage of the internet as a venue to connect to other nontheistic individuals (keysar & navarro-rivera, 2013). its providence among scholars incites the question: would atheism have profound effects and influence on the religious landscape not only within america and europe but throughout the world? or would that be easily forgotten for the next succeeding years? in other words, would the world become a secular place in the next centuries or become even more religious? the warranted answer to these questions cannot be given facilely due to the vast demographics of the human population. a great amount of time and different certified studies must be conducted for reliable bases. …any predictions regarding the mid-to long-term impact of the new atheism can only be of the most cautious sort. even its immediate impact is very difficult to quantify just yet. due to the complex and time-consuming nature of large-scale data collection, comprehensive statistical information may not appear for some time. (bullivant, 2010, pp. 120-1). but any profound effects are always linked to how strong the force of its cause. in the previous section, it was noted that new atheism is still an active mediator that we are not yet living in the irreligious world. it would be premature, at present, to give a full and deterministic account of the future of atheism and its effect on society. rather the direction of the inquiry should center on the instances and degree of how the movement would vanish from the scene as an indication of moving towards a secular community. borer (2010) noted that if everything around us is manifestly secular, it is only the time that we do not need any more atheism movement. thus, the question is: what characterizes a secular world to trace the vanishing point of the movement. in an atheistic and secular community, religion disappears from its familiar forms and is replaced with a socially constructed worldview founded on a nonsupernaturalistic and non-transcendental foundations (borer, 2010). such a worldview heralds the plausible downturn of religious power. according to mcanulla (2012), there are four dimensions of power that could be used to examine the approach of atheism on religion. first, religions experience an indefensible place within the public square. despite the separation of church and state, religions could still influence some government decision-making, particularly on controversial issues. second, in terms of political agenda, religion receive (though not in all cases and countries) some aids. a particular example is the allegation of new atheists on the extension of faith schools of the church of england (mcanulla, 2012). third, most religions practice indoctrination or preference-shaping like the idea of ‘life afterlife.’ dawkins (2006) and hitchens (2007) state that indoctrination is a form of child abuse that could affect later in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. pp. 1-14 9 life. lastly, religions regulate some behavior that is injurious to their subjects or believers: women are mostly assigned to a second-class status which disempowers the female gender. the disappearance and abolition of religious powers would certainly indicate the triumph and feat of atheists while their public struggles and campaign would start becoming unnecessary and be gone from the new phase of social order. a careful consideration based on statistical data is crucial to map out the demographic increase of atheists. based on the 2008 international social survey program (issp), there was a large increase of affiliated atheists for most of the forty participating countries during the study. the 2008 survey underlines the religious landscapes in several countries in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in the united states on september 11, 2001. the incident was condemned as a result of religious fundamentalism that marked and triggered the development of ‘evangelical atheism.’ heretofore, zuckerman (2007) estimated the demographic population of atheists between 500 and 700 million. he admitted that it is difficult to predict the future growth or decline of atheism. but while most people continue to have faith in deities in some societies, likewise, the non-belief in god is increasing (bruce, 2002 as cited in zuckerman, 2007). in general terms, ‘nonreligious affiliation’ (including atheists, agnostics, nones) is much higher which reflects the meteoritic growth of secularism from 3.2 million in 1900 to 918 million in 2000 (paul & zuckerman, 2007). the increase of atheists over the years is notably significant in predicting the future of secularism and the condition as to how the new age movement of atheism would vanish. unexpectedly, china constitutes a vast number of atheists worldwide notwithstanding that it is the heart of buddhism despite within the orient region which is commonly known for traditional and cultural practices. in the case of the united states, church membership and bible fundamentalists plunged from 70 to 65 percent and from 40 percent to 30 percent, respectively. contrariwise, bible skeptics rose from 10 to 20 percent (stenger, 2009). such growth is seemingly caused by aggressively atheistic books. at the same time, the current pattern on decreasing religiosity in europe will continue until 2050, unfortunately, it may not happen indeterminately (kaufmann, 2007). scholars predict that islam would match up the number of christianity before the end of the century. the advancement of science is likely to happen but the dominance of religions will prevail. the presumed rise of muslim believers is not because people will convert and change their religious affiliation rather it is the population (paul & zuckerman, 2007; kaufmann, 2007; stenger, 2009; ellis, hoskin, dutton, & nyborg, 2017) that causes exponential growth probably due to its polygamous relationships and highest reproduction rates. nevertheless, anyone should not be misled by this projection: it is only the share of unaffiliated individuals in the global population that will decrease but their population is expected to surge by more than 100 million. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. pp. 1-14 10 figure 2. projected change in the unaffiliated population, 2010-2050 (pew research center, 2015) the probable collapse of the power of religions and the growth of atheists are distinctly the major factors in determining the vanishing degree of atheism movement in the future. an inclination to scientific explanations, the acceptance of homosexual rights and promotion of most controversial issues of society such as abortion, divorce, and use of contraceptives would be some of the traces of new atheism movement in the new phase (or the total dissolution of religion) as defended and advocated by atheists intellectuals. apart from the futuristic account towards a secular society, another critical question is whether religions would disappear (absolutely). the researcher is not committed in declaring that new atheism’s principles and ethics would dominate the world for the next century. if it is irrational and outdated to believe in religion, then what is the survival value of this irrationality? also, the truth of theism (or the belief that there is a god) cannot be assessed by its sociocultural impact like terrorism and child abuse, which have been systematically questioned by atheists. both theists and atheists are appraised to grow statistically but differ only in proportion. henceforth, the complexity of predicting the future requires a lot of time and comprehensive study on various aspects of human life. conclusion this study took a futuristic account by treating the advent of new-age atheism as a vanishing mediator towards a secular world. throughout the paper, the new age of atheism was regarded as an active transitory phase that critically decry the religion as the cause of social suffering and positively advance science as the only way to the truth which originated during the 19th century. new atheism was presumed to cease to exist the moment religious power falls and atheists’ population consistently increases until the next centuries despite believers of major religions are also increasing. nevertheless, religions are not ascertained by the researcher to fully vanish as atheism becomes a strong social force or power. this account engenders resistance but also the probability that the new structure can dominantly, if not completely, accommodate its tenets in a future society. notes 1. kahambing (2019a) mentioned in the development of the framework that one of the recent adaptation of the vanishing mediator in literature is gottlieb’s (2017) exposition of the white lady in walter scott’s the monastery who, in her mediation, made some changes in the structure and then vanished. like a mirage, a ghost, or a spectre, the vanishing mediator connects, by extension, to spectrality studies or the modes of the spectral in literature. see, for example, kahambing (2019d; 2019e; 2020a; 2020b). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. pp. 1-14 11 2. this scientific footing relied on positivism, among others, and this has affected philosophy (regarded as ancilla theologia or ‘handmaid of theology’ in pre-modernity) as well. see kahambing, 2019f. references amis, m . 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(2007). atheism: contemporary numbers and patterns. in in m. matin (ed.), the cambridge companion to atheism (pp. 47-65). new york, usa: cambridge university press. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 122-130 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 122 the role of cultural hegemony in mariposa in maintaining gender color assumption nur nabilah fauziyah uin maulana malik ibrahim malang correspondence: nabilahziyah@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i1.2784 received 30 july 2020; accepted 15 september 2020 abstract the development of technology has a big contribution to creating cultural phenomena of global citizens. a movie as part of cultural products in this matter is not only considered as a cultural phenomenon, but it also can takes a significant role in shaping the culture itself. specifically, this paper was conducted to discover denotative and connotative meaning of pink and blue color of school uniform in mariposa and its relation of practicing hegemony in the context of gender color. in analyzing the meaning of color use in school uniform and the relation between pink and blue uniform with hegemony, the author uses barthes’ semiotic and gramsci’s hegemony as the theory. the data were collected from the images of movie scenes in mariposa when the characters wear their school uniform. after analyzing the data, this study found that (1) the use of pink and blue color as a color of school uniform in mariposa represents masculinity and feminity, (2) mariposa movie is considered as a medium in operating hegemony, and (3) the hegemony is represented through pink and blue color of the movie characters’ uniform. keywords: hegemony, gender color, semiotic introduction in this globalization era, a movie as a form of the cultural product takes a significant role in society. as it has become a part of society’s life, a movie might lead to massive impacts in the community. happer and philo (2013) assert that on a micro-level, the values of some movies have an impact on constructing individuals’ beliefs about reality and even creating social change at the macro level. these phenomena are convinced to be a form of urgency for individuals as consumers of cultural products to comprehend a particular message that the movies want to share. to go even further, the fact that the message of a movie can be presented explicitly and implicitly also brings the cultural studies to the concept of semiotic. briefly, semiotic is defined as a study of a sign that occurs in society (hodge & kress, 1988). this concept could be employed to examine the explicit and implicit meaning which are contained in a movie, costume, posters, etc. the study of semiotic has been widely discussed in the study of culture. there are several previous studies that have discussed this topic. to illustrate, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 122-130 123 okadigwe (2016) explains that a costume in a movie represents the socio-cultural attributes of the character in the movie. by using semiotic theory, this study reveals that the shape, motifs, and color of the costume have its own meaning. the research of semiotic which conducted by persada (2019) also reveals that the visual of gundala’s poster depicts a strong impression of the character in the movie. in addition, rifa (2018) shares the fact about denotative, connotative, and myth of starbuck logos. by relating to barthes’ semiotic theory, the research found out that the figure of starbuck logo symbolizes elegance and the meaning of denotative and connotative of starbuck logos have changed in every logo. all of these studies show that semiotic in cultural studies is assumed as a crucial tool in examining the meaning of cultural phenomena. by concerning the meaning of a sign, semiotics could generate a particular meaning that might be not realized on the surface. the significance of semiotics also lies in the fact that this study encourages the researchers and society generally to critically view a sign that occurs in reality. meanwhile, this study particularly attempts to examine the implicit meaning which is contained in the characters’ costume of mariposa movie. mariposa, a movie based on a novel best-seller, is a romance-drama movie which is directed by fajar bustomi who formerly directed the most-viewed local movies, dilan series. this movie has been anticipated by movie lovers in indonesia, especially teenagers. with great attention that mariposa has, i attempt to examine the cultural phenomena of the movie. by using barthes’ semiotic theory, this study was conducted to figure out denotative and connotative meaning that emerged from the characters’ school uniform. to enrich the analysis of this study, gramsci’s hegemony is also implemented in this research. hegemony theory is employed in order to discover the role of the movie as a cultural product in the context of gender color stereotype and its relation with the practice of hegemony in society. literature review semiotic the study of semiotic was originally introduced in 1916 by a linguist named ferdinand de saussure. saussure, as the father of modern linguistics, asserts that semiology has a huge impact to discover what denotes the signs and how the signs are determined (saussure, 1966, p.16). this theory emerges from saussure’s assumption about the importance of putting linguistic signs into a more general theory. in saussure’s semiology, language has a significant role in explicating the meaning of the signs because it has a big contribution in constructing a reality that happens in society (yakin & totu, 2014). there are two elements of language in semiology, signifier and signified. a signifier is conceptualized with a material form of language such as sound image, whilst signified is conceptualized with a mental concept of the sign. this concept emphasizes the relation between the signs especially in a language with the process of cognitive in the human mind. regardless of saussure’s focus on language in semiology, there are still many various kinds of signs in semiotics. to illustrate, sounds, images, and gestures might be used as the object in the analysis of semiotic (chandler, 2017, p.2). these examples signify that semiotics could be implemented to analyze a movie, poster, advertisement, etc. the scope of semiotics might not only focus on what we called as a sign, but it also can be employed to various objects that might ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 122-130 124 be used to represent something else. pierce (1965) in his theory of semiotic states that something can be categorized as a sign if someone interprets it as a sign, regardless of the fact that there is no intended meaning at the beginning. pierce’s theory also affirms that the concept of sign in semiotics doesn’t stand alone, but it is a part of the sign system. semiotics in this matter does not only focus on exposing the meaning of the sign, but further than that, it could be employed to understand how the meanings are constructed and how reality is conveyed through the signs (chandler, 2017, p.2). furthermore, semiotics also has a tight relation with the concept of communication. the fact that communication involves a symbol activity indicates that sign in semiotics is a part of communication. leeds-hurwitz (1993) specifically state that semiotics encompasses non-verbal communication. this statement emphasizes on the fact that the analysis of semiotic covers various types of communication. in specific, barthes (1968) distinguished the analysis of semiotic into two types, verbal and non-verbal communication. the verbal communication highlights on the component of the text such as the title on the poster as the main object of semiotic analysis, while the non-verbal communication focuses on the images that can be analyzed. these signs later will be divided into two levels of meaning, denotative and connotative. denotative meaning is defined as something that people see on the surface and it is not related to the context of culture, society, ideology (bouzida, 2014). on the other hand, connotative is defined as something which portrays the emotion and culture’s values of signs (fisk, 1992). hegemony the term hegemony roots from ancient greek hegemonia which is interpreted as a form of domination of one element to another in the social order. this concept is popularized by an italian named antonio gramsci who associated the concept of hegemony with the power of the state. according to gramsci, hegemony only can be exercised if there are cooperation, consent, and surveillance from every element of the state (barret, 1997, p.239). this definition affirms that the practice of soft power with a persuasive way in the context of hegemony has an important role in constructing a common interest of society (nye, 2003). in other words, the practice of hegemony in the state or in the global context requires great power from the ruler class to influence and create a consensus about norms and values in the society. the domination of the ruler class in hegemony context also denotes that there is a hierarchy in the social order. in fact, the concept of hegemony cannot be separated from marxism theory which focuses on the discrepancies of social class. generally, marxism theory concerns on the class domination by the bourgeois class over the proletariat class as an effect of capitalism in the aspect of political, economic, and ideological (jessop, 2004). the practice of domination that occurs in society is predicted by marxism to bring a class struggle and revolution class in the future. the revolution in this case can emerge from the proletariat class because of the emergence of awareness from the working class about the reality in society. responding to this matter, gramsci reveals that the bourgeois class still can prevent the revolution of the proletariat class by two means, coercion and consent (herrmann, 2017). coercion is interpreted as a power that is exercised by ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 122-130 125 applying violence, while consent is defined as a power which practiced by creating a consensus among the bourgeois and the proletariat classes. maintaining the power of the state with a consent way which defined as hegemony is known to have different sources in each era. to illustrate, a great population is considered as the main source of hegemony in the 17th and 18th centuries because of its big impact on agricultural economic (yilmaz, 2010). then, in the middle of the 20th century, the source of hegemony changed into the military force. these facts show that the source of hegemony might change by considering the situation of the society at that time. meanwhile, in this globalization era, technology is considered as the main source of hegemony. with the development of technology in this era, hegemony could be implemented in many aspects of society, such as political, social, economic, and culture. specifically, culture and its products have a big contribution in exercising hegemony. cultural products such as magazines, newspapers, film, music, and social media have a significant role in influencing hegemonic discourse due to the fact that society will always consume cultural products. this fact also indicates that a cultural product might have an impact on persuading society’s perception of reality and preserving the hegemony of the dominant group. gender color with a complex identity of individuals, the possibility of the emergence of social stereotyping is inevitable. in fact, there are many stereotypes that flourish in society currently. one of the examples of social stereotyping which still exists and develops is a gender stereotype. a gender stereotype is generally illustrated with an assumption and belief about how a certain gender must think and behaves in their community. this stereotype might appear at the individual level due to cognitive reasons. fiske and neuberg (1990) explain that in the aspect of social psychological, individuals tend to do a classification about their interlocutors. it indicates that the possibility of social stereotyping might already exist in everyone. further, gender stereotypes might also come to the community because of cultural reasons. in a wider context of society, the cultural background of someone is considered to be tremendously effective in influencing gender stereotypes. this stereotype commonly associates a certain object or behavior with the representation of masculinity and femininity (cunningham, 2011). specifically, one of the notable examples of gender stereotype emerges from gender color. gender color, for example in pink color, frequently be related to a certain gender because of many factors. sanad (2018) asserts that the development of technology, culture, and economy has a big contribution to governing the color of gender in society. by relating to the history of color preferences, it is found that a certain color at the beginning doesn’t represent a certain identity such as gender, but it evolves across the time due to various events that occur in society. in the prehistoric period, the evidence of gender color especially in the industry of clothes is not found in the community, but it starts to develop in the medieval period. in the medieval period which characterized by renaissance events in europe, gage (1978) mentions that men tend to wear blue and yellow colors for their clothes, while women tend to wear vermilion red color. this phenomenon arises along with the development of science and technology in europe and shows ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 122-130 126 that there is a tight relation about what happens in society with the stereotype of gender color. the stereotype of gender color also progressively develops at the beginning of the 20th century. there are various events which occurred at that time and world war is one of the major factors which contributes to constructing gender color assumption. the fact that the aspect of social, political, and economic experienced significant changes in society also indicates that world war could influence the fashion preferences of consumers, including color preferences. this assumption is reinforced by the fact that nazi germany with its big power at that time emphasized that a pink color is a form of femininity. in addition, the stereotype of gender color might also be recognized as a result of hegemony. uncu (2018) reveals that gender color, for example in pink color for girls and blue color for boys, originally introduces by westerners and it was also expanded around the world by western countries with their big influence in social and economic circumstance. in this case, by glorifying their success in the industrial revolution, western countries were able to construct society’s perception of gender color especially in the fashion industry. method this paper is conducted by using descriptive qualitative research as the design in order to comprehensively describe denotative and connotative meaning of color use in mariposa’s school uniform and the role of pink and blue color of school uniform in exercising hegemony in the context of gender color. this study positions mariposa movie as the primer data source and other studies about hegemony, semiotic, and gender color as the secondary data source. the images from mariposa movie scenes that represent the pink and blue color of school uniforms are recognized as the data of the research. in the process of collecting the data, this research uses a documentation and observation technique. the data were collected by observing the movie in order to find denotative, connotative, and the hegemony that the movie wants to present from the characters’ school uniform. specifically, the images of the movie scene are selected by connected the images with gramsci’s and barthes’ theory in the context of gender color. after collecting the data, then the data are analyzed by implementing barthes’ semiotic and gramsci’s hegemony theory and it is written with a descriptive analysis form. findings and discussion the concept of wearing uniform in school has already been adapting by many schools over the world. many countries, especially in asia, require their students for wearing uniform in school. this fact denotes that the concept of wearing uniform in school is considered as an essential thing for society. to go even further, the use of uniform in a complex society is even depicted as a form of identity of individuals. as a form of their identity, individuals tend to believe that their uniform is a representation of their existence in the group. specifically, wearing uniform at school might lead the students to a certain perspective about how they must view themselves and others (dussel, 2001). all of these facts indicate that there is intended meanings that someone wants to show to others while wearing uniform. in this matter, wearing a uniform can be interpreted as a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 122-130 127 form of the group's existence, a symbol of the group, or even as an expression of equality. semiotic analysis of school uniform in mariposa in a semiotic dimension, the color might perform as a sign of a certain object. caivano (1998) explains that color might have a function to substitute a physical entity and have a relation to the aspect of the psychological and culture of individuals. specifically, the choice of pink and blue color in the school uniform of mariposa’s characters also can be interpreted with a semiotic perspective. in this case, the pink and blue color of the uniform denotes the variation of school uniform based on their gender the visual sign of pink color is seen to be used in order to show that the uniform represents female students, while the blue color is implemented to represent male students. by interpreting the colors in the level of denotation meaning, it is known that the use of pink and blue color in the school uniform of the movie’s characters might be only seen as an ordinary thing and it doesn’t encompass a certain meaning. in contrast with the previous interpretation, the visual sign of pink and blue color in mariposa’s school uniform can evoke a certain meaning in the level of connotation. by relating it to the socio-cultural phenomena in society, pink and blue color are found to have a certain meaning. in specific, pink color is interpreted with a form of playful and sensitivity, while blue color is interpreted with a form of responsibility and loyalty (cerrato, 2012). this interpretation is generated by society with various factors especially in the context of culture. frassanito (2008) mentions that funny face movie as one of the cultural products contributes to preserving the stereotype of colors in community. at this point, pink color is even associated with the concept of femininity, while the blue color is associated with the concept of masculinity. these facts show that the concept of pink and blue color in mariposa’s school uniform represents masculinity and femininity. ‘mariposa’ as a medium in operating hegemony in indonesia context, the uniform was firstly introduced during the japanese occupation. at that time, all schools were required to have a uniform in order to make the students be more easily directed and regulated (moser, 2008). based on this fact, it can be seen that there is a power exercising by the japanese governor when the uniform was first worn in indonesia. the power exercising in this matter is shown by the fact that the japanese used their soft power in creating the rules about the obligation of wearing a uniform in school. the fact that the use of uniform was massively implemented by all of the students in indonesia also indicates that there is a connection between power exercising and school uniform in the history of indonesia education. further, in the era of the massive use of technology, practicing hegemony also be more emphasized on the concept of cultural hegemony. one of the media that can be used in preserving hegemony is a movie. a movie as a product of culture has become an inseparable part of the community. it is confirmed by the fact that the number of cinema viewers already reached 50 million viewers in 2019. meanwhile, a movie is also assumed to have a great impact on creating and preserving hegemony due to the fact that movies as a cultural product can ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 122-130 128 influence society’s perception of reality. the fact that there are many viewers of the movies which assume that the movie scenes portray the issue in reality also indicates the importance of movie in maintaining the domination of a particular culture. this domination later can be used as a tool to construct the ideology in society. as was previously stated, the growth of cinema viewers in indonesia signifies that indonesia’s movie industry has a pivotal role in constructing or reconstructing social order. one of the movies that might have a great impact on society is a movie with the title mariposa. as a movie which based on popular wattpad and novel best-seller, mariposa is predicted to be one of box office movies in 2020. relating to this matter, it is found that mariposa in the context of cultural studies can be connected to the concept of hegemony. in gramsci’s theory of hegemony, it is mentioned that the domination of one group over the others might be constructed by taking the consent of the subordinate groups. in this case, mariposa is classified as one of the media in operating hegemony by creating a particular perception of gender color. in fact, this movie has a significant role in glorifying the concept of color classification based on gender which has a relation with the culture of western countries as the dominant group in the movie industry. the use of pink and blue color as a representation of gender color in ‘mariposa’ and its relation with hegemony in mariposa movie which frequently sets in school, the director particularly illustrates the characters by wearing a uniform in school. the characters’ uniforms are divided into two colors, pink and blue. on the surface, the concept of uniform by wearing pink and blue color is understood as a common thing. however, if it is connected to the concept of gender color, the uniform will be not considered as a neutral thing again. in the cultural context, the description of pink color as a girl uniform and blue as a boy uniform can be interpreted as one of the examples of exercising hegemony. the fact that the concept of gender color as a common stereotype was popularized by the dominant groups who have power in persuading society in the global context to consent with the ideology also indicates that there is a practice of hegemony in the movie. in this matter, western countries that are part of the industrial revolution have a great impact on persuading others to assume pink color as a representation of girl and blue color as a representation of boy. additionally, the fact that mariposa movie still implements the concept of pink and blue color as a representation of gender color also indicates that the concept of gender color is still relevant until this modern era. in this era, a cultural ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 122-130 129 product such as movies certainly has a big effect on creating society’s assumptions about reality. in the context of hegemony, mariposa movie is known to have a pivotal role in persuading society about the fact that the boy must be represented with blue color as a form of masculinity and girl must be represented with pink color as a form of femininity. therefore, mariposa can be categorized as the medium in operating hegemony of western countries and it might have a significant role to reinforce the concept of pink as a girl color and blue as a boy color on global citizens. conclusion mariposa as one of the popular movies in indonesia is not only considered as an entertaining movie in the study of culture. in fact, the visual sign of the movie is discovered to be the representation of masculinity and femininity. the classification of color based on the gender in mariposa also indicates that there is a relation between mariposa movie with the context of hegemony. in this case, pink and blue color in uniform that is presented in the movie is considered as one of the examples of hegemony that western countries have. the movie has a role in glorifying the concept of gender color that western countries bring, and the 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(2010). state, power, and hegemony. international journal of business and social science, 1(3). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 151-162 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 151 the multiple roles of heaney’s landscapes: a mirror of life and its dilemma david c. e. tneh tunku abdul rahman university, malaysia tnehce@utar.edu.my doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010202 received 25 november 2017; revised 2 dec 2017; accepted 19 february 2018 abstract this paper discusses the timeless appeal of the poetry of seamus heaney, the poet laureate of ireland and nobel prize winner for literature (1995). this paper traces the early developments of heaney’s poetry and highlights how the creative genre offers a dialogic platform (even in the 21st century) for national and political issues. heaney’s poetry transcends geographical boundaries with its evocative imagery and fluidity of time and space that is alluring, enigmatic, and striking. this paper will then discuss how multiple roles of heaney’s metaphorical landscapes from his five collections of poetry (from 1966 to 1979) namely death of a naturalist, door into the dark, wintering out, north, and fieldwork are not merely poems about the nature, the environment, and ireland but are instruments about his socio-economic/political views concerning idyllic irish rural life, memories, nationalism, sectarian violence, colonial british rule, and his catholic faith. the discussion of his selected poetry offers a deep intimate insight of heaney’s earlier poetry that mirrors irish life and its struggles with nationhood. keywords: seamus heaney, poetry, nationalism, identity, politics introduction seamus heaney was born on 13th april 1939 in the townland of mossbawn, county derry, northern ireland (morrison, 1982, p.13) the son of a catholic farmer and cattle dealer, heaney attended a local primary school in anahorish and later he won scholarships to st. columb’s college, derry (19511957) and from there he completed his tertiary education at queen’s university belfast (1957-1961) achieving a first-class honours in english language and literature. he was active in a local dramatic society and published several poems in the university’s undergraduate literary magazine. his later years in academia were spent teaching at st. thomas’s secondary school, belfast, st. joseph’s college, queen’s university and later as a guest lecturer at university of california in 1971. his more popular works include death of a naturalist (1966), door into the dark (1969). wintering out (1972), north (1975), and field work (1979). heaney is a foreign member of the american academy of arts and letters and was professor of poetry at oxford university (1989-1994). in three decades of writing poetry, he has won numerous literary awards, the most notable being the nobel prize in literature award in 1995. mailto:tnehce@utar.edu.m� ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 151-162 152 seamus heaney, being an irish writer from northern ireland, now still under british rule, distinguishes himself as the second greatest writer from ireland after william butler yeats (1865-1939). coming from turbulent northern ireland where the current political situation is still unresolved between the ira and the british government, heaney writes in a multiplicity of themes that are relevant to his beloved homeland and to his inner self. this paper will discuss his earlier works that cover multiple landscapes of the irish countryside to its lifestyle, from rural to urban and the transforming and evolving scenery drifts along various concerns ranging from his childhood memories in county derry farm to wider social and political aspects as well. what is equally imperative in this paper is how heaney utilizes poetry as a quest to understand and discover a historical framework to analyse the current political turmoil and this paper will also demonstrate heaney’s use of metaphorical landscapes (such as the landscapes of nature and the human mind) as a bridge to understand the social and political issues that affect ireland. being ireland’s most celebrated poet, blake morrison (1982) comments that one of heaney’s “ambivalence concerns his response to the recent history of northern ireland, the crisis of which has placed poets under the compulsion to respond” (p.15). in this, heaney finds himself torn between what elmer andrews comments as “…the sectarian crossfire with fellow catholics pressuring him to write political verse and liberal critics congratulating him on not taking sides” (andrews, 1988, p.1). heaney’s earlier poetry is often mired with “a sense of deep loss and even moral guilt” (“this is not a spade: the poetry of seamus heaney,” 2007). being a nationalist, heaney found it ironic to be using the language of the colonizers to highlight the deep seated issues that trouble the inner psyche of the irish folk but being a public poet, heaney realizes that the role of language should have its importance to serve the community. perhaps this is what heaney meant when he says in his prose work, preoccupations. “art has a religious, a binding force, for the artist. language is the poet’s faith of his fathers and in order to go his own way and to do his proper work in an agnostic time, he has to bring that faith to the point of arrogance and triumphism” (heaney, 1980). method as a literary paper, the qualitative approach is utilized with textual analysis and close reading is the method employed in understanding the poetry of seamus heaney. this paper discusses selected poetry from seamus heaney’s earlier collection such as death of a naturalist, door into the dark, wintering out, north, and fieldwork. comparison is made between the poems and a thematic approach is undertaken to analyse the poems to the overarching concerns of the paper. this approach is common in literary analysis as the text(s) is/are the central focus of the discussion. for a more comprehensive understanding, comparisons with other literary works will be done to widen the analytical scope of the analysis. findings and discussion heaney’s first two volumes of collected poetry death of a naturalist and door into the dark offer us a glimpse of the landscapes of irish rural life. the landscapes in heaney’s poetry portray an outlet for his imaginative mind to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 151-162 153 explore the boundaries inaccessible by the explorations of the human self. it is through the landscapes of the mind that he conjures up images of the past that speaks well of historical occasions as well as its associations with the future. in heaney’s first collection “death of a naturalist” the landscape of nature also returns to his childhood experience. the poem begins with a scenic description of a flax-dam being populated with new life in the lines: the force of nature unleashing its fury on the persona encapsulates heaney’s portrayal of the natural landscapes from its stage of innocence to its wrathful burst of energy and violence. then one hot day when the fields were rank with cowdung in the grass the angry frogs invaded the flax-dam; i ducked through hedges to a coarse croaking that i had not heard before. the air was thick with bass chorus. right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked on sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. some hopped: the slap and plop were obscene threats. some sat poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting. this sudden physical encroachment by the frogs shows the demystifying of nature as a benign landscape that many thought it to be. this wild play of the imagination demonstrates heaney’s tapping into the vivid universe of his childhood world of experience, creating the rituals of rural life that project and gratifies our tactile senses to the sounds of nature. by the projection of past images too, is heaney’s way for an answer for the future, elmer andrews comments “heaney’s preoccupation with his own childhood is indicative of a pietism which looks for an inviolate origin, a pure source. in childhood, the poet may recognize the secret moments of his deepest self. the response of the child are the primary movements of his humanity, and finds and enlarges his freedom” (andrews, 1988, p.8). in the poem “follower”, heaney (1980) describes his father ploughing the fields, while he is the follower that cannot catch up with the energy sapping activity so much so that he “stumbled in his hob-nailed wake/ fell sometimes on the polished sod;/ sometimes he rode me on his back/ dipping and rising to his plod” (p.18). thus in this poem, the rural farming landscape provides heaney all year the flax-dam festered in the heart of the townland; green and heavy-headed flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. there were dragonflies, spotted butterflies, but best of all was the warm stick slobber of frogspawn that grew like clotted water in the shade of the banks. (heaney, 1988, p.5) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 151-162 154 with a scenario of his doubts and “self-consciousness about the relationship between ‘roots and reading’, the live and the learned” (andrews, 1988, p.8). it is here too that heaney searches for answers to his roots; the ploughing of the land symbolizes his deep search for his identity, a truly difficult task when heaney was young but eventually he bridges this with the symbiosis between the landscape and the poet, by means of his poetry that reconciles the tension. heaney does this by studying the works of patrick kavanagh whose dilemma seems to parallel to heaney’s, especially the conflict between the poet and life on the land longing for “the city of kings/ where art, music and letters were the real things” (heaney, 1980, p.137). heaney thus learns from kavangh the “management of ironic points-of -vantage on his material promoted the expression of more subtle, complex feelings about the relationship between the poet and place” (andrews, 1988, p.9). thus in “death of a naturalist”, heaney (1988) writes of the simplicity of irish rural life that soon is to be linked with larger issues at hand. from the spectrum of colours in “blackberry-picking” (p.7): late august, given heavy rain and sun for a full week, the blackberries would ripen. at first, just one, a glossy purple clot among others, red, green, hard as knot. to the vivid and descriptive “churning day” (p.8) where finally gold flecks began to dance. they poured hot water then, sterilized a birchwood bowl and little corrugated butter spades. their short stroke quickened, suddenly a yellow curd was weighting the churned-up white, heavy and rich, coagulated sunlight…” heaney’s poetry reaffirms the old way of irish life against a modern world of changing values and the fast – paced rhythm of it that threatens the old way of living. heaney combines the landscapes of nature and the molding of it in his imagination to eventually enter the embracing arms of solitude, peace and tranquility or in the words of elmer andrews, “desire to enter into communication with mystery-is expressive of his notion of art as divination and revelation” (andrews, 1988, p.27). thus, the landscape panorama that heaney frames in his first collection of poetry gives us a flawless image of life fully equipped with its beauty, serenity as well as its rustic charm. but there is more to this than just picturesque poetry. one must consume the poetry of heaney with its entire dynamics as well. andrews comments that it is only when we attend to the details of heaney’s recreation of the rural world that we find implications of a larger social and moral order, an inheritance for which the poet feels incapacitated by his own sensibility. there is a notion of discontinuity, a feeling of loss, a sense of guilt, an apprehension of violence as ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 151-162 155 well as of beauty, lying deep in things. these feelings constitute in germinal form the basic postures and dynamics underlying heaney’s entire poetic oeuvre (andrews, 1988, p.23). in heaney’s second collection, “door into the dark”; we are thrusted into the imaginative stores of his mind in near darkness. the title itself comes from the poem entitled “the forge” which describes metaphorically a place where ideas of the imaginative creation is conceived and produced by force by the blacksmith. the darkness is a place of reverence for heaney because it’s from the darkness itself comes forth the flames of the forge that bends and twists the shapeless ideas of the mind into the sharpest creation. the blacksmith’s tool is the anvil that is used to create the fruits of his labors. heaney describes it powerfully in the lines, the anvil must be somewhere in the centre horned as a unicorn, at one end square, set there immoveable: an altar where he expends himself in shape and music (heaney, 1988, p.20) similarly in “the thatcher”, heaney (1988) associates it with another power of creation, that is the weaving and transformation of nature’s raw materials into creations of a bygone era, this speaks well of his intention to bring forth into light the traditional craftsmanship of an ancient era. the “thatcher” is described as having “a midas touch” (p.21). couchant for days on sods above the rafters he shaved and flushed the butts, stitching all together into a sloped honey comb, stubble pitch, and left them gaping at his midas touch. this power of creation is similar to that of the blacksmith and heaney unravels this too, in the creative force of the ancient landscapes of ireland known for its myths and lore. in the poem “bogland” (heaney, 1988. p.41) 19 this damp, murky and unscenic landscape fascinates heaney, “heaney’s poetic realm he identifies it in ‘bogland’, is not the wide-ranging expansive prairie: it is vertical rather than horizontal, lying in the depths of personal and communal experience” (andrews, 1988, p.34). heaney perceives the bog land in the poem as a representation and expression of the irish culture. it is also a landscape that heaney tries to expound further upon the roots of ireland by unraveling and shedding the layers upon layers of mystery that surrounds his poem. this is well expressed in the lines: melting and opening underfoot, missing its last defination by millions of years. they never dig coal here, only the waterlogged trunks of great firs, soft as pulp. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 151-162 156 our pioneers keep striking inwards and downwards, every layer they strip seems camped on before. the bogholes might be atlantic seepage the wet centre is bottomless. (heaney, 1988, p.41). the bog pits being a part of the landscape of ireland for so long never could reveal much of the country’s origin. even though relics of the old and fossils from a pre-christian era were uncovered from the bogs, an excavation of the entire area never could reveal much of ireland. its deep centre acts as a black hole that is timeless and never ending. elmer andrews comments that: there is, in heaney’s poetry, sense of ireland as an old dark, the secret depths, the cultural past, the pioneer in search of origins runs the risk of getting lost in mists and swamps…beyond all possibility of renewal, lies the formless, primeval level of history and consciousness-the mysterious source of life (andrews, 1988, p.35). heaney often writes of the past so that he can write on the future, therefore the poet traces his love of poetry back to his childhood days. similarly he does this for his love for nature too. from the first two collections, heaney gradually extends the explorations of his self to the explorations of the landscape and its relation to the communal past. the landscape is sacramental for heaney as he uses it once again in his third collection of poems, “wintering out” (1972). morrison says, “what ‘wintering out’ does is to explore the deeper structures of present hostilities, the way in which the divisions of the protestant and catholic communities are embedded in the language and topography…he continues to draw from a rich store of personal memory, but also opens up much wider perspectives of history” (morrison, 1982, p.39) in heaney’s selected prose, “preoccupations”, he writes of the physical land that assumes various roles including implicit social and historical dimensions embedded in it. in relation to this, “wintering out” portrays heaney’s concerns of the political crisis in ireland in the 1970’s as well as heaney’s obsession with the peat bog that revels the past and the future events of ireland all together. heaney’s poetry in “wintering out” gives us the impression that he does not leave the charm of the irish world but instead moves deeper into the heart of his irish roots by naming certain places of his youth. names like “derrygarve”, “anahorish”, combines the roots of the natural gaelic languages with the native tradition and topography of the irish countryside to portray the sweeping river, an image of the anglo-irish dialect that sweeps across the “shiny grass and darkened cobbles” (heaney, 1988, p.47) the poem “broagh” (which means riverbank) is another example of what john wilson foster says as “another small hymn to a londonderry place—name which also rehearses in sound the landscape it labels” (foster, 1995, p.34) the rain in the poem: ended almost suddenly, like that last ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 151-162 157 gh the strangers found difficult to manage. (heaney, 1988, p.55) the irish place-names, pronunciations and its identity with the land are heaney’s way of reviving the importance of the anglo-irish dialect from being swamped by the anglo-saxon language and tradition. not only does heaney searches for the ‘word’, the poem “toome” gives light into heaney’s search for the core of his homeland. my mouth hold round the soft blastings, toome, toome, as under the dislodged slab of the tongue i push into a souterrain prospecting what new in a hundred centuries loam, flints, musket-balls, fragmented ware, torcs and fish-bones till i am sleeved in alluvial mud that shelves suddenly under bogwater and tributaries, and elvers tail my hair. (heaney, 1988, p.54) heaney imagines the way the word “toome” is pronounced, by means of moving ones lips forward and lifting the tongue. by means of this “soft blastings”, he finds “loam, flints, musket-balls, fragmented ware, torcs and fish-bones…” from the “souterrain”. morrison (1982) describes the word as “underground chambers scattered in there thousands about ireland, often associated with ancient burial mounds and occasionally used to store away smuggled goods and arms” (p.44). heaney’s description of the “alluvial mud” describes this successful act of reaching his “primeval source of his selfhood and race…he has done so not by leaving his native ground but by looking into it more deeply; he chooses excavation rather than exile” (morrison, 1982, p.44). “the tollund man” meanwhile is another of heaney’s bog poems that well illustrates his passion for the irish political martyrdom as he connects the images of bodies in danish bogs dating to the iron age to the real political situation in ireland. “the dead bodies are sacrificial victims to the mother goddess, nerthus, the goddess of the ground, who requires new bridegroom each winter to bed with her in her sacred place in the bog, to ensure renewal and spring fertility” (andrews, 1988, p.64). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 151-162 158 heaney’s portrayal of the “tollund man”, found in the depths of the bog is an image of renewal and hope. the sacrifices committed in the past are similar to the sacrifices done by his countrymen against the rule of the british. therefore, it provides an understanding to the violence that continues in present day ireland. the modern day violence of ireland is a continuum from the past; the blood shed is for the benefit of mother ireland. heaney also treats the poem as a kind of devotion, i could risk blasphemy, consecrate the cauldron bog our holy ground and pray him to make germinate the scattered, ambushed flesh of laborers, stockinged corpses laid out in the farmyards. (heaney, 1988, p.62-63) heaney perceives the man to be a “possible intercessor to which the poet would pray to redeem his slaughtered countrymen” (andrews, 1988, p.64) heaney sees the motivation that drove the sacrifices to be committed in the past to be similar to the irish cause and their fight for independence. the “tollund man” is an ancestor to the modern day irish political martyr and heaney pictures the persona going to the aarhus museum where the body is kept, to offer up to his prayers perhaps for a revelation or an answer to ireland’s political crisis. heaney’s next collection “north” is considered as one of his darkest collections of poetry. while in “wintering out”, heaney tries to find a metaphor for his beloved ireland, “north” is a detailed development of “setting ancient situations, perceived with freshness and immediacy and with a sensitivity to their disturbing and awe-inspiring mystery, against contemporary situations” (andrews, 1988, p.84). while heaney’s other collection offer some form of hope and sustenance, “north” is a collection that speaks well of the darkest moods that prevail in heaney’s mind. nevertheless, heaney took a great leap of faith in his fourth collection, offering us no longer rustic and peaceful descriptive poems but his adamant and personal views that critics had argued, long overdue. robert f. garratt (1995) speaks of the “north” collection as framing “contemporary events within a larger historical narrative of ancient celtic and norse lore, metaphorically connecting the sectarian killings in northern ireland to the ritualized human sacrifice of pre-christian jutland. here was the book that reviews felt were long overdue: an irish writer confronting and interpreting the social and political issues of his day” (p.22). this fourth collection is vital to the development and complexities of his other collections. there is a growth of the landscape and the mind. heaney’s references to the iron age society, viking myths and legends, the rituals of the catholic and celtic including other ancient saga’s as well, provides him with sources for his poetic debate without being accused of “partisanship”. therefore by doing so, heaney is careful that should his poetry encompass politics, he is careful that it should not serve them. he writes to clarify his expression, his ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 151-162 159 feelings and to give light to his search but definitely not to instil hatred in others. his preoccupations with the bogland are still obvious in “north” and this can be seen in the lines of “the graubelle man”. hung in the scales with beauty and atrocity: with the dying gaul too strictly compassed on his shield, with the actual weight of each hooded victim, slashed and dumped. (heaney, 1988, p.111) the bog “transforms and preserves what it contains”, (shapiro, 1995, p.22) which is naturally true as in many archeological findings, near perfect bodies or artefacts that preserves the memories of the past, it even projects the violence of ancient killings long before the existence of a country named ireland. in the poem “kinship”, the violence of the past is mingled with sexual overtones as the bog is seen to be a place of dark mystery, exuviating an almost sexual kind of love. the bog is described as an “insatiable bride/ sword swallower, casket, midden,/ floe of history” (heaney, 1988, p.116) heaney now ventures in and out of his bog stronghold with the images of human sexuality and violence mingles together. the poem “punishment” meanwhile sees the poet identifying with an ancient body of a female found in a bog. obviously murdered, his sorrow turns to guilt in the following lines, i who have stood dumb when your betraying sisters, cauled in tar wept by the railings, who would connive in civilized outrage yet understnd the exact and tribal, intimate revenge. (heaney, 1988, p. 112) the person then is dumbstruck as he watches her “betraying sisters” being shaved, tarred and tied to the railings in belfast by the ira s a punishment for dating british soldiers. he does nothing but finds himself torn between the feelings of approval and outrage. stallworthy (1995) comments “his indictment is directed less against the betraying sisters than against the onlooker-himself-who would connive with those who inflict this punishment, whilst admitting to contradictory feeling of ‘civilized’ outrage and ‘tribal’ satisfaction” (p.181). however we simply must not judge heaney as a brute that agrees with this kind of political violence because his expression is a poetic response or as bernard o’ donoghue (1994) puts it “…the writer who has always declared the wish to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 151-162 160 represent the writing self as n example of the experiencing observer. so the judgment in he poem is not a moral or political one; it is an artistic one” (p.74). in “funeral rites”, heaney portrays a catholic burial and links it to the burial of gunnar, a viking hero and shows a “sadly repetitious and minimal ceremonies occasioned by ‘each neighborly murder’ in the northern ireland of the mid-1970’s” (hildebidle, 1995, p. 40). the poem is his method of linking the present with the past, of viking heroism and present day ireland. the death of the viking is seen to be a beautiful moment. men said that he was chanting verses about honour and that four lights burned in corners of the chamber: which opened then , as he turned with joyful face to look at the moon (heaney, 1988, p.95). what lies beneath this serenity is in fact the act of murder. though the poem is edifying, heaney is not too optimistic about the hopes of amity. “north” remains heaney’s response to the demands that public poet should have moral and social obligations as well in his writing. he has bowed to the pressures to write about the ‘troubles’ and he has finally delivered. heaney’s next collection entitled “field work”(1979) is written when he spent 4 years in the republic in an area called glanmore. his work represents a scaling down of his vision, no longer is he writing about the unlimited boundaries of the north, instead “field work” is concentrated on a smaller scope, the field, rather than the expansive landscapes of the mind and soul. his work is focused upon the community and its members. this collection mourns the death of his friends and contains six elegies though he has moved south, the ulster sentiments in him is predominantly strong. heaney has brought with him south his poetic voice and new meaning in his preoccupations and style. the first poem “oysters” opens with a feast as the poet and his friends are dining on oysters by the seaside. the oyster suddenly brings about some political and historical conscience in the poet. over the alps, packed deep in hay and snow, the romans hauled their oysters south to rome: i saw damp panniers disgorge the frond-lipped, brine-stung glut of privilege (heaney, 1988, p.139). the poet is taken aback for a while and for once thinks of himself like the plundering romans who once “split”, violated”, “ripped and shucked and scattered” the precious shellfish a long time ago. to proceed would be an act of historical plunder all over again but then he continues to gorge himself deliberately saying “and was angry that my trust could not repose/ in the poetry ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 151-162 161 of freedom/ leaning in from sea”. the poet decides that his fortitude shall not be dogged by historical events anymore instead he shall now rely on his poetic imagination. no longer will his “own sexual and political anxieties keep him from resting in the material happiness of the day;”(vendler, 1995, p. 48) but instead he relies on the searching’s of his mind. “at the water’s edge” describes a scene at newry in 1972; sometime after british paratroopers shot 13 civil right marchers that henceforth became known as bloody sunday. the place is described as a spiritual waste land. the holy place was deserted, “carved monastic heads/ were crumbling like bread on water”, even the pagan statues are falling apart such as “on boa the god-eyed” and the basin that held holy water once now contains rainwater. the poet therefore looks up at the sky, hoping for a sign from god but what is prominent is “the thick rotations / of an army helicopter patrolling” (heaney, 1988, p.142). the poet longs for spiritual sustenance, hoping for an outlet for his expression but then what comes forth is political sustenance from the incidents of that fateful bloody sunday. in “casualty”, heaney writes of an acquaintance that was killed by a bomb blast when he defied the curfew on the neighborhood imposed by the ira. heaney uses this poem then to explore his relationships with “the tribe” that finally ends with the following lines. as you find a rhythm working you, slow mile by mile, into your proper haunt somewhere, well out, beyond… dawnsniffing revenant plodder through midnight rain, question me again (heaney, 1988, p.150). heaney feels that his poetic vocation had occasionally alienated him from his people and his friend who was killed appears again and again as a ghost that questions him repeatedly his ways defying “the tribe”. heaney does not answer but then what appears is “the primary of mysterious, elemental forces, carrying him beyond the time---bound politics of the tribe” (andrews, 1988, p.125). conclusion heaney thus uses his power of the language to transgress the constraints of “the tribe”. he asserts his own independence in the end and celebrates it as a kind of “artistic activity” (morrison, 1982, p.78). heaney rejects some of the old values of the past and in “field work” reasserts himself in the quest for his own identity and meaning. in his journey for poetic development, he reaches a completion of that journey that began in 1966. his search for the answer in the irish landscape is found in his poetry, a platform of political attitudes that mirror the desperateness of a situation that needs to be addressed. heaney’s poems are for him the main medium of which he works his art; that is sowed his ingenuity and the belief of the struggle to protect his believes, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 1, no. 2, march 2018, pp. 151-162 162 and also “to speak out for injustice.” (“violence in seamus heaney’s poetry,” 2017). poetry, according to heaney should have its own “vindicating force” and an authority of its own. this is what heaney (1986, p. 93) meant in his critical writing “the government of the tongue”, that a poem has a biological right to exist and the poet is therefore “credited with a power to open unexpected communications between our nature and the nature of the reality we inhabit.” references andrews, e. (1988). the poetry of seamus heaney. london: macmillian press. buttel, r. (1975). seamus heaney. london: associated uni press. foster, j.w. (1995). the poetry of seamus heaney (on wintering out). critical essays on seamus heaney. new york: g.k. hall & co. garratt, r.f. (ed.). (1995). critical essays on seamus heaney. new york: g.k. hall & co. heaney, s. (1980). preoccupations. london: faber & faber. heaney, s. (1980). selected poems. london: faber& faber. heaney, s. (1988). the government of the tongue: the 1986 t.s. eliot memorial lectures and other critical writings. london: faber & faber. heaney, s. (1998). opened ground: selected poems 1966-1996. new york: strauss. hildebidle, j. (1995). decade of seamus heaney’s poetry. critical essays on seamus heaney. new york: g.k. hall & co. larsmo, o. (2007). this is not a spade: the poetry of seamus heaney. retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/06/seamus-heaneypoet-blake-morrison lavan, r. (2014). seamus heaney’s places. retrieved from http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/seamus-heaneys-place/ mambol, n. (2017). violence in seamus heaney’s poetry. retrieved from https://literariness.org/2017/11/20/violence-in-seamus-heaneys-poetry/ morrison, b. (1982). seamus heaney (bradbury, m., & bigsby, c.,eds.).london: methuen. o’donoghue, b. (1994). seamus heaney and the language of poetry. new york: harvester wheatsheaf. shapiro, a. (1995). crossed pieties (on the early poetry). critical eessays on seamus heaney. new yok: g.k. hall & co. stallworthy, j. (1995). the poet as archaeologist. critical essays on seamus heaney. new york: g.k. hall & co. vendler, h. (1995). the breaking of style: hopkins, heaney and graham. london: harvard uni press. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/06/seamus-heaney-poet-blake-morrison� https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/06/seamus-heaney-poet-blake-morrison� http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/seamus-heaneys-place/� https://literariness.org/2017/11/20/violence-in-seamus-heaneys-poetry/� ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 10-21 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 10 identity and self-presentation in letters of request written by college students maria corazon saturnina a. castro university of the philippines-diliman mcsacastro@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.020102 received 26 june 2018; revised 12 august 2018; accepted 14 august 2018 abstract participants in an interaction risk their sense of face in every action (goffman, 1967). requests, by definition, are face-threatening acts (brown and levinson, 1978). in making a request, a speaker not only threatens the hearer’s negative face as he impinges on the hearer’s claim to freedom of action; he also threatens his positive face as he exposes himself to the possibility of being denied or rejected. in order to minimize this possibility, the speaker has to present himself in such a way that the hearer would have a positive impression of him. this paper examined letters of request written by students of a university in metro manila for noticeable forms of self-presentation. following goffman’s thesis (1956) that self-presentation is a tangible component of identity, this paper analyzed lexicosyntactic patterns, and impression management strategies utilized by the writers to express their communicative intention (make a request), and construct an identity deemed necessary in attaining the hearer’s approval. keywords: face, request, self-presentation, impression management, identity introduction participants in an interaction risk their sense of face in every action (goffman, 1967). a request, by definition, is a face-threatening act (brown and levinson, 1978). it is a directive act performed to get the hearer to do something that is to the speaker’s benefit and at the cost of the hearer. from the speaker’s point of view, the hearer is able to do this act but it is not obvious that the hearer will do it in the normal course of events or of the hearer’s own accord (searle 1969). in making a request, a speaker not only threatens the hearer’s negative face as he impinges on the hearer’s claim to freedom of action; he also threatens his positive face as he exposes himself to the possibility of being denied or rejected. in making a request, one must create an emotional atmosphere that will ensure the addressee’s positive response; therefore, the use of appropriate tone, organizational as well as politeness and persuasive strategies are paramount in order for him to create a positive impression to elicit the preferred response from the addressee. in other words, effort is exerted to convey a positive selfpresentation. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 10-21 11 requests have been one of the most researched areas in cross-cultural, intercultural, and interlanguage pragmatics (e.g. blum-kulka & oshtain, 1984; byon, 2006; baron, 2008, shively, 2011). most of these studies, however, highlight the relationship between politeness and requests (e.g. hassall, 1999 & 2003; rue & zhang, 2008; ogiermann, 2009). this study hopes to contribute to the body of knowledge on requests by examining not only politeness but also other linguistic and discourse phenomena particularly identity construction and self-presentation that relate to successful request making in a specific discourse community. statement of the problem this paper examined letters of request written by students of a university located in metro manila for noticeable forms of self-presentation. following goffman’s thesis (1956) that self-presentation is a tangible component of identity, this paper analysed lexico-syntactic patterns, and impression management strategies utilized by the student writers to express their communicative intention (make a request), and construct an identity deemed necessary in attaining the hearer’s approval. this paper poses the major question: what identities are constructed by the varying types of self-presentation manifested in letters of request? this major query is broken down into the following sub-questions: 1. how do the writers of the letters of request present their requests in terms of form and organization? 2. what linguistic and impression strategies are utilized by the writers to show positive values that are deemed acceptable by their addressees? 3. how does the interrelationship between the form and organization of the letters and the language used by the writers create a positive selfpresentation by the writers? conceptual framework this paper is anchored in the works on the face and self-presentation of erving goffman; the politeness theory of brown and levinson; and the selfpresentation strategies of jones and pittman (1982) and scott and lyman (1968). according to goffman (1957), participants risk their sense of face in every interaction. goffman describes a person’s face as an image of self that is based on social expectations. it addresses the questions, “who am i supposed to be in this situation? what behaviors are expected of me? to maintain one’s face, particular behaviors must be enacted and not others. goffman described several types of face-work that people engage in to protect their face and that of others. these are rituals—doing routine behaviors that are considered polite and are expected to be enacted by participants in their everyday encounter; corrective process correcting a negative act done on another person by means of an apology; avoidance— avoiding a person who is deemed to be a threat; and poise—controlling embarrassment when one’s face is threatened by exhibiting poise. brown and levinson (1978) expanded the concept of face by defining it as that which all interactants are assumed to have an interest in maintaining during interaction where ‘positive face’ is the positive and consistent image people have of themselves and their desire for approval; on the other hand, ‘negative face’ is the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, and right to non-distraction. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 10-21 12 when the face is threatened, a speaker may choose from a variety of politeness strategies to avoid or minimize damage to the face. closely related to goffman’s notion of the face as the image that is based on social expectation is his concept of self-presentation (1956). to goffman, social interaction is like a stage and the people who engage in interactions are actors who perform a variety of roles. he used the term ‘performance’ to mean the activity of an individual in front of others. through this performance, he delivers impressions to others and information is conveyed to create an identity which the audience attributes to the individual but which the individual may or may not be aware of. important concepts in goffman’s self-presentation include setting; appearance; manner; front; and front, back, and off stage. setting refers to the location where the interaction takes place. since different settings have different types of audience/interactants, an individual/actor has to change performance appropriate to the setting. the appearance has to do with the performer’s social status as reflected in his occupation, gender, age, etc. manner refers to how an individual performs his role; it also tells the audience how the individual will act out his role. for example, a professor is supposed to behave in a respectable manner and must not talk in a vulgar manner. if the professor behaved otherwise, his appearance and manner are inconsistent and may confuse his interlocutor. the front is the image /impression an individual conveys to the audience. often, he follows a social script on how to behave or interact in an interaction. everyday interactions have three stages—the front where the individual has to perform because he is constantly watched; the back where the individual can be himself; and off stage where the individual may meet his audience outside the front stage. to illustrate, a student performs and behaves in front of his professor; be himself in his own room; and meets and talks in a quite relaxed way to his professor outside the classroom. goffman’s thesis is that the presentation of self is the intentional and tangible component of identity. an individual/actor engages in intra-self negotiations to project a positive impression which goffman called impression management. the number of impressions that people construct of themselves in the mind of others is varied and limitless. jones and pittman (1982) created a taxonomy that includes five common self-presentational strategies—ingratiation; self-promotion, intimidation, exemplification, supplication. the objective of ingratiation is to make other people like an individual through that individual’s imitation, flattery, doing favors for others, or displaying positive personal characteristics (jones, 1990). in self-promotion, the individual tries to convince his audience of his ability, competence, intelligence. intimidation is the strategy used by the individual who wants to be feared; be viewed as powerful or ruthless. by using exemplification, one may construct an impression of being morally upright, righteous. finally, supplication occurs when an individual publicly admits weaknesses and deficiencies. other researchers expanded the taxonomy by adding other strategies. scott and lyman (1968) presented an analysis of one kind of talk called the account. an account ‘is a linguistic device employed whenever an action is subjected to valuative inquiry.’ there are two types of accounts—excuses and justifications. excuses are accounts in which an individual admits that the act in question is bad, wrong, or inappropriate but denies full responsibility. justifications, on the other ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 10-21 13 hand, are accounts in which one takes full responsibility for the act in question. to justify an act is to assert its positive value in the face of a contrary claim. accounts are given in a variety of ways. the linguistic form of the account is expected to be socially suited to the norms of culture and situation. the acceptance of refusal of an account depends greatly on the appropriateness of the language used. failure to employ linguistic style may result in dishonoring the account. all of these frameworks contribute to the understanding of writing a letter request as process whereby participants ( writer and reader) negotiate identities – the writer creates a positive identity through appropriate self-presentation (using various linguistic and organizational strategies) so his request would not be denied; that way, he is able to maintain his face. the reader/addressee infers from the form and linguistic style of the letter an identity of the writer that would significantly influence his decision to approve or deny the request. method one hundred letters of request processed by the office of the college secretary of the college of arts and letters of the university were randomly selected and permission was requested via online (email). except for one, all the students gave their consent for their letters to be part of the study. the data were initially classified in terms of structure and organizational following reep (2003). afterwards, the presentation strategies were evaluated and categorized based on the self-presentation strategies presented by jones and pittman (1982) and scott and lyman (1968). findings and discussion in writing a letter of request, the writer may use the direct or indirect organization (reep, 2003). the direct organization has generally three sections: 1. the opening which establishes the reason for writing and presents the main idea—statement of the request; 2. the middle part which explains details about the situation ; 3. the closing which reminds the reader of the call for action or looks to future interaction between the writer and the reader. the indirect organization, on the other hand, has: 1. a “buffer” part before the request. it is usually an introduction of oneself. the introduction gives the reader an idea of who the writer is and his predicament. 2. the statement of the request 3. details of the request 4. expression of thanks an evaluation of the organization of the letters revealed that 75% used the indirect organization. the preponderance of the indirect organization is consistent with the filipinos’ dislike for directness and confrontation. according to filipino anthropologist jocano (2001), the filipino communication style involves pahiwatig (hint or suggestion); pabatid (to make conscious); and finally pahayag ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 10-21 14 (to reveal). it is considered rude to be direct and so one has” to go around the bush” before stating the request. it is considered good behavior (magandang asal) to minimize directness. often, good behavior is a standard against which the personhood of the writer is known and expressed. to be perceived, therefore, as having good behavior is paramount in achieving the desired response from the reader. for goffman, by choosing indirectness which is actually a negative politeness strategy, the speaker (the writer of the request letter) recognizes the social distance between him and his audience (reader). this recognition is brought about by the respect he has for his reader. this distance is reflected in language by the use of hedges, and apologies prior to the statement of request. several research have studied the correspondences between politeness and other phenomena related to requests (e.g. brown & levinson, 1978; roloff and barnicott, 1978; cody, woelfel & jordan, 1983). the conclusion of these studies is that the speaker’s indirectness which is synonymous with politeness varies according to the speaker’s relationship with the hearer, and according to the nature of what is being requested, along with the potential benefits of complying with the request (bilbow, 1995). what is the link, therefore, between politeness, indirectness, and request? according to hendricks (2002), the link with politeness is that indirectness is one type of strategy that speakers can resort to in their attempt to protect a hearer’s face when making a request. as such, politeness will be interpreted as the prime motivator for the use of indirectness. of the letters which used indirect organization, 80% started with selfintroduction. the students stated their names, courses, year levels, and in some cases their student numbers. the self-introduction was the students’ way of initially providing a context for their letters. for instance, when a student identifies himself/herself as a ‘graduating’ student, the communication dynamics can change into one that would have an added amount of consideration for the student. in this particular university, graduating students are given some preference—that is to say, they have a special day for registration; they are allowed to enlist in a class even if the class is already filled up; and they are usually given residency extensions. however, in many instances, the selfintroduction in the letters fundamentally fulfilled a socially acceptable and conventional act of politeness on the part of the students. ten percent (10%) of the letters started with a greeting—good day. as young children, we have been trained to greet people and make polite conversations. whenever we enter somebody else’s house or office, we say hi or good morning. this kind of politeness extends to the written discourse. for some students, stating the request without greeting first may be interpreted as being rude and impatient. the greeting is a strategy to give deference to the reader to make him feel respected and appreciated. more than being phatic, greetings are expressions of politeness and are reflective of one’s being ‘cultured’ and ‘educated.’ another 10% of the letters started with expressions of apology and regret. in these letters, the students highlighted their weaknesses (internal as in depression, sickness or external as in family problems) that led to their inability to comply with the university policies/rules. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 10-21 15 examples: 1. “ on account of my balance due to unsettled student loan last semester, i am in deepest regret to inform your office that i will not be able to comply with such deficiency. i was diagnosed with posterior wall hyperthrophy and pulmonic regurgitation.” 2. “i apologize for not being able to comply with the deadline of payment due to my mother being unable to leave the house in order to withdraw the necessary amount in time. she has been ill and only recently recovered.” the attention given to the apology prior to the statement of request arouses a sense of sympathy and to some extent, moral and social obligation. when a student writes about personal crises all occurring at the same time, the reader is moved emotionally and more often than not, the request is approved for ‘humanitarian reasons.’ in summary, the indirect organization reflects two significant impression management strategies—1. to show politeness and good breeding; 2. to emotionally move the reader before the revelation of the request. the letters that show direct organization comprise 25% of the letters and are broken down as follows: 1. request for late payment (40%) 2. request for residency extension (20%) 3. request for change of matriculation (6%) 4. request for readmission to the program (17%) 5. request for readmission from awol (17%) the requests for late payment were noticeably short. the first paragraph had 3-5 sentences and the first sentence stated the appeal or the request and the remaining sentences accounted for the reason/s for the request. in most letters, the reasons ranged from the family’s financial difficulties, delay in remittances from ofw (overseas filipino workers) family members. 16% of the students were working students who also appealed for consideration for their delayed salaries. what is noticeable, however, is that the last sentence assured the university of the intention of the students to pay on specific dates. the commissive act was explicitly stated by the performative “i promise to pay” or by the modals in, “i will pay”; “i shall complete payment.” the commitment shown in the letters reflected the students’ maturity in acknowledging that the privilege to continue studying in the university comes with a responsibility. the other letters were longer due to the nature of the request. the requests for extension of residency had mostly family circumstances as primary reasons — the student had to take on odd jobs to help the family; the student had to work in the family business to make ends meet; the student had to take care of ailing family members, etc. the reader could get the impression of a family-oriented person who had to temporarily forego his studies to help the family but, at the moment, ready to go back to school. in requests for readmission, the students admitted their inadequacies and delinquency. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 10-21 16 ex 3: “i failed bio 1 because i lacked focus, self-management, and discipline. i am sure that i can do better next time and will continue to be diligent in my studies.” “i admit that i have failed to deliver the right and sufficient performance that is needed to pass the subject… i understand now my weaknesses…” the courage to admit one’s inadequacies created an impression of honesty and sincerity on the part of the students. though sometimes bordering on the fallacy of ad misericordiam, the appeals nonetheless, impressed upon the reader an overwhelming pathos in favor of the students. in the next discussion, we look at the self-presentation strategies utilized by students to show positive values deemed acceptable by the reader. a non-parametric statistical analysis of the self-presentation strategies found in the data yielded the following results: 1. sixty-six percent (66%) of the student writers used a combination of at least two self-presentation strategies. in decreasing order, the self-presentation strategies are 1) supplication and exemplification; 2) justification and exemplication 3) excuse and exemplication; 4) apology and justification; 5) justification and self-promotion. 2. only thirty-four percent (34%) used single self-presentation strategies which are, in descending order, 1) justification; 2) supplication ; 3) excuse the use of dual self-presentation strategies can be seen as a means of bolstering the arguments of the requests and increase the possibility of approval. table 1 shows the self-presentation used in the data and the percentages of occurrence. table 1. self-presentation self-presentation strategies percentage supplication and exemplification 28% justification and exemplification 20% justification 14% excuse and exemplification 12% supplication 11% excuse 9% apology and justification 3% justification and self-promotion 3% it is not surprising the supplication was the most used self-presentation strategy. many of the request letters actually appealed to the pathos of the reader. in their request for readmission to the university or to their respective programs and extension of payment, the students usually talked about financial problems as their primary reason for not being able to pay on time, or not being able to continue their studies. the financial problems had been caused by multiple factors such as sickness or death in the family, delay in remittances, or inability of the family to have adequate resources for education. another prevalent reason would be the students’ health—physical and mental. they admitted suffering ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 10-21 17 from physical ailments such as heart and neurological problems and mental conditions like depression and bipolar disorders. ex: 4”i underloadeded twice due to some conflicts in schedule that coincided with financial problems at home. my biological father died in 2006 and it was hard for my mother to finance my education. my stepfather, on the other hand, would rather prioritize the education of my half siblings. consequently, i started to work as a writer to support my education.” ex: 5 “taking a leave of absence for one semester was a decision made by me and my mother. since the start of the first semester ay 2013-2014, i had been visiting my cardiologist more frequently. my heart condition had become a burden that was difficult to ignore… my heart condition worsen and i developed insomnia. i was advised by my doctor to see a psychiatrist since he believes i might be suffering from depression. my parents and i decided that i take a break from school….” the discourse of the letters, however, which started with supplication did not stop at highlighting weaknesses and disabilities. the succeeding part of their letters exemplified their virtues. the students showed that they value honor and commitment by stating their willingness to pay at a specified date (in cases of requests for extension of payment). ex: 6 “i was not able to complete my enrolment on time due to unsettled accountability. i was not able to pay on time because our family is experiencing financial difficulties. i promise to pay my tuition fee on may 15, 2015.” others go beyond supplication by magnifying how the approval of their request would affect their ideals. in the next example, the student requested readmission from awol. at first, he used supplication by citing his family’s hardships and his medical condition. toward the end of his letter, however, he cited how meaningful it would be for him to be able to graduate highlighting his struggle to continue his education. the student redirected the reader’s attention from his weakness to his strength—his desire to study despite financial and physical challenges. any educator/administrator would find this request difficult to deny. ex 7: “the best use of man’s life is to strive for and obtain new knowledge that he will share and thus further the minds and lives of other men. the learning and development opportunities that are available in xx (name of the university) are invaluable, and i believe in eventually graduating not as a means for me to earn but as a stepping stone in becoming a valuable contributor to the learning and knowledge that can be found in xx. i am grateful for the opportunity to continue my education.” there were also request letters that solely used justification (14%). a fundamental principle in theories of self is the idea that people want to view themselves positively and they want others to have the same view (brown, 1998). knowing how to own up to a mistake impresses upon the reader a mature, well ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 10-21 18 adjusted individual. presenting oneself less favorably by admitting failure in judgment or a misbehavior, ironically, becomes favorable to the student. ex 8: “i admit that i always prefer not to drop subjects which i am most likely to fall short of because i would still like to continue attending these classes despite of the risk it might cause my official record. also, i would like to state that i only lack a few requirements for my subject with inc grades which i am planning to fulfil within this semester. i understand that the efforts i exerted were still inadequate for me to have a good status in our college but i am very much hoping that you would give me another chance…” ex 9: “the reason why i dropped the course was because of my failure to cope with the lessons and the requirements. i was balancing work and academics last semester and it took a toll on my studies. i missed a number of classes plus i failed to submit a paper and an exam that was 40% of our grade. i had to withdraw from class with my professor’s consent.” twelve percent (12%) of the letters used excuse with exemplification. in using these strategies, the students acknowledged their inability to pay or comply with requirements; however, they denied responsibility and instead blamed other people. ex 10: “i was not able to process my change of matriculation because of the late enlistment of my professor. he was able to enlist me formally in the crs website only after the deadline of the enrollment. ex 11: “unfortunately, during that period, my professor in pe gave me an inc. my professor told me that the only way for me to complete the course is to attend the finals of his class. in both letters, the professors’ actions resulted in the delay of enrollment or graduation of the students. there was no mention of why the student was given an inc. in the other example, the student did not mention why the professor enlisted him late. the self-serving information (putting the blame on the professor) was placed in the preferred dimension of the communication while the negative information (the possible lapse in judgment on the part of the student) was disregarded. these students tried to save their faces by blaming others. fortunately, these letters comprised only 9% of the total letters. three percent (3%) used apology with justification. these students started their letters with an apology for something they were not able to do or fail to comply with. the apology was immediately followed by an acceptance of responsibility. manifesting accountability is an important factor in creating positive impression and restoring/maintaining the trust of the reader. ex12: “i sincerely apologize for the lateness of this letter and for my late payment. i am also sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused you. i will pay the tuition fee as soon as this letter is approved. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 10-21 19 ex13: “i would like to apologize for the delay of payment regarding my change of matriculation process. i have forgotten and missed the deadline last monday. i have already prepared the payment and i am hoping to pay as soon as possible.” the remaining three percent (3%) combined justification and self-promotion. after admitting responsibility for a negative behavior, some students tried to convince the reader of their competence and ability in redirecting their academic lives to overcome their delinquency. all they need would be another chance to prove themselves. to appear modest in this situation may be misinterpreted as a weakness or lack of competence. there is a need to enhance self-description to increase the possibility of the approval of requests. in the next example, the student requested an extension of his residency. apparently, he was dismissed by his former college and was seeking admission to another college. in the course of trying to get in a new program, he was not able to enroll for three years but is now ready to go back and finish his degree. ex14: “i stayed with the school of statistics from 2006 till last semester. i started taking speech communication subjects from 2012-2013 though i was not yet accepted. my grades have been excellent. i received a gwa of 1.56 in the first semester and 1.6 in the succeeding semester. i am hoping for your favorable action on my request.” conclusion this paper examined the ways students presented themselves in their letters of request to increase the possibility of approval. majority used an indirect organizational strategy which is consistent with the filipino style of communication that frowns upon directness. they used dominantly justification and supplication which they balanced with exemplification. these strategies created an impression of mature individuals who initially seemed frail, weak, or even delinquent but strove to be competent, diligent, and responsible. how do all the lexico-syntactic features, organizational and self-presentation strategies relate to constructing a desired identity? according to schlenker (1985), self-presentation can be seen as a goaldirected activity that occurs in a social context which has an actor (the student), an audience (the reader), and the social situation (the student makes a request which will be approved by the reader who is in administration). in this transactional view, two features define the desirability of self-presentation for the individual. the self-presentation must be beneficial in the sense that the actor sees it facilitating the attainment of his goal. the self-presentation must also be believable. the findings in the study support the observation that the selfpresentation strategies used by the students helped create acceptable identities. they presented themselves as individuals who, due to varying believable circumstances, were unable to comply with university requirements/policies. the use of modality, however, marked a turning point in many of the letters. in describing past activities/situations, the students admitted their flaws and held themselves responsible for their actions. many of the letters, however, had a second part where the students stressed their potentials and commitment. they explicitly informed the reader of what they could do if given a chance (that is, if the request would be approved). putting the past and future in opposition ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 10-21 20 foregrounded a time-related positive change that was happening or about to happen to the students. the completion of the positive change would be in the hands of the reader and this strategy would significantly contribute to persuading the reader to endorse or approve the requests. references barron. (2008). “contrasting requests in inner circle englishes. a study in variational pragmatics”. in m. puetz, and van aertselaer, j.n. (eds.), developing contrastive pragmatics: interlanguage and crosscultural perspectives. berlin: mouton de gruyter, pp.355-402. blum-kulka, s. & olshtain, e. (1984) “requests and apologies: a cross-cultural study of speech act realisation patterns (ccsarp)”. applied linguistics 5: 196-213. blum-kulka, s., house, j., & kasper, g. (1989) cross-cultural pragmatics: requests and apologies. nj: ablex. brown, p. & levinson, s. (1978). “universals in language usage: politeness phenomena”. in e. goody (ed.), questions and politeness. strategies in social interaction. cambridge: cambridge university press, pp. 56-289. brown, p. & levinson, s. (1987). politeness: some universals in language use. cambridge: cambridge up. byon, a. (2006) “the role of linguistic indirectness and honorifics in achieving linguistic politeness in korean requests”. journal of politeness research 2: 247-276. culpeper, j. & haugh, m. (2014). pragmatics and the english language. ny: palgrave macmillan. dasdalovska, n. et al. (2016). the use of request strategies by efl learners. procedia-social and behavioral sciences 232 55-61. goffman, e. (1956). the presentation of self in everyday life. edinburgh: university of edinburgh social science research center. goffman, e. (1972). interaction ritual: essays on face-to-face behavior. london: penguin press. hassall, t. (1999). ‘request strategies in indonesian’. pragmatics 9: 585-606. hassall, t. (2003). “requests by australian learners of indonesian”. journal of pragmatics 35: 19031928. hendriks, b.c. (2002). more on dutch english…please? nijmegen university press. jocano, f.l. (2001). filipino worldview: ethnography of local knowledge. punlad research house. jones, e & pittman, e. (1982). toward a general theory of strategic selfpresentation. j. suls. psychological perspectives on the self. 1, 231-262 nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. ogiermann, e. (2009). “politeness and indirectness across cultures: a comparison of english, german, polish and russian requests”. journal of politeness research 5: 189-216. reep, d. (2003). techinical writing. principles, strategies, and reading. 5 th ed. ny: longman. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 10-21 21 rue, y., & zhang, g. (2008) request strategies: a comparative study in mandarin chinese and korean. amsterdam: john benjamins publishing company. schlenker, b. (1985) the self and social life. mcgraw hill. scoot, m.b. & lyman, s.m. (1960). accounts. american psychological review. 33, 46-62. searle, j. (1969). speech acts – an essay in the philosophy of language. london: cambridge university press. searle, j. (1975) “indirect speech acts”. in p. cole, and j. morgan (eds.), syntax and semantics 3: speech acts. new york: academic press. shively, r. (2011). “l2 pragmatic development in study abroad: a longitudinal study of spanish service encounters”. journal of pragmatics 43: 1818-1835. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 178 code-switching in multilingual roving people’s conversations beda bramantoko1 and *priyatno ardi2 sanata dharma university, indonesia bbramantoko@gmail.com1 and priyatnoardi@usd.ac.id2 *correspondence: priyatnoardi@usd.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.4735 received 8 june 2022, accepted 2 february 2023 abstract this paper aims at analyzing the types of code-switching in the conversation of multilingual roving people, who move from one country to another country. the participants of this qualitative research were five multilingual roving people. audio recordings and interviews were used to collect the data. the results reveal that the types of code-switching employed by the multilingual roving people were intrasentential switching, inter-sentential switching, situational switching, and metaphorical switching. the researchers also found that the factors influencing the multilingual roving people in switching the codes included the speaker, interlocutors, changes in the situation because of the third person, and changes in the topic. the researchers concluded that the type of code-switching that appeared the most was intra-sentential switching and the most influencing factor why the participants did code-switching was the interlocutors. keywords: interlocutors, intra-sentential switching, multilingual roving people introduction the ability to switch from one language to another one becomes evidence that someone is possessing a high level of language literacy (huerta & perez, 2015). as code-switching is a part of human life, which happens in a multilingual society (auer, 1998; cantone, 2007; febiyaska & ardi, 2019; sebba, mahootian, & jonsson, 2012, wardhaugh, 2010; yusuf, fata, & chyntia, 2018), having a high level of language literacy enables people to easily adapt with their new society and raise their interaction. as a result, they can convey the message they try to deliver. therefore, code-switching helps people communicate to convey messages easier and faster (abdely, 2016; altarriba & basnight-brown, 2009). rahardi (2015) argues that code-switching is important due to three reasons. firstly, code-switching is a way to convey a specific purpose in doing something. secondly, when the speakers forget the language they use, they choose to use other languages to explain what they mean. it means that code-switching helps multilingual speakers to express what they want to say clearly. when they speak, they do not speak what is wrong because they forget the language they are using. thirdly, it is important to do code-switching because it can help the speakers mailto:bbramantoko@gmail.com mailto:priyatnoardi@usd.ac.id mailto:priyatnoardi@usd.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.4735 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 179 express their feelings. sometimes multilingual people could not express their feelings if they just use one language. therefore, they need to use code-switching so that they can express their feelings well. chair and agustina (2014) also explain that code-switching can help people make relationships closer to other people wherever they are if they can use other people’s language. this is important because they will make other people whom they speak with feel comfortable because of the use of the interlocutor’s language. despite its various definitions, code-switching is simply defined as the use of multiple languages in words, phrases, and sentences (bullock & toribio, 2009; gardner-chloros, 2009; muysken, 2000). chaer and agustina (2014) contend that code-switching is the replacement of language or language variations by speakers who are consciously aware of certain circumstances. in this case, code-switching is a combination of two or more languages by combining words, phrases, and sentences. furthermore, rahardi (2015) considers code-switching as a switch between language codes. it is in line with wardhaugh (2010) who says that codeswitching is a language transfer and a variety of languages carried out by the speakers in a speech act. in a nutshell, code-switching occurs when the speakers speak in more than one language to other speakers (prathama, 2013). when the speakers cannot remember information or words in their native language, they will take another language they are mastering (abdely, 2016). therefore, codeswitching is closely related to bilingual and multilingual societies. there are now considerable pieces of evidence of the studies about codeswitching in indonesia. firstly, prathama (2013) reports the types of code-switching and reasons for doing code-switching in an international company. the data were obtained through audio recordings and interviews. the results showed three types of code-switching, situational code-switching, metaphorical switching, and conversational code-switching. the speakers switched languages due to a variety of different situations including the atmosphere, time, place, and speech participants. secondly, putranto (2018) analyses the types of code-switching in a movie, entitled 99 cahaya di langit eropa. the movie used intra-sentential switching, inter-sentential switching, and extra-sentential switching. thirdly, febiyaska and ardi (2019) analyze the types and features of indonesian-english code switching in gogirl! magazine, revealing that the most used type was alternation and the most used feature was non-nested a b a. moreover, kustriyono (2013) investigates the factors of code-switching and mixing code used by university students. the factors that he finds out include the speakers, interlocutors, changes in the situation due to the third person, changes in the topic, and humor. other studies (martin-anatias 2019; martin-anatias 2018a; martin-anatias, 2018b; rusli, shaari, zainuddin, shi, & amin, 2018; yusuf, fata & chyntia 2018) have also investigated code-switching in songs, newspapers, and novels. the previous research shows the investigation of code-switching that happens in indonesia. however, to date, there has not been sufficient research that examines the use of code-switching in multilingual people who always move from one country to another country, called roving people. they travel from one place to another and not staying anywhere permanently (stevenson, 2015). this phenomenon is worth investigating since in this era there are more and more people traveling from one country to another that has various cultures and languages. it raises one possibility that the code-switching they perform will be in various forms. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 180 therefore, this phenomenon makes the writers interested in filling the gap by investigating the use of code-switching in the conversations spoken by multilingual roving people in their daily life. this paper aims to investigate the types of codeswitching used by multilingual roving people and the factors that influence their use of code-switching. literature review types of code-switching wardhaugh (2010) has argued that many speakers speak several languages in speaking. the speakers may choose to use the codes or languages interchangeably or even switch and mix the languages in a speech act. thus, code-switching is a language transfer and a variety of languages that are used by the speakers in a speech. furthermore, coulmas (2005) states that code-switching can occur when the speakers are aware of the two different languages. they use multiple languages in words, phrases, and sentences. chaer and agustina (2014) emphasize that codeswitching is the replacement of language or language variations by speakers who are consciously aware of certain circumstances. code-switching is a combination of two or more languages by combining words, phrases, and sentences. hammers and blanc (2000) have categorized code-switching into three types. the first type is inter-sentential switching, which occurs when the speaker speaks in sentences or clauses in one language and then will speak other clauses or sentences in different languages. hammers and blanc (2000) also say that intersentential switching is the change of language from one sentence to another sentence or from one clause to another clause. an example of inter-sentential switching is ‘mata kamu bagus, i like it’ (purtanto, 2018). this sentence is considered as one inter-sentential switching because the speaker switches the language from indonesian to english in a different clause. the second type of code-switching is intra-sentential switching. hammers and blanc (2000) mention that intra-sentential switching is the change between words in a sentence with a different language. this phenomenon can also be called code-mixing. an example of intra-sentential switching is ‘aduh sorry ya? aku kesiangan nih’ (purtanto, 2018). the word ‘sorry’ is an adjective in english that the speaker says in the middle of his indonesian sentence. the third type of code-switching is tag switching. tag switching is a code where people can put some tags from one language to a sentence that has a different language. hammers and blanc (2000) have said that tag switching is the laying of tags with a language on a sentence that has a different language. an example of tag switching is ‘by the way, habis ini mau kemana?’ (putranto, 2018). in this dialogue, ‘by the way’ becomes an example of tag switching. wardhaugh (2010) has proposed two types of code-switching, namely situational switching and metaphorical switching. situational switching can occur when code-switching is caused by a change of situations. for example, a speaker uses language in certain situations. then, he switches the language he uses before with another language because of the situation. meanwhile, metaphorical switching occurs when there is a change in the topic spoken by the speakers. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 181 factors influencing code-switching code-switching is used by multilingual speakers for some reasons. chaer and agustina (2014) propose that there are five factors why people do code-switching, namely the speaker, interlocutor, changes in the situation because of a third person, changes of formality, and changes in the topic. the first factor is the speaker. according to chaer and agustina (2014), speakers use code-switching because the speakers have some reasons for doing code-switching. the speakers can get advantages for themselves or others. the following illustration gives an example. they are an employee and a manager. both of them come from west java. speaking to the manager, the employee uses sundanese. hearing the employee speaking sundanese, the manager directly speaks sundanese. the same language, namely sundanese, makes their relationship closer since they are from the same region and language, the second factor is the interlocutors. chaer and agustina (2014) say that the interlocutors can influence the speakers to do code-switching because the speakers want to compensate for the interlocutors’ ability. the third factor is the changes in the situation because of the third person. chaer and agustina (2014) explain that the third person also influences the speaker to do code-switching. in the example given by chaer and agustina, there are three persons, namely nanang, ujang, and togar. nanang and ujang can speak sundanese fluently while togar cannot speak sundanese. first, nanang and ujang speak sundanese because it is their mother tongue. in the middle of their conversation, togar comes and joins them. nanang and ujang suddenly switch their language to indonesian because they know that togar cannot speak sundanese. the fourth factor is the change of formality. the change of formality can make the speaker do code-switching. people can switch their language because of the situation. chaer and agustina (2014) give an example of this case. before the lecturer comes to the class, every student speaks indonesian informally to others. the class is noisy because the lecture is not in the class yet. suddenly, when the lecturer comes to the class, the students switch their language to formal and polite indonesian. the class becomes quiet when the lecturer comes to the class. in this case, there is no change between languages. it is just the change of formality within the same language. the last factor that influences people to do code-switching is the changes in the topic. chaer and agustina (2014) explain that the topic makes the speakers do code-switching because the speaker may use two or more languages. they also mention that the speakers often use different languages if the topic changes. chaer and agustina put an example for this case. they illustrate two people who can speak indonesian and javanese. one of them is the leader, while the other one is the secretary. the illustration is taken when they talk about a letter. in the beginning, they use indonesian when they talk about the letter. after that, they switch the language to javanese when they talk about the person who sends the letter. therefore, in this case, the topic also makes the speaker switch their language. method the researchers employed qualitative research in this study. according to albusaidi (2008), qualitative research can be used for investigating natural phenomena. in this case, code-switching is a natural phenomenon that happened in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 182 multilingual people (rahardi, 2015). since code-switching is a natural phenomenon, qualitative research is appropriate for this research. ary, jacob, and razavieh (2002) explain that qualitative research requires more explanations to elaborate more on how and why something occurs. participants this research investigated the multilingual roving people who move from one country to another country and always do code-switching. ten speakers were participating in this study, whose conversations were recorded and analyzed. however, there were only five speakers who were chosen to be the participants in the interviews. they were coded as p1, p2, p3, p4, and p5. they were chosen because they had more proficiencies in the languages than the other five speakers. therefore, it was expected that the results of the interview were more varied. the other five participants who were not chosen as the participants of the interview played a big role in helping the interviewees as their interlocutors. some of the relationships among them also appeared in the data presented in the findings. the identities of the five participants are as follows. table 1. participants in the research no. participants age gender language mastery countries visited 1. p1 23 years old female  english  france  german  mandarin  indonesian  america  taiwan  canada  spain  austria  france 2. p2 22 years old female  english  indonesian  france  mandarin  german  america  taiwan  canada  spain  austria 3. p3 25 years old female  france  english  german  indonesian  mandarin  russian  america  taiwan  canada  spain  austria  france 4. p4 36 years old male  indonesian  english  german  manado  german  italy  indonesia 5. p5 19 years old male  indonesian  mandarin  english  javanese  malaysian  indonesia  china  malaysia ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 183 instruments and data-gathering techniques the audio recording was used to collect the data. the audio recording was done by recording multilingual roving people when they had conversations. it became the first technique in gathering the data since it suited best the types of data that were required in this linguistic study (thieberger, 2012). this process of audio recording was done in october 2020. to find out the factors that influence codeswitching in multilingual roving people, the researchers interviewed the participants. the interview is one of the commonly-used basic methods for obtaining qualitative data. people can use an interview to collect data from people about their beliefs, opinions, and feelings about a certain topic in their own words. the researchers interviewed the five multilingual roving people to confirm their language mastery compared to the other five participants. in addition, the interview with these five participants aimed at finding out the factors that influenced multilingual roving people to switch their languages. findings and discussion types of code-switching used by the multilingual roving people based on the findings, there were five types of code-switching used by the participants, namely inter-sentential switching, intra-sentential switching, tag switching, situational switching, and metaphorical switching. the number of types of code-switching that are used by multilingual roving people is shown in table 2. table 2. occurrences of code-switching used by multilingual roving people types of code-switching total occurrences percentage intra-sentential switching 25 45.45% inter-sentential switching 22 40% metaphorical switching 5 9.1% situational switching 3 5.45% intra-sentential switching abdely (2016) argues that intra-sentential switching is the switching of languages at a phrase and word levels. hammers and blanc (2000) also say that intra-sentential switching is the changes between words in a sentence with a different language and it can also be called code-mixing. thus, intra-sentential switching is the change of words and phrases from one language to another languages. the examples of this type of code-switching in this study are as follows. example 1 ich auch, do you want to bring la clef? (me too, do you want to bring the key?) (p2) in the example above, the code-switching was done by p2 when she asked her sister if she wanted to bring the key. p2 switched her language to the level of phrases and words. at first, she spoke german in phrase one. then, she switched ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 184 the last two words of the english sentence to france. this switching was considered intra-sentential switching because the code-switching was done at the level of a phrase (ich auch) and words (la clef). example 2 tidy up my matratze. (tidy up my bed.) (p3) in the example above, the code-switching was done by p3 when she answered her sister if she wanted to tidy up her bed. p3 switched her language in the level of the word. at first, she spoke in english. then, she switched the last word of her sentence from english to german. this switching was considered intra-sentential switching because the code-switching was done at the level of word (matratze). example 3 duì, it is possible if they know, and they want to study many languages. (yes, it is possible if they know, and they want to study many languages.) (p2) in the example above, the code-switching was done by p2 when she answered her sister’s question about learning languages. p2 switched her language in the level of the word. she spoke in mandarin for the first word and then she switched the next sentence to english. this switching was considered intra-sentential switching because the code-switching was done at the level of word (duì). example 4 kita tidak capek, right, tere? (we are not tired, right, tere?) (p1) in the example above, the code-switching was done by p1 when she asked her sister who was not tired when did hiking. p1 switched her language in the level of the word. in the first sentence, she spoke in indonesian, but then she spoke the last word (right) in english. this occurrence is in line with hammers and blanc (2000) who say that intra-sentential switching is the changes between words within a sentence in a different language. it is also called code-mixing. inter-sentential switching abdely (2016) says that inter-sentential switching is the switching between one clause or sentence in one language into another clause or sentence in a different language. elden (2014) also supports that inter-sentential switching can be done by people who master two or more languages and use those languages when they are speaking. hammers and blanc (2000) state that inter-sentential switching is the change of language from one sentence to another sentence or one clause to another clause. therefore, inter-sentential switching can be defined as the type of codeswitching when the speakers say a sentence or clause in one specific language then continues speaking another clause or sentence in different languages. the example is as follows. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 185 example 5 tere, in your opinion, why are other people hard to learn languages? je dis cole parcel que energise voter void pour les recherché de bram. (tere, in your opinion, why are other people hard to learn languages? i say this because i am recording your voice for bram's research.) (p1) in the example above, the code-switching was done by p1 when she answered her sister’s question about learning languages. p1 switched her language in the level of the sentence. at first, she spoke in english. after that, she switched her next sentence to france. this switching was considered inter-sentential switching because the code-switching was done at the level of a sentence (je dis cole parcel que energise voter void pour les recherché de bram). example 6 oke, tunggu aku. did you buy these? can i drink this tea? (wait for me. did you buy these? can i drink this tea?) (p1) in the example above, the code-switching was done by p1 when she asked about her mother’s drink. p1 also switched her language in the level of the sentence. in the first sentence, she spoke in indonesian and switched her next sentence to english. this switching was considered inter-sentential switching because the codeswitching was done at the level of a sentence (oke tunggu aku). example 7 nicht, ich möchte lasagne essen. i think that is delicious. (no, i want to eat lasagna. i think that is delicious.) (p1) in the example above, the code-switching was done by p1 when she said to her sister about the food that she wanted to eat. p1 switched her language in the level of the sentence. in the first sentence, she spoke in german then in the second sentence she switched her language to english. this switching was considered inter-sentential switching since the code-switching was done at the level of a sentence (nicht, ich möchte lasagne essen). example 8 maybe they are confused about how to learn languages well or maybe they are lazy. wǒ yě gānggāng yìshí dào kěyǐ yánjiū wǒmen de yǔyán. (maybe they are confused about how to learn languages well or maybe they are lazy. i also just realized that we can research our language.) (p1) in the example above, the code-switching was done by p1 when she answered her sister’s question about learning languages. p1 switched her language in the level of the sentence. in the first sentence, she spoke in english (maybe they are confused about how to learn languages well or maybe they are lazy.) than in the second sentence, she switched her language to mandarin (wǒ yě gānggāng yìshí dào kěyǐ yánjiū wǒmen de yǔyán). those four examples that have been discussed are considered inter-sentential switching because the changes in the language are in the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 186 level of the sentence. it is in line with hammers and blanc (2000) who say that inter-sentential switching is the change of language from one sentence to another sentence or one clause to another clause. metaphorical switching in the theory of metaphorical switching, wardhaugh (2010) says that it happens when the speaker changes the topic of the conversation. if the speakers are talking about a certain topic, they will switch their language to other languages that are related to the topic. the following conversation was written to show the readers that the speaker switched the language because of the change in the topic. example 9 p3 : today i am going to go to restaurant to eat. her boyfriend : okay, maybe i will go to the concert today. p3 : have you practiced the mozart one? es gibt eine rolle, die sehr schwer zu spielen ist, vor allem der dritte teil. (there are parts that are very difficult to play, especially the third part.) her boyfriend : ja, nach dem konzert werde ich mozart üben. ja, sie haben recht, der dritte teil ist schwierig. (yes, after the concert i will practice mozart. yes, you are right, the third part is difficult.) p3 : okay, gut dann. hast du freunde, die musik spielen? (okay, well then. do you have friends who play music?) her boyfriend : yes. in the example above, the conversation about their preparation for the concert was done in english. when they talked about mozart, they switched their language to german. it was because mozart is an austrian who used german in his country. it showed that mozart became the topic of the conversation which made them switch the language. it is in line with wardhaugh’s theory (2010) that says metaphorical switching happens when the speaker changes the language due to the change of the topic from the conversation. situational switching wardhaugh (2010) says that situational switching happens when the speaker does the code-switching because there is a different situation when they speak. it means that situation also becomes the reason why people do code-switching. therefore, situational switching is one type of code-switching that is influenced by the situation around the speaker. the following conversation was written to show the readers that the speaker switched the language because of the situation. example 10 her sister : was machst du? was hast du so lange gebraucht? wir sind fast zu spat. (what are you doing? what did it take so long? we are almost late.) p1 : warten sie, ich muss mein telefon finden. (hold up, i need to find my phone.) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 187 her sister : oh my god. i told you to always remember where you put your phone. p1 : ahhh, can you help me find my phone so we can go? her sister : what? you always like this. where did you use your phone last time? p1 : on the sofa. her sister : wait. is this your phone? this, we have to go. in the conversation above, p1’s sister switched her language from german to english because she was angry when she looked for her phone. therefore, it changed the situation. in this conversation, the speakers used their mother language when they were angry. it is in line with wardhaugh (2010) who says that situational switching happens when the speaker does the code-switching because there is a different situation when they speak. factors influencing code-switching in multilingual roving people in this study, the results of the interview were used to give more elaboration on the factors that influence multilingual roving people in doing code-switching. all five participants contributing to this study were called p1, p2, p3, p4, and p5, in which p stands for participant. the results of the interview below explain the reason why the participants always do code-switching in their daily activities. the speaker four participants in this study said that they did the code-switching for personal reasons. p1, p2, p3, and p4 said that they did not want to forget the languages that they have already mastered. in the interview they said: terus memang alasan lain kenapa aku melakukan kode code-switching karena memang aku nggak mau ngelupain bahasa yang sudah aku pelajari. (then another reason why i do code-switching is because i do not want to forget the language that i have learned.) (p1) di satu sisi dengan cara aku melakukkan code-switching, aku tetap bisa memprtahankan bahasa yang aku punya dan tidak melupakan bahasa yang aku miliki. (in addition, by doing code-switching, i can still maintain the language that i have, and i do not forget the language.) (p2) kalau dari aku sendiri sih alasannya karena aku gak mau lupain bahasabahasa yang aku bisa ya bram. (the reason is because i do not want to forget the languages that i can, bram.) (p3) di satu sisi aku tetap lakukan code-switching karena supaya tidak lupa dengan bahasa yang aku punya. (on another hand, i keep doing code-switching so that i do not forget the language i have.) (p4) p4 also added that he wanted his children to master the same languages as he masters. this reason also made p2 think that it was okay for her to switch to any language that she masters. they also added: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 188 kalau ini sih iya, bram. jadi gini, aku kan punya anak tuh, pasti dong aku mau ajarin anakku ilmu apa yang aku punya. di sini aku juga ingin anaku bisa memiliki banyak bahasa. (yes, bram. i have a child, of course, i want to teach my child the knowledge i have. here i also want my child to be able to have many languages.) (p4) gimana ya, bram ya? masalahnya selama ini aku kayak nggak sadar gitu lo kalau melakukan alih kode, kayak semua bahasa yang aku kuasai itu seperti tercampur di otak aku karena saking banyaknya bahasa. (the problem is that i do not realize when i do code-switching. it is like all the languages i know are mixed up in my brain because there are so many languages.) (p2) the results of the interview are in line with chaer and agustina (2014), saying that the speakers use code-switching because they have some reasons and factors that make them do code-switching in their way. furthermore, the speaker can also get the advantage of doing code-switching for themselves or others. by analyzing this reason, the researchers are sure that the use of code-switching helps them remember the languages that they have. the interlocutors all five participants also mentioned that they switch the language to the people they are talking to. they wanted to adjust to the language mastery of certain people or communities. p3 even added that she wanted to make the people they were talking to feel comfortable to have a conversation with her. the following examples show their answers. yang memiliki kemampuan banyak bahasa itu ya hanya aku dan saudarasaudaraku aja, tapi kalau misalkan aku bertemu sama teman yang nggak memiliki banyak kemampuan bahasa, iya aku harus menyamai kemampuan mereka dalam berbahasa. iya intinya melihat orangnya dulu lah kalo aku. (those who have many language skills are just me and my siblings, but if i meet a friend who does not have many language skills, then i have to match their ability in language. yes, the point is i see the interlocutor.) (p1) jadi di keluarga aku itu kan orang-orangnya bisa banyak bahasa itu kakakku dan semua orang di rumahku bisa banyak bahasa jadi ya aku ingin mengikuti kemampuan mereka jadi kalau misalkan aku berbicara bersama keluarga aku ya aku akan mengikuti kemampuan mereka yang berarti aku menggunakan banyak bahasa. tapi kalau misalkan aku bertemu dengan temanku biasanya sih aku tidak menggunakan banyak bahasa. aku hanya menggunakan bahasa yang temanku kuasai. (in my family, those who can speak many languages are my sisters and everyone in my house. yes, i want to follow their abilities, so if i talk with my family, i will follow their abilities which means i use many languages. however, if i meet my friends, i usually do not speak many languages. i only use the language that my friends are good at.) (p2) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 189 aku selalu berusaha menyesuaikan diri dengan lawan bicara aku supaya mereka nyaman bicara dengan aku menggunakan bahasa yang mereka punya. tentu saja yang juga aku bisa loh ya. (i always try to adjust the language to the person i am talking to, so they are comfortably talking to me using the language they have.) (p3) ya itu tadi bram, aku juga lihat siapa lawan bicaraku, seperti yang tadi aku sebut kalau aku bicara dengan bapakku selalu pakai bahasa campur, atau ke saudara juga gitu sih. tapi ke orang lain ya enggak. (yes bram, i also saw who the other person i was talking to. as i said earlier, when i talk to my father, i always use mixed language, or to my family, too, but not to other people.) (p4) kadang aku harus nyesuain sama lawan bicaranya siapa. aku juga menyesuaikan gak cuma bahasanya aja sih tapi juga prilaku dan aksen orang. jadi gak cuma bahasa aja yang berubah tapi juga prilaku juga berubah. (sometimes i have to adjust the language to the person i am talking to. i also adjust not only the language but also people's attitudes and accents. so, it is not only my language that changes, but also my behavior.) (p5) the results of the interview are in line with chaer and agustina (2014), saying that the interlocutors can also make the speaker do code-switching because the speaker wants to compensate for the interlocutors’ ability. in this case, the writer is sure that the use of code-switching helps them adjust their language mastery to other people. the changes in the situation because of the third person the changes in the situation because of the third person also play a big role in influencing the participants to do code-switching. p1 and p2 mentioned that they switched the language since there was a third party who came and joined the conversation. p1 also stated that she switched the language since her father only mastered english, while she and her sister mastered some languages, including english. this situation also made p1 speak more formal english when talking to her father rather than when she talked to her sister. they in the interview said: jadi di keluarga aku itu yang bisa banyak bahasa itu aku dan saudara saudaraku. sedangkan bapak aku hanya bisa berbicara bahasa inggris. jadi ya seperti yang kamu berikan contoh tadi itu terjadi di keluarga aku. aku sering banget bicara sama adekku pake bahasa jerman karena memang sekarang kan kita lagi hidup di lingkungan orang jerman lalu saat bapak datang tiba tiba aku langsung bicara pake bahasa inggris karena memang bapak nggak bisa bahasa jerman. (so, in my family, those who can speak many languages are me and my sisters. meanwhile, my father can only speak english. so yes, as you gave the example earlier, it happened in my family. i often speak to my sister in german because now we are living in german as well. then, when my father comes suddenly, i immediately speak in english because he cannot speak german.) (p1) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 190 pernah sih, terutama kalau aku sedang bersama kakakku dan kita bicara bahasa inggris lalu datang teman kita yang hanya bisa bahasa jerman. lalu aku sama kakaku bicara dalam bahasa jerman. (i have experienced that, especially when my sister and i speak in english but then our friend who only speaks german comes along. it makes my sister and i speak german.) (p2) the results of the interview are in line with chaer and agustina (2014) that explains when the third person comes, he/she also influences the speaker(s) to do code-switching. in this case, the writer is sure that the use of code-switching helps speakers adapt to the change of situation because of a third person. the changes in the topic talking about the next factor that influences people in doing code-switching, p1, p2, and p3 mentioned that they switched the language when talking about a specific topic. p1 shared her story that she would speak in france and mandarin when she talked about her childhood. this situation happened because she once lived in montreal and taiwan when she was a child. a similar situation was also experienced by p2 who would always speak in german in talking about her high school. this situation also happened because she once stayed in salzburg. moreover, the tendency to discuss a certain topic based on its original language was also experienced by p3. it happened when she discussed mozart as written in the example of metaphorical switching. they in the interview said: kalo ini sih sering banget ya aku merasakan dalam keseharian aku. misalkan kan aku tuh waktu kecil tinggal di montreal. nah sekarang ini kan aku sering tuh bicara sama adekku pake bahasa jerman karena memang kita sekarang hidup di lingkungan orang jerman terus tiba-tiba topik kita berubah dalam suatu pembicaraan misalkan pertama itu kita bicara tentang makanan pakai bahasa jerman terus topik yang kedua itu bicara tentang masa kecil kita yang berarti kita tinggal di montreal yang pakai bahasa prancis. seketika di saat itu juga biasanya kita akan melakukan alih kode ke bahasa prancis karena memang topiknya itu montreal memakai bahasa prancis terus kita gunakan bahasa prancis dalam pembicaraan itu. (i feel this very often in my daily life. when i was a kid, i lived in montreal. right now, i often talk to my sister in german because we live in a german as well. then suddenly our topic can change in a conversation. for example, in the first topic, we talk about food using german, then the second, we talk about our childhood where we lived in montreal which uses french. immediately, we usually switched the language to french because the topic was montreal that uses french, then we continued to use french in the conversation.) (p1) aku sering bicara sama kakakku pakai bahasa inggris, terus tiba-tiba dalam percakapan itu kita bicara topik yang beda, contohnya sekolahku pas sma di salzburg. di salzburg kan pakai bahasa jerman tuh, yaudah aku terus pindah bahasa ke jerman. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 191 (i often talk to my sister in english and suddenly we talk about different topics, for example about my high school in salzburg. in salzburg, the people there use german. so, i use german in conversation.) (p2) nah kalau yang ini iya bram. jadi kayak waktu itu aku record percakapan aku sama pacarku. awalnya kita bicara bahasa inggris kan? terus saat kita bicara tentang mozart yang berasal dari austria yang memakai bahasa jerman, kami langsung bicara memakai bahasa jerman. jadi itu sih. aku gak sengaja loh itu. aku malah baru sadar sekarang sebenarnya hahahaha. (so, at that time i recorded my conversation with my boyfriend. at the beginning of the topic, we spoke in english, right? then we talked about mozart who came from austria. in austria, the people use german, so we immediately speak in german. so that is it. i did not mean it. i just realized now actually hahahaha.) (p3) the results of the interview are in line with chaer and agustina (2014) who explain that topics make the speakers do code-switching. it was because they often use different languages if the topic also changes. when the speakers are influenced by the topic, they can use two or more languages. conclusion two major conclusions are drawn from the findings. the first finding shows that intra-sentential switching (45.45%) becomes the most common type of codeswitching that appears in the conversation done by multilingual roving people. intra-sentential switching is followed by inter-sentential switching (40%). after intra-sentential switching, the writer found metaphorical switching has a percentage (9.1%) of the occurrences. the last type of code-switching that has the least occurrence is situational switching (5.45%). the second finding shows four factors affecting multilingual roving people to do code-switching in this study. those factors are the speaker, the interlocutors, the changes in the situation because of a third person, and the changes in the topic. not all participants have the same factors that influence them in doing the code-switching. it depends on the background experienced by the speakers. moreover, it also depends on the language that each of them masters. code-switching in multilingual roving people’s conversations is an interesting topic to be added to a discussion in sociolinguistics class. it can be used as one example for sociolinguistics students to show them that moving from one country to another country will make people get some benefits and help them develop their language repertoire. this language repertoire is helpful for sociolinguistics students in making the relationship closer as they can adjust the languages based on the interlocutors. this research only discusses code-switching done by multilingual roving people. it includes the switching in the level of word, phrase, clause, sentence, and the factors influencing code-switching. future researchers are invited to reveal more aspects that exist in code-switching. they may conduct a study on codeswitching that focuses on the accent used by multilingual roving people. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 178-193 192 references abdely, a. a. 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(2018). types of indonesian-english codeswitching employed in a novel. kasetsart journal of social sciences, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.kjss.2018.02.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.kjss.2018.02.004 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 87-96 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 87 kingyaw’s reciting poem on afro-american accent: the world-englishes movement nurvita wijayanti and panggio restu wilujeng universitas bangka belitung correspondence: wijayavita88@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v5i1.3729 received 9 september 2021; accepted 29 september 2021 abstract fanon in his book titled ‘black skin, white masks’ says that no matter how smart black people may become, white people will always feel the sense of ‘inferiority’ in which black people speak pidgin. the sense of imitation of imitating makes the colonizer culture, in which the black people come across inferior from the white’s perspective. kingyaw’s youtube video tries to break such a false perception. in his video, he talks the way black people have their unique accent it cannot be compared to the received pronunciation (bre). therefore, this study aims to unravel the linguistic theory on language variation as a part of the world-englishes movement. this study uses descriptive qualitative method by having one of kingyaw’s video performing and reciting a poem titled “accent” that was uploaded in youtube on december 17th, 2018. post-colonialism allows the people to see the world without discrimination. keywords: world-englishes movement, fanon, post-colonialism, accent, postmodernism introduction postmodernism in the third world is part of the thought that developed countries are the standard of knowledge (peter: 2018). it follows the emergence of capitalism and democracy that human should be equal though it turns out that it is part of the domination or the so-called containment (fanon: 1970). what especially as developed countries in america and europe become the center of universe, hence making the third world countries peripheral. theory of postmodernism enunciates that the truth is relative and there is no absolute truth. africa as a part of the third world has been struggled in frantz fanon’s writings talking about the imperialism and western center. it is a witness that many of his ancestors, africans, have an identity crisis as the result of colonialism (david: 2000). fanon’s black skin, white masks says that no matter how smart black people may become, white people will always feel the sense of ‘inferiority’ in which black people speak pidgin. the sense of imitation of the colonizer culture make the black people inferior from the white’s perspective. it is supported by chandra saying that colonization shapes one culture into a blended culture and the people in it (chandra: 2019). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 87-96 88 the inferiority nowadays has been struggled through the world-englishes movement. it contains the movement from non-english speaking countries. africa as the former colonized country. some start to refuse the standard of the received pronunciation or british english standard when they speak. the consequences have the huge impact as this movement support anti-discrimination in speaking english. the term world-englishes has been introduced by nelson and kachru stating that the inner circle is from british and america as the standardized accent while the outer circle is from the countries which have been trained to use english to form a new context (sa’d: 2018). furthermore, it involves the process of making english native for every country. the outer circle makes a progress by having its own native version of english. world englishes introduces three circles namely the inner circle, the outer circle, and the expanding circle. the inner circle includes such countries as the usa, the united kingdom, ireland, canada, australia, and new zealand. meanwhile, outer circle is the formerly colonized countries such as singapore, india, and malawi. therefore, the expanding circle is indonesia, china, japan, and greece (sa’d: 2018). africa is a part of the british colony (europeans) mostly within a slave trade (maier: 2020). the youtube video titled “accent” shows a performance of reciting poem titled “accent” by king yaw, a ghanaian, who strongly refuses the discrimination of english accent. he strongly disagrees with the concept of standardized accent, especially when african should sound like british or american english. in a video consisting of 3:07 minutes, he recites the poem showing his disappointment toward anybody who always rechecks the way he speaks. he performed it at the 2018 texas grand slam poetry festival finals at texas a&m university. this study, therefore, aims to investigate the contribution to linguistic aspect into the world-englishes movement reflected from the poem titled accent recited by king yaw. the linguistic aspect can be varied based on the expression and the phrases brought by king yaw in his youtube video. therefore the phonological, sociolinguistics, phonetic, and semantic aspects are included in this study. by having those linguistic aspects, the author wants to prove that the poem fights against accents discrimination. it propose the world-englishes movement. this study brings the topic on the world-englishes movement as a part of the postmodern era where the truth is not absolute anymore. thus, the ugly truth about standardized knowledge brought by the european or the americans is no longer acknowledged (karim & azlan: 2019) therefore, the theory used in this research is the theory of postmodernism, the world-englishes and linguistic theories such as phonetics, phonology, and semantics. phonetics is the study of sounds and its symbol (wells: 2014). the standardized symbols are written in the international phonetic association (ipa), where it covers mostly british english and american english. phonetics matters the proper pronunciation based on its stress pattern, raising and lowering intonation, diphthong vowel, triphthong vowel, fricative, affricate, nasal sound, voiced, and voiceless. zhengwei pei and yanhong xing in their research in 2016 concluded that the chinese students still refer to phonetic rule rather than the language variation proposed by the world englishes (pei and xing: 2016). their findings show that the teacher is aware of the world englishes thus teaching it to the chinese students. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 87-96 89 however, the teachers need to explain the phonetic standard used in both british english and american english. phonology tries to accept the variation of the english language as a part of the assimilation language spoken by non-speaking english countries. phonological studies, therefore, include the aspect of language variation such as flapping sound, lvocalization, upper-case letters for consonant (gardiner & deterding: 2020) different accents, phoneme variation, rhyming, rhythm, and tone. malaysian english (me) has become the world englishes movement that makes it a postcolonial variety. it is part of the richness in intonation, tone, and rhyming. thus it proposes the variety of a dynamic and rich new english (rahim: 2014). semantics supports the concepts of a connotative meaning. lakoff & johnson propose that metaphors is one of the concept of semantic knowledge that has one meaning to something else (lakoff & johnson: 1980). metaphors can be found in a major lexical category such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives (glanzberg: 2008). thus the acquire of metaphor is the understanding of the meaning behind a word, phrase, or clause that has a metaphor (ngongo & benu: 2020). postmodernism conceptualizes fanon’s famous work on his view about postcolonialism. in this context, his view is reflected through the postcolonial canon (shringarpure: 2015). those standards no longer exist in the concept of fanon’s theory which accepts all standards of english language accents and dialects. worldenglishes movement emerges as the result of this well-known theory. therefore, the world-englishes support the concept of postmodernism as it accepts non-standardized english accents. it refuses the form of received pronunciation brought by the international phonetic association (ipa). method this research uses the descriptive qualitative approach using the object of a youtube video titled “accent”, a poem recital performed by a ghanaian named king yaw. the video shows the full performance within a 3.07-minute duration. thus, it requires comprehensive data collection and data analysis. in this research, the author observes the expression performed by the speaker through his intonation, his gesture, his raising tone, and rhyming when performing the poem recital. in addition, the researcher would like to find the main issue which is the world englishes movement in a postcolonial era. the author also considers several terms that are part of connotative meaning therefore they can be included as the main object of the research. the data collection includes both the poem titled “accent” and the suprasegmental features shown in king yaw’s performance such as its gesture, intonation, tone, and rhythm. the authors played the video on youtube several times to get a different focus on each playing. at first, the authors identified the utterances recited in the poem. secondly, the authors collected some terminologies that might have a relation with the world-englishes movement. the next step is the focus on a suprasegmental feature such as the way the speaker speaks to the audience, expresses the poem recital, makes the gesture he shows to the audience, and accentuates the pronunciation and accent that he has in the video. the authors used descriptive qualitative research which means that it is importantly descriptive rather than interpretive (sandelowski: 2010). some theories identify the elements in linguistics that are related to the movement of world ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 87-96 90 englishes. it concludes that there is a relation between the linguistic aspects and the postmodernism theory. findings and discussion the english language has evolved and changed in many countries which use it (schneider: 2007). the poem recital video shows king yaw’s expression when performing the poem titled “accents”. he opens the recital in a raising tone requesting to repeat the question: huh, what? say that again, um, can you say it slowly and enunciate? hmm, one more time? bro, just spell it. figure 1 figure 2 the poet uses the raising intonation to confront the people who underestimate his ghanaian-english accent. he imitates someone who asks him to repeat his unclear articulation. at worst, that someone mocks him by telling: dude, are you even speaking english? ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 87-96 91 figure 2 king yaw’s intonation indicates the use of suprasegmental features in phonology. he resounds like a native to be sarcastic. he imitates the native speakers to show that he can be native-like but he refuses to do. king yaw expresses annoyance toward native speakers who underestimate his ghanaian accent. by the second stanza, he highlights the concept of the ghanaian accent. the three lines poem shows that ghanaian is part of africa and it has english as the national language as well. history forces the african to speak black english as a result of slavery. yet, it contributes to the variation of english. world englishes tries to conceptualized the englishes as equal english with some different backgrounds that create what are so-called accents and dialects all around the world. so let me get this straight, my home-bred, homemade ghanaian accent is too foreign for your ethnocentric taste? figure 4 king yaw uses ethnocentric which is defined as a part of having a strong feeling of cultural or ethnic bias (oxford dictionary: 2021). when english is seen as an ethnocentric taste, king yaw conceptualizes it as too foreign. it occurs that ghanaian english does not deserve a place in the inner circle. therefore, king yaw uses the raising intonation to show his anger and annoyance. the use of sarcasm is seen in the third stanza by mentioning the famous african american actor and its famous line on the famous african american movie titled black panther in 2018. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 87-96 92 you’ve been imitating forest whitetaker, talking about ‘the king will now have the strength of the black panther stripped away’ but all of sudden, you can’t navigate a conversation with me? figure 5 intonation discusses the duration to communicate the discourse meaning. other than duration, it also represents the intensity and pitch. in other words, intonation is the combination of these three called as the acoustic parameter (levis: 2012). the discourse tells about the statement cited from the famous movie titled black panther that is the rising of african american actors who become the main players in several hollywood movies. it promotes the spirit of afrofuturism that discovers black adventures across the african diaspora (strong & chaplin: 2019). from the use of rising intonation in the clause ‘the king will now have the strength; of the black panther stripped away’, it indicates the paradox between the audience of the movie and the reality in discriminating the accents. at one time, people think that the clause is encouraging; however, at the other hands they do not accept accents spoken by african-american. connotative words and sentences are used to support the making of the rising intonation. the clause you can’t navigate a conversation with me? enunciates the expression of anger by raising the word navigate and with me. navigate in the oxford dictionary is “to plan and direct the course of ship, plane, car etc., for example by using a map” (oxford dictionary: 2021). meanwhile, the non-literal meaning shows that the word navigate is the ability to read the code or map shown by the african american speaker. on the contrary, the listeners cannot acquire that ability. therefore, it is part of the sarcasm. instead of feeling down, king yaw educates the native speakers. this is shown in the fifth stanza: if we’re being real, i can’t understand shit you say either! but i have learned, i have learned to code switch, for your convenience . this is how i survive, it is a tool meant to keep me safe in this country. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 87-96 93 the reciter uses the term ‘code-switching’. the speaker uses the second or foreign language to adjust to the non-native speaker. code-switching occurs when the speaker should show empathy by switching the language that the listener speaks (hoffman: 1991). code-switching is conducted when the speaker would like to be accepted in society. the speaker who does code-switching also respects the hegemony mode that he/s he should follow the rules from his/her superior (gijimah: 2019). double identity is part of the issue faced by the reciter. this is part of w.e.b dubois's concept stating that this is part of the double consciousness. it happens when the individual has two thoughts, two souls, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body (carnegie council: 2021). i go back home occasionally, to stay connected to my roots, but my family does not seem to recognize me, i like to think it because i’ve been gone too long, but the truth is, i have toyed with my west african accent, so much that i have become invisible to my own people. the stanza states that the two identities do exist. the reciter is the part of these two races and languages, therefore accents are not mattered. this hybrid identity is challenging as the individual will not feel received by both sides. as a ghanaian, the reciter feels that his accent is outrageous to hear. it sounds so america. on the other hand, he feels rejected by american society. the history of the american negro develops in the concept of not making america ‘africanized’ nor making africa ‘americanized’ (carnegie council: 2021). this statement was confirmed by martin luther king jr that double consciousness will become a true hybrid. meaning to say that the american negro is not american nor he/she is african (carnegie council: 2021). these two statements are the reality faced by the reciter as he cannot forget and erase the cultures and values to be a ghanaian, nor he can mingle completely and be called an american. yet, the issue of racism is still in the upbringing. discrimination is described as people matter the varied accents. it is a set of circumstances that holds ‘whiteness’ to be superior (bheero: 2021). the reciter is a member of the outer circle, however, he is raised in america that makes him part of the native speaker. his bloodline is african therefore it was the problem of the twentieth century (du bois in novita dewi: 2021). the last four stanzas show the climax of the performance by bringing up the raising intonation, connotative meanings, and discourse at once. you think, you think, this sexy, saucy, juiced, home-toned inflection can be distorted? my accent is the realest thing about me, it has more than survived, been burned alive, struggled its way through ice, yet still migrated, limped on every college side-walk, but still graduated, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 87-96 94 joined speech and debate. traveled all over the country, slayed every single tournament. my accent falls in love in five different languages. medofo pa beda me nkyen in tsui ba ni oba ka in mase chalee beh yu makucam slee ma der mon amour, viens dormir a cote de moi my love, come sleep next to me my accent is an open map full of endless possibilities, it is why, when you speak, i try my hardest to listen. to understand. to taste the salt in your accent. so why do you refuse to taste the sweetness in mine? the reciter says the phrase ‘this sexy, saucy, juiced, home-toned inflection’ refers to the ghanaian accent. he describes the accent as 'sexy' as according to the oxford dictionary it means sexually attractive, exciting, and interesting (informal). in connotative meaning, the word accentuates the quality of language sound that is interesting. the other words say the same when he uses saucy to describe the ghanaian accent. it means “rude or referring to sex in a way that is humorous but not offensive” (oxford dictionary: 2021). the connotative meaning shows that the reciter wants to compare a ghanaian accent with an object that refers to human appearance as sexy, saucy, and juicy. moreover, they refer to the language inflection that ghanaians have while english does not have. that is the concept of the worldenglishes movement when everybody has a right to speak with their own accent brought since they were born. it is expected not to be adjusted and leave it sounds natural. the outer speakers including ghanaian accent deal with this worldenglishes movement to be accepted in american society, moreover world society which speaks english. outer speakers use the concept of world-englishes to be accepted in the world society of english speaking. according to bhowmik, measuring the standard of english speaking is different from time and space. he says that spelling errors matter to britain people, others are in the grammatical, lexical, and phonological systems (2015). meanwhile, widdowson in bhowmik accentuates that there are two elements of english variation. it is seen from its communal and communicative perspective. spelling and accents are part of the communal system while the communicative goal is to share communication among its user (1994). in other words, the world englishes points out the term communicative because it will not reduce the essence of the goal of communication. the spelling and accent can be different from standard english but the main message is delivered successfully. this poem voices the world-englishes in several attempts which are phonological suprasegmental features, semantics, and discourse analysis. the intonation shows how the reciter feels about the race issue used when he speaks his ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 87-96 95 ghanaian accent. semantics is shown in the use of connotative meaning, and discourse supports the connotative meaning in the wider context. this poem is generally the voice of the world-englishes movement. said says that the world is already mixed that every race is migrated to other places. so there will be mixed races as well. it can be seen through the mobility of africans who move into france and learn to be francophonic. he also points out that to be utilitarian in this century is not significant anymore as there are critics who are english and who are not english (said: 2001). based on his explanation, this poem is part of the movement that the english users should be revised. it does not only belong to the inner circle but also is part of the outer circle. conclusion the video shows how the poem reciter uses mostly high tone and rising intonation. or, even worse the speaker accentuates several terms by having mispronounced the terms. however, it actually is acceptable and understandable. the point delivered is to campaign the term the world-englishes as the main aspect of communication that is accepted the divergence in accent and dialect of english language. sarcasm is part of the output of the discourse. the poem reciter mostly uses raising intonation, metaphor, and connotative meaning. in the video, he uses raising intonation to mock the listeners that are mostly native speakers. he also uses the connotative meaning to compare with the others aspect of words so that the sarcasm can be delivered significantly. metaphor is used to point out the meaning of connotative words. references bheeroo, l., mafethe, p., & billing, l. (2021). racism, power, and truth: experiences of people of colour in development. bond society building: london bhowmik, s. k. (2015). world englishes and english language teaching: a pragmatic and humanistic approach. colomb. appl. linguist. j., 17(1), 142-157. du bois, w. e. b. (1994). the souls of black folk. new york, avenel, nj: gramercy books. fanon, f. (1970). toward the african revolution. london: penguin book. carnegie council. (2021). african american identity and double consiousness. https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/education/002/worksheets/ushistory/mlk/doubl econsciousness chandra, t. m. (2019). the reclaiming cban cultural identity while living as a cban diaspora in aerica as depicted in camilla bacello “havana”. lire journal (journal of linguistics and literature), 3(1), 60-65. gijimah, t. (2019). code-switching as a means of struggling against the english hegemony at midlands state university. journal for studies in humanities and social sciences, 8, 44-60. hoffmann, c. (1991). an introduction to billingualism. london: longman. karim, m. h. b. a., & azlan, a. a. (2019) modernism and postmodernism in feminism: a conceptual study on the developments of its defination, waves and school of thought. malaysian journal of social sciences and humanities, 4(1), 1-14 kyeremateng, y. (2018). accent. texas grand slam poetry festival. texas a&m university. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9obcz-fhog&t=29s https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/education/002/worksheets/ushistory/mlk/doubleconsciousness https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/education/002/worksheets/ushistory/mlk/doubleconsciousness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9obcz-fhog&t=29s ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 87-96 96 maier, d.j., davies, oliver, f., john, d., & boateng, e. a. (2020, april 1). ghana. encyclopedia britannica. https://www.britannica.com/place/ghana ngongo, m., benu, n. 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(2015). the afterlive of frantz fanon and the reconstruction of postcolonial studies. journal of french and francophone philosophy, 23, 113128. doi 10.5195/jffp.2015.676 strong, m. t., & chaplin, k. s. (2019) afrofuturism and black panther. american sociological association, 18(2), 58-59. https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504219854725 wells, j. (2014). english phonetics: theory and practice. in sounds interesting: observations on english and general phonetics (pp. 38-81). cambridge: cambridge university press. doi: 10.1017/cbo9781139871327.003 widdowson, h. g. (1994). the ownership of english. tesol quarterly, 28, 377389 https://www.britannica.com/place/ghana http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.5n.4p.183 https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0351-0696-1 https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504219854725 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 12 iranian youth’s identity politics: cosmopolitan aspirations, self-reproach and lived experiences of belongingness to the nation alireza azeri matin international university of malaya-wales (iumw), malaysia correspondence: azeri_matin@yahoo.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.4445 received 4 march 2022; accepted 15 august 2022 abstract constituting more than one-third of the country’s population, young generation in iran are also a subnational group who have their own unique experiences of living in iran and distinct way of defining themselves as iranian. this has given rise to iranian youth’s identity politics, evinced by nationwide student-led uprisings and social movements throughout the past decade. identity politics in this sense is specified as the ways in which the young iranians reflect on their everyday experiences in order to make sense of their belongingness to the nation. the aim of this study, however, is to elucidate the ambiguities surrounding the youth’s identities through conducting a series of focus group discussions with the most mature segment of this age group who were selected from middle-class residents of tehran. the findings ultimately unravelled cosmopolitan aspirations, self-reproach and some other identity-making aspects of these young people’s lives. keywords: focus group, identity politics, iranian youth, lived experiences, social movements introduction soon after islamic revolution in 1979, iran underwent a sudden political, economic and social change through which it turned from the west’s major ally into an internationally isolated nation (borszik, 2016). accordingly, in the course of more than four decades, the fundamental shift in islamic republic of iran’s (iri) international relations, particularly in regard to the west, has resulted in a series of grave consequences for the nation, affecting almost every aspect of people’s lives in iran (milani, 2018). the magnitude of such devastating effects on the country was exacerbated even more with eight years of iran-iraq war which began shortly after islamic revolution and lasted up until 1988. throughout these years, however, iri has been capitalising on both repressive and ideological state apparatuses to reaffirm its legitimacy to rule over the nation (golkar, 2016). in line with such efforts, the state-controlled social institutions, including mainstream media, have been incessantly engaged in construction of a homogeneous identity based on islamic, revolutionary and anti-west ideology in order to ensure the continuity of the theocratic regime through solidarity of the nation (amirpur, 2017). the mailto:azeri_matin@yahoo.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.4445 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 13 regime’s relative success in establishing an islamic state, however, was enabled through netting the support of the majority of people who up until mid-1990s had retained a revolutionary spirit and a warring attitude against a west-backed enemy, iraq (chubin, 2019). in this way, the period of post-war was the beginning of a gradual societal shift partly for the waning collective mood of unity, comradeship and fanaticism, and partly due to the entrance of the world into a new era of globalisation. perhaps the most remarkable transformative aspect of the globalisation at this point was the advent of the new forms of transnational media such as internet and satellite tv, and their rapid expansion across the country during 1990s. in essence, these new means of mass communication had their impacts on the people of iran by bringing about an abundance of unfettered information and entertainment contents, liberating people from the state-run national media’s monopoly. also, in tandem with such developments, a plethora of political and popular cultural contents with generally anti-regime disposition flooded the free-to-air satellite tv and various internet-related websites and platforms (alikhah, 2018). this in turn, marked a defining moment for people of iran as they were able to access to a different narrative about the nation’s history as well as alternative meanings of iranianness (marandi & tari, 2017; matin, 2020). nonetheless, the culmination of these social, political, and technological transformations during the last decade of the twentieth century coincided with the emergence of young generation in iran. being born between early 1990s to about mid-2000s, these young people are now almost 15 to 29 years old, and are predicted to constitute one-third of the 84 million population of iran by 2020 (roudi, azadi, & mesgaran, 2017). also known as iranian youth, the young generation is seen to be a distinctive subnational group with members who claim to have their own specific norms, values and unique experiences of living in iran and being iranian (khosravi, 2017). such uniqueness is seen by many to have its roots in youth’s disconnectedness with revolutionary culture, as well as concurring their formative years with post-war era and the life-altering circumstances of this hectic period, the most significant of which was arguably the accessibility to the global media (tajmazinani, 2017). the youth’s distinctiveness in this way, was remarkably manifested in various social and cultural practices, and their increasing radical political participation (rivetti, rivetti & yurova, 2020). this is perhaps most evident in youth’s burgeoning online activism and other emancipatory campaigns, along with the nationwide social movements and uprisings which have primarily been organised and spear-headed by young dissidents throughout the past two decades (khazraee & losey, 2016; mohammadi, 2019). these observations, alongside the youth’s self-proclaimed definition for their iranian selves vis-à-vis the islamic identity construct imposed by the state, therefore, have given rise to this subnational group’s identity politics: the youth’s struggle over the meaning of iranianness, and the ways they perceive /express themselves in relation to their belongingness to the nation. against this background, the present study argues that since iranian youth are (or perceive themselves as) members of a distinctive subnational group with unique norms, values and worldviews, they are also likely to have their own specific way of reflecting on and defining themselves as iranians. as part of their identity project, then, such largely experiential self-perception has emerged as a meaningful source ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 14 for youth to compare/contrast themselves with ‘others’ while preserving their national belongingness. in this context, ‘othering’ involved the youth’s construction and identification of self (as a subnational social group) and others, through attribution of differentiating characteristics to either in-group or out-group members. this study, therefore, aims to shed some light on iranian youth’s identity politics through exploring some of the salient aspects of their identities, particularly those based on their lived experiences. here, ‘identity politics’ follows lawler’s (2015) expanded definition of the term, focusing more on banal and everyday form of identity-making that produces and reproduces (sub)national identities (billig, 1995) in the context of ‘others’ who are seen to stand outside such identities. furthermore, a ‘salient aspect of identity’ in this study is specified as what young generation perceive to matter to them the most at specific point in time, particularly those beliefs, attitudes and experiences that set them apart from older generations. the term ‘lived experiences’, however, is referred to these individuals’ personal knowledge about and experiences of social world gained through their direct and first-hand involvement in everyday events. in this view, besides critical role of the politics of identity in advancing social change, any inquiry into iranian youth’s identities seems to be of paramount importance, precisely because young people comprise the largest segment of iran’s population, and have the highest potential for shaping the future of the country (bakhtiari, 2020; khan-mohammadi & kaveh, 2019). moreover, the qualitative approach of this study was set to unravel some of the youth’s deeply embedded perspectives often not accessible by means of survey and statistics. this is in particular important since the existing knowledge about youth within the circles of iranian social science is largely built on positivist paradigm and quantitative research which have often sought generalisiblity rather than getting into the roots of social problems (ghaneirad & gholipour, 2009; rahbari, 2015). identity and identity politics the questions like ‘who am i?’ and ‘where do i belong?’ have taken up an unprecedented level of immediacy and complexity in modern times (papastergiadis, 2000). the ‘self’, as he further noted, is now the site of such intense cultivation while one’s “place of origin is a determining force in our destiny”. identity in this sense refers to the ways individuals think about themselves as ‘a people’ and how they think about others, as well as imagining how others might think about them (kidd & teagle, 2012, p. 7). lebow (2012) distinguished between concept of identity and practice of identity, considering the latter the understandings of individuals of themselves and their behavioral implications. such understandings, he suggested, have three physical, social and reflective dimensions. an individual’s physical body that differs from others including appearance, abilities and limitations that help shape his or her live and react to others and their perspectives upon his or her. the individuals’ social understanding of themselves that comes from their social relations with others and their positions in society. the reflective dimension is a product of consciousness which enables people to grasp their distinctiveness from, and similarities with others. such sociological perspective, therefore, focuses on everydayness of identity, and considers it as an ordinary performance produced by individuals’ self-making ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 15 processes alongside their positions in the social systems (goffman, 1969). parallel to this, giddens (1991) coined the term ‘identity project’ to suggest that identity is not static, but it is a development process and a movement towards, rather than a conceived destination. it is through this view that giddens thought of the complexity of identity whereas the more resources available for construction of the self, the more aspects of identities we weave around our ‘selves’. since 1980s, however, there has been a ‘veritable discursive explosion’ around the concept of identity (hall, 1996). it was during this time that identity emerged as a political struggle, and became a central theme in cultural studies (barker, 1999, p. 2). hall (1996) pointed to the ‘impossibility’ and ‘political significance’ as two differing ways of understanding identity. impossibility of identity, as he argued, refers to the western notion of the totality of a person who owns a fixed and stable identity. in this view, individuals are regarded as unified agents with a universal and static identity. in contrast, cultural studies view on identity holds that an individual’s self is made up of multi-layered and shifting identities. it was within this ‘unstable identity’ perspective that the political significance of the concept of identity was highlighted (hall, 1996). such antiessentialist view on self within the cultural studies, therefore, featured identity politics “as a forging of ‘new languages’ of identity with which to describe ourselves” (barker, 2004, p. 95). identity politics has often been described as the tendency of the members of a particular race, gender, ethnicity, age or religion to politically organise around a special interest merely with the intention of advancing such interest without concern or regard for any larger group or collective. this does not necessarily mean the reinforcement of a certain group identity, as some social movements have been the result of breaking away from dominant identity towards the acknowledgement of the individuals’ identities. bernstein (2005) traced back the formal use of the term identity politics to 1979 when social scientists began to use the phrase to label the certain activist groups who challenged the societal perspectives and description of how they perceived themselves. in later decades, identity politics was broadened to mean collective actions usually with activist or violent nature around issues of nationalism and ethnicity (bernstein, 2005). in the words of wiarda (2014, p. 148), identity politics simply means ‘the quest to belong’, though it can be more formally described as “political attitudes or positions that focus on the concerns of sub-groups in the society”. identity politics, as he further elaborated, is a form of “activism or status-seeking” pursuits involving various social, cultural and political categories. identity politics, therefore, concerns “the self-interested perspectives of self-identified societal interest groups . . . in ways that people’s politics are shaped by these narrower (non-national) aspects of their identity” (2014, p. 148). in a strictly political sense, the term is described as political activities which involve struggles over the right forms of political, legal and constitutional recognition and tolerance towards identities of individuals belonging to various social or cultural (sub) groups (tully, 2003). identity politics, from a more cultural standpoint, refers to the “collective sensibilities and actions” originating from a distinctive worldview (or experiences, interests, and struggles) within a society as a response to the majority’s worldview that has a tendency to overpower, subsume or erase such distinctive worldview (hale, 1997). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 16 moreover, identity politics has been conceptualised as “contestations of theory and interpretation about particular identity groups and in opposition to the dominant or majority population” with the aim of exploring the “discursive dependence on the ever-evolving constructions” discrete categories of identity (fraser-burgess, 2018). identity politics, as noted by arthur asa berger (2018, p. 189), is the strong passion and intense desire that social groups have about their own problems, situations, and needs. identity politics for chris barker (2004) is about “making and maintenance of cultural rights” for those within a society or culture who strive to make identity claims. in terms of restoring justice and equality in a democratic society, identity politics also aims at changing culture and behaviour in ways that will have real benefits for the people involved. identity politics, as francis fukuyama has observed is a natural and inevitable response to injustice which in recent years has resulted in “welcome changes in concrete public policies that have benefited the groups in question, as well as in cultural norms” (2018, p. 83). in recent decades, however, there have been some developments that emerged to explain the identity politics’ implications for recognition of a certain group among other groups in various societies around the world, in addition to its critical role for social change in those nations (parekh, 2008). methodology in this study, focus group discussion (fgd) was preferred over other methods mainly due to ‘group effect’, allowing the data to emerge in the form of spontaneous conversations between participants, with minimum interference of a moderator. here, the group effect was in particular vital for generating the necessary data, since the study dealt with young people’s everyday experiences which were more likely to be revealed through unaffected and ordinary interactions between members in each group. the recruitment of the research participants was based on a purposive sampling approach that aimed to provide an in-depth account about the underinvestigation phenomenon through interviewing only a number of information-rich individuals (liamputtong, 2011). this was carried out through snowball sampling technique wherein existing subjects provided referrals from people they knew, such as friends, relatives and colleagues, as long as they fitted the nomination criteria. the criteria required candidates to be 25-29 years old, shiite, middle-class residents of tehran, with no affiliation with iranian political system. in this way, the candidates’ age, religion membership and even political connection were relatively easy to confirm. however, estimating the participants’ social class required extra effort which involved looking into the initial information provided by the referees at the preliminary nomination stage, to see if such descriptions qualify these individuals as middle class or not. the inclusion criteria protocol which was developed for this category considered factors such as the candidates’ residential area (e.g. northern districts, inner city and southern districts respectively represent upper class, middle class, and under class), and the income of their families between $10 to $100 per person per day (farzanegan, 2021). since the purpose of the fgds was to explore some of the less-known aspects of individuals’ identities which not had been adequately addressed before, the interview guide was designed with minimum structure to let up on participants and thereof allow the emergence of varied and new ideas (kitzinger, 2020). the topics ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 17 for discussions were chosen carefully to allow the participants to start thinking about and reflecting on their sense of belonging to the nation as well as their everyday experiences of living in iran and being iranian. each topic was introduced by asking a general question and then giving the members some time to mull it over, while listening to their responses and observing their nonverbal interactions in order to present the probes and follow-up questions appropriately and at the right time. these interrogation techniques allowed to get a better sense of what individuals were exactly trying to communicate, since their initial responses to the general questions were hardly clear, detailed and meaningful. the arrangement of the topics to be discussed as well as the wordings of the interview questions were tested out and fine-tuned during a pilot study with a group consisting of 2 males and 2 females. the pilot study also proved to be useful for evaluating the group characteristics such as size and diversity. as such, the focus groups with 4 members were found to be manageable without compromising ‘group dynamics’, not to mention the inconveniences that having larger groups would bring to the host. conversely, the pilot study provided some clues about unproductivity of the mixed groups, since gender relations between members seemed to sway the participants’ opinions and way of speaking. that is to say, at times male participants seemed to play with words and alter their views in order to appear ‘cool’ or sophisticated. in the same vein, the female participants occasionally united against male peers to signal ‘girl power’ which influenced their overall responses to the questions. following these observations, and in order to remain sensitive to the local culture and also to be considerate towards the hosts’ expectations, it was decided to have homogeneous groups in terms of gender, each consisting of four members. the decision on the number of the groups, however, was based on data saturation wherein the continuation of the fgds did not yield any new ideas. furthermore, due to the current political climate in iran where people are generally hesitant to openly talk about their experiences and reveal their views in public or in formal settings, the fgds were informally conducted in host participants’ homes. a consent form was designed and copies of it were given to the participants at the outset of each session to read and sign if they were willing to take part in the focus groups. the form was also included a section informing the participants about the nature of the research and the ways in which its findings would be used in future. also, each participant was assigned with a pseudonym to protect their confidentiality and anonymity. each focus group lasted about 90 minutes and they were voice-recorded in their entirety. finally, the discussions were fully transcribed, and then were translated from farsi to english. the analysis began with reading through the transcripts of each focus group and in a topic-by-topic order to get a general sense of what participants are saying. this was followed by coding each text segment, starting with the shortest or easiest to access ones. coding required paying attention to the main idea being conveyed within a text segment and then assigning a single code to it accordingly. after assigning about 18 code labels to the entire text database of 250 pages, the codes were listed and then grouped in order to eliminate the overlaps and redundancies, resulting in emergence of 7 major themes. these themes, then, reflected the range ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 18 of ideas associated with the participants’ perceptions and everyday experiences of being iranian. limitations as a qualitative study there are a number of limitations most of which are inherent to its non-probability sampling approach. this, ultimately, prevents the generalisation of the study’s findings to the large and diverse population of the youth in iran. nonetheless, both demographic and geographic inclusion criteria within this sampling framework present the two main limitations of the study. in this way, choosing middle-class tehranis for investigation, as the most relevant group, was primarily due to the feasibility considerations, including time and resources involved in the research. furthermore, the decision to limit the sampling population to only 25-29, rather than 15-29 year-olds, was based on the idea that participants with any greater age difference are less likely to use the same vernacular, linguistic terminologies and communication styles (considering the urban iranian culture). similarly, reducing the geographical scope to the middleclass dominated areas followed the rationale of enhancing group homogeneity, and therefore, encouraging group interaction and dynamics which are essential for generating the quality data (stewart & shamdasani, 2014, p. 44). moreover, tehran has long been the country’s heartbeat of culture, commerce and politics, with middle-class tehranis being an indicator for cultural, political and economic traits across the nation (basmenji, 2013; ghaffari, 2020). in addition to this, the capital city’s middle-class population have often been the protagonist in political activism and social movements (bagheri, 2018). findings desire to join the world at certain point during the interviews, the participants were taken by surprise when they were asked “how would you describe who you are as an iranian if you were to introduce yourself to the people from other countries?”, as if they had never taught about such matter before. in response to this question, however, the participants tried to rely on their imagination in order to say something about themselves in such hypothetical situation. in so doing, they came up with various answers, many of which were vague, abstract or uncertain, but others provided some clues about how they regarded themselves as iranians. ali from male group 6, for example, said: i’d say anything positive about iran. i’d tell them that our civilisation is one of the earliest in the world. i’d tell them that we are friendly people and despite all the shortcomings and disreputableness of our government, at least we have peace and security in our country. whereas the comments like the one above suggested the participants’ strong desire to be known as a peaceful and unthreatening nation, their further elaborations held western media responsible for the current negative image on iranians. other participants in this group, for instance, said: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 19 what could be heard about iranians is not positive at all. they [western countries] even made films about iranians to destroy our image. first thing i’d do is to convince them [people of the world] that what they show about iranians are not true at all,especially younger people are totally different from what’s shown in there. they should know that nothing’s wrong with us or our culture. yet, i rather not to say anything about our government! (hesam) i’d even talk proudly of our religion . . . i’d talk about politics too, and try to show them that the created image of iran by the west is false. iranians are peaceful people, and the new generation cares about connection with the world. (saleh) expressing their resentment against demonising depictions of iranians across the world’s major media networks, the respondents believed that it was time for other nations to begin questioning the validity of such misleading representations. implied in their comments also was the aspiration that iranian youth deserve global recognition as a dissident generation who did not elect the current government in iran, and therefore, have no association with authorities and their wrongdoings. the participants’ responses, in this way, can be explained in the historical context and throughout the years that followed the islamic revolution when iran-us relationship came to an end. this alone, was the single major political shift that brought about a series of devastating circumstances for the nation, not to mention the recent crippling international sanctions that exacerbated the iran’s already secluded status (peksen, 2019). parallel to this, global media corporations have relentlessly attempted to construct a biased image of the nation (ebrahemifar, 2019), often making no distinction between young and old generations, or undiscerningly confusing ‘government’ with ‘people’ when using the word ‘iran’. ultimately, the participants’ discussions at this point showed that the reverberation of the world’s negative views on iran has particularly been felt by young generation who more than ever care about being known as unthreatening and peaceful people with a hope of becoming the citizens of the world. considering migration next to the discussion around the topic of defining the self as iranian, when the participants were asked whether they would consider migration, they almost readily began to respond as if they had frequently thought about such matter before. as exemplified in the following conversations between members of the male group 6, the participants conceived of migration as a solution to their presumably depressing situation: i won’t leave iran to live somewhere else forever, maybe just for a short while to earn some money, and experience ‘real’ life at least for a while! (hesam) if some of my friends and family can followed me, i’d definitely consider it! (amir) well, if this was the case everyone would go! [all laugh] personally, i’d consider living in another country, only temporarily, just to improve my ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 20 financial condition and of course to see how the life feels beyond the walls! (saleh) what these comments bring to light the most is the participants’ both current pressing financial problems, as well as their overall sense of desolation caused by boredom of living within the nation-state boundaries that keep them away from the rest of the world. in this way, migration looks like a valid option for the participants, as overwhelming restrictions imposed by authorities together with other social problems like unemployment, inflation, and economic recession continue to make it more and more difficult for many people to prosper in iran (kazemi, baghbanian, maymand, & rahmani, 2018). in this view, contemplating migration is more prevalent among the youth since they are, on the one hand, feeling uncertain and insecure about their future in iran, and on the other hand, more likely to be engrossed by the aspects of the western way of life (khosravi, 2017). that being said, despite the participants’ general preoccupation with migration, they regarded being in the company of family and friends the only worthwhile belonging that held them back from leaving iran for good. in other words, expressing such feelings might be construed as an overwhelming sense of despair and hopelessness among youth, since other than kinship, they cannot imagine any other meaningful reason for spending the rest of their lives in iran. nonetheless, as the nation currently undergoing a more serious political and economic turmoil, while migration for many young people remains a relevant idea to improve their lives (kamal & hossain, 2017), for others it is way to repudiate the legitimacy of the islamic regime’s rule (larsson, 2018). in consequence, then, it can be said that similar to their desire to join the world, as their responses to the previous topic suggested, the youth’s reflection on migration presented just another dimension of these young people’s cosmopolitan aspiration; the tendency to go beyond the restricted view on reality of life and as part of their commitment to move towards an imagined global culture. we are all know-it-alls in response to the question “what are some of the common traits among iranians that distinguish them from other nations?”, the first characteristic that the participants strongly agreed on was being ‘know-it-all’; a quality that describes iranians as people who consider themselves expert in every subject. the general essence of this kind of perception can be seen in the conversations of the participants in male group 5: it's true that we iranians are all doctors and philosophers! i don’t know why we are all like that but maybe it is in our genes. one talks about everything, knows about anything, and finally concludes in his/her own way. it’s rooted in our culture . . . our excessive friendliness. (reza) well, when we talk, we close our ears. i just wait for the moment when it’s my turn to prove my own point, regardless of whether or not i have enough knowledge about that subject. (peyman) we don’t really care what others’ point is. we just want to show that we know more and understand better than others do. (mehdi) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 21 in the same way, the participants across female groups attributed ‘know-itall’ as a common feature among iranians: iranians always try to say that they know more and better than others: “i know everything but others know nothing, they are all wrong, they don’t understand and i am the only one who understands it all”. this is partly because of our inquisitive nature that we all share; the one that makes us interfere in others’ lives . . . i think iranians are inherently too warm and friendly, and being all-know-it-all is one of the consequences of the overshoot of such seemingly positive traits. (forouz, group 4) unfortunately, it's bitter fact about us. we all know it all, and we all think that we know everything very well. (elham, group 3) the notion of iranians’ hospitality, warmth and cordiality has long been recorded in various travelogues and ethnographic accounts (simpson-hebert, 1987; bar, 2004). from the participants’ point of view, however, these positive traits have evolved over time into a rather conceited and narcissistic mannerism. nevertheless, as the group members openly admitted that such attribution is indeed an inconvenient truth about the whole nation, at times they seemed to be uneasy to direct such criticism toward themselves. this in turn, implied that although these individuals did not try to detach themselves from the nation’s dominant culture, they felt mortified for inheriting such negative attributions, hence, willing to leave off this customary but not-so-honoured common trait. consequently, the participants’ reproachful attitude towards this seemingly long-existing national characteristic, seem to serve them as a sensible strategy to dissociate themselves from some aspects of their predecessors’ tradition, in exchange for illuminating a contemporary and progressive dimension of their identities. our judgmentalism continuing the discussions around the common national traits led to the emergence of another major theme, describing iranians as people who tend to criticize others and their behavior or moral standards. the following conversation between members of the male group 1 provides a glimpse into how these individuals perceived ‘judgementalism’ as another negative, and yet significant mannerism that they believed to persist across generations in iran: we are all one hundred percent judgmental! that’s something we’ve grown with. we’ve lived with these norms since our childhoods. the environment in which people grow up has great impact on who they become. even those iranians who claim never judge people, unconsciously do it all the time. unfortunately, it’s part of who we are. (hamed) we all know that judging others is wrong, but somehow, we all still do it. (ashkan) iranians are famous for doing that, since antiquity these traits have been reflected in persian poetries, proverbs and satires. it’s like when we don’t understand something, we make thousands of comments about it, unlike westerners who don’t make comments on things that don’t concern them. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 22 the act of judging others is atrocious, it’s sort of ridiculing people . . . such a trait is specific only to iranians. (yashar) what is quite clear in above conversations is that the participants do not seem to be pleased to carry on those ancestral legacies that are considered undignified, at least by today’s universal standards of morality. similar dispositions were also noticeable among female participants, as they expressed their disapproval of judgementalism, while regarding it as an inseparable part of being iranian: we judge others in regard to everything, even about those things that don’t concern us. i mean, we tend to pass judgments about other people’s face, outfit, behaviour, and everything else. although, making comments on others’ behaviours could be a bit justifiable, being overly critical on other things is not right, especially things that don’t concern us. (elmira) the idea that iranians are judgmental is true . . . yes, we do judge others. all of us do it. it is something innate, not in our hands. (elham) as reflected in all these comments, the participants tried to indirectly distinguish themselves from their ancestors, not by excepting themselves and pretending to be unjudgmental, but by implying a desire to put an end to the continuity of such presumably inherited trait. in this way, detaching themselves from unfavourable aspects of tradition, particularly in the cultural globalisation context where differences are becoming less critical, was just another self-reproach strategy employed by these individuals to reflect on their identities without denouncing their belongingness to the nation. oddness of freedom focusing the discussions more on the group members’ experiences of everyday life, the first and foremost matter that the conversations were drawn to, was the problem of lack of freedom in iran. the discussion around this topic began when the moderator asked the participants to talk about their day-to-day struggles which might be particular to the young people in iran. in response to this, each participant reflected on lack freedom in iran from their own specific point of view and sometimes shared their personal stories in this regard, however, what they ultimately pointed to was their discontentment to the overwhelming restrictions that they had to face on an everyday basis. ashkan from male group 1, for instance said: you see, young people thirst for freedom. because there’s no freedom in iran, young people cannot harness their energy or utilise their talents. we want to be free to choose what to do. we are not even allowed do those basic things that are considered normal in other countries. likewise, the participants’ conversations across both male and female groups suggested their strong belief against numerous restrictions in iran which have particularly divested women from their ordinary rights. for example, some of the members of female group 4 stated: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 23 well, women cannot sing or play musical instruments in iran. that’s a truth. there is no future for female singers or musicians. many iranian women leave their homeland just to pursue their goals since there are so many restrictions even for things as trivial as singing and dancing. (negin) we have too many restrictions in here. for most of us, iran is a cage because we cannot pursue our dreams or realise our talents. we cannot even choose what to wear. (saeideh) despite their apparent authenticity, these statements did not come as a surprise, since there have been mounting reports on human rights violation and restrictions on civil liberties in iran throughout the past few decades (parsa 2016; bozorgmehri 2017). nevertheless, after the moderator posed some follow-up questions, a rather less-known idea came into view, suggesting that freedom is an odd, or perhaps misunderstood concept among iranian youth: when we think about freedom the first things that enter our minds, are drinking alcohol and removing women’s hijab. we rarely talk about freedom of speech and belief. you see, the art and culture are heavily controlled in iran, but do we really care enough about such things? (nima, male group 1) we inherently want to be like modern nations where there’s no restriction in obvious things such as our choice for clothes and hairstyles. but we don’t know the true meaning of freedom, because we only see those kinds of trivial things in western shows and movies. (reza, male group 5) although in making their points, the participants frequently referred to “true meaning of freedom”, they did not provide any clear explanation about it. indeed, by using the term, they only tried to emphasize two main ideas: the young iranians’ limited experience of freedom as well as the pervasiveness of restrictions in iran, especially in those aspects of life that are not so obvious to ordinary people. the point to note here at this point of discussion is the participants’ belief about the oddness of freedom for the young people in iran. in their views, this was mainly because of the young generation’s limited abilities to act and speak freely while witnessing obvious aspects of liberty in western world mainly through their routine access to the transnational forms of media. ultimately, these reflections point to the participants’ exclusive perspectives on freedom; the ways in which being free is imagined by the youth and the extent to which such imaginations might resonate with the standards of living in the democratic societies. disappointment in national media the next issue that the participants frequently referred to, when they were asked to talk about their everyday struggles that could only be experienced in iran, was their disappointment with national media. mainly criticizing irib (islamic republic of iran broadcasting), the largest media organization in the country, for lacking creativity, entertainment, and quality contents, the participants regarded heavy censorship and regulations, as well as the authorities’ reluctance to capitalize on productions that do not serve the state’s political agendas. this idea was captured in the conversations of the members in female group 1: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 24 the fact is that our own national media doesn’t have anything to offer . . . (parisa) it is not about being iranian or limitation of resources; producers’ hands are tied! (fatemeh) they [media content producers in iran] don’t have the relevant and up-todate knowledge and facilities, too. (mohaddeseh) you don’t have many options . . . either this one or that one. obviously, no matter how much you try to be creative within this framework, you cannot satisfy your audiences. you cannot talk about certain subjects for the fear that they might become political or religious issues which might go against their [authorities’] doctrines. there’s no such a thing in other countries because they believe in everyone’s rights, and recognise everyone’s beliefs and opinions. (parisa) whereas the media are doubtlessly one of the most indispensable aspects of modern life, they are also indicators of the political system and cultural practices in a society (thompson, 1995). the inadequacies of national media, as reflected in the conversation above, highlights the government’s authoritarian approach to control the media in iran, especially through regulating national media and deciding what contents to be consumed by the people. the participants’ disappointment in national media, therefore, can hardly be taken as only the reflection of these individuals’ deprivation of entertainment, since those needs are in one way or another met through their access to alternative media. rather, it is more of the youth’s distinct way of expressing dissidence and defiance against the state’s hegemonies, and hence, presenting themselves as a generation that besides seeking institutional transformation, aspires recognition of their cultural rights. generational gap at certain points during the group interviews, the participants spontaneously stepped up to make a comparison between the circumstances of their lives with older generations’, in order to get their ideas across, particularly at times when they were trying to emphasize their goals and purposes in life: i admire our parents and grandparents’ generations. i feel they lived a better, healthier and more fulfilling life, than us. we will grow old in misery, full of regrets of not fulfilling our wishes. the older generations lived on their beliefs. nowadays we hardly have faith in anything! we have no life or religion and no future or even past. (reza, male group 5) we feel empty, suspended in the space . . . neither here nor there, a big question mark! we call ourselves muslims, but we drink and resent hijab. obviously, social media, internet, satellite tv and other modern technologies responsible for disparity between young and old. (ali, male group 6) as exemplified by the comments above, the participants’ seemingly wistful admiration for their ancestors for supposedly having a simple, purposeful and fulfilling life, served them as a way to reflect on their living condition in iran. this ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 25 is clearly shown in their talks awash with a number of pessimistic terms such as “grow old in misery”, “no life or religion”, “no future or even past”, as they tried to paint a gloomy picture of the young people’s everyday life in iran. once again, such self-reflections functioned to show the participants’ discontentment with the circumstances of living in iran, and the disjointedness they believed to exist between young and old generations. along these lines, by considering the strong influence of modern communication technologies on widening the generational gap, they also pointed to the young generation’s substantial dependency on various forms of new media, which in one way or another distinguishes them from older generations. conclusion the current unsettling social and political condition in iran can perhaps be best described as an ideological battleground for winning the majority’s consent about what it means to be iranian. this provocative climate has largely been shaped by islamic regime’s increasing confrontation with the west’s cultural imperialism throughout the past three decades or so, and in response to the intensification and expansion of the globalisation forces, particularly the developments in transnational communication systems (pahlavi & ouellet, 2020). the beginning of this period (early 1990s) also witnessed the gradual diminishing spirit of comradeship and revolutionary values especially among younger people who did not see themselves part of the islamic revolution nor directly dealt with the consequences of iran-iraq war. the emergence of the young generation during this era was remarkable since they have shown less resilience than their precursors towards the state’s hegemonies. the youth’s changing attitudes and increasing resistance against the islamic identity construct, therefore, have discursively projected into these young people’s perceptions and experiences of being iranian, which in one way or another have given rise to their identity politics. the present study, however, was an attempt to throw some light on these young people’s identity politics through investigating a few members of this social group who had a more or less similar demography and living circumstances. in so doing, the research took an interpretive (meaning-centred) approach to explore these deep-seated dimensions of the participants’ identities which are presumably less accessible by means of surveys and statistics. as such, the in-depth group interviews revealed some of the least known but critical aspects of the participants’ identities: cosmopolitan aspirations and the desire to end their disconnectedness with the rest of the world which has thus far brought them a great deal of despair and emptiness. sense of self-reproach presented another dimension of their identities as they had to deal with iranians’ time-honoured but unfavourable notions such as being know-it-all and judgemental, particularly in the contemporary context of global culture. tapping into the participants’ other experiences, some of the most salient aspects of their identities came into view: the oddness of freedom for the youth as they hardly had the opportunity to experience liberty, the dissatisfaction with national media which was seen to be more of an ideological state apparatus than the media for quality content for the people, and finally, the inter-generational gap which they perceived to exist, disjointing them from their traditionalist predecessors and ancestral culture. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 12-29 26 these results demonstrated how the participants built on everyday problems and dilemmas of life to shape their moods, attitudes and feelings, and how their identities are formed around basic needs for security and self-esteem as well as the desires that flow from them. this experiential based identity, as lacapra (2006) noted, should neither be idealised nor demonised merely on grounds of whether it is beneficial in some ways or is a source of political ills of the modern world. instead, identity should be seen as modes of being with others, ranging “from the actual to the imagined, virtual, sought-after, normatively affirmed, or utopian” (lacapra, 2006, p. 228). in this view, and as argued here, identity may be mobilised as a resource for political claims and recognition, not only in explicitly political sense (as in policy-making and public-government affairs), but more prevalently in everyday and banal uses of identity (billig, 1995). these more pervasive forms of identity, as this study showed, are to be found in 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(2014). political culture, political science, and identity politics: an uneasy alliance. ashgate publishing, ltd. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 1-9 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 1 the portrayal of an afghan wife in åsne seierstad’s the bookseller of kabul: stylistic analysis arina isti’anah sanata dharma university, indonesia arina@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.020101 received 7 july 2018; revised 13 august 2018; accepted 23 august 2018 abstract in the grammatical level of analysis, transitivity is one of the choices. the role of verb in a clause determines its process and participants, and thus imply particular meanings. this research took two chapters as the research data taken from a novel by åsne seierstad entitled the bookseller of kabul. talking about literature about afghanistan society, what attracts this research is the afghan character named sharifa. the research found that seierstad employed various types of processes, participants and circumstances to describe sharifa. first, the use of actor and of material process aims at portraying the responsibility of an afghan wife in spite of the sorrow seen from the mental process with sharifa as the senser. the use of relational process with sharifa as the carrier is to attach her to particular character, both physical and psychological states. in sum, the novel portrays the afghan wife as a submissive, yet devoted character. keywords: afghan’s wife, stylistics, transitivity introduction men and women have different roles in a particular society, especially in a patriarchal one. one of which is afghanistan in which father has the most powerful role in a family. in spite of the powerless figure in the society, women in afghanistan have been stereotyped as submissive and in need of liberation (andrews, 2016). in the bookseller of kabul, a novel written by åsne seierstad, the portrayal of patriarchal family is obviously found in the narration. sultan khan, the eldest son of bibi gul, is a successful bookseller in kabul who has two wives, sharifa and sonya. the novel starts the narration by discussing sultan khan’s second marriage to a sixteen-year-old girl named sonya. the character of sharifa, the first wife, is narrated in particular language choice, so this research focuses on the portrayal of the afghan wife. in afghanistan, girls are raised to be good mothers and tolerant housewives. therefore, education is ignored (rahimi, 1991, p. 6). the tolerance is shown in the novel, represented by sharifa. she has to accept the fact that her husband, sultan khan, has married to sonya without her permission. young girls are common to marry at the ages of 13 and 16. young girls had no right to choose ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 1–9 2 their future husbands, or question their engagement, arranged by their parents (rahimi, 1991, p. 6). she has nothing to do with her husband’s choice, yet silence and obedience. the representation of sharifa to represent an afghan wife provokes this present research. the observation of literary works by means of linguistic study is offered by stylistics. quirk mentions that stylistics is “something like a revolution in the relation between linguistic and literary studies” (ravassat & culpeper, 2011, p. 2). the linguistic description of the language in literary works provide the reliable proof on how particular meanings are interpreted. by doing so, the personal assumption can be avoided. ufot adds that “stylistics is the study of the language of literature which employs the various tools of linguistic analysis” (ufot, 2013, p.101). in this research, the grammatical choice in the literary work is observed by means of transitivity analysis proposed by halliday. in analyzing a novel, its components are categorized into three: chapters relating to each other and the novel as a whole, paragraphing relating to the chapter, sentences relating to the paragraph, and words and phrases relating to sentences (beard, 2004, p. 15). this research takes two chapters which represent sharifa. furthermore, the grammatical choice in the chapters is explained further. by analyzing the grammar of language, this research refers to halliday’s systemic functional grammar (sfg) which looks at language as a ‘social semiotic’ which directs attention to the communicative and socially expressive functions of language (leech & short, 2007, p. 4). lock mentions three types of meanings within grammatical structures: experiential, interpersonal and textual meanings (1996, p.8). in the experiential meaning, grammar is used to identify how messages are packed in particular processes seen through transitivity analysis. transitivity system “acknowledges that the verbal element is the core of the clause, and that the choice of lexical verb itself is somehow crucial to the rest of the choices in the clause” (jeffries & mclntyre, 2010, p. 72). transitivity system is a grammatical system dealing with different processes found in the language and structures (song, 2013). simpson summarizes the four processes in transitivity analysis: material, verbalization, mental and relational (jeffries & mclntyre, stylistics, 2010, p. 73). transitivity is a grammatical system which deals with some types of process, consisting of participants and circumstances, found in language and its structures (song, 2013). there are three main process types in hallidian system: material, mental and relational. material process reflects the outer experience, the process of the external world, such as in “you produce so much money”. on the other hand, mental process reflects the inner experience of an emotion, such as in “i was fascinated by it”. relational process is about identifying and classifying. the example of relational process is “every fourth african is a nigerian” (halliday & matthiessen, 2004, p.170). the next process is behavioral process, the borderline of material and mental processes, which refers to “the outer manifestations of inner workings, the acting out of processes of consciousness and psychological states”. the example is “people are laughing”. the following process is verbal process, which represents the symbolic relationships constructed in human consciousness and enacted in the form of language, like saying and meaning” the example is “we say”. the existential process refers to the process of “to be”, to exist or to happen (halliday ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 1–9 3 & matthiessen, 2004, p.171). the example is “today there’s christmas in the south”. the table below summarizes the processes, meanings and participants by halliday. table 1. the six processes proposed by halliday. no process types meanings participants 1 material doing, happening actor-goal 2 mental feeling, thinking senser-phenomenon 3 relational classifying identifying carrier-attribute token-value 4 verbal saying sayer-verbiage-receiver 5 behavioral behaving behaver 6 existential being existent the employment of sfg to analyze literary works has attracted scholars. a transitivity analysis researching the main character in hoa pham’s “heroic mother” proves that transitivity is able to find out the significance of verb choice in representing the character role. the research gives the general view of the story that elderly like talking about their past memories and victories to educate the young generations. the analysis figured out that the main character is suffered from loneliness, boredom, and inconsideration from her family. seen from the transitivity processes, the main character is described to live with sorrow and victories, also ignored by the youngster. the verbs are concluded to represent the main character’s devoting energy, youth and life to the country’s independence (nguyen, 2012). the representation of women in pakistani is researched through transitivity choice made by a pakistani woman author. the research takes a novel written in urdu, the national language in pakistan, in a consideration that it represents the true pakistani society. from the observation, the employment of mental and material processes in the story reveals that the woman author is still influenced by the society. women are represented as negative and oppressors. the narration shows that women are passive and dependent on men. the actions denoted to women are reactions of men’s actions (shah, zahid, shakir, & rafique, 2014). similar to previous studies mentioned above, the present research takes how the narrator describes an afghan wife represented by sharifa. the first objective is to figure out the linguistic features used by the narrator to describe the afghan wife. the second objective is to conclude how an afghan wife is portrayed in the novel. by doing this research, it is expected that studies on literature by means of stylistics can be studied further by scholars. it also invites future researchers to compare the portrayal of men and women in afghanistan seen in literary works. method this research employs stylistics as its approach since it provides the linguists to observe literary texts. in stylistics, there are some language levels to observe, one of which is grammatical level. in this level, the researcher employs halliday’s transitivity analysis under systemic functional grammar point of view. stylistics provides the systematic study of language description of literary works. it is claimed that stylistics shows the process of how language is utilized to criticize literary works (widdowson, 2013). the study will not only display the language ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 1–9 4 feature description, but also figure out the effects resulted from the choice of words. in stylistics, transitivity analysis is believed to figure out the effects of particular choice. in this research, the effects are the character of an afghan wife portrayed in the novel. the main data were taken from a collection of novel entitled the bookseller of kabul by åsne seierstad. the novel was published by back bay books in new york. the novel contains of 19 chapters. of those chapters, the researcher selected the ones presenting the role of women. in other words, the extracts of the novel were purposively selected in the way they present an afghan wife. “the proposal” and “crime and punishment” were the two chapters involving sharifa the most in the description. the data were analyzed in some steps. first, the researcher selected particular chapters of the novel which describe the woman characters the most. second, the researcher sorted the narrator’s utterances in describing the afgan wife character and categorize each utterance using transitivity analysis. third, the researcher summarized the process types of transitivity which represented the character. fourth, the researcher interpreted the roles of the afghan wife in the story by referring to the linguistic features used to describe the character. findings and discussion from the observation done by the researcher, sharifa is represented in various processes, participants and circumstances. the most used process employed is material process with sharifa as the actor. the material verbs relating to households mark the process. the relational process with sharifa as the carrier is also found in the novel. it is to describe sharifa’s physical state and status. the next process found is mental process marked by cognition verb such as think and know. the last process is behavioural process, marked by the verb sigh. the paragraphs below display how seierstad portrays sharifa in the novel. the extract below is taken from the first chapter of the novel, “the proposal”. in the beginning of the novel, seierstad tells about the plan sultan khan has made to propose a young girl to be his second wife. this is the power of man in afghanistan to arrange his marriage. in islam, men are allowed to have more than one wife. it is also represented in “the proposal”. however, this research is more interested in describing how the first wife, sharifa, is represented in the novel. seierstad chooses various processes to represent sharifa. the extract below is the example. sharifa [carrier] was getting old [attribute]. like sultan [circumstance of manner], she [carrier] was a few years over fifty [attribute]. she [actor] had borne him [recipient] three sons and a daughter [goal]. the time had come for a man of sultan’s standing to find a new wife. (p.4) the first sentence above is chosen in the relational process. relational process shows that relationship is a set up between two concepts: an object (carrier) and a quality (attribute) (thompson, 2014, p.101). the linking verb get marks the process. sharifa is the carrier who is attached to the attribute old. here, seierstad introduces the physical state of sharifa to the readers. however, the circumstance of manner found in the beginning of the second sentence emphasizes that sultan khan is also in the same state as sharifa. the relational process in the second sentence is the further description of how old sharifa is. the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 1–9 5 next process found in the extract above is material process. the material verb borne is chosen in the novel to tell the readers that sharifa has given four children to the husband, sultan khan represented as the recipient. that explanation is to explain the reason of sulan’s choosing another woman to be his wife. it is not because of sharifa’s inability to give him children, but the husband’s power and prestige to choose another woman to be his second wife. in the last sentence of the extract above, seierstad also notices that men over fifty are common to find another woman. what is interesting in the first chapter of the novel is that sultan khan did not tell his wife and family that he would propose a sixteen-year-old girl named sonya. he managed the proposal himself. this condition makes his wife and the family shocked. usually, the mother and sisters would arrange a marriage of the man in the family. however, that situation is not found in sultan khan’s choice. the extract below shows the response of sharifa, the wife. sultan went home to inform his family of the news. his wife, sharifa, his mother, and his sisters [actor] were seated around a dish of rice and spinach [circumstance of place]. sharifa [senser] thought he was joking [phenomenon] and laughed and cracked some jokes [goal] in return [circumstance of manner]. (p.7) the fact that sultan khan was about to marry a young woman was never imagined by sharifa. there are three processes found in the above extract. first is material process marked by the verb seated which involves physical action (thompson, 2014). the second is mental process marked by the verb thought. it refers to the participant’s consciousness about the news brought by her husband. that is, why sharifa responded it by laughing as a behaver. this process involves both material and mental. the following response given by sharifa is crack some jokes, a material process, showing an action by sharifa to deny the fact she just found out. when the engagement day comes, sultan asked sharifa, his mother and sisters to attend the event. he intends to show sonya’s family that the wife and the whole family supports him. as a wife, sharifa is represented in a material process as the actor who conducts particular action for the sake of her husband. twenty days after the proposal of marriage the solemn engagement ritual took place. sharifa [actor] pulled herself [goal] together [circumstance of manner] and put on a brave face [goal]. (p.8) the material verb in the above extract is done by sharifa in a situation that forced her to do so. the actor and goal shown above refer to sharifa. it reveals sharifa’s submission to her husband. the employment of the second goal a brave face actually signals sharifa’s fear to face the reality. in the material process mentioned in the above extract, sharifa is the doer or actor. the noun phrases herself and a brave face in the extract above are regarded as goals, meaning the participants that something was done to it (fontaine, 2013, p.74). the choice of words by the author in the extract above signifies that sharifa intends to make some physical actions for the sake of his husband. the goals mentioned in the extract are for the husband and family’s name. to accept the fact that her husband is about to marry a young girl upsets sharifa. eventually sharifa cannot keep her disappointment to her husband when the wedding day comes. the extract below is the proof. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 1–9 6 sharifa [carrier] was inconsolable [attribute]. what really rankled was the fact that the man had picked an illiterate, someone who had not even completed nursery school. she, sharifa [carrier], was a qualified persian language teacher [attribute]. “what has she got that i haven’t got?” [verbiage] she [sayer] sobbed. (p.7) the first sentence in the above extract takes sharifa as the carrier and inconsolable as the attribute. the process is relational, meaning that it attributes some kind of quality to a participant entity (fontaine, 2013, p.76). sharifa is the noun attached to adjective inconsolable as the attribute. as a wife, seierstad portrays sharifa as a sad wife having to accept the fact that her husband picked someone who does not belong to the same class as her. the extract above obviously portrays that sharifa is an educated person. the third sentence takes sharifa as a carrier and a qualified persian language teacher as attribute. since the attribute is in the form of noun group, it means that sharifa is referred to the class of entity which the carrier belongs. with the backup of the family, sharifa shows her action by refusing to attend the wedding ceremony. it is shown in the following datum. the wedding took place two months after the engagement, on the day of the muslim new year’s eve. this time [circumstance of time] sharifa [actor] refused to attend [goal]. (p.8) the circumstance of time above refers to the wedding day of sultan’s marriage to sonya. the verb refused in the above extract takes sharifa as the actor. this becomes the climax of sharifa’s rebel to her husband. after her silence and obedience shown in the engagement day, sharifa is eager to reject her husband’s request to attend the wedding. the first chapter of the novel taken as the sample discussed above reveals that in one hand, sharifa is portrayed as a submissive wife. on the other hand, sharifa is portrayed as an educated woman. the education she has influences her action not to attend her husband’s wedding. despite her internal conflict, sharifa is also devoted to her family. she chooses not to divorce from sultan, but stay for the sake of the family dignity. in the chapter “crime and punishment”, seierstad tells the readers more about the relationship between sharifa and sonya. sharifa then decides to make peace with the condition she faces. the following extract is taken for the second chapter of the data. sharifa [actor] sweeps the floors [goal], washes curtains [goal], busies herself [goal] with the perpetual dusting [circumstance of manner], sits down, sighs, sheds a few tears [goal]. (p.24) sharifa [actor] cooked, served, washed, and make the beds [goal]. (p.25) the above sentences are represented in material process with sharifa as the actor. the underlined words above mark material verbs, representing actions the actor does. those verbs signify the house chores done by the wife. it is the wife’s responsibility to manage things at home. the verb shed in the first sentence above shows shafira’s sadness of being the first wife who still takes responsibility of doing chores. what is dilemmatic for sharifa is that she has to perform her responsibility as a good wife instead of getting divorce from sultan khan. the data below show material process representing sharifa. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 1–9 7 she [actor] swallowed her pride [goal] and appeared the model wife. (p.25) sharifa tried to chirp like a fussing mother hen. she [actor] took on the heaviest chores [goal] and little by little [circumstance of manner] taught sonya [recipient] how to make sultan’s favorite dish, showed her how he liked his clothes organized, the temperature of the water he washed in, and other details that a wife should know about her husband [goal]. (p.26) the verbs swallowed is a material verb with her pride as the goal. it is the constituent which the action is directed to. in the following sentence, the verbs tried, took and taught are also material verbs with sharifa as the actor. she is the constituent who conducts the actions, including teaching sonya how to serve sultan, their husband. the actions done by sharifa above results in some feelings experienced by sharifa presented in mental process. below are the examples. she [senser] knows that sultan will turn up one of these days [phenomenon], but he can never be bothered to tell her exactly when he is leaving kabul, so sharifa [senser] expects him home [phenomenon] every hour for days on end [circumstance of time]. the first process found above is mental process, referring to something that goes on in the internal world of mind (thompson, 2014, p.97). the participants in the mental process above are senser and phenomenon. senser is the participant which senses, while phenonemon is the participant which is being sensed (fontaine, 2013, p.75). in the above extract, she representing sharifa is the senser. it takes a phenomenon in the form of a noun clause that sultan will turn up one of these days. mental process in that sentence is marked by the verb knows categorized as cognitive process. here, sharifa involves her consciousness when she is waiting for her husband. beside cognitive mental process, sharifa is also represented in desiderative mental process marked by the verb expects. this kind of process shows senser’s wish. the extract above shows sharifa’s awareness and expectation to her husband. though sharifa does not decide to divorce from sultan, she cannot deny her feeling of betrayal. below is the datum in mental process. sometimes she [senser] hates him [phenomenon] for having ruined her life, taken away her children, shamed her in the eyes of the world [circumstance of reason]. (p.24) the verb hates in the above sentence is categorized as emotive mental process. it refers to the senser’s emotion to the phenomenon. since the verb shows the process of feeling, the mental process in the above extract is categorized as emotive or reactive mental process (thompson, 2014, p.99). it is clearly seen that the senser is sharifa and the phenomenon is him, referring to sultan khan. shafira blames her husband for the material actions he has done to her: ruining her life, taking away the children and shaming her in the eyes of the world. the actions mentioned previously creates emotion to sharifa. another process to represent sharifa is relational process. the sentences below are the examples. sharifa, the pensioned-off wife, [actor] is waiting in peshawar [circumstance of place]. she [carrier] has no peace [attribute]. she knows that sultan will turn up one of these days… (p.23) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 1–9 8 the relational process in the above extract is shown by the verb has. thus, the process is categorized as possessive relational process. sharifa, represented in pronoun she is the possessor and no peace is possessed. this kind of process is to attach sharifa with no peace. as a wife, she does not possess that kind of abstract thing. it is explained by the first sentence above since sharifa is the actor who conducts the material verb wait. the other relational process representing sharifa is displayed in the following sentence. she [carrier] swallowed her pride and appeared the model wife [attribute]. (p.25) the linking verb appeared functions to attach sharifa as the carrier to the attribute the model wife. despite peace that she does not get, sharifa is attached as the model wife. she still takes care of households and gives examples to sonya how to serve the husband. the next process to characterize sharifa is behavioral process. it refers to a “borderline area between mental processes and material processes” (downing & locke, 2006, p. 151). sharifa [behaver] sighs. she [senser] thinks of the punishment that befell her neighbor jamila [phenomenon]. (p. 34) shafira [behaver] sighs. jamilla committed a serious crime, but more from ignorance than a wicked heart. (p.36) the verb sigh marks the behavioral process. the mental process refers to sharifa’s feeling towards her neighbor, jamilla. what makes sharifa sigh is the punishment given to jamila, her neighbor who just died. jamilla is a newly-wed whose husband left for work. during that time, her husband’s brother found a man visiting jamilla by finding out things belonging to the suspect. since the family is so shamed of the situation, jamilla’s mother decides to ask his sons to kill jamilla. it happens since a woman having an affair with another man is a disgrace to the family. from the elaboration above, material verbs designated to shafira is used by seierstad to represent the household actions a wife does. despite the feelings sharifa has, which are represented in mental verbs, seierstad portrays sharifa as a tough woman. the one-sided decision to marry a young girl made by her husband, sharifa does not have any courage to leave her husband. disgrace is attached to a divorced woman in afghanistan. thus, to maintain the family’s dignity, sharifa chose to stay and even she accepts sonya, the second wife, eventually. conclusion through stylistic analysis, the description of particular character in the story can be objectively and obviously explained. this research supports the previous claim since stylistics takes “a close look at the text and analyses its significant language forms and expressions for the sake of interpretation, it comes very close to practical criticism” (al shawa, 2015, p.125). this research interprets that sharifa as an afghan wife is portrayed as a submissive, yet devoted wife. she can solve the internal conflict she has in order to maintain the family’s pride and dignity. this research suggests future scholars to compare the portrayal of the husband and conclude how the choice of wordings in the novel can create different meanings of particular literary work. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 1–9 9 references andrews, a. (2016). (re)defining afghan women characters as modern archetypes using khaled hosseini's a thousand splendid suns and asne seierstad's the bookseller of kabul. proquest llc. beard, a. (2004). the language of literature. new york: routledge. downing, a., & locke, p. (2006). english grammar: a university course. london: routledge. fontaine, l. (2013). analysing english grammar: a systemic functional introduction. cambridge: cambridge university press. halliday, m., & matthiessen, m. (2004). an introduction to functional grammar. london: horder arnold. jeffries, l., & mclntyre, d. (2010). stylistics. cambridge: cambridge university press. leech, g., & short, m. (2007). style in fiction: a linguistic introduction to english fictional prose. harlow: pearson. nguyen, t. h. (2012). transitivity analysis of heroic mother by hoa pham. international journal of english linguistics, 2(4), 85-100. rahimi, w. m. (1991). status of women: afghanistan. bangkok: unesco principal regional office for asia and the pacific. ravassat, m., & culpeper, j. (2011). stylistics and shakespeare's language: transdisiplinary approaches. new york: continuum. seierstad, å. (2004). the bookseller of kabul. new york: hachette book group. shah, s. k., zahid, s., shakir, a., & rafique, s. (2014). representation of women in mann o salwa: a case study through feminist stylistic analysis. research on humanities and social sciences, 4(7), 90-105. shawa, w. (2015). stylistics analysis of the poem ‘to a skylark’ by p.b. shelley. iosr journal of humanities and social science. 20(1), 124-137. song, z. (2013). transitivity analysis of a rose for emily. theory and practice in language studies, 3(12), 2291-2295. thompson, g. (2014). introducing functional grammar (3ed). new york: routledge. ufot, b. g. (2013). phonology and stylistics: a phonoaesthic study of gray’s ‘elegy written in a country churchyard’. english linguistics research, 2(2), 110-125. widdowson, h. g. (2013). stylistics and the teaching of literature. new york: routledge. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 32-41 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 32 local cultural literacy and its promotion retno muljani and emanuel sunarto sanata dharma university, indonesia retnomuljani@usd.ac.id and esunarto@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.020104 received 26 june 2018; revised 27 july 2018; accepted 3 september 2018 abstract this study addressed two research questions: what educational functions can be promoted through museum wayang kekayon (mwk) collections? and what criteria should promotional media have to promote mwk? the study implemented hermeneutic approach supported by theories of semiotics, discourse, pragmatics, and web usability. data were collected by browsing the internet, conducting observations while visiting mwk, interviewing experts on museum, wayang, and semiotics and mwk educators. the findings of the study were 1) the identification of mwk educational functions to introduce cultural literacy and other relevant philosophical values, and 2) the clear criteria of effective promotional media to promote cultural (wayang) literacy in the digital era. the study recommended that fun but meaningful activities should be conducted at mwk, and relevant resources and tools should be provided and used to support the activities. keywords: local cultural literacy, museum, promotional media, wayang introduction wayang is an artistic cultural masterpiece which has a deep-rooted foundation in indonesian community. wayang performances describe complex human life symbols from birth until death (soetrisno, 2008:3). philosophy, life wisdom, human characters, moral-social teachings are some aspects related to wayang and its performances that can be sources of interest to researchers. unesco’s declaration which acknowledged wayang as“ a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity” on 7 november 2003 confirmed wayang as the world cultural heritage. as a museum (which possesses thousands of wayang collections, museum wayang kekayon yogyakarta (mwk) could have been a place of interest to visit. however, previous studies indicated that mwk might neither be a must-visit site for tourists coming yogyakarta nor an object of regular visits by local people. there are some reasons for this phenomenon and previous studies have been conducted to discover strategies to promote mwk and to increase selling points of mwk (juwita 2014; purnomo 2016). considering that the complete research design was multi-year, the researchers decided to focus on the identification of mwk functions to mailto:retnomuljani@usd.ac.id mailto:esunarto@usd.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 32–41 33 introduce cultural literacy, and the adoption of appropriate criteria for mwk web site as a far-reaching promotional medium to promote the cultural literacy which is typical of indonesia ( note: the next stage of the research would be the construction of mwk website based on the discovered criteria as an effective means of promotion). the website should be communicatively informing relevant and reliable information and user friendly. museum wayang kekayon yogyakarta (mwk) the founding father of mwk is the late wayang collector whose name is professor dr. kph soejono prawirohadikusumo a professor in one faculty of medical study and an expert in javanese culture. a great collection of wayang purwa, wayang madya, wayang gedhog, wayang klithik, wayang golek and many other kinds of wayang and masks are stored in mwk. the collection is privately owned by his family. therefore, mwk may be categorized as a museum of specialized collections, particularly wayang collections (hein 2005). in 1990 mwk was officially opened by sri paduka paku alam viii the vice governor of yogyakarta special region (diy) afterwards, mwk was opened for public fully in 1992 and since then it has joined badan musyawarah museum (barahmus) diy. it is located at yogyakarta-wonosari street no 277, banguntapan, bantul, yogyakarta. there are seven (7) units surrounded by a large garden in the museum complex. however, the study only explored units 1 and 2 in which wayang purwa collections were stored and displayed. in unit 1, visitors could observe a complete set wayang arranged neatly with its essential decorations such as pakeliran, blencong, and artificial dalang sitting facing the pakeliran. on the right side of the dalang were wayang of good characters and knights whereas on the left side were wayang of bad characters. there is also a replica of gatotkaca – a popular puppet figure who was the son of wrekodara of the pandavas. in unit 2, wayang collections narrating the episodes of ramayana, mahabarata, and karna tanding were stored. the episodes and figures belong to wayang purwa collections the objects of the study ( source: panduan pengunjung museum wayang kekayon yogyakarta). wayang is acknowledged as having tangible and intangible aspects. the tangible aspect refers to the objects of carved leather representing characters. the tangible aspects can be seen, touched, stored physically. the intangible aspects of wayang cannot be seen or touched but they can be taught, shared, delivered through wayang performances. the intangible aspects include wayang performances, javanese poetry, transfer of dalang skills to next generation (source: an interview with the owner of mwk and a resource person of museum on 18 august 2017). it is both the tangible and intangible aspects of wayang which will be explored further to address the two research questions. roles of museums related to the museum functions as a place for conservation, research, education, and entertainment, a museum can have particular roles in society, namely, education and social action (hein 2005). furthermore, he states that “museums are primarily education institutions”. they have roles in preserving ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 32–41 34 culture and they are open to public. in this way, they become public institutions having certain educational work related to culture. visitors to museums, especially children, can experience education which is object –based or inquiry based. they can actively learn to solve problems by constructing meaning based on their knowledge acquired previously and the experiences in visiting the museums in addition, museums can also have social roles such as what happened in the early twentieth century when john cotton dana ( 1856-1929) the founder of the newark museum – initiated progressive education and expanded museum functions to include citizen empowerment leading to a democratic society. bearing in mind the two integrated roles of museums and simplifying the roles to meet the present local context, the researchers study mwk’s wayang collection and the public service assigned to mwk. the result is the identification of relevant cultural values embedded to certain wayang figures which can help us build, develop, and maintain better community life. values such as heroism, nationality, honesty, loyalty can be introduced and shared to visitors of mwk semiotics by referring to barthes’ theory (1956), susanto states that semiotics is part of linguistics which studies signs in other fields which can be used as a language to express and represent meanings (staff.ui.ac.id/system/files/users /irzanti.../ metode semiotika.pdf). further, susanto considers that signs can deliver certain information. signs can be communicative. signs can also represent the meanings of other objects or things which can be comprehended by those seeing the signs. thus, any research implementing semiotic theories is usually “qualitative-interpretive”. susanto also discusses charles sanders peirce’s theory (18391914) that signs are representatives which explain something (triadic concept) and a certain sign becomes meaningful because of the context when the sign is used. meanings can be personal or social depending on certain contexts. peirce also uses the term representamen as used in the triadic concept, however, he sometimes uses the term sign as well. in addition, petrilli’s theory on sign and meaning (2015) is also implemented in this study as the underlying semiotic theory. in live communication, meaning can be constructed when a sign is used to signify something by an utterer and understood by the listener. signs must be interrelated in order to be meaningful. therefore, signs representing meanings about wayang should be studied in relevant contexts so that they can be used communicatively for mwl promotional media, especially for its website. discourse the mwk website as the focus of the study has texts and pictures. ideally, the texts and the pictures should be in harmonious intertextuality. there are four basic text types generally known such as narrative, descriptive, expository, and argumentative. another classification of text types introduces informative and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 32–41 35 instructive texts. websites are included in informative texts (www.bbc.co.uk accessed on 6 october 2017). each text type has its main functions and features but rarely does a text have just one type exclusively. a particular text can be relatively easy to comprehend or, on the other hand, quite complicated to comprehend. this characteristic is usually known as text readability. according to dubay (2004), a writer can produce a readable text by 1) using simple words not confusing words, 2) avoiding biases in the language used, 3) employing correct grammar rules, correct punctuation and spelling, accepted graphical elements and markers. in addition, blakesley (2011) adds five sentence readability principles to be paid attention to by writers. they should pay attention to action style, agent and action position, modifier and modified words position, information arrangement, and characters in agent positions. the theories on sentence and text readability need to be “crosschecked’ by “modifying” the cooperative principles of grice maxims to ensure the quantity, quality, clarity, relevance of information provided at the promotional media, especially mwk websites. web usability quensenbery (2006) proposes the criteria of “ “balancing the 5 es” as part of the theories on web usability. they are effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, and easy to use. each will be described as follows. a website must effectively facilitate its users to reach their purposes. a website must be efficient in the sense that it can work fast and accurately to support users. a website should have an interesting interface so it can engage its visitors and satisfy its users. a website should also be error tolerant that it can prevent errors but it also provides a recovery system. last but not least, a website must be user friendly so it allows users to access with ease. to sum up, all of the underlying theories on semiotics, discourse, pragmatics, and web usability can be synthesized and adapted to result in a criteria of effective promotional media, especially, a website, for mwk. the criteria can be used to design and build an effective web site which can support mwk’ educational roles and functions in general. the figure of the synthesized theoretical framework is provided on the next column. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 32–41 36 fig 1: the synthesized and adapted piere and welby theories method the study was a qualitative descriptive study adopting hermeneutic approach to interpret signs, pictures and texts related to mwk collections in order to construct meanings. as the first year of a multi-year research, the study aimed at 1) identifying educational functions of mwk, and 2) discovering the criteria of mwk effective promotional media, especially the website to promote mwk. the data of the study consisted of primary data and secondary data. the primary data referred to the tangible and intangible aspects of mwk’s wayang collections and the data from the research subjectsresource persons and mwk educators. the secondary data were the data collected by browsing the internet to search for information about mwk, available websites, blogs, and other promotional media, and elements of good websites. research subjects there were three mwk educators and three resource persons involved in this study. since the nature of the study was “qualitative—interpretive”, the researchers selected three resources persons who were experienced in their fields so that they could provide rich data regarding wayang, museums/mwk, and semiotics. three mwk educators provided data on mwk’s wayang collections and special events conducted at mwk. they were interviewed at different dates and places. the schedules were provided in the data collection sub-sections. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 32–41 37 data collection the primary data of the study, namely, the data about mwk collections and events, were collected during three visits to mwk ( the second and third weeks of april and the third week of june 2017) by using commonly used qualitative research instruments: observations, individual interviews, and group discussions (libweb.surrey.ac.uk. skills accessed on 5 otober 2017) while visiting mwk, the researchers observed all mwk rooms and collections using an observation checklist. the data collected were the identified seven (7) rooms or units in which wayang collections, statues, masks, and paintings were displayed. the researchers also received one brochure of mwk which described some of mwk favorite collections, such as the collections of pandava and kaurava wayang, wayang collections from different parts of nusantara, and adapted wayang figures to match zodiac characters. a sampling technique was conducted to decide which wayang collections would be the focus of the study. it was pandava and kaurava wayang collections out of more than 5500 wayang figures. the popularity of the pandavas and kauravas in mahabharata series and the rich values embedded in the wayang figures and narratives were the reasons of selecting them as the wayang characters to study.. two other printed brochures were collected in the third visit. one was a “guide sheet” to mwk whereas the other described mwk briefly and mentioned social media belonging to mwk. in the third visit, the sampled wayang collections were re-confirmed. the online promotional media were collected from january until mid of june 2017. first, a variety of media were identified and scrutinized to result in the sampled far-reaching promotional media, namely mwk website designed by dinas kebudayaan provinsi daerah istimewa yogyakarta. the first resource person (rp 1) was interviewed twice on 18 and 25 august 2017. he was the owner of mwk and one of the museum board members of yogyakarta (badan musyawarah museum/barahmus). the data collected from him were related to mwk special collections, vision and mission, values embedded at particular wayang figures and how to relate the values to nowadays life contexts. the second resource person (rp 2) was a dalang (a puppet master) who was interviewed on 23 september 2017. he was an experienced dalang and his expertise was required to provide expert judgements on what aspects to introduce or share to public, which wayang figures are worth promoting, how to introduce and promote them to young generation, and aspects related to the intangible cultural heritage. the third resource person (rp 3) was a professor on linguistics and a lecturer of semiotics who shared his knowledge about signs, symbols, and meanings related to wayang and mwk existing website. the secondary data were collected through a library study to learn about mwk, to compare and contrast museum websites, and to discover general criteria of good museum websites. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 32–41 38 data analysis all data collected from the observations, visits to mwk, semi structured interviews, and library study were noted, transcribed and analyzed qualitatively to address two research questions. coding was created to categorize recurring information and to create themes, for example, nil = nilai meaning values, sim = simbol meaning symbols, krt = kriteria meaning criteria, int = intangible aspects, kom =komodifikasi meaning commodification, prom = promosi meaning promotion, tok = tokoh meaning figures, and akt = aktivitas meaning activities. some codes were combined such as nil-intrp 1 and rp3 which refer to nilai as intangible aspect stated by resource persons 1 and 3. the data quality was of paramount importance. thus, triangulation techniques were implemented. different ways to collect data were adopted such as observations (three times), interviews (five times with three different resource persons), group discussions. the group discussions were conducted among researchers and a focus group discussion (fgd) with the resource persons and mwk educators was planned to be conducted in the third week of october 2017. procedure the procedure of the study was as follows: first, reviewing literature and related documents on museums, wayang, and websites; second, formulating the two research questions as the focus of this first -year research; third, collecting both primary and secondary data; fourth, determining data quality through triangulation; fifth, analyzing data; sixth, reporting results. findings and discussion the findings related to the first research question about the educational functions of mwk can be divided into two main functions, namely, to introduce, share, and teach cultural local values, and 2) to develop children’ s passion toward wayang as local culture. the functions were reported as themes. theme 1: loyalty, brotherhood, equality, honesty are reflections of one’s character. 1. wrekodara who always spoke in bahasa jawa ngoko implicitly taught us to treat all people as equal partners. (nilintrp 1) 2. karno symbolized everlasting brotherhood although he seemed to have betrayed his brothers by taking sides to the kauravas family. he never betrayed his brothers because if he did not join the kauravas, the war and situation might be worse for the pandavas his brothers by blood. this can be interpreted as a reminder for not judging people too quickly. also, being loyal as a knight towards his country is heroic. the episode of karno tanding is a popular and favorite episode (nil-intrp 1 and 3) 3. trijata was known as a loyal companion of sita rama’s wifein her adversity. trijata always comforted sita and supported her psychologically when sita was feeling desperate and worried about her husband. thus, children/ teenagers need to learn to build friendship and maintain it by being loyal to their friends. (nil-intrp1and 3) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 32–41 39 theme 2: wisdom and open mindedness are necessary. 1. all wayang were arranged at a pakeliran in such a way that all wayang of good characters were positioned at the right side of dalang and wayang of bad characters were at the left side. however, dalang could change the positions, for example, when he wanted to deliver certain messages that there was no rigid dichotomy in life, no rigid separation between goodness and badness which he might call as a grey area. thus, there might be wayang of good characters among the kauravas as well. (nilintrp2 and edu 1 2) 2. local wisdom which is part of cultural heritage needs to be shared and taught to people. it can develop harmony in life, togetherness, etc…so why is it abandoned? (nilrp1 and 2) theme 3: dying as a hero for one’s country is an honor. the episode of kumbokarno gugur implies heroism. he was a brother of ravana who died in a war with the pandavas not because he wanted to defend ravana who kidnapped sinta but because kumbokarno wanted to defend his country. he criticized ravana strongly before he went to the battle field and finally he died as a hero. ( nil-intrp 2) the previously mentioned examples of values embedded to certain wayang figures are part of the intangible aspects of wayang. using wayang figures to narrate interesting activities and episodes (tok and akt) artistically is one of the many ways to introduce, share, and teach educational and philosophical values. this way can also bring children and young people closer to their indonesian cultural identity. theme 4: becoming a dalang: why not? 1. another issue of wayang as a cultural heritage is how to ensure transfer of knowledge, skills, and passions to young people so that they are willing to learn to become dalang. they could start by doing relevant interesting activities. (intrp 1 and 2). 2. children need activities that attract them and once they are attracted they will learn passionately as shared by rp 1 and 2: “ my daughter likes dancing so i encourage and support her and i hope that later she has the passion to learn more about javanese tembang and wayang, of course.” “ other children need competitive activities so kompetisi dalang cilik might be the solution but sponsors must be invited to provide rewards.” ( intrp 1 and 2) the findings related to the second research questions concerning the ways to promote cultural literacy are divided into two ways, namely, 1) commodification, and 2) criteria of effective promotional media, especially for mwk website. the two ways are described in themes. theme 1: commodification: is it possible? all resource persons state implicitly that commodification, to some extent, is possible and necessary. 1. mwk needed to create fun activities for visitors, for example, providing a kind of selfie booth and other interesting photo backdrops in the museum complex so that visitor could take pictures of their own using their own ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 32–41 40 camera phones. this facility may attract more visitors to come to mwk, and the increasing number of visitors can cause positive multiplying effects to mwk and the local community (komprom rp 1) 2. adopting contemporary elements in wayang performances was acceptable as far as the modern elements did not “destroy” wayang as a noble heritage of culture. through this modification, hopefully children and young people would be interested in knowing and learning more about wayang and other forms of local cultural literacy. mwk should provide specific unique souvenirs for its visitors for free or for sale (kom-rp2 and 3) theme 2: communicative and effective promotional media to introduce, invite, and involve community members in cultural preservation, education, and entertainment will support local cultural literacy, in this case, the knowledge, values, and spirit of wayang collections 1. rp 1 stated that mwk needed websites and also more practical promotional media which could be operated only by using visitors’ mobile phones equipped for qr code. thus, visitors could just come and then found wayang collections they wanted to know more, affixed their cellphones to the barcode to connect with the system and they could get more information about the wayang figure. (krt-rp 1) 2. mwk website should use relevant signifiers (= penanda). external penanda might be the gate whereas internal penanda is probably the pakeliran. (krt – rp 3) 3. prepare engaging and relevant activities which were inquiry-based or problem-based, and promote them via promotional media. activities could be about figures or relevant events. (krt-rp 1) 4. select and use colors and pictures carefully. use icons and symbols only if their deeper meanings were already understood. (krt-rp 3) 5. brief and relevant texts, appropriate letter sizes should be considered in creating captions for wayang collections and other visual descriptions. (krt-rp 3) conclusion museum including mwk should function as educational institutions. as a museum with a quite complete wayang collections, mwk may have the role to introduce wayang literacy as part of local cultural literacy. values such as heroism, honesty, loyalty, integrity should be part of everyone’s daily life which can be introduced, shared, and taught through formal and non-formal educational institutions including mwk and other museums. as a privately owned museum, mwk needs supports such as technology and human resources. promotional media to inform and invite visitors can be employed, however, they should fulfill certain criteria. in particular, mwk website should be communicative and user friendly in providing relevant information to public. visitors who have been interested in visiting mwk need to be exposed to well-maintained collections supported with practical technology and involved in engaging learning activities. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 32–41 41 the educational functions of mwk seem like a big dream to realize. supports, courage, and good networking can make the dream come true. references blakesley. 2011. five principles of sentence readability. writing center siu. retrieved from http://write.siu.edu/_common/ documents/handouts/fiveprinciples-of-sentencereadability.pdf. on 22 mei 2016 cobley, p. 2010. the routledge companion to semiotics (ed.). london: routledge. pp. 326-327 dubay, w. 2004. the principles of readability. impact iinformation. costa mesa: plain language services hardwick, c. s. (1977) semiotic and significs (ed.). the correspondence between charles s. peirce and victoria lady welby. bloomington: indiana university press. hartono, j. 1999 . analisis & disain sistem informasi: pendekatan terstruktur teori dan praktek aplikasi bisnis. yogyakarta: andi offset. hein, g. e. 2005. the role of museum in society: education and social action. materials presented at seminar for museum educators 9 novemebr 2005 in finland. jeffrey, l. w., lonnie d. b., & victor, m. b. 2004. information system analysis & design methods (6 th ed), irwin. juwita, i. a. e. r. 2014. strategi pemasaran museum wayang kekayon yogyakarta dalam meningkatkan jumlah pengunjung. thesis. https://core.ac.uk/display/38683817/tab/similar-list accessed on 20 september 2017. pamungkas y. w. a., sriwindono, h., dan polina, a. m., sistem informasi museum wayang kekayon yogyakarta berbasis web. in press. purnomo, j. 2016. disain interior museum wayang yogyakarta. thesis. https://eprints.uns.ac.id/23539/ 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2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, september 2022, pp. 68-79 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 68 use of the word ‘anak’ (child) in indonesian from ecolinguistic perspective praptomo baryadi isodarus sanata dharma university, indonesia correspondence: praptomo@usd.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5147 received 9 september 2022; accepted 13 october 2022 abstract this article presents the results of research on the use of the word ‘anak’ (child) in indonesian compound words from an ecolinguistic perspective. the problem studied is whether the use of the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words has a relationship with the environment. when it shows a relationship with the environment, what type of environment will the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words refer to? because the problem is studied from an ecolinguistic perspective, the theory used in this research is the theory of language concerning the environment. a language whose manifestation is in the form of grammatical units is assumed to designate a certain type of environment as its reference. the data of this research are in the form of compound words which contain the word ‘anak’ in indonesian. the data were taken from a primary source, namely the online version of the kamus besar bahasa indonesia (2015), and from a secondary source, namely the researcher's introspective data as a native indonesian speaker. the data were collected by the referential method and analyzed by the referential equivalent method. the results of data analysis were presented with informal methods and formal methods. the results of this study indicate that the use of the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words refers to ten types of environment, namely (1) the family environment, (2) the educational environment, (3) the work environment, (4) the place environment, (5) the socio-economic environment, (6) the socio-ethical environment, (7) the animal environment, (8) the plant environment, (9) the natural environment, and (10) the artificial object environment. this finding is one of the pieces of evidence that language has a relationship with the environment. keywords: ‘anak’ word, compound words, ecolinguistics, environment, indonesian introduction this article presents the results of research on the use of the word ‘anak’ in indonesian from an ecolinguistic perspective. what is meant by the use of the word ‘anak’ is the combination of the word ‘anak’ with other words to form a compound mailto:praptomo@usd.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.5147 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, september 2022, pp. 68-79 69 word. for example, the word ‘anak’ joins the word ‘kandung’ (biological) to form ‘anak kandung’ (biological child), the word ‘anak’ joins the phrase ‘sekolah dasar’ (elementary school) to form ‘anak sekolah dasar’ (elementary school pupil/student), the word ‘anak’ joins the word ‘ayam’ (chicken) to form ‘anak ayam’ (chick), the word ‘anak’ joins the word ‘sungai’ (river) to form ‘anak sungai’ (tributary). thus, the object of this research is the use of the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words. the word ‘anak’ that combines with other words to form compound words can generate certain meanings. the word ‘anak’ in ‘anak kandung’ (biological child) contains the meaning of 'his own child'. the word ‘anak’ in ‘anak sekolah dasar (elementary school pupil/student) expresses the meaning of 'pupil' or 'student'. the word ‘anak’ in anak ayam (chick) expresses the meaning of 'small chicken'. the word ‘anak’ in ‘anak sungai’ (tributary) means 'branches of the river'. this study aims to prove that language has a relationship with the environment. the relationship between language and the environment is the object of studies in ecolinguistics (halliday, 2001) or language ecology (haugen, 1972). therefore, the use of the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words is studied from the perspective of ecolinguistics or language ecology. in this study, the object of the study is part of the language, namely the use of the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words. in this case, the use of the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words is examined concerning the environment. the problem studied is whether the use of the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words has a relationship with the environment. when it shows a relationship with the environment, what type of environment will the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words refer to? for example, the word ‘anak’ in ‘anak kandung’ (biological child) has a relationship with the family environment, the word ‘anak’ in ‘anak sekolah dasar’ (elementary school pupil/student) has a relationship with the educational environment, the word ‘anak’ in ‘anak ayam’ (chick) has a relationship with the animal environment, and the word ‘anak’ in ‘anak sungai’ (tributary) has a relationship with the natural environment. discussions on the use of the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words are found, among others, in the book by kridalaksana (1988; 1993), chaer's book (1984), echols’ and shadily’s book (1994), badudu (1981), and the online version of the indonesian dictionary (2015). kridalaksana (1988; 1993) discusses the use of the word ‘anak’ to study the combination of lexemes in indonesian. the combinations of lexemes containing the lexeme of ‘anak’ are listed and classified according to their grammatical meaning. in his work of an indonesian dictionary of idioms, chaer (1984) has also listed idioms containing the word ‘anak’ and explained their meaning. in the kamus besar bahasa indonesia (2015), the online version also has a list of compound words containing the word ‘anak’ and their respective meanings. in these books, the use of the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words, of course, has not been discussed from an ecolinguistic perspective. there have been articles that present research results on the use of words or lexicon from an ecolinguistic perspective, namely articles by sibarani (2014) and sinungharjo (2020). sibarani (2014) examines ‘bamboo’ vocabulary in batak toba ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, september 2022, pp. 68-79 70 language from an ecolinguistic perspective. based on the results of his research, sibarani (2014) shows a list of vocabulary related to bamboo that is almost extinct in batak toba language. sinungharjo (2020) examines the biotic lexicon in music from an ecolinguistic perspective. the results of his research, among others, show that there is a relationship between musical genres and the combination of biotic lexemes. biotic lexemes are more dominant in dangdut music. the use of biotic elements as the central element is found in popular music and rock music genres and the use of biotic elements as attributes is found in reggae, punk, and hardcore music. in addition to the articles, there is also a thesis by tarigan (2018) which describes the karo language lexicon of nouns and verbs related to the rice environment in rumah pil-pil village and describes a picture of people's understanding of the noun and verb lexicon of rice. the results showed that the rice lexicon in karo in rumah pil-pil village consisted of 5 groups, namely (1) the pre-planting stage lexicon, (2) the planting stage lexicon, (3) the post-planting stage lexicon, (4) the animal and plant lexicon related to rice, (5) the lexicon of processed rice in rumah pil-pil village. from the five lexicon groups, 118 noun lexicon and 50 verb lexicon were obtained. the number of the rice lexicon found in rumah pil-pil village is 168 lexicon. from the results of testing the understanding of the people of rumah pil-pil village on the rice lexicon, the results show that there has been a decreasing understanding of the lexicon in each age group of respondents, especially the adolescent age group. respondents' understanding of noun lexicon at the age of 45 years was 97.7%, aged 21-45 years was 84.6%, and aged 15-20 years was 60.5%. respondents' understanding of the verb lexicon at the age of 45 years was 98.6%, the age of 21-45 years was 82.6%, and the age of 15-21 years was 39.8%. the use of the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words is studied from an ecolinguistic perspective, so the theory used in this study is the theory of language concerning the environment. the ecolinguistic paradigm includes a functional paradigm (isodarus, 2022), namely the study of language in terms of language relations and other aspects of life. ecolinguistics is the study of language concerning the environment (wenjuan, 2017, chen 2016). language concerning the environment contains three concepts, namely language, environment, and the relationship of language to the environment. language is a sign or symbol consisting of form and meaning. a language which consists of form and meaning is manifested in grammatical units, namely words, sentences, and discourse. in this study, the grammatical unit studied is the word, namely the word ‘anak’ which is combined with other words to form a compound word. the environment, in this case, includes the metaphorical environment, namely the language user, as proposed by haugen (1972) and the non-metaphorical environment as stated by halliday (2001). the environment is everything that surrounds human life. the environment includes the human environment, animal environment, plant environment, natural environment, and the environment of artificial objects. each type of environment can still be broken down into more specialized types. the human environment, for example, can be detailed into the individual environment, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, september 2022, pp. 68-79 71 family, school environment, work environment, place/location environment, socioeconomic environment, socio-ethical environment, and so on. the relationship between language and the environment can be explained through the semantic triangle proposed by ogden and richards (1989: 11). ogden and richards (1989) explain the relationship between symbols, thoughts, and referents. the symbol serves to symbolize the mind and therefore there is a direct relationship between the two. the mind points to the referent and therefore there is a direct relationship between the two. the relationship between symbols and referents must go through the mind, namely through references or designations, and therefore between symbols and referents there is an indirect relationship. the indirect relationship is shown by a dotted line. the following presents the semantic triangle of ogden and richards (1989: 11). figure 1. the semantic triangle by ogden and richards (1989:11) the semantic triangle theory from ogden and richards (1989: 11) is adapted in this study to explain the relationship between language and the environment. in this study, what is meant by a symbol is a verbal symbol or language and the referent in question is the environment. the human mind is the axis of the relationship between language and the environment. it is the mind that connects language with the environment. language and environment do not have a direct relationship. the indirect relationship is shown by a dotted line. the relationship between language and the environment must go through the mind. this is following the view that language is in the human mind (subiyanto, 2013). the relationship between language, thought, and environment can be described in the following ecolinguistic triangle. figure 2 the ecolinguistic triangle ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, september 2022, pp. 68-79 72 the relationship between language and the environment can be explained from two starting points, namely starting from the environment as a referent and starting from language as a symbol. if it departs from the environment, the environment is perceived by the mind through the senses to form a concept and then the concept is symbolized to form language. the symbolized concept is called meaning. thus, a language, which consists of form and meaning, is formed. if it departs from language, the language element consisting of form and meaning refers to a certain environment. in this study, the relationship between language and the environment starts from the elements of language that have been formed. the language element that has been formed is the word ‘anak’, which combines with other words to form a compound word. the word ‘anak’ in the compound word expresses a particular meaning. the word ‘anak’ is a compound word that expresses a particular meaning and has a relationship with a certain type of environment. method the object of this research is the word ‘anak’ in indonesian. the research data are compound words that contain the word ‘anak’. the data were obtained from two sources, namely (1) from a book containing a list of compound words containing the word ‘anak’ in indonesian and (2) from a creative generation of the indonesian language that researchers use daily. the data from the first source were taken from the online version of the kamus besar bahasa indonesia (2015). the data were obtained from a second source, which botha (1981: 67) calls introspective data. this introspective data are compound words containing the word ‘anak’ which is not found in the online version of the kamus besar bahasa indonesia (2015). data collection from the first source was carried out using the method of listening or observation (sudaryanto, 2015: 203), namely by listening to a list of compound words containing the word ‘anak’ found in the first data source. the results of the listening are then recorded on the data card. data collection from the second source was carried out using an intuitive method (labov, 1972: 9), namely by generating the language competence of the researcher as an indonesian speaker. in this case, according to robins (1992: 9), the researcher is an internalist, that is, the researcher is also a speaker of the language being studied. the data that have been collected are then classified based on the types of environment it refers to. the classified data are then analyzed using the referential equivalent method, which is a method that uses referents as a tool to prove certain lingual facts (sudaryanto, 2015). this referential equivalent method is used to prove that the word ‘anak’ in a certain compound refers to a certain type of environment. the results of the data analysis are presented using informal methods and formal methods. the informal presentation method is the formulation of the results of data analysis in ordinary words, even with technical terminology. the formal presentation method is the formulation of the results of data analysis with what is commonly known as signs and symbols (sudaryanto, 2015: 241). with the formal method, the results of data analysis in this study are presented in a table. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, september 2022, pp. 68-79 73 findings and discussion based on the environment it refers to, the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words designates ten types of environment, namely (1) the family environment, (2) the educational environment, (3) the work environment, (4) the place/location environment, (5) the socio-economic environment, (6) the socio-ethical environment, (7) the animal environment, (8) the plant environment, (9) the natural environment, and (10) the artificial object environment. the word ‘anak’ which refers to the family environment generally means 'descendants'. the data for the word ‘anak’ which refers to the family environment are presented in table 1 below. table 1. the word ‘anak’ referring to the family environment no compound words makna 1 anak kandung his/her own child 2 anak sulung the first child 3 anak bungsu the last child 4 anak tungal the only child 5 anak kembar children (two, three, or more) born from the same womb in a pregnancy 6 anak sapihan (newly) weaned child 7 anak istri children and wife or family 8 anak bini children and wife or family 9 anak cucu children and grandchildren or descendants 10 anak yatim a child who no longer has a father 11 anak yatim piatu a child who no longer has a father and a mother 12 anak tiri husband's or wife's inborn child who is not the result of marriage to the current wife or husband 13 anak angkat a child who is given the cost of education by someone, but still lives with his parents 14 anak asuh a child who is given the cost of education by someone, but still lives with his parents 15 anak haram a child born from a relationship outside the marriage bond 16 anak jadah children born from relationships outside of marriage bond 17 anak emas the most loved child the word ‘anak’ which refers to the educational environment is found in the combination of the word ‘anak’ and the name of the education unit, the combination of the word ‘anak’ with the name of the level in education, the combination of the word ‘anak’ with the type of education, the combination of the word ‘anak’ and the word student. the word ‘anak’ that refers to the educational environment generally contains the meaning of 'pupil' or 'student'. the data for the word ‘anak’ which refers to the educational environment are presented in table 2 below. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, september 2022, pp. 68-79 74 table 2. the word ‘anak’ referring to the educational environment no combined words meaning 1 anak taman kanak-kanak (tk) kindergarten pupil or student 2 anak sekolah dasar (sd) elementary school pupil or student 3 anak sekolah menengah pertama (smp) junior high school pupil or student 4 anak sekolah menengah atas (sma) high school pupil or student 5 anak sekolah menengah kejuruan (smk) vocational high school student 6 anak sekolah pupil or student 7 anak kursus student taking a course 8 anak madrasah 1. madrasa (a college for islamic instruction) student 9 anak seminari seminary student 10 anak kelas i student of the first grade 11 anak kelas ii student of the second grade 12 anak kelas iii student of the third grade 13 anak didik pupil or student in table 2, data numbers 1 to 5 is a combination of the word ‘anak’ and the name of the education unit. data number 6 to 9 includes a combination of the word ‘anak’ and the name of the type of education. data number 10 to 12 is a combination of the word ‘anak’ and the name of the level in the education unit. data 13 is a combination of the word ‘anak’ and the word ‘didik’ (educate). the word ‘anak’ that refers to the place/location environment is found in the combination of the word ‘anak’ and the name of the place. the word ‘anak’ followed by a place name usually means 'a child who comes from a particular area' or 'a child who lives in a particular area'. the data for the word ‘anak’ that refers to the environment in which it is located are presented in table 3 below. table 3. the word ‘anak’ pointing to the place/location environment no combined words meaning 1 anak aceh a person coming from aceh 2 anak bali a person coming from bali 3 anak yogyakarta a person coming from or yogyakarta 4 anak papua a person coming from papua 5 anak kota a person coming from a city 6 anak desa a person coming from a village 7 anak asrama a person living in dormitories 8 anak kampung a person living in a kampong or village 9 anak kos a person living in a boarding house 10 anak jalanan a person living on the street in table 3, data 1 to 5 are a combination of the word ‘anak’ with the name of the place of origin. the combination of words 1 to 6 means 'children who come from….' the combination of words 7 to 10 means 'children who live in ….' ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, september 2022, pp. 68-79 75 the word ‘anak’ that refers to the work environment means 'people who work in', 'players', or 'subordinates'. the word ‘anak’ that refers to the work environment is contained in the compound words presented in table 4 below. table 4. the word ‘anak’ referring to the work environment no compound words meaning 1 anak kapal officer on duty on the ship 2 anak perahu ship's crew 3 anak panggung performers in plays, drama, comedies, and so on 4 anak komidi comedian, play performer, theatrical performer 5 anak dabus player of dabus (sundanese martial arts showing human abilities that are immune to sharp weapons, hard water, and others) 6 anak dayung rower 7 anak buah subordinate the word ‘anak’ that refers to the socio-economic environment is found in the combination of the word ‘anak’ and the name of the parent's occupational background and the combination of the word ‘anak’ with the name of the level of the parents' economic ability. the word ‘anak’ that refers to the socio-economic environment generally means 'a child whose parents’ status is …' or 'a child whose family's economic condition is capable or not.' table 5. the word ‘anak’ referring to the socio-economic environment no compound words meaning 1 anak pejabat a person whose parents are officials 2 anak petani a person whose parents are farmers 3 anak pedagang a person whose parents are traders 4 anak buruh a person whose parents are laborers 5 anak pengusaha a person whose parents are businessmen 7 anak kaya a person whose parents are rich 8 anak miskin children of poor parents 7 anak mampu children of rich parents 8 anak tidak mampu children from poor families the word ‘anak’ referring to the socio-ethical environment is found in the combination of the word ‘anak’ and words that state the good or bad behaviour of a person. the compound word containing the word ‘anak’ that refers to a socio-ethical environment means 'a child who behaves according to or not following societal norms.' table 6 the word ‘anak’ referring to the socio-ethical environment no compound words meaning 1 anak baik a good child 2 anak saleh a religiously obedient child 3 anak nakal a child who behaves deviantly from social norms ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, september 2022, pp. 68-79 76 4 anak durhaka a child behaving against parental orders or god's orders 5 anak brandal a child who behaves not in accordance with the norms of society 6 anak kurang ajar a child behaving impolitely 7 anak santun a well-behaved child 8 anak penurut a child who obeys parental orders the word ‘anak’ that refers to the animal's environment is found in the combination of the word ‘anak’ and the name of the animal. the word ‘anak’ followed by the name of an animal usually means 'a small animal'. the data for the word ‘anak’ that refer to the animal environment are in the combination of words presented in table 7 below. table 7 the word ‘anak’ pointing to animal environment no kata majemuk meaning 1 anak kelinci a little bunny 2 anak kucing a little cat 3 anak harimau a little tiger 4 anak sapi a little cow 5 anak burung a little bird 6 anak gajah a little elephant 7 anak ular a little snake the word ‘anak’ that designates the plant environment is found in a combination of the word ‘anak’ and the name of the plant or the name of the plant part. data for the word ‘anak’ that refers to the plant environment are presented in table 8 below. table 8 the word ‘anak’ pointing to the plant environment no compound words meaning 1 anak daun leaf blade 2 anak pisang small banana tree 3 anak cabang twig the word ‘anak’ that refers to the natural environment is found in the combination of the word ‘anak’ and the name of the type of natural environment. the word ‘anak’ that refers to the natural environment generally means 'section' or 'branch'. data for the word ‘anak’ that refers to the natural environment are presented in table 9 below. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, september 2022, pp. 68-79 77 table 9 the word ‘anak’ pointing to the natural environment no compound words meaning 1 anak sungai river branch 2 anak bukit smaller hill 3 anak air gutter or ditch 4 anak gunung a smaller mountain that appears near a larger mountain 5 anak angin softer wind 6 anak laut smaller sea the word ‘anak’ that designates the environment of artificial objects is found in the combination of the word ‘anak’ and the names of artificial objects. table 10 the word ‘anak’ pointing to the environment of artificial objects no compound words meaning 1 anak kunci a key to open/unlock a lock 2 anak tangga the part of the ladder that is used to stand on 3 anak panah an arrow released with the bow 4 anak meja drawer 5 anak busur arrow 6 anak timbangan weighing device as a measure of the weight of goods 7 anak dacin stone (iron and so on) on a scale with a certain weight 8 anak batu tulis stationery to write on slate 9 anak batu cylinder shaped stone for crushing pepper (chili, spices, etc.) 10 anak bedil bullet 10 anak kalimat part of a sentence (clause) that cannot stand alone as a sentence' or 'bound clause' 11 anak judul addition to the title of an essay or a writing 12 anak bab part of the chapter in a writing 13 anak baju underwear 14 anak perusahaan a company part of a larger company the word ‘anak’ in the combination of these words means 'part'. the data for the word ‘anak’ that refers to the environment of artificial objects are presented in table 10 above. conclusion the conclusion from the data analysis in this study is that the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words refers to ten types of environment, namely (1) family environment, (2) educational environment, (3) work environment, (4) place/location environment, (5) socio-economic environment, (6) socio-ethical environment, (7) animal environment, (8) plant environment, (9) natural environment, and (10) artificial object environment. the results of this study have answered the research problem, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, september 2022, pp. 68-79 78 namely whether the use of the word ‘anak’ in a combination of indonesian words has a relationship with the environment. the word ‘anak’ that designates certain environment contains certain meanings. the word ‘anak’ which refers to the family environment means 'descendants'. the word ‘anak’ which refers to the educational environment means 'pupil' or 'student'. the word ‘anak’ that refers to the work environment means 'people who work in', 'players', or 'subordinates'. the word ‘anak’ which refers to the environment in which it is located means 'person who comes from' or 'person who lives in'. the word ‘anak’ which refers to the socio-economic environment means 'children whose parents are' or 'children whose socio-economic status is able/poor'. the word ‘anak’ which refers to a socioethical environment means 'a child who behaves well or not well'. the word ‘anak’ which refers to an animal environment means 'a small animal'. the child's word that refers to the plant environment means 'part'. the word ‘anak’ which refers to the natural environment means 'part'. the word ‘anak’ that refers to the environment of artificial objects also means 'part'. the results of this study prove that the use of the word ‘anak’ in indonesian compound words can refer to various types of environments. the type of environment that the word ‘anak’ denotes depends on the word it combines. the words they combine also affect the meaning expressed by the word ‘anak’. furthermore, the results of this study further confirm the basic assumption in ecolinguistics that language has a relationship with the environment. the theory of the relationship between language and the environment will be stronger when more research is carried out on the elements of language from an ecolinguistic perspective. references badan pengembangan bahasa dan perbukuan. 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(2017). ecolinguistics: towards a new harmony. language & communication, 62, 124-138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2017.04.004 notes: in the indonesian version, this article was presented online at the 29th anniversary seminar of the faculty of letters, sanata dharma university, on april 4, 2022. https://doi.org/10.24071/sin.v15i1.3273 https://doi.org/10.26499/mm.v12i2.1033 https://doi.org/10.24071/sin.v14i2.2675 https://doi.org/10.14710/humanika.18.2 http://repositori.usu.ac.id/handle/123456789/10789 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2017.04.004 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 81-87 81 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia posthumanism in two fanfiction stories: the cyborg and cyborg maria vincentia eka mulatsih sanata dharma university, indonesia mv_ika@usd.ac.id *correspondence: mv_ika@usd.ac.id doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i1.2788 received 17 march 2020; accepted 19 august 2020 abstract since the development of artificial intelligence (ai) has widely spread in many sectors of humans’ life, the studies of posthumanism where humans ask critically about their existence are needed. knowing that, this research will deal with posthumanism (herbrechter, 2015) drawn from two fanfiction stories entitled the cyborg and cyborg. both stories are written by different authors from different countries. this study is a library research which applies comparative study as part of data analysis technique and the result of data analysis will be presented qualitatively. preliminary result that is taken from first reading of the two stories deals with young authors who think that cyborgs have more humanistic values when they are being compared to humans. the researcher hopes that this study has insightful effect to pre-service students in dealing with the development of technology in this revolution industry 4.0. keywords: cyborg, posthumanism, fanfict introduction industrial revolution 4.0 does not only affect some sectors in the way we communicate, educate our students or use recent technological devices. it also influences the world of literature. in the past, classic literary works such as shakespearean plays or romanticism poems became the central discussion and analysis. previous researches also discuss some literary works by applying recent perspective (apristia, 2019; indriyanto, 2019; manggong, 2020). although nowadays, some classic literary works still exist, the emergence of ‘new form’ of literature should be discussed deeply since its number increases significantly. some conferences on literature that were held in 2019 underlined the shift of the world literature from the classic form into more millennials one. for example, new writers or poets can be known fast by having some posts on social media or certain websites. in this case, some websites also accommodate young writers and readers to write, to read or even to give direct comment on the works. this kind of literary work is called fan fiction. two fan fiction stories are selected due to some reasons. the first deals with the title of the work which has a similar theme. we know that the development of technology in industrial revolution 4.0 has created an implanted human creature between a human and a technological stuff that is called a cyborg. second reason is the writers of the stories. both http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs mailto:mv_ika@usd.ac.id ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 81-87 82 writers are young and beginners. besides, they are from different countries. the first writer is from australia while the second writer is not from english spoken countries. a comparative study which connects two stories from different countries enriches cross cultural understanding. the last is the source of those two stories which are taken from two websites namely wattpad and write 4 fun. both stories are in form of fanfiction. in short, this research deals with recent kind of literature which is popular nowadays called fanfiction in relation to the central theme of industrial revolution that is the emergence of ai and cyborg. posthumanism phenomenon will be the central discussion drawn from two stories. based on the explanation above, the question is formulated as follow: how is posthumanism portrayed in two fanfiction stories cyborg and the cyborg? it is expected that this article will be beneficial for those who want to understand some new concepts such as fanfiction, cyborg, and posthumanism since the study of posthumanism is quite new if it is being compared to previous studies. moreover, those terms are relatable to real context that happens recently. in addition to that, young writers who read the result of this research can write more about the development of industrial revolution in the light of posthumanism context. as this study relates to cyborg, posthumanism is applied. there are some experts of posthumanism who write about this subject. wolfe (2010) in his book entitled what is posthumanism? criticizes the notion ‘human’ as the central discussion. he underlines that humans cannot stand alone without the presence of other beings. besides, the concept of ‘human’ has been constructed. actually, we cannot merely describe that posthumanism is the condition after humanism nor we relate this term to the relation between humans and some objects such as animal, plants, technologies, media, and etc. posthumanism is actually the critical perspective that lies beyond the relation of them. “it challenges the traditional point of view of basic humanity value” (mulatsih, 2020, p. 112). some people may also consider that cyborg or artificial intelligence is the central discussion of this field, but we can have more than that. analyzing critically the connection of the constructed ‘human’ concept together with some other creatures is the aim of posthumanism. in short, the study of posthumanism discusses more the critical idea to show the deconstruction of human concept rather than the object of posthumanism. there are some studies which include posthumanism as the center discussion. wolfe (2010) questions the term of human first because analyzing posthumanism perspective from a literary work, a researcher should set a clear boundary of the term humanism. the concept of good human has been created culturally, sociologically, biologically. humanist is seen where human can control universe. for example, the white people justified slavery to black one. while posthumanism deals with the connection of other things and humans. posthumanism is dynamic and situated in certain context. it challenges the traditional concept of ‘humanism’. herbrechter (2015, p. 2) also adds that “a posthumanism is not unduly excited about cyborgs, ai, or indeed animals, plants and minerals, technologies, media and their convergences, but it takes the time to remember, to reread and reconnect, in short which is ‘critical’”. in line with that argument, ferrando (2013) underlines that the concept of human and cyborg has blurred. we can improve human’s ability by using other things such as technology (phone, eye glasses, microchip, etc). the connection between human and other technological objects in form of a creature is called cyborg. the term of cyborg is actually an abbreviation from two words: cybernetic and organism. there was also historical exclusivism of human because they don’t follow the ‘rule’. to sum up, posthumanism is against post centrism where everything is h ybrid, we discuss not the human but its existence together with the connection with other things. interestingly, huang (2019) who has posthumanism in the relation to asian racial issue ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 81-87 83 also classifies posthumanist scholarship into two groups. the first discusses the development of science to empower humans and the second underlines the implications on political and other areas. he defines posthumanist readings clearly by giving the boundary of the text. when certain text examines humans which are not considered as fully humans because of their disability, gender, race, and etc. he builds the connection between posthumanism and said’s orientalism. to sum up, he wrote “there have always been humans that have been less than human—this is not a novel or radically different relation, although the ways in which it is articulated can be new”. in addition to those previous theories, iovino (2016) states that posthumanism does not have a clear boundary. it can set the connection with other fields of study such as biology, ecology, cultural studies, even politics. she also adds that “posthumanist studies help us take wider views of the universe beyond ‘the egotism of the race’ is, however, not simply by finding refuge in a wilderness ‘out there’, but by exploring the recesses of the ‘in-house’ wilderness within an across the human” (p. 13). in her article entitled posthumanism in literature and ecocriticism, she reviews some studies that show a strong connection between posthumanism and ecocriticism. huang (2019) shows some examples on how posthumanism concept in relation to humans’ race is withdrawn from some literary works. one of them is taken from larissa lai’s salt fish girl (2002). some words are analyzed as slave labor together with the characterization of the main character. other example is taken from ken liu’s the algorithms for love (2004). this work can be considered as a critic toward the concept of human as viewed by intelligent dolls. in addition to that, wolfe (2010) states that posthumanism is “a continuation of the poststructuralist critique of the prevalent humanism in literary criticism throughout most of the 20th century and the idea that literature and the study of it should be a defense of the human, or the nature and value of humanity, against the perceived scientific and economistic onslaught.” carretero-gonzalez (2016) in her essay the posthuman that could have been: marry shelley’s creature shows how dr. frankenstein as the creature reflects the transition of transhumanism to posthumanism. moreover, amberson & past (2018) demonstrate the connection of posthumanism and ecocriticism in their work entitled gadda’s “pasticciaccio” and the knotted posthuman household. they explain that this literary work has connected the concept of humanism to posthumanism in the environment called “oikos” a greek word of ‘household”. not only ecocriticism, phoca (2004) adds that the study of posthumanism can be related to feminism and gender. from previous reviews, we know that posthumanism has been discussed worldwide from different countries that included different literary works which were analyzed from different perspectives. this article is considered to be a different study due to its different object from previous studies and its comparative method that is applied. previous studies have not mentioned any popular literary work that is included to fanfiction which is written by a young writer. besides, this article does not only discuss one fanfiction story. it focuses on the similarities and differences of two fanfiction stories. method since this study is a library research, it deals with document analysis. data are gathered from two selected fanfiction stories and classified by using theory of posthumanism. the explanation of intrinsic elements of both stories is included too. the classification of those data will be analyzed more deeply through applying comparative study. basically, when the researcher applies this comparative study, the researcher finds some similarities and differences. due to that reason, this research will find some ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 81-87 84 similarities and differences in both fanfiction short stories to portray posthumanism content in both stories. based on this explanation, this research is a library study by applying document analysis. there are some steps done in conducting this research. the first is data gathering. this process is done by reading two stories for several times and underlining some parts that relate to posthumanism concept. elements of story such as plot, characters, theme become the main data. after data are gathered, the researcher classifies the data based on the theories stated in previous studies. the data that have been classified are analyzed critically by applying document analysis. in this process, the researcher also finds some similarities and differences from both stories. then, the researcher presents the result in a qualitative way by retelling the plot of the story in order to be able to follow easily. findings and discussion there are two parts in this findings and discussion. the first deals with the similarities of posthumanism found in both stories. the second discusses the differences of posthumanism in both stories. before having the explanation of each part, a brief summary of each story is provided. using first person point of view, rowan tan’s the cyborg develops the story of a cyborg who begins to be awake after long period of surgery. the character realizes that he/she is not a fully human again. from his/her thought that is stated from the sentences “they told me they were saving my life. it wasn’t long until i realized the truth. they weren’t saving my life, they were stealing it, trying to create the perfect soldier, half human, and half machine.”, readers know that actually the character does not want to live to be a cyborg. there is a tendency that being a cyborg is less worthy than being a fully human. the story then continues to the presence of a ‘bad’ character that is characterized as a leader of terrorist organization. explicitly, the main character does not agree to the concept of cybernetics that seems to save someone’s life. he thinks that this technological and scientific development is used to fulfil humans’ desire. in this case, it is relatable with political power to conquer other areas where there is no one who has same values. the ‘bad’ character says that the war is not caused by them, it is the government who has the responsibility. the reason of having the war based on the ‘bad’ character is men, women, and even children beg and plead to be saved. the cyborg after knowing some effects of government action decides to expose the truth about the government. the story of cyborg also has first person point of view. readers can feel some experiences that the main character has. this cyborg is created to destroy human beings by a man named dan whiz. different from the creator’s wish, this cyborg decides to run away and lives as a normal human. this cyborg is so happy when she lives together with her step mother, experiences going to school and feels different to a teenager who has opposite sex. the story then continues to the event where her step mom knows that she is a cyborg. not long after that, her creator kidnaps her step mother and her close friend, she has to meet her creator and surrender for saving liz and mike. the story ends with the optimistic feeling from liz that lisa (the cyborg) can be together with her again. similarities of posthumanism drawn from both stories the concept of cyborg from two stories is similar in form of the construction between human and technological stuff. the first cyborg is presented in a half human and half robot creature, meanwhile lisa cyborg is presented as a human which has a robotic body inside. lisa’ description looks like the female cyborg creature that is created in real world named sophia. this cyborg is completed with artificial intelligence (risam, 2019). as wolfe states that posthumanism is more to critical idea that lies behind the relation of cyborg, both stories also criticize human actions in destroying other human beings. in the cyborg, the author writes the description of the situation after government’s attack as ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 81-87 85 follow: “the air was putrid, the smell of decaying, rotting meat was overwhelming. i looked down at the streets and nearly vomited. there were bullet-riddled bodies everywhere. huge piles of carcasses surrounded by massive swarms of flies dotted the streets.” the government that should have protected citizens kill them all. implicitly, this story criticizes government’s policy that can cause harm effect toward the citizens. similar to the first story, cyborg also criticizes the power of a creator that is used negatively. these following sentences which are taken from the work are able to represent the critics toward humans’ bad intention: “i’m not going back to him. my master. my creator. i don’t what to be what i was created for. i was created for world domination. to rid the humans. i didn’t want that though. i wanted to prove him wrong”. from those two stories, the similarity of posthumanism is in term of constructing the concept of human. the main character in each story that is a cyborg tries to show that the cyborg has more humanistic values than real human beings. both stories show critical perspective toward the notion of human concept. drawing the limitation of posthumanism concept, both stories can only be classified as posthumanism due to this main character as a cyborg but the storyline of both stories does not include the presence of other beings such as animals, plants, and etc. the centre of the story is actually still related with human although the main character is characterized as a cyborg. besides, both stories underline the negative side of human emotion that is criticized by the cyborgs in a moving forward plot with a flash back part. differences of posthumanism drawn from both stories in this part, there are three differences that will be explained further. they are the theme of the story, the main character’s characterization, and the gender of each cyborg. those differences are related to posthumanism concept. discussing the theme of the story, in the cyborg, the main character is created in the scope of a war where strong creatures will conquer the weak ones. political situation is the dominant aspect. in line with huang’s (2019) discussion, this cyborg story depicts the power relation that is tried to be fought. this posthumanism notion is intended to criticize the action of the authority which has power. indeed, it can be connected to marxism theory of class. it is different from cyborg story. the main character of cyborg is created to show the power of love where a cyborg can feel to love humans and being loved. in a nutshell, posthumanism in the first story has a close relation to political background while the second story has more emotional aspect. although those two cyborgs in two stories are similar in term of the mixture between human and technological stuff that have been discussed in the previous part, a cyborg in the cyborg clearly represents human’s body with additional cybernetics as stated in the statement: “i looked down to see half my body replaced with mechanical limbs and body parts.” when we see a cyborg in story cyborg, the main character is described as a fully human in relation to its appearance. some characters do not know that the creature is not a human. “you see i’m not like other girls.” “what do you mean?” “i’m designed for the destruction of human kind. i have built in combat skills and technology to read peoples data. martin designed me to take over the world. i choose a different path though.” she stares at me wide eyed and weirdly. it’s like she doesn’t believe me. “you don’t believe me do you.” i say sadly. “well l-l-“she stutters. i sigh and take an apple from a fruit bowl that was on the kitchen table. “watch and you might want to step back.” i warn her. she nods and backs away. i toss the apple in the air. then i use my laser eyes. the apple turns into ash as stream ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 81-87 86 rises. she looks at me widen eyes and falls over a chair. some previous lines are taken before lisa’s step mother knows that actually she is a cyborg. they strengthen the point that lisa’s identity cannot be seen with two bare eyes. it means that lisa has same appearance like other girls. thus, the physical appearance of both cyborgs is different. the first cyborg is clearly seen as a cyborg while the second cyborg is not. this difference on physical appearance also has an impact on characterization of each cyborg. the first cyborg has a clear description of the cyborg and personal trait. this cyborg does not want to keep silent during the war that has been created. he wants to create a better world for all by fighting back. the second cyborg does not have a clear description for its appearance and personal trait directly. lisa as the cyborg in the second story even questions how she can have a feeling like a human. from that explanation, it can be concluded that the concept of posthumanism especially the cyborg as the object or central discussion cannot be restricted. an author has his or her own style to represent the concept of a cyborg. one that differentiates the cyborg is author’s ability to present it clearly or not. from gender perspective, the first cyborg is not clearly described as a male or female cyborg. the beginning of the story where the cyborg experiences a battle before the surgery has the tendency to create a male cyborg in readers’ mind. however, the author does not explicitly write it. the cyborg from the second story is female. the author also states that her name is lisa. previous studies discuss that posthumanism can have the connection with gender and feminism. in the second story, lisa is characterized as the only female cyborg who has humans’ feelings, strong commitment, and is powerful. she can deny her creator’s will to destroy humans. this posthumanism concept has blended with feminism concept to criticize the negative side of humans’ negative will. conclusion posthumanism concept that is found in both stories is still around the object that is a cyborg. although both stories criticize the power that humans have to destroy their own race, the absence of nature and other creatures is one thing that needs to be added so that human will not forever be the central discussion. luckily, both stories challenge the concept of human from physical creature into more philosophical idea. from those two stories, we can learn that humans should be aware of themselves to realize their negative side that can destroy their own race. some differences that are found in both stories tend to have the connection with each writer’s style and interest but both young writers are able to deconstruct and to question humans’ values comparing to their cyborgs. 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(2019, march). the life potrait of urban society within o, the novel by eka kurniawan. in second conference on language, literature, education, and culture (icollite 2018). atlantis press. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 239-250 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 239 language attitudes and language choice among students in yogyakarta: a case study at universitas sanata dharma anna fitriati and maria magdalena sinta wardani sanata dharma university, indonesia fitriati@usd.ac.id and mmsintawardani@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030209 received 23 november 2019; accepted 26 february 2020 abstract yogyakarta is a multicultural city in which people from different regions and ethnicity live and well known as one of the best foreign tourist destinations in indonesia. this situation gives an excellent opportunity for the community to communicate with others whose different cultural backgrounds, ethnicity, and language. commonly, they talk in javanese, the local language spoken in yogyakarta. meanwhile, due to the engagement with those who speak in different languages, indonesian and english are gaining more frequent usage. concerning this situation, this paper is to investigate the language choice among students in yogyakarta. this study also scrutinises their language attitude toward english, colloquial indonesian, and local languages. in achieving the objectives, a sociolinguistic questionnaire is given to 100 sample respondents who are the students of universitas sanata dharma. the results show that the students have appreciative attitudes towards the colloquial indonesian, english, and local languages. the investigation on the language choice indicates that the students choose to communicate using indonesian. the dominance of indonesian shifts the use of local languages. keywords: sociolinguistics, attitude, choice introduction linguists agree that language and society are related to each other. wardhaugh (2006) says that language and society may have four different relations. the first one is linguistic structure and behaviour may be determined by social structure. the second is the opposite in which the linguistic structure defines the social structure of society. the third is that society and language influence each other. while the fourth is, there is no relation between the two. each type of these possible relation results in different situations towards the existence of language, as holmes (2013) said that economic, social, and political factors possibly lead a community to shift from using one language to using another. the relation between social structure and linguistic structure is reflected in the daily life of society in yogyakarta. living in yogyakarta, a multicultural city in indonesia, enables people to meet and communicate with those whose different ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 239-250 240 language and cultural backgrounds. moreover, the existence of yogyakarta as an international tourist destination provides more opportunity for society to mingle with others from different countries. this situation influences the choice of the language spoken by the community. choosing the most appropriate language to use is necessary for them. in general, people use javanese language (one of the local languages in indonesia) to communicate with those who are javanese and indonesian to communicate with those from different regions in indonesia and english when they interact with foreigners. nowadays, there is a tendency that the colloquial indonesian and english are gaining more intense usage, while the use of javanese or other local languages is fading. this situation is supported by the language policy of the government, the education system, and the globalisation. based on the linguistic phenomenon mentioned above, we would like to test the ethnolinguistic vitality of the colloquial indonesian, english, and local languages. as holmes stated, the ethnolinguistic vitality of a language might be influenced by the status of the language that is indicated by the attitude of the people toward the language, the size of the group who uses the language and their distribution, and the institutional support (holmes, 2013, p. 66). this paper is intended to explore the possible language shift that occurs in yogyakarta by investigating the language attitude and language choice among students in yogyakarta, especially at universitas sanata dharma. universitas sanata dharma is one of the universities in yogyakarta whose students come from different provinces and ethnicity. they also possess various cultural and linguistic backgrounds. at this university, both indonesian and english are compulsory subjects for all students. english is the principal medium used in classes in the english education department and english letters department. sociolinguistics underpins the basic theory of this research. as stated by kridalaksana, sociolinguistics is a branch of linguistics that studies the relation between society and language (kridalaksana, 2008). moreover, the definition of sociolinguistics in this research refers to the following:“it has strong connections with anthropology through the study of language and culture, and with sociology through the investigation of the role language plays in the organization of social groups and institutions. it is also tied to social psychology, particularly with regard to how attitudes and perceptions are expressed and how in-group and outgroup behaviours are identified. we use all these connections when we try to analyse language from a social perspective” (yule, 2006). in sociolinguistics, examining the way how language isu sed in different social context is considered a useful way to determine not only the way language works, but also the social relationships in a particular society, as well as the way how people set up and express their social identity through the use of language (holmes, 2013). one topic frequently discussed in sociolinguistics is the relation between language attitude and language choice in multilingual societies. the connection between language attitude and language choice is arguable. some sociolinguists argue that language attitude shapes and is shaped by language choice. on the other hand, others assert that language choice is the result of the language attitude of the speakers towards language. regardless of these two opinions, language ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 239-250 241 attitude is closely associated with language choice. holmes considers that there is no identical language attitude towards a particular language. “people generally do not hold opinions about languages in a vacuum. they develop attitudes towards languages which indicate their views about those who speak the languages, and the contexts and functions with which they are associated. when people listen to accents or languages they have never heard before, and their assessments are totally random. there is no pattern to them. in other words, there is no universal consensus about which languages sound most beautiful and which most ugly, despite people’s beliefs that some languages are just inherently more beautiful than others” (holmes, 2013). furthermore, he elaborates that social and political factors have a significant influence on people’s language attitudes.“attitudes to language are strongly influenced by social and political factors. language varieties have indexing properties that all members of the community are aware of. language planners must take account of attitudes when they select a suitable language for development as an official or national language” (holmes, 2013). language attitude may also be determined based on how the community identifies and labels the language. when they have positive attitudes towards the language, they will select the language in most interactions. meanwhile, they may be resistant to using the language when they have negative attitudes. “as a result, people develop either a positive or negative attitude to other languages based on how the community identifies and labels them. a language becomes appealing to the speakers who have a positive attitude towards it and prefer it in most interactions. on the contrary, if speakers have negative attitudes towards a language, they develop resistance in using it.” (dweik & qawar, 2015). in terms of language choice, sumarsono argues that the language choice of a speaker is dependent on some factors such as participants, settings, and topics (sumarsono, 2013, p. 199-200). another researcher, meyerhoff, highlights the relation between language choice and ethnolinguistic vitality. he said, in multilingual communities, different languages may have different vitality in various domains, and that the selection of the language may affect the interactional force and may imply something about the situations or the speakers. “that is, we will see that in multilingual communities, different languages have more or less vitality in different (institutional, social or personal) domains. in multilingual settings, the choice between languages carries interactional force or implies something about the situation or the interlocutors. one language may be used for some social functions or in a specific social context, while another language is reserved for other functions and contexts. this can be called diglossia, and we will look at some communities that have been described as diglossic, including speech communities with elaborated registers that are used in different situations and with different addressees.” (meyerhoff, 2006, p. 103). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 239-250 242 a good diglossic situation will put each of the languages in different domains. on the other side, when a language leaks into the areas which are previously reserved for the other variety, this leak may put the other array in an unfortunate situation. to be worse, this can result in a language shift. language shift occurs when gradually one of the types spoken in a society displaces the minority language mother tongue (holmes, 2013). when parents choose not to use their mother tongues to communicate with their children, the children will not be able to acquire their parents’ mother tongues. if this situation happens continuously, it may lead to the extinction of the language, and it proves that language attitude and language choice influence the vitality of language. as said by mohamed & hashim (2012) “ethnolinguistic group with no or low vitality will likely lose the uniqueness of its group identity and the mother tongue”. sasse, as quoted by janse (2003), stated that more than half of the world’s languages have died, and almost half of the remaining languages are dying. based on the statistics published by badan pengembangan bahasa dan perbukuan, kemendikbud ri, there are 750 languages spoken by indonesian people. among those languages, only 18 languages are secure (-, 2019). this fact is an alarm for the society to be alert to language endangerment. according to sallabank (2010), there are four factors that may trigger language endangerment. they are (1) natural catastrophes, disaster, famine, (2) war and genocide, (3) overt repressions, and (4) cultural, political, and economic dominance. the cause of language endangerment in a particular region may be different from other areas. in general, the challenge we face today is that dominant languages (the languages with the most speakers) endanger minority languages. as revealed by wamalwa & oluoch (2013) they said that for about 90 per cent of the languages can be replaced by dominant languages. the threat posed by the “big five” (english, russian, mandarin, hindu, and spanish) is real and great, especially to the third world countries whose vast majority of languages are a minority. a majority of the third world languages have not been described linguistically. the threat posed by english is underlined by its importance on the world stage in the 21st century. based on the criteria of who the user is, languages can be categorized as safe or endangered languages. for instance, safe languages have members of three generations. they are the children, the parents, and the grandparents who speak the language, whereas, critically endangered languages are infrequently spoken by the grandparents, or by the youngest speakers of the language (johnson, 2011b in carjuzaa, 2017). language endangerment may lead to language displacement. may (2001) stated that language displacement might occur during four processes: (1) initial language contact that leads minority status of the historically associated language, (2) bilingualism, (3) recessive use of the old style which is mainly limited to the intra-ethnic communication, and (4) unstable bilingualism that leads to the monolingualism. research on language attitudes and language choices has been carried out by many researchers. kumiasari and mbato explored the relationship between the language attitudes of students studying english as a foreign language against english and indonesian and studied the relationship between language attitudes ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 239-250 243 and educational backgrounds and study programs. in this study, it was found that respondents had positive language attitudes towards both indonesian and english (kumiasari & mbato, 2018). furthermore, the results of their study showed that respondents' language attitudes were influenced by their educational and occupational backgrounds. meanwhile, dewi and setiadi (2018), in a study entitled language attitude and language choice in bilingual academic learning environment, enhance language attitudes and language choices of english language study program students at bina nusantara university. their results show that students have a positive language attitude towards english because students consider that english is an international language and mastery of english will open up wider employment opportunities. through a language study in education conducted by ting (2013) in malaysia, he cites the results of the 2002 cls survey of the perceived importance of english proficiency in social mobility among chinese university students. the most popular languages that they considered as english with 78 per cent and 14 per cent for chinese. the second most important language that they should learn is chinese for 63 per cent and malay for 18 per cent. moreover, the third most important language is 73 per cent for malay and 17 per cent for chinese. however, there is also a negative view of english users in malaysia. kim (2001), as quoted by fei, w. f., siong, l. k., kim, l. s., & yaacob, a. (2012) found resentment towards the use of english in malaysia. using english was perceived as an attempt to "show off", being "boastful", a relic of colonialism, as being elitist, and a betrayal of the malay cultural identity and the malay language. this resentment was also prevalent among the non-malay students. different from ting’s research, ying (2015) found that malaysian and english do not have high vitality. yet, vernacular languages are rated as having high vitality. it is suggested that ethnic languages dominantly shape ethnic identity. this study is similar to the previous studies above in terms of the focus of research namely language attitudes and language choices. nevertheless, this study differs from earlier studies because it observes the relationship between language attitudes and language choices of students at universitas sanata dharma. besides, this research does not only focus on english or indonesian but also on the use of local languages. method this research was a descriptive quantitative research, and was designed to answer the following research questions: (1) how the students value the local language, colloquial indonesian, and english; and (2) what language do they use in a particular domain. a questionnaire was designed to help the researchers obtain the data. this questionnaire includes closed questions related to the respondents’ cultural background, language attitude, and language choice in particular domains. the respondents’ direct self-reports based on their metalinguistic ability were applied. the design of this questionnaire is in line with what milroy and gordon said. “they are fundamentally metalinguistic tasks in that they rely on the respondents’ ability to consider their linguistic behaviour” (milroy & gordon, 2003, p. 54). therefore, the questions used in the questionnaire were categorised as closed ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 239-250 244 0 5 10 15 20 25 b al i b an te n d k i j a ka rt a ja w a b a ra t ja w a t e n ga h ja w a t im u r k a lim a n ta n … k a lim a n ta n … k a lim a n ta n … k a lim a n ta n … la m p u n g m a lu k u n u sa … p a p u a r ia u s u la w e si … s u m a te ra … s u m a te ra … y o g ya ka rt a number questions. the items were completed with some options indicating the language attitude and language choice that the respondents could choose. the questionnaire was divided into two parts. the first part covered 17 questions which aimed to identify the respondents’ language attitude towards the colloquial indonesian, english, and local languages. the second part contained 12 items to find out the data related to the language chosen by the respondents to communicate in family, housing complex, social interaction, social media, and religious worship domains. the language options provided were the colloquial indonesian, english, and local languages. linkert scales are used in questions related to the respondents’ language attitudes. every answer was given a score with a range from one to four, with a range from strongly disagree, disagree, agree, and strongly agree. four was the highest score, and it indicated positive attitudes, whereas the lowest score, which indicated negative attitudes, was 1. the respondents of this research are 100 randomly selected students of universitas sanata dharma. this university is one of the universities in yogyakarta whose students come from almost all provinces in indonesia. those students study in various departments and have different languages, ethnicity, and cultural backgrounds. the information on respondents’ demographic factors such as gender, ethnicity, hometown, and mother tongue was also gathered. findings and discussion the first part of the questionnaire deals with the identification of the demographic factors that may influence the language attitude and language choice of the students. the following figures describe the distribution of the respondents based on the gender and place of origin. figure 1. the distribution of the respondents based on the gender figure 2. the distribution of the respondents based on the origin m a le , 2 7 f e m a le , 7 3 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 239-250 245 table 1. the demographic distribution of the respondents mother tongue local language 30 indonesian 70 english 0 local language mastery yes 97 no 3 ethnicity background mono-ethnic 73 multi-ethnic 27 language background of the parents monolingual (the mother and the father have the mother tongue) local language 52 indonesian 27 multilingual (the parents have different mother tongue) 21 where to live in yogyakarta boarding house with friends from different regions 67 boarding house with friends from the same region 3 living with parents 22 living with relatives 7 table 1. shows that the respondents acquire different mother tongues. the dominant one is colloquial indonesian (70%). compared to the mother tongues of their parents, this finding is intriguing. the number of students whose parents’ mother tongue is indonesian is only 27%. it implies that more families chose to introduce indonesian as the first language to their children, although the parents speak in local languages (52%) and come from the same ethnic groups (72%). this condition is also reflected in the data related to the respondents’ language choice, as described in the following figures. figure 3. language choice in particular domains 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 family neighbour friends, outside the university friends and lecturers , outside class friends and lecturers, in class social media worship place indonesian english local language other language ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 239-250 246 figure 4. language use based on the functions figures 2 and 3 show that indonesian is dominant in all fields and functions. english is mostly used in class and social media, whereas local languages are used to communicate with their family, neighbours, and friends. the second part of the questionnaire shows that the students have positive language attitudes towards indonesian, english, and local languages though there are some points we need to highlight. the following table describes the summary of the data calculation on the language attitude. table 2. language attitude no statement strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree 1 indonesian is very important for my life because it supports my study 0 1 21 88 2 indonesian is very important for my life because it is necessary for my daily communication 0 2 25 73 3 indonesian is very important for my life because i need it to reach my dream 0 8 30 62 4 indonesian is very important because it is needed for international communication 6 28 40 26 5 indonesian is very important because it can increase my prestige 17 41 32 10 6 english is very important for my life because it supports my study 0 4 37 59 7 english is very important for my life because it is necessary for my daily communication 3 22 44 21 8 english is very important for my life because i need it to reach my dream 1 5 31 63 9 english is very important because it is needed for international 0 3 17 80 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 239-250 247 communication 10 english is very important because it can increase my prestige 16 31 35 18 11 the local language is very important for my life because it supports my study 8 47 32 13 12 the local language is very important for my life because it is necessary for my daily communication 3 21 47 29 13 the local language is very important for my life because i need it to reach my dream 7 53 30 10 14 the local language is very important because it can increase my prestige 15 50 27 8 15 indonesian, as the national language, should be prioritized 0 4 28 68 16 english, as an international language, should be learned 0 5 23 73 17 local languages should be preserved by using it in daily conversations 0 4 14 82 the first point has related the importance of colloquial indonesian, english, and local languages toward their daily life, education, and future life. the students consider indonesian and local languages necessary for their regular communication, but indonesian gains more appreciative language attitude. the local languages are not regarded as essential to support the respondents’ study and future life, and the mastery of the local languages will not influence their prestige. the language that the students think can increase their prestige is english. milroy (milroy j. 2007, 137) stated, “speakers tend to confer prestige on usages that are considered to be those of higher social classes.” in indonesia, those who can speak in english are regarded as more educated than those who cannot. on the other side, the establishment of asean economic community and globalisation provide more opportunity for indonesian people to mingle with others from different countries and at the same time, force them to compete with more competitors due to the open labour market. this situation encourages indonesian people to master english since it is needed for international communication. the respondents agree that indonesian, as the official language of the republic of indonesia, should be prioritised. this point is in line with milroy’s statement that “all standard languages have to be given some form of legitimacy, and have to be maintained and protected through authority and doctrine of correctness” (milroy j. 2007, 138). in terms of preserving the local languages, 96% of the students think it is necessary to protect local languages by using the language in daily communication. this attitude is also reflected in the fact that 97% of the students also use the local languages in the spoken communication. based on the results described above, it can be seen that colloquial indonesian is dominant and gets positive attitude. colloquial indonesian is chosen more because of the dominance of the social, political, economic, and education factors. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 239-250 248 the social element that can be identified in this research is the community does not maintain the ethnic language but they prefer to choose the national language. the choice not to introduce local languages as the mother tongue is not by virtue a coincidence. the analysis of the respondents’ hometown, parents’ ethnicity and the mother tongue of the parents implies that this choice is taken for some reasons. most respondents who acquire the colloquial indonesian as their mother tongue live in big cities, and some of the parents seem to have moved to another town where they are required to use indonesian. as an example, some respondents whose parents who speak javanese (a local language spoken in yogyakarta and jawa tengah) do not acquire javanese language because their parents had moved to live in dki jakarta, jawa barat, or sumatera selatan. because the parents choose not to maintain their first language, they do not introduce their ethnic language as the mother tongue of their children. as a result, the children acquire colloquial indonesian as their mother tongue. the dominant use of colloquial indonesian is also the result of the government language policy that puts indonesian as the official national language as established in the law no 24/2009 on the national flag, language, emblem, and anthem. this political factor provides more room for indonesian to be promoted and protected since this law enforces the use of indonesian as the official national language used in state official documents, education institutions, international and domestic forums, working environments, company reports, names, and mass media. moreover, indonesian is also taught in school. it is a compulsory subject from elementary schools to high education levels. benedict anderson, as cited by gal (gal 2007, 152), explains that centralised education, general conscription, press capitalism, and national labour markets influenced the creation of standard languages that may lead to homogeneity across the national territory. this opinion is valid regarding the fact that 70% of the respondents use indonesian as their mother tongue. acquiring the colloquial indonesian gives the respondents more opportunities for their future education and jobs. it may make their life more comfortable since indonesia is the most common language spoken by society. they will be able to communicate with others who are from different regions easily. the data shows that 67% of the respondents live in a boarding house together with friends from different areas. when they communicate with their friends, they prefer to use colloquial indonesian than english or their local languages. comparing english and local languages, it can be seen that the use of local languages is more dominant than it is of english in the family, neighbourhood, and friend domains. the respondents use local languages in these domains because they considered it more intimate when they use local languages to communicate with their family, neighbours, and friends. local languages are mostly used in speaking and listening functions. it means that they are only used in spoken discourse, and the exposure to the use of local languages is minimal. local languages are only taught in elementary schools, junior high schools, and senior high schools. meanwhile, the use of english is more dominant than the use of local languages in the classroom and social media domains. this situation is triggered by the fact that in some departments at universitas sanata dharma, english is used as the language of instruction in the classroom. moreover, in this millennial ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 239-250 249 era, the use of social media enables people to interact with other people from different parts of this world. the linguistic phenomenon occurring at universitas sanata dharma shows that the colloquial indonesian gradually displaces local languages. this situation may endanger the local languages, and if the community does not see the importance of maintaining local languages and do nothing to preserve them, we may lose them. and when we lose them, we may lose the world as steiner said, “when a language dies. a possible world dies with it.” (steiner, 1998). conclusion it can be concluded that the students value colloquial indonesian, english, and local languages positively for different reasons. indonesian and english are given positive value because they are essential for their study, daily life, international communication, and future life. meanwhile, local languages are appreciated because they are necessary for their regular life communication. in terms of language choice, colloquial indonesian gains the most dominant usage since it is the national language and lingua franca in indonesia. this dominance is influenced by social, political, educational, and economic factors. though this situation is useful to increase the vitality of indonesian, it may endanger the existence of local languages because the number of speakers is decreasing. the result of the analysis implies that being multicultural does not guarantee that the person will also be multilingual. this study needs further elaboration since it only applied the direct approach and observed only the students in one university. further research might be conducted by using the match-guise technique and observing more respondents. references -. 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(2013). language, identity, and mobility: perspective of malaysian chinese youth. malaysian journal of chinese studies, 2(1), 83-102. wamalwa, eric w. & oluoch stephen b. j. (2013). language endangerment and language maintenance: can endangered indigenous languages of kenya be electronically preserved?. international journal of humanities and social science, 3(7), 258-266. retrieved from www.ijhssnet.com. wardhaugh, r. (2006). an introduction to sociolinguistics fifth edition. malden: backwell publishing. fei, w. f., siong, l. k., kim, l. s., & yaacob, a. (2012). english use as an identity marker among malaysian undergraduates. 3l: language linguistics literature®, southeast asian journal of english language studies, 18(1), 145-155. ying, h. s., heng, c.s. abdullah, a. n., (2015). language vitality of malaysian languages and its relation to identity. gema online® journal of language studies, 15(2), 119-136. yule, g. (2006). the study of language. new york: cambridge university press. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 178 two adjacent vowels in pagu and their alternating word stress placement dalan mehuli perangin angin sanata dharma university, indonesia dalanperanginangin@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030204 received 29 january 2020; accepted 14 february 2020 abstract some diphthongs in pagu, rather than being pronounced as a single syllable in a normal/rapid speed of speech, can alternate to appear in two different adjacent syllables when pronounced in a slow speech. in pagu, the speed of speech affects the words syllable number and word stress placement. the previous study suggests that word stress in pagu is placed on the penultimate syllable. this paper will discuss word stress placement in pagu in two different speed of speech (normal and slow) as well as two adjacent vowels as affected by the speed and their position in the word. this sheds a light on the behaviors of two adjacent vowels in the stress placement area i.e. whether they are different vowels they can alternate between a diphthong or two separate vowels in two different syllables and when they are identical they cannot be separated into two different syllables when occur in the final position. keywords: stress placement; non-austronesian (papuan) language; diphthongs; long vowels; syllable structure introduction on my first stage of studying the pagu language for the indonesian institute of sciences’ (lipi) project (on the endangered languages in eastern indonesia documentation/revitalization in 2012-2014), i asked its speakers a lot of questions, e.g. how to say ‘bird’, ‘fish’, ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘the sun’, ‘the sea’, the moon’ any other nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives in pagu? i listened to them painstakingly and always asked them to repeat several times in order to spot the word stress placement. the first answered words are always pronounced quicker than those repeated ones. interestingly, for certain words their syllable numbers are not the same, that is the first pronounced words count one less syllable than the repeated ones. the two words in table 1 below exemplify this. table 1. words with two different and identical adjacent vowels in the prefinal position words normal speech slow speech /tiila/ ‘bad’ [ˈtiː.la] [ti.ˈ(ʔ)i.la] /tuaŋe/‘eight’ [ˈtua.ŋe] [tu.ˈ(w)a.ŋe] ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 179 in table 1 above, in each the two words /tiila/ ‘bad’ and /tuaŋe/‘eight’ there are two adjacent (identical) /ii/ and (different) vowels /ua/ that occur in the prefinal position (each is followed by a cv syllable). these words can have either two syllables when pronounced in a normal (rapid) speed, or three syllables, in a slow speed. the identical ones can be pronounced as a long vowel [iː] in one syllable (in normal speech) or two [i]s in two separate syllables (where both can be separated by a glottal [ʔ]). the different ones /ua/, can be pronounced as a glide [w] plus [a] in one syllable [wa] (in normal speech) or [u] and [a] in two separate syllables (where between the syllables, the glide [w] can occur). furthermore, when two different adjacent vowels occur in the final position in any of the following four possible vowel-consonant patterns: vv, vvc, cvv, or cvvc, the different vowels can also alternate to become one or two syllables (see table 2). in contrast however, long vowels in the final position never alternate to become two identical vowels in two separate syllables (see table 3). table 2. two different adjacent vowels in the final position patterns words normal slow vv /ao/ ‘bring’ [ˈao] [ˈa.o] vvc /aun/ ‘blood’ [ˈaun] [ˈa.un] cvv /soŋou/ ‘guilty’ [so.ˈŋou] [so.ˈŋo.u] cvvc /gouŋ/ ‘real’ [ˈgouŋ] [ˈgo.uŋ] table 3.two identical vowels (a long vowel) in the final position expected patterns (of the slow speech) words normal/slow slow vv not exist vvc /ook/ ‘to defecate’ [ˈʔoːk] *[ˈʔo.ok] cvv not exist cvvc /ku.tuul/ ‘big’ [kuˈtuːl] *[kuˈtu.ul] the words in table 2 have two different vowels that occur in the final position (they are not followed by another syllable). like the examples in table 1, they can also alternate to have two different numbers of syllables depending on the speed, i.e. the normal (rapid) one has one and the slow one has two syllables. those in table 3 on the other hand when occur in the final position they are always long vowels. note that pagu words cannot have the four-possible vowelconsonant patterns in the final position. unlike those in table 1 and 2, they cannot alternate to have two syllables but rather one only; even when pronounced in a slow speech. (the asterisk (*) symbol means that the pronunciation is not possible). figure 1 below outlines the alternating number of syllables of words with two different adjacent vowels in the four possible syllable structures when occur in the final position. they can alternate into two syllables, that form v.v, v.vc, cv.v or cv.vc syllable structure, or a single syllable as they are pronounced as a diphthong. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 180 two different adjacent vowels / diphthongs v v v v c c v v c v v c figure 1. two possible syllabe structure of two different and identical adjacent vowels in the in final position because of the facts mentioned above, the word stress in pagu can be said not always to occur in the penultimate but also in the final position. this determined by four factors: (i) the speed of the speech (normal/rapid vs slow) (ii) the two types of the adjacent vowels (identical vs different vowels) and (iii) the position of the vowels in the words (final or prefinal), and (iv)the heaviness of the syllable. note that diphthongs and longs vowels are heavy syllables (hayes 2009), therefore they must be assigned a stress when occur in the final position. we will see further in this paper that the two different adjacent vowels in the final position can alternate to have one or two syllables based on the following two circumstances: (a) a slow speech will result a glide insertion: glide /y/ or /w/ always can be inserted between the vowels and functions as a ‘syllable boundary’ (represented by the dashed vertical line in the left table above). whether the glide is /y/ or /w/ depends on the first vowel, for example: the front high /i/ or /e/ will allow /y/ whereas, the back high /u/ or /o/ will allow /w/. (b) a normal/rapid speech can result a vowel replacement by a glide: /i/ is replaced by /y/ and /u/ by /w/. the identical vowels in the final position on the other hand are always a long vowel, i.e. they cannot alternate to become two syllables. in any other position it can always split into two syllables, and a glottal /ʔ/ can always occur in between as a syllable barrier. thus, orthographically it suggests that the long vowels in the final position must be presented with two vowels instead of one (e.g. tuuk ‘to burn’ and feen ‘turtle’). this paper does not present a theoretical perspective rather a descriptive one that makes use of the traditional phonological theories such as the syllabification i.e. onset and rhyme (selkirk 1982 among others) and heavy syllable (hayes 2009). i will describe the phenomenon based on the pagu phonological nature, i.e. certain types of adjacent vowels; whether different or identical adjacent vowels; ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 181 which combinations of those vowels allow alternation to become one or two syllables; which ones don’t. by studying this issue, we will better understand the characteristics of long vowels, diphthongs (vowel glides) and glides in pagu in relations with the language syllable structure. we will also find out that word stress placement is not always on the penultimate but with certain vowels words and under different speed of speech can alternate to appear on the final. in addition, stress is assigned in the final because it is a heavy syllable. section 1 will discuss about the pagu language, section 2 the method. in order to get into the alternating word stress phenomena in pagu, i will present several pagu phonological features: phonemes, diphthongs and vowels in section 3 and syllable structure in section 4. in section 5, i will discuss the word stress placement (including the alternating word stress and that additional affixes that follow the base word i.e. epenthesis and suffixes do not affect the word stress placement). section 6 will conclude this paper. the language pagu is a papuan (non-austronesian) language spoken in the south-eastern end of the west-north peninsula of the halmahera island (see figure 2). following voorhoeve (1983) it belongs to the north halmaheran language family of the west papuan phylum that comprises two sub-families: southern and northern subfamily. the former one consists of west makian and the latter is divided into ternate group (ternate and tidore) and the mainland group that includes tobelo, galela, modole, tabaru, loloda, sahu, and pagu (see figure 3). figure 2. the pagu area in the indonesian map (in the black highlight pointed by the arrow). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 182 figure 3. the voorhoeve’s classification of the north halmaheran family all previous works on these languages including pagu (wimbish 1992) suggest that word stress in each of them is placed on the penultimate when the syllable of the word is more than one (see ternate (hayami-allen 2001), tidore (van staden 2000), and tobelo (holton 2003) except sahu that is more ‘not predictable’ (visser and voorhoeve 1987:19). method the data is mainly taken during the indonesian institutes of sciences’ (lipi) project (2012 – 2014) on saving the language from being extinct. i was hired by lipi to be in charge of documenting and describing the language. pagu can be considered as an endangered language based on at least the two following reasons: (a) the active speakers of the language are in average aged 45 years old or older and (b) the older generation do not transfer it to the younger generation (hisyam et.al. 2013). this paper is taken as a revised version of a phonological phenomenon from the phonology chapter of my phd thesis entitled “a descriptive grammar of the pagu language (perangin angin 2018), written as a requirement to obtain my phd degree at the university of hong kong. all data is recorded with an excellent quality of a wav formatted audio recorder. it contains different genres such as folklore telling and conversations among two or three people. all of the recordings have been transcribed in elan and toolbox annotator program. secondly, the elicitation on how to pronounce words in the normal (rapid) or slow speed are also recorded in the same format, that allow me to carefully listen to the difference in the number of syllables of various words. in addition, i also use a triglot dictionary of pagu-indonesian-english with 1300 entries (perangin angin 2014). this is produced by transferring the transcribed recordings in elan and toolbox into words format that consist of word entries, word pronunciation, examples in sentences and also word stress placement. note that entries in the dictionary are taken from the natural situation thus they are representations of the the normal/rapid speech. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 183 phonemes, diphthongs and long vowels there are twenty four phonemes in pagu consisting of nineteen consonants (table 4) and five vowels (table 5). table 4 shows the place and manner of articulation of the consonants and table 5, the height (high, mid and low) as well as the frontness (front, central and back) of the vowels. table 4. consonants in pagu labial alveolar palatal velar laryngeal nasals m n ɲ ŋ plosives (stops) p b t d c j k g fricatives f s h trill r lateral l glides w y note that wimbish (1991) and (1992) excludes the /h/ sound. i include this phoneme because of its appearance in several words; it appears in few words and only in the initial position of the following words [haiˈwani] ‘animal’, [ˈhali] ‘expensive’, [ˈhambak] ‘job’, [ˈhara] ‘sort’, [ˈhawa] ‘k.o. fish trap’ and [haˈbari] ‘news’. the /h/ sound cannot be omitted (not optional) otherwise it will change the meaning e.g. [ˈali] (the one without /h/ means ‘to cry’), or become meaningless. table 5. vowels in pagu front central back high i u mid e o low a in addition, there are also twenty possible vowel combinations that appear as diphthongs (two vowels with different targets that occur in a single syllables). they are listed in table six below. basically, any combinations of the five vowels in table 5 above are possible. however, they can be categorized into the four groups (a, b, c, and d) because of their distinctive characteristics when deals with: (i) word stress placement, (ii) their position in the word and (iii) whether pronounced in rapid or slow speech. these can affect whether they can split into two vowels in two different syllables and whether a glide (/y/ or /w/) can be inserted between the two or not. i will discuss these phenomena in more detail in section (4). table 6. pagu diphthongs in four different types a: /ia/, /iu/, /ie/, /io/, /ua/, /ue/, /uo/, /ui/ b: /ai/, /ei/, /oi/, /au/, /eu/, /ou/ c: /ea/, /eo/, /oa/, /oe/ d: /ae/, /ao/ the four groups of the diphthongs are categorized based on their height and frontness, as the following: group a: the high front /i/ or high back /u/ is followed by any other vowels. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 184 group b: the low /a/, or mid /e/ or /o/ is followed by either the high front /i/ or high back /u/. group c: the mid front /e/ is followed by mid back /o/ or vice versa, or followed by the low /a/. group d: the low /a/ is followed by the mid /e/ or /o/. when pronounced in a slow speech, these diphthongs can have different manifestations. diphthongs in group a and c can have a glide insertion i.e. /y/ in the first four and /w/ in the last four (of a) and /y/ in the first two and /w/ in the last two (of c) (see table 7). those in group b and d cannot have a glide insertion (table 8). in contrast, when pronounced in rapid speech, those in group a and b can have a glide replacement i.e. /i/ is replaced by /y/ and /u/ by /w/. those in group c and d cannot have such a sound replacement. table 7. examples of glides replacement and glide insertion in group a and c in normal and slow speech normal/rapid speech slow speech no glide glide replacement no glide glide insertion /dudual/ ‘waterfall (a) [duˈdual] [duˈdwal] [duˈdu.al] [duˈdu.wal] /kiuk/ ‘to pull out’ (a) [ˈkiuk] [kyuk] [ˈki.uk] [ˈki.yuk] /doe/ ‘end’ (c) [ˈdoe] * [ˈdo.e] [ˈdo.we] /teol/ ‘to squeeze’ (c) [ˈteol] * [ˈte.ol] [ˈte.yol] table 8. examples of glides replacement and glide insertion in group b and d in normal and slow speech normal/rapid speech slow speech no glide glide replacement no glide glide insertion /lepait/ ‘sandfly’ (b) [leˈpait] [leˈpayt] [leˈpa.it] *[leˈpa.yit] /beleul/ ‘delta’ (b) [beˈleul] [beˈlewl] [beˈle.ul] *[bele.wul] /laem/ ‘to lick’ (d) [ˈlaem] * [ˈla.em] *[ˈla.yem] /sao/ ‘to wrap’ (d) [ˈsao] * [ˈsa.o] *[ˈsa.wo] because of the characteristics of the glides given above, glides in pagu can be categorized into two different types: ‘absolute’ or ‘optional’. an absolute glide (/y/ or /w/) is one that appears as a ‘pure’ consonant (non-syllabic; it must occur with a vowel and function as a syllable barrier). it neither can be replaced by vowel /i/ or /u/ respectively. this is exemplified by the six words in table 6 below. as an optional one here it means that /y/ can be replaced by /i/ and /w/ by /u/ as we have seen in the examples above. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 185 table 9. examples of absolute glides. word meaning correct pronunciation glide replacement yayam ‘mutter’ [ˈya.yam] *[ˈia.yam] yeku ‘hill’ [ˈye.ku] *[ˈie.ku] you ‘leg’ [ˈyou] *[iou] wola ‘house’ [ˈwo.la] *[ˈuo.la] wecar ‘headache’ [ˈwe.car] *[ˈue.car] wuis ‘flow’ [ˈwu.is] *[ˈuu.is] the first three ones are words with an absolute /y/ and the last three others are with an absolute /w/. as compared with the optional glides, /y/ and /w/ that can replace the vowel /i/ and /u/ respectively, as the absolute ones cannot. all the five vowels in pagu have the long vowel counterparts: /iː/, /uː/, /eː/, /oː/ and /aː/. each of them can occur in the final or prefinal position. table 10. long vowels in the final position word meaning normal speech waas ‘pour’ [ˈwaːs] bereek ‘dirt’ [be.ˈreːk] golool ‘grease, fat’ [go.ˈloːl] nuus ‘island’ [ˈnuːs] dingii ‘footprint’ [di.ˈŋiː] table 11. long vowels in the prefinal position word meaning normal speech booto ‘finished’ [ˈboːto] gaani ‘head louse’ [ˈgaːni] tiila ‘bad’ [ˈtiː.la] when a long vowel is in the final position it must be assigned a stress (ˈ). note however, when the long vowel is in the prefinal it can split into two different syllables. i will discuss this in more detail in section 5. syllable structure pagu has four syllable patterns: v, cv, vc and cvc (see also wimbish 1991 and 1992). it does not have a consonant cluster (in a single syllable) or adjacent consonants in two different syllables. figure 4 below sketches the syllable combinations of a pagu word. as we can see, the last sound of the front syllable cannot become a consonant (coda) if the first sound of the following syllable (onset) starts with a consonant (marked with (*)). two vowels however can be adjacent in two different syllables (nucleus and nucleus). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 186 figure 4. pagu syllable structure pagu words can be monosyllabic (see examples in table 12), disyllabic (table 13), trisyllabic (table 14) or quadrisyllabic (table 15). there are no words with more than four syllables except the reduplicated ones. the four tables below provide with examples of words with each of the given number of syllables mentioned above as pronounced in a slow speech. table 12. the four syllable patterns in one-syllabled words/particles no. syllable pronunciation meaning/function 1 v [o] a noun marker particle 2 cv [de] ‘and/with’ [ma] a relational noun linker [ka] ‘only’ 3 vc [ˈoːk] ‘to defecate’ 4 cvc [tuːk] ‘to burn’ [feːn] ‘turtle’ table 13. the eight syllable combinations in two-syllabled words no. syllable pronunciation meaning/function 1 v.v [a.o] ‘to bring’ 2 v.cv [u.wa] ‘don’t’ 3 v.cvc [o.sis] ‘to pee’ 4 v.vc [a.un] ‘blood’ 5 cv.v [mi.a] ‘monkey’ 6 cv.cv [bu.di] ‘to cheat’ 7 cv.vc [lo.at] ‘four’ 8 cv.cvc [wa.lik] ‘to open’ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 187 table 14. the eight syllable combinations in three-syllabled words no. syllable pronunciation meaning/function 1 cv.cv.cv /de.we.la/ ‘morning’ 2 cv.v.cvc /ki.a.lon/ ‘basket’ 3 cv.cv.cvc /ki.ki.siŋ/ ‘fin’ 4 cv.cv.v /so.ŋo.u/ ‘guilty’ 5 cv.cv.vc /sa.ma.ek/ ‘shy’ 6 cv.v.v /ki.a.u/ ‘young’ 7 cv.v.cv /ki.a.ni/ ‘only’ 8 v.cv.cv /i.yo.lo/ ‘yes’ table 15. the eight syllable combinations in four-syllabled words no. syllable pronunciation meaning/function 1 cv.cv.cv.cv /ka.la.ce.ce/ ‘gecko’ 2 cv.cv.cv.v /ti.ŋi.ka.i/ ‘onery’ 3 cv.cv.cv.cvc /ku.lu.bi.taŋ/ ‘worm’ 4 cv.cv.v.cv /ka.wu.u.lo/ ‘when’ 5 cv.cv.v.cvc /so.so.o.yol/ ‘jelly fish’ 6 cv.v.cv.cv /sa.u.ra.mo/ ‘fog’ 7 cv.v.cv.cvc /gi.a.to.mal/ ‘wrist’ 8 cv.v.cv.v /ga.i.lo.a/ ‘tomorrow’ as predicted by the pagu syllable structure in figure 4, and as we can see through the examples in the four tables above, a closed syllable (either vc or cvc) never appears in the initial or medial position. they however can appear in the final position only. we have seen above that the number of syllables of a word with a diphthong or long vowel will alternate between one or two when pronounced in normal/rapid or slow speech respectively. when the syllable with a long vowel occurs in the final position it cannot alternate to become two different syllables, but in the prefinal position it can. diphthongs on the other hand by contrast have different behaviors. the different behaviors of the four groups of diphthongs in pagu when dealing with their position can be outlined in table 16 below. table 16. the possible alternation in prefinal and final position of the four groups of pagu diphthongs diphthongs types alternation in pre-final alternation in final a: /ia/, /iu/, /ie/, /io/, /ua/, /ue/, /uo/, /ui/ ✓ ✓ b: /ai/, /ei/, /oi/, /au/, /eu/, /ou/ ✓ ✓ c: /ea/, /eo/, /oa/, /oe/ ✓ ✓ d: /ae/, /ao/ ✕* ✓ * can appear in one syllable only those of group a can alternate to become one or two syllables in both the prefinal and final position. they can alternate to become two syllables by splitting ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 188 the diphthongs into two different syllables or by inserting a glide (as a syllable boundary) in between. they can also become a syllable by replacing the first target /i/ or /u/ with the glide /y/ or /w/ respectively (see table 17 below). table 17. glide insertion and /i/ or /w/ replacement in group a. /ie/ /ia/ /iu/ /io/ /uo/ /ua/ /ue/ /ui/ 2sil [i.(y)e] [i.(y)a] [i.(y)u] [i.(y)o] [u.(w)o] [u.(w)a] [u.(w)e] [u.(w)i] 1sil [ye] [ya] [yu] [yo] [wo] [wa] [we] [wi] those in group b and c by contrary can alternate to become two different vowels in two different syllables while those in group d can alternate in the final position only. word stress placement in the syllable weight theory both vc and cvc are known as a heavy syllable. in addition, when the v is either a long vowel or a diphthong it is also considered as a heavy syllable too (hayes 2009:280). we have seen above that when a long vowel occurs in the final position it must be assigned a stress either in normal or slow speech. however, when a diphthong occurs in the final position it can alternate to appear as two different vowels when pronounced in a slow speech. thus, by default (normal speech) a diphthong in the final position is a heavy syllable and must be assigned a stress. word stress in pagu by default is assigned to the penultimate syllable when the two final syllables of the word has the v.cv, v.cvc, cv.cv or cv.cvc structure (see word examples in table 18 below). we must notice however: (i) the final consonant must begin with a consonant and (ii) the vowel in both syllables must not be a long vowel or a diphthong. if the syllables of the word have these two criteria above whether pronounced in rapid or slow speech, the stress placement will remain in the penultimate syllable. table 18. syllable structure that must be assigned a stress on the penultimate syllable word meaning pronunciation v.cv uwa ‘don’t’ [ˈu.wa] v.cvc osis ‘pee’ [ˈo.sis] cv.cv budi ‘cheat’ [ˈbu.di] cv.cvc walik ‘open’ [ˈwa.lik] word stress with long vowels or diphthongs when the vowel is a long vowel or a diphthong however the stress placement is not automatically on the penultimate, but rather it is determined by two phonological factors: (i) the speed of speech and (ii) their position in the word i.e. prefinal vs. final. when a diphthong occurs in the final position by default (in the normal speech) it must be assigned a stress. when it is pronounced in a slow speech then it splits into two different syllables (see table 19). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 189 table 19. diphthongs in the final position pronounced in normal or slow speech. word meaning normal slow ao ‘bring’ [ao] [ˈa.o] aun ‘blood’ [ˈaun] [ˈa.un] samaek ‘shy’ [saˈmaek] [saˈma.ek] mia ‘monkey’ [ˈmia] [ˈmi.a] when it occurs in the prefinal position it can also alternate to occur in one or two syllables depending on the speed of speech (table 20). note that whenever it occurs as a diphthong or two separate vowels the stress is always assigned on the penultimate syllable. table 20. diphthongs in the prefinal position pronounced in normal or slow speech. word meaning normal slow beika ‘try’ [ˈbei.ka] [be.ˈi.ka] kaugon ‘yesterday’ [ˈkau.gon] [ka.ˈu.gon] baliara ‘care’ [ba.ˈlia.ra] [ba.li.ˈar.a] kialon ‘basket’ [ˈkia.lon] [ki.ˈa.lon] tuange ‘eight’ [ˈtua.ŋe] [tu.ˈa.ŋe] a long vowel in contrast when occurs in the final position cannot alternate to occur in the two syllables, and it is always assigned a stress (table 21). table 21. long vowels the final position pronounced in normal or slow speech. word meaning normal slow golool ‘oil’ [goˈloːl] *[goˈlo.ol] muaan ‘to yawn’ [muˈaːn] *[ˈmua.an] nuus ‘island’ [ˈnuːs] *[ˈnu.us] ook ‘to defecate’ [ˈʔoːk] *[ˈʔo.ok] however, when it occurs in the prefinal, it can alternate in one or two syllables and the stress remains on the penultimate syllable (table 22). table 22. long vowels in the prefinal position pronounced in normal or slow speech. word meaning normal slow guule ‘to play’ [ˈguːle] [guˈule] kiipit ‘to pinch’ [ˈkiːpit] [kiˈipit] kawuulo ‘when’ [kaˈwuːlo] [kawuˈulo] word stress and vocalic epenthesis or suffixes the word stress placement in pagu whether assigned on the final or penultimate syllable (in normal or slow speech) only applies to base word. this ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 190 means that any other sound that comes after the base will not affect the word stress placement. in natural conversations, pagu base words that end in a consonant i.e. vc or cvc commonly will be accompanied by a vocalic epenthesis. it is a vowel that follows the last consonant. the vocalic epenthesis is normally a copy of vowel that appears before the last consonant. note however when the vowel is long the epenthesis will be the short version and the diphthong will result in the last target vowel. this is exemplified by the words in table 23 below. the vocalic epenthesis are those in bold. table 23. words end in a consonant followed by a vocalic epenthesis in normal or slow speech. word meaning normal speech with epenthesis slow speech with epenthesis aun ‘blood’ [ˈaunu] [ˈa.unu] kiipit ‘to pinch’ [ˈkiːpiti] [kiˈipiti] samaek ‘shy’ [saˈmaeke] [saˈma.eke] nuus ‘island’ [ˈnuːsu] (not possible) likewise, suffixes that come after the base words in pagu do not affect the word stress placement. (1) no-jaga no-kodel-uku-si-li doka 2s-guard 2sg-busy-downwards-imprf-repet yonder e ma sakai ma i-olak-uwa-si-li excl art cook but 3nh-cooked-neg-imprf-repet ‘you take care of your child while you yourself are really busy, while over there the meal isn't cooked yet’ in the sentence above, there are two base words (those in bold) that are followed by suffixes i.e. kodel ‘busy’ and olak ‘cook’. the stress placement of each word is on the penultimate [ˈko.del] and [ˈo.lak] respectively. the occurrence of the suffixes (those underlined) do not affect the stress placement namely each remains on the penultimate. conclusion this paper has affirmed whether stress placement in pagu is not always assigned on the penultimate. it can also appear in the final position when the v is a long vowel, or a diphthong pronounced in a normal/rapid speech. the number of the syllables of words with a long vowel and diphthong when occur in the prefinal position can also alter as a result of it being pronounced in a rapid or slow speech. this happens because they can ‘stretch’ into two different vowels in two different syllables or remains ‘intact’ as a single sound in a rapid speech. this paper, not ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 178-191 191 only has discussed those aforementioned findings but also outlined several features of the phonology of pagu, such as its phonemes inventories, syllable structure, and different characteristics of diphthongs and long vowels. references hayami-allen, r. (2002). a descriptive study of the language of ternate, the northern moluccas. indonesia, umi ann arbor. hayes, b. (2009). introductory phonology. oxford: wiley-blackwell. hisyam, m., azis, s. u., & angin, d.m.p. (2013). pemertahanan bahasa pagu. jakarta: lipi press. holton, g. (2003). tobelo. muenchen lincom europa. kotynski, e. a. (1988). tabaru phonology and morphology. workpapers of the summer institute of linguistics at the university of north dakota. 144-216. grand forks. university of north dakota press. perangin angin, d. m. (2014). kamus kecil pagu-indonesia-inggris 2014. jakarta: pmb-lipi press. perangin angin. d. m. (2018). a descriptive grammar of the pagu language. unpublished phd thesis. the university of hong kong. selkirk, e. (1982). the syllable. in h. v. d. hulst, & n. smith (eds.), the structure of phonological representations: part 2 (pp. 337-384). dordrecht: foris van, s. m. (2000). tidore: a linguistic description of a language of the north moluccas. universiteit leiden. visser, l. e., & voorhoeve, c. l. (1987). sahu-indonesian-english dictionary and sahu grammar sketch. verhandelingen van het koninklijk instituut voor taal-, landen volkenkunde 126. dordrecht. foris publications. wimbish, s. g. (1991). an introduction to pagu through the analysis of narrative discourse. ma thesis, university of texas at arlington. wimbish, s. g. (1992). pagu phonology. in burquest, d., & laidig, w. (eds) “descripitive studies in languages of maluku”, 69–90. https://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/ https://software.sil.org/toolbox/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 51-60 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 51 child marriage in short stories from indonesia and bangladesh: victor, survivor, and victim novita dewi sanata dharma university novitadewi@usd.ac.id; novitadewi9@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.020106 received 25 july 2018; revised 5 august 2018; accepted 3 september 2018 abstract early marriage is a total destruction to the human rights of children. contrary to the conviction that child marriage in rural, developing countries is inextricably linked with their cultural backwardness, violence against women need to be examined and addressed in terms of the specific socio-economic and cultural conditions as to why girls, adolescents and young women are forced to live and marry in their young age. this article examines two shorts stories from indonesia to be analyzed comparatively with another story from bangladesh to show the limit of mainstream feminist perspectives that often put the blame on minority cultures. the present study reveals that first, child marriages in both countries are largely driven by such factors as poverty, economic dependency, lack of education, and dowry in bangladesh’s case. secondly, the ways in which authors depict child marriages vary, i.e. it is either perpetuating the violence in child marriage, or critically depicting child marriage as an aberrant patriarchal practice. taken together, the child brides play their respective role as victor, survivor, or victim. keywords: child marriage, feminism, normalization, multiculturalism introduction in 2011, the world was shocked by the heartbreaking news of child marriage practices in different parts of the world shown in the cover of the national geographic magazine by the photographer stephanie sinclair for her article entitled “too young to wed” (harlan, 2015). it features a red-veiled girl surita shreshta balami, 16, screaming in protest over a marriage procession that carries her to a new home with her husband bishal shrestha balamani, 15, in the village of kagati, kathmandu valley, nepal. since witnessing the horrific events in 2003 when several young girls in one province in afghanistan burnt themselves rather than being forced to marry, sinclair was a determined advocate to end this cruel practice. the young girls she interviewed testified that they chose to die than to live a terrible life under such torture as rape, abortion and divorce. sinclair said that early marriage was performed in at least 50 countries in the world with a startling number, i.e. 39,000 marriages every single day. it means that two girls mailto:novitadewi@usd.ac.id mailto:novitadewi9@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 51-60 52 per second were sacrificed in forced marriages, sometimes with men who are much older. sinclair’s photos paved the way for the formation of a non-profit foundation “too young to wed” which she built in 2012. this article is to discuss the representation of early marriage in two short stories set indonesia and one short story from bangladesh. it would seem that in both bangladesh and indonesia, as in other less developed countries, the practice of child marriage is largely driven by socio-economic factors, including poverty, economic dependency, financial incentives and the practice of dowry, as well as lack of access to education and health services. as reported in the journal of health, population and nutrition (2012), 82% of women in bangladesh aged 20-49 years got married before the age of 18 years, and 63% of marriages took place before the age of 16 years. there have been attempts to lower the number of child marriage that is proven to be harmful for the health of the mother and child, either through formal and informal education as well as the revision of the law that set the age limit for the minimal age of 19 for marriage in the country. although there are already laws that restrict early marriage, indonesia, likewise, is ranked seventh among the ten countries with the highest number of child marriage; while india and bangladesh are on the, respectively, first and second place. in indonesia, article 7 of law no. 1 of the 1974 marriage law allows marriage only if the man has reached the age of 19 years and 16 years for the woman. it is also stipulated by the law that the basis for a marriage is the consent of the bride; and that of the parents for the bride who is not yet 21 years old. dispensation against the age limit may be granted by the court or other officers appointed by the parents of both sides (susetyo, 2010). however, according to plan international, getting the evidence: asian child-marriage initiative (2015), an estimated one out of every five girls in indonesia get married before the age of 18 years. child marriage in indonesia is more common in rural areas. west sulawesi, for example, is recorded as the region with the highest rate of child marriage before the age of 15 because some people regard this practice as a cultural tradition that has long been rooted. the community accept it as part of the social structure, hence they rarely question about the effects and consequences posed by early marriages. suffice to say that for now, early marriage is not infrequently associated with the normalization of violence of men against women and children (girls). such marriage is often seen as a way out for the bad stigma that afflicts a girl due to a sexual experience outside of wedlock, victim of rape, and various other forms of sexual abuse. the aim of this article is to examine how male cruelty toward (young) women is imagined and often taken for granted as being a normal practice in different ways in different countries, like bangladesh and indonesia; and how the varied interpretations thereof are respectively represented in the three child bride’s stories. literature view there is an assumption that women of the minority groups (read: eastern, non-western) have become victims of their own culture. cultural practices within the multicultural society often appear conflicting with the feminist views (from the west) in reading the ways men treat women. women in the third world culture ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 51-60 53 are considered more subordinate compared to experienced women in the western world, as it has been discussed at length and refuted by, for example, mohanty (1988), suleri (1992) and ang (2003). while it may be true that many values in a multicultural society are not prowomen (okin, 1998), volpp (2001) proposes a constructive dialogue of feminismmulticulturalism in order to revisit the biased opinions of the european feminism. that minority culture is often seen to oppress women is a view that comes from the colonial ideology. so imposing is this view that it claims the superiority of the rational western culture vis-à-vis the barbaric and irrational other. in addition to the historical legacy of colonialism, volpp considers the origins of liberalism, the depiction of the feminist subject, and the use of binary logic that have all obscured cultural strengths and multicultural experience of women’s life. indeed, multicultural/minority culture itself is never static but constantly changing and negotiable with the times. such a crude feminism perspective retains the patriarchy, cruelty and the overturning of the dignity of women it otherwise seeks to challenge. therefore, an analysis of early marriages in literature will be placed in the context of gender studies with postcolonial perspectives. using the tri-prong strategy of feminism-multiculturalism-postcolonialism, the discussion aims to reveal the power-relations and their implications that occur in the three stories chosen to discuss. findings and discussion précis of the short stories the first story by ahmad tohari, “minem gave birth to a baby” (english version of “si minem beranak bayi”) is set in a dry limestone hill village in indonesia where kasdu rushes back home to meet his 14-year-old wife minem who has just given birth to a premature baby – 2 months ahead of time. the baby is forced out from minem’s womb when she fells downhill with a large earthen jar full of water in her hand. kasdu is too lazy to fetch some water from the other neighboring village when a prolonged drought hit the region. still puzzled by the incident, the young father walks his way quickly to see his in-laws to tell the news only to meet minem’s father who is equally baffled that his child can produce a child. impatient by her husband’s exaggerated response, minem’s mother reprimands him that she too was 14 when giving birth to minem. still amazed, minem’s father puts a proud smile on his face thinking how easily his daughters meet their soul mates; next month the family is to celebrate the wedding of minem’s sister, twelve-year-old minah. the second story “inem” was written by the famous indonesian writer pramoedya ananta toer after his release from 29-month-imprisonment by the dutch indies government. presumably a semi-autobiographical in nature, the story is told by a six-year-old boy muk (also pram’s nickname) about a girl two years older than he is who stays with his family to help muk’s mother cooking in the kitchen or, at times, accompanying muk and his younger siblings to play. till one day inem tells the narrator that she is going to get married. not only muk, his mother is also baffled because inem is only a child. when inem’s mother who lives nearby comes to take the girl back, argument ensues between muk’s mother and inem’s mother. mbok inem is determined to marry her daughter off with 17year-old markaban, son of a wealthy cattle trader, ignoring as she does muk’s ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 51-60 54 mother advice to avoid child marriage for health reason. inem’s marriage however is not a happy one, for markaban is a sex maniac and wife-beater. having divorced her husband, inem begs muk’s mother to return to the family again whilst asking for protection. to the child narrator’s disappointment, his noble decent mother refuses to let the 9-year-old divorcee stay in the house with male children out of respect. set against women’s daily life in bangladesh, the last short story “seduction” by razia sultana khan tells of halima, a girl who is forced into a marriage at a young age. her routine chore involves helping her mother-in-law preparing meals for the family in the morning and serving the husband’s needs of the flesh in the evening. halima’s husband quickly makes halima tired of life in a marriage without love. during the daytime, the lonely wife is often caught stealing glances through the slats on the window of her room facing aga sadeque road, as she is waiting for the touring cinema to pass by. the mother-in-law then makes her busy with embroidery work, until one afternoon, halima is attracted by the charm of a young chai peddler who looks more manly and muscular than her thin, pale husband. halima is thrilled and with mixed feeling receives the chai from him brought to her by nine-year-old ahsan, the son of halima’s neighbor. in fact, chai bhaia gives this free sherbet drinks to everyone for free before selling it later for one paisa per cup. when the much awaiting chaiwallah is no longer seen selling chai on a pushcart for he is now selling it in a tea shop, halima willingly gives four paisa to ahsan to get her chai nonetheless. theory application all girls in “minem gave birth to a baby”, “inem, and “seduction” are married to men from rich families when they are very young, respectively, 13, 8, and 16, to alleviate each family’s financial problem. to begin with the story set in bangladesh, halima is expected to help reduce the burden of the family. in india and most south asian countries including bangladesh, the tradition surrounding early marriage, dowry, and arranged marriage still continue since colonial times, especially in rural areas, because this custom is loaded with religious, political, and financial systems (subramanian, 2010). poverty is one of the main reasons why bangladeshi families marry off their daughters. in addition, the marriage of children reduces the financial hardship of the family which is then passed on to the daughters. “you’ll be the oldest daughter-in-law”, halima’s mother says, “you will be respected and ... have responsibilities.” (khan, 2010, p. 119). the girl who still loves to romp in the yard with her little friends, two birds named tuni and mooni, is suddenly disconnected from the world of her childhood. her husband’s family house is larger and more comfortable to his mother’s home. in the daytime, however, the space and mobility of the young wife is confined to a narrow room in order not to interconnect with life around her. the husband’s family is certain that by getting halima locked up in her room, she is not to touch the outside world. the following passage describes halima’s cultural bondage. helping her to settle into the customs in their house, halima’s husband had mentioned the windows. “we always have the slats pointing downwards; otherwise there’s no privacy in this room.” he had paused, then added, “ma is very particular about this.” ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 51-60 55 as the days passed halima did notice that whenever her mother-in-law came to her room, her eyes invariably went to the slats even as she talked to halima. (khan, 2010, p. 121) here, halima is given the responsibility, but the right is not given to her – the right to mingle, the right to gain entertainment, the right to be free to live a normal daily life for girls of her age. victimization continues in the story. sexual maturity is quickly obtained by halima because almost every night she is made an object of sexual satisfaction by her husband. being treated as an object of lust, not only does she live an unhappy marriage life, she is also prone to physical damage. child marriage is but sexual exploitation the way prostitution is (mikhail, 2002). it should also be borne in mind that who, unicef, and ngos around the world have established grounds for criminalization on destruction of the reproductive organs suffered by the child bride. the decline in the number of early marriages in bangladesh, according to kamal, has increased the country’s maternal and child health index (2012, p. 317). women and children become victims of violence in marriage at a young age, both physical and psychosocial violence. if seen through gender studies, “seduction” offers a narrative of violations of women’s rights, but there is no solution in them. halima is depicted as a femme fatale or seductive female (dewi, 2016: 130). the appearance of female trappers with aura of enchantment and mystery always color the literary works since the ancient and classical (see braun, 2012), until the contemporary times primarily in novels and western films at the end of the 20th century. such characters as delilah, salome, cleopatra, helen of troy get transformed into beautiful girls in the james bond film. this kind of objectification is inseparable from orientalist view which became the core of postcolonial studies (dewi, 2018). though there is no infidelity between halima and the chai man, “adultery” through the eyes is plainly illustrated as she peeks through the window admiring how well-built the young man is: [the biceps] bulged through the half sleeve of his safari shirt as he stood poised over the cup of tea with the heavy kettle in the midair. she wondered how it would feel to the touch. she closed her eyes and a stillness came over her, and when she opened her eyes the stillness was mirrored in the eyes of the chaiwallah. his left brow shot up and he gave his quirky smile. halima’s heart thundered away but she did not lower her eyes. (khan, 2010: 128) the passage above betrays typical sex-innocence of a young woman. instead, it depicts halima’s sexual/sensual repressions. it is clear here that the narrator put the female character in her position as a victim. until the story ends, the more obvious is the weakness of halima. despite her seemingly rebellious manner as shown in her taking a peek and even sneakily buying tea for herself, the young woman is on the losing side. when chaiwallah no longer passes in front of her wind for he is now working in a coffee shop, halima continues to send ahsan to buy a cup of chai even if she has to pay four times more expensive. here, instead of breaking the rope of violence against her, halima in reality accepts the conditions and consequences of early marriage, that is, the marriage that has made the child bride physically and spiritually burdened. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 51-60 56 similarly, “inem” is evidence that young girls are wed to ease the family’s economic problem. the story is one of pram’s early works along with 10 other short stories compiled in stories from blora. “the twenty-nine months in the dutch captivity to pram is a time of experience, mentality, thought and imagination that matures and enriches the soul,” h. b. jasin writes in his introduction to the reprinted edition of the short stories collection (in toer, 1994, p. vi). indeed, pram’s childhood experiences, criticism of the feudal culture, and his anxiety over the justice in society are characteristic of the works of the maestro (hatley, 1980; dewi, 2013). child marriage is considered commonplace among families living in the poor area that becomes the setting of pram’s story. it would seem that inem, like probably most girls in her kampong, is thrilled when telling her little young master about her marriage: “the proposal came a week ago. my folks and all my other relatives think it’s a good idea.” though astonished that inem is only two years older than him, muk comments cheerfully, “wow! that’ll be fun!” (toer, 2004, p. 31) that marriage means alleviation of poverty is apparent in inem’s enthusiastic rejoinder described below: “it sure will,” she agreed. “they’ll buy me all these beautiful new clothes. and i’ll get to wear a bride’s dress and have flowers in my hair and powder, mascara, and eye shadow. i’m going to like that!” (toer, 2004, pp. 31-32) conversely, muk’s mother, who is of higher social status, gives a different reaction thus: “and just a child! eight years old. such a shame. but they need money, i suppose, and the only way to get it is by marrying off their daughter.” (toer, 2004, p. 37) the mother character who is reportedly inspired by pram’s own mother tries hard to explain to inem’s mother not to let inem get married in such a young age by repeatedly saying “it’s not right for children to marry” for fear that “their children will be stunted [and] their health will be poorly affected” (toer, 2004, pp. 35-36). as a note in passing, the acting director of reproductive health, national population and family planning agency (bkkbn) widwiono recently claims that a mother younger than 18 years old is incapable of taking care of her baby optimally (cited in kompas, august 2, 2018, p. 10). the same report says that based on the 2012 indonesian demographic and health survey, the maternal mortality rate reached 359 deaths per 100,000 births. but the effort of muk’s mother to explain about the risk of early marriage is fruitless because inem’s mother unwaveringly believes that nothing is wrong about early marriage. having previously detailed inem’s future husband, i.e., markaban son of a rich man and an only child, mbok inem is puzzled why muk’s mother should be overly worried about inem’s getting marriage. pram describes the different views between the two women as follows. “i’m sure you’re right, ma’am, but my own family is long-lived. my mother is still alive and she’s at least fifty-nine. my grandmother is living, too. she must be about seventy-four. and she’s still strong, strong enough to pound corn, anyway.” still ignoring her, mother added, “especially if the husband is young, too.” “of course, ma’am, but markaban is seventeen.” ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 51-60 57 “seventeen! my husband was thirty when he married me.” (toer, 2004, p. 36) the conversation between the two women of different social status concerning early marriage clearly shows the gulf that socially separates them. pram’s criticism to feudalism is shown by the term “ndoro” (in the original version of the story) meaning “ma’am” used by inem’s mother to address the narrator’s mother (see toer, 1994, p. 41). thus, by showing two contrasting concepts of marriage and its consequences, pram underscores the economic and educational disparities that fertilize early marriage practices. this short story also offers a counter-ideology against child marriage, which in this case is represented by the upper-middle class family like the mother of muk. the characterization of narrator’s mother breaks the assumption that all third-world women passively accept the oppression and subordination of patriarchal ideology. pram’s criticism of child marriage is put in the mouth of 6-year-old muk who cannot stand hearing inem’s screaming in pain when beaten and forced to serve the biological needs of her husband. as such, this short story effectively calls for justice for the weak and the marginalized. whenever muk ask his mother why inem is crying out “in time with a thudlike sound and then pounding on a door”, mother gives this simple answer: “they’re fighting.” (toer, 2004, p. 42) if muk urges again why inem and her husband should fight, muk’s mother never gives him a satisfactory answer but saying this only: “such a pity, such a poor little thing…” (toer, 2004, p. 43) thus, through postcolonial reading, pram’s cynical comment is all the more palpable in the closing paragraph: “i’d often hear her cries of pain and when she screamed, i cover my ears with my hands. meanwhile, mother continued to uphold propriety and the family’s good name.” (toer, 2004, p. 47) like inem as well as the bangladeshi child bride halima, minem and her sibling in tohari’s short story also wed in their young age – all marry into money. in both stories with indonesian (java) settings, however, early marriage for girls is not only economical but it also makes the parents proud. through the characterization of minem’s father, it is inferred that having his two daughters “fly fast off the shelves” makes him delighted (tohari, 2015, p. 33). one can compare minem’s father here with the anxiety shown by inem’s mother in pram’s story discussed earlier should her daughter accept no marriage proposal, saying: “i just feel lucky someone’s proposed […] and if we let this proposal go by, there might not be another one. imagine the shame of having a daughter become an old maid! besides, once she’s married she might even be able to help lighten the load around the house.” (toer, 2004, p. 34) it is clear here that for the javanese society in the 1950s (and perhaps even today), early marriage for daughters makes the family brim with pride. when compared to halima and inem, it would seem that minem belongs to women survivors, not victims. the male characters, ironically, come across as timid, if not to say cowardice. not only is kasdu cast as lazy, but he is also weak. tohari describes how this husband of minem is impressed with “how minem bore the extreme pain…held her breath and contracted her belly so that the baby would be pushed out.” (tohari, 2015, p. 29) although kasdu is concerned about the safety of minem and her baby, negligence of his pregnant wife is a form of violence. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 51-60 58 it is also interesting to look further at the actions of kasdu’s father-in-law. unlike kasdu, minem’s father seems less concerned about the pain of his own child. after being rebuked by his wife not to over-respond to the birth of her premature grandchild, the man said: “yes, yes. but i’m still amazed. it turns out that not only a mature woman can give birth to a baby, a little girl can do it also.” (tohari, 2015, p. 33) now it is clear that in this short story, normalization of violence is delivered in a joking tone. minem’s father’s jokes about babies that are likened to eggs or meat are but verbal violence. the feminist perspectives help to uncover tohari’s criticism of marriage at a young age that harms women vis-à-vis male egoism. nevertheless, reading this short story with emphatic understanding accompanied by a sense of taste, one can see that the tradition of early marriage is but common existence in poor areas. tohari extensively described minem’s arid village where “little boys with cracked skin” scavenged dry twigs and broken branches for firewood and gadung yam, cassava remnants in stony soil (tohari, 2015, p. 28). tohari’s depiction of hollow in the ground that used to be a stream without a single drop of water, dried molten trees, rock-hard soils, and so forth helps reinforce the picture of people who live in poverty. for this impoverished population, child marriage is a solution. the paradoxical effect is juxtaposed herein: the dryness of nature and the fertility of the child bride’s womb. conclusion this article has shown that there are similarities and differences in “seduction”, “inem”, and “minem gave birth to a baby” in representing child marriage. they all open with events experienced by the female characters who are married at their young age. life does not immediately become good after these women put an abrupt end to their childhood – a time of playing and schooling. the extent to which the female characters can be seen as victims, survivors, or victors of early marriage differs from one case to another and to the third. the story from bangladesh by khan depicts halima the child bride as a victim of patriarchy, while the indonesian child brides in the stories relatively survive the hardship of following early marriage tradition. pram’s inem however is not as successful as tohari’s minem. although both young women endure the difficulty, the former is left out, while the latter is welcomed by the family. this study has also shown that the varied imaginations of child marriage in the stories studied are inseparable from the cultural context upon which each story is drawn. apparently, “seduction” is presented to readers in the western world who tend to assume that the exploitation of women is but exoticism of the local culture, particularly through the depiction of sexual repression experienced by the main character, i.e. a copied figure of temptress in western literature. conversely, child marriage in “minem gave birth to a baby” is displayed with a little jest as a natural, everyday thing and there is no element of coercion in the matter, since early marriage has been a long-standing practice in the village that becomes the setting of the story. the normalization of violence in tohari’s short story is thus proven through the presence of a tough and self-controlled female character, while in khan’s, the young woman character comes across as troubled and repressed. but criticism against child marriage is most obvious in “inem” in that normalization of violence perpetrated by men against women is scarcely shown ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 51-60 59 herein. there is an attempt, even if it fails, to break the violence of child marriage in this early story of pram therefore, this paper concludes that victimization toward child brides in the three stories occurs in varying degrees. the female protagonists are all too young to wed; and, worse still, they are too weak to defend themselves against patriarchal system. gender issues in the story from bangladesh, however, are not the same when placed within the context of the indonesian stories. in the hope of ending the practice of early marriage, these short stories have all invited further reading to reveal the complexity of gender and multicultural cultures as diverse as bangladesh and indonesia. when more transformative writing and reading of child bride stories is available, the world would require no more heart-rending stories to put an end to early marriage like those reported in the national geographic magazine quoted in the beginning of this article. references ang, i. 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(2001, june). feminism versus multiculturalism. columbia law review, 101(5), 1181–1218.retrieved on february 19, 2010, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1123774. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23500187 http://www.jstor.org/stable/4030681 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021911810001476 http://www.hukumonline.com/berita/baca/hol20594/pernikahan-di-bawah-umur-tantangan-legislasi-dan-harmonisasi-hukum http://www.hukumonline.com/berita/baca/hol20594/pernikahan-di-bawah-umur-tantangan-legislasi-dan-harmonisasi-hukum http://www.jstor.org/stable/1123774 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 90-100 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 90 the problem of equilibrium in the panji story: a tzvetan todorov’s narratology perspective yoseph yapi taum sanata dharma university, indonesia yosephyapi@usd.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.020110 received 5 july 2018; revised 3 august 2018; accepted 20 august 2018 abstract narrative is understood as the record of human activities which relate strongly to a cultural matrix. narrative, in terms of story or story telling, is representative of factual and fictional achievement placed in a chronological or causal order. therefore, narrative and narratology have an important function in understanding cultural activities. some structuralist scholars, especialy those living during 1960 1980, created a special theory on narratology. there are four specialists of narratology; they are: vladimir propp, claude levi-strauss, tvsetan todorov, and a. j. greimas. they claimed the same perspective, that all narrative (such as folktale, myth, and legend) in fact share the same fundamental structure (i.e grammar, syntactical structure, semantics axes, actantial structure, or logical structure). panji story is one of indonesian heritage stories popular during the rule of madjapahit kingdom. the narratives were transmitted into folktales, oral literature, written literature, hikayat, or engraved as the reliefs at ancient temples. the narrative which was originated from singasari kingdom was so pervasive in east javanese culture, as it created a panji culture (nurcahyo, 2016). the spread of the narratives was so extensive, reaching bali, nusa tenggara, sumatra, borneo, papua, and to neighbouring countries such as malaysia, thailand, cambodia, laos, and myanmar. this paper aims at revealing narrative sequences of panji narratives in line with todorov’s narrative theory, especially in relation to his narratology theory of equilibrium. todorov’s equilibrium gets a new perspective and meaning. keywords: narratology, panji narratives, equilibrium, disruption, realization, repair, restoration introduction through long and arduous struggle, the panji script was officially recognized by unesco as one of the memories of the world (mow), in october 2017. in february 2017, the nomination proposal was signed by four countries, namely: indonesia, malaysia, cambodia, and the netherlands. in the proposal, indonesia included 76 panji manuscripts; malaysia attached 7 panji manuscripts; cambodia ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 90-100 91 1 panji manuscript; and leiden university attached 252 panji manuscripts (agung, 2018). as noted by prasetya (2014), panji is a typical form of indonesian creativity popular during the majapahit kingdom in east java. one thing is certain that the manuscript or oral version of panji story created at that time is not based on the indian literature. the panji story essentially contains the javanese romance very popular in the majapahit era (1300-1500 ad). the depiction of panji story was also seen in the reliefs of the panji story at kendalisodo temple, mirigambar temple in tulungagung regency, yudha temple on the slope of penanggungan mount, and especially panataran temple in blitar regency. kieven (2014) assumed that the figure with a hat carved on the temple's reliefs was panji. the panji storyis written in various versions of literature. these stories tell of the engagement of putra panji (inu) from the kingdom of jenggala / kahuripan with putri candrakirana (sekartaji) from the kingdom of daha/kediri. after being separated, the two lovers searched for each other. they are eventually reunited after wandering around and overcoming many obstacles. these three elements separation, mutual searching, and reunion are characteristics of all versions of the panji story. during the 177 years of power, the kingdom of kediri (1045-1222) contributed to the color of the civilization in the archipelago. in its golden age, the reign of kediri kingdom covered a relatively extensive area. the expansive spread of the panji story from kediri kingdom in east java to other places across the archipelago is a proof that the kingdom covered a very extensive area. besides gaining popularity in java, the panji story was also known in bali, nusa tenggara, sumatra, kalimantan, and papua. it even spread to malaysia, thailand, cambodia, laos, and myanmar (nurcahyo, 2016: 21-22). the panji story is not only inherited through oral media (fairy tales) but also written media (saga), performing arts (wayang beber), and enshrined in temple reliefs. despite its status as the world heritage, the panji story is not understood and studied intensively or extensively, especially by the cultural owners of the story. it is time for the panji story to be reviewed and appreciated more deeply by younger generation. questions arise, such as "why is the panji story so famous? what are the characteristics of the story compared to other stories? what is the meaning of panji story?” this paper has two purposes. first, it aims to examine the narrative structure of the panji story and reveal its meaning, both the surface and deeper meaning. second, it aims to understand the basic structure of various panji stories by using tzvetan todorov's structuralism narratology. theory narratology is a branch of structuralism that studies the narrative structure and how the structure influences the readers’ perception. narratology comes from latin words narratio and logos. narratio means a narrative, words, story, saga; whereas logos means science. narratology is an attempt to study the nature of a 'story' as a concept and as a cultural practice. so, narratology is a systematic study of stories. narratology is also called a narrative discourse theory. both narratology and narrative discourse theory are interpreted as a set of concepts about story and storytelling. narratology develops on the basis of linguistic analogies, such as ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 90-100 92 syntactic models, as in the relationship between a subject, a predicate, and an object. tvzetan todorov (1939-2017) is a prominent bulgarian-french structuralist literary critic who studies the theory of narratology. he is also known as a philosopher, historian, anthropologist, and sociologist who is influential in these fields of science. todorov uses the term narratologie to refer to structural analysis of parts of the story to reveal the functions and relations of these parts. he defines the story as "what is told" (what is narrated). the story being told is usually a chronological sequence of themes, motives, and plot lines. the plot presents the logical and causal relationship of a story. discourse is used to describe stylistic choices that determine how a narrative text or performance is presented to the readers or audience (richardson, 2017). todorov asserted that all the stories begin from the 'equilibrium' situation, a balanced state in which opposing forces are not in confrontation. this situation was then disrupted by "an event that changes the peaceful state.” other events then lead to the second 'equilibrium' situation. as richardson (2017) illustrates, there are five stages of narrative development that are shown in units of text meaning. the five stages are as follows: (1) a state of equilibrium, a condition that should occur; (2) stage of disruption to the order; (3) stage of realization (recognition) of disruption; (4) phase of efforts to repair damage that occurs; and (5) the new equilibrium stage, a state of restoring the balanced condition. these five stages do not occur in a linear line but in a cycle (circle). if described, todorov's narrative cycle is seen in the following figure 1. figure 1 of todorov’s narrative cycle narration is driven by the urge to create balance. the initial balance and the final balance in the cycle are not the same. according to todorov, narration always involves transformation. the characters of the stories and their situation are transformed through the development of disruption. disruption often occurs outside local social norms, for example murder and creation of fear from which a character who solves the mystery will appear (todorov, 1971). theory application the panji story is not only documented in fairy tales. the study conducted by nurcahyo (2016) on the tradition of the panji story confirms that the appropriate ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 90-100 93 term to refer to all information relating to the panji story is the panji culture. the panji culture is a set of artifacts, sociofacts and mentifacts related to the panji story. in the panji culture, the panji stories are found in four genres, namely hikayat panji (panji saga), dongeng panji (a tale of panji), sastra panji (panji literature), and seni pertunjukan panji (performing arts). there are several documented media for the panji story, namely oral media, ancient texts, written literature, temple reliefs, and performing arts. through oral media, we know the tales of panji, such as keong mas, timun mas (the east javanese version), ande-ande lumut, panji laras, and golek kencana. through the media of written literature, we know sastra panji (panji literature), panji mordaningkung, panji megatkung, panji chekel waningpati, panji narawangsa, panji jayengtilem, panji wulung, serat panji, serat panji dadap, wangbang wideya, and panji raras. from the inherited forms of saga, we know hikayat panji semirang, hikayat panji anggraeni or hikayat kudawenangpati, and hikayat panji jayakusuma. there are many performing arts related to the panji story. among them are wayang topeng (malang), wayang beber (pacitan), wayang timplong (nganjuk), wayang gedog (malang), wayang krucil (malang), wayang thengul (bojonegoro), kethek ogleng (pacitan, wonogiri), jaranan (trenggalek, tulungagung), reyog ponorogo, lutung kasarung (sunda), legong dance, drama gong (bali). the following discussion involves five texts, namely (1) hikayat panji semirang, (2) hikayat panji anggraeni; (3) keong mas story; (4) ande ande lumut story; and (5) the panji story in temple reliefs. hikayat panji semirang hikayat panji semirang is a romantic love story between dewi sekartaji and raden inu kertapati that is full of obstacles and challenges. as a result of the jealousy of his half-sister, galuh ajeng, dewi sekartaji shaves off her hair, flees and disguises herself as a man. at first she calls herself panji semirang, then changes her name to gambuh warga asmara. the disguise of dewi sekartaji ends when raden inu kertapati catches her cuddling the doll given by inu kertapati. the following are the narrative units which are grouped based on todorov’s narrative perspective: 1. dewi sekartaji or candrakirana lives happily with her father in the royal palace of daha (kediri). 2. from his concubine, king daha begets a daughter named galuh ajeng, who is envious and pampered by her father. one day, raden inu kertapati sends two dolls. the golden doll is wrapped in rags and the silver doll is wrapped in silk. ajeng chooses the silk-wrapped doll. upon learning that she gets a silver doll, she wants to trade it with candrakirana’s doll. candrakirana does not want to trade it. her father shaves off her head to make candrakirana look like a man. she leaves the palace and builds herself a royal palace. she disguises herself as a man named panji semirang. 3. raden inu kertapati realizes that panji semirang and later gambuh warga asmara is actually dewi candrakirana. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 90-100 94 4. inu kertapati finds dewi candrakirana cuddling the golden doll he sends her as a gift. 5. inu kertapati and dewi candrakirana get married and live happily ever after in the royal palace. hikayat panji anggraeni hikayat panji anggraeni is a touching romantic love story. the story, abound in metaphors and symbols of romance, tells about the romance between raden inu kertapati and dewi sekartaji, the reincarnation of his dead lover, dewi anggraeni. although he is arranged to marry dewi sekartaji, inu kertapati falls madly in love with dewi anggraeni. for this, dewi anggraeni is murdered. her beauty reincarnates in the body of dewi sekartaji and makes her more beautiful. dewi sekartaji is named dewi galuh candra kirana (the light of the moon). the following are the narrative units of the panji anggraeni story based on todorov’s narratology formation: 1. raden inu kertapati of jenggala kingdom is arranged to marry dewi sekartaji (candrakirana). they both know this. 2. however, raden inu kertapati falls deeply in love with dewi anggraeni, the daughter of jenggala prime minister. upon learning this, the king of kediri is furious. inu kertapati’s father hopes that dewi anggraeni will be the second wife. but inu kertapati does not marry anyone if his wish to marry dewi anggraeni is forbidden. dewi anggraeni is killed. upon learning dewi anggraeni’s death, inu kertapati is devastated and acts like a crazy man. he carries dewi anggraeni’s dead body anywhere. 3. raden inu kertapati realizes that dewi anggraeni is dead. he cremates her body. after that, inu kertapati wanders in the disguise of a man named kudaweningpati. 4. when he walks in the garden of soka (geranium) flowers during the full moon, he sees dewi anggraeni’s spirit fly to the moon from the blossoms of the soka flowers. the gods tell him that anggraeni has become the moonlight shining upon sekartaji. sekartaji’s beauty doubles and she gets a new name: dewi galuh candra kirana (moonlight). 5. inu kertapati realizes the resemblance between candra kirana and dewi anggraeni. he falls in love with candra kirana, gets married and they live happily ever after in the royal palace. keong emas like ande ande lumut, keong emas, or literally golden conch, is another popular folklore in indonesia. the keong emas imax theatre, a giant snailshaped theater building for a special high-tech movie show and performances, was named after keong emas. the theater building was founded on the initiative of mrs. tien soeharto, the late first lady of the second president of indonesia, soeharto, and was inaugurated on april 20, 1984. the story of keong emas is a romantic love story between raden inu kertapati and dewi candrakirana. the challenge they face this time is dewi galuh's jealousy. one person’s happiness can mean another person’s misfortune” (todorov, 1971). this love triangle triggers the development of keong emas storyline. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 90-100 95 the following section describes the narrative units of the keong emas story in todorov’s narratology perspective. 1. king kertamarta from the kingdom of daha has two daughters: dewi galuh and candrakirana. dewi cadrakirana is betrothed to raden inu kertapati of the kingdom of jenggala. 2. dewi galuh feels jealous and envious to candrakirana. dewi galuh asks for the enchantress’ assistance to cast a spell on candrakirana. the enchantress transforms candrakirana into a golden conch and throws it to the sea. the magic will only be broken after she meets her fiancé. 3. an elderly woman catches fish and the golden conch. she puts it in a water vessel. strange things happen. food abounds and her house is always clean and neat. who has done all of these things? intrigued, the elderly woman peeks to see what is going on. 4. keong emas introduces herself as the princess of daha kingdom who is bewitched and turned into a golden sconch by a wicked enchantress. when it happens, raden inu kertapati ventures out in search for candrakirana. the wicked enchantress disguises herself as a crow and shows him the wrong direction. fortunately, an elderly man helps him find the right way. raden inu kertapati continues to the village of dadapan. when he sees a girl cooking, the magic disappears. 5. raden inu kertapati marries dewi candrakirana. the elderly woman from desa dadapan is brought to live in the palace. dongeng ande ande lumut the story of ande ande lumut has been studied using the levi strauss structuralism approach by taum (2011: 117-190). in the study, it was revealed that the cycle in the panji story was closely related to the twin kingdoms of kediri and jenggala which were originally one kingdom called kahuripan founded by king airlangga. disputes and civil wars between these two kingdoms constantly broke out. taum concluded that the story of ande ande lumut implicitly projects the desires of the two twin kingdoms, jenggala and kediri, to live harmoniously and peacefully as envisioned by king airlangga. the following section describes the narrative units in todorov’s narrative theory. (1) once upon a time, in east java, indonesia, there are two twin kingdoms, jenggala kingdom led by king jayengnegara, and kediri kingdom led by king jayengrana. it is told that both kingdoms used to be the realms of one kingdom called kahuripan. according to the king airlangga’s last word before he died, the two kingdoms must be reunited through a bond of a marriage to avoid a civil war. finally, panji asmarabangun (the heir of jayengnegara) is betrothed to sekartaji (the daughter of jayengrana). they live happily ever after. (2) one day, jenggala kingdom is attacked by an enemy. in the midst of a fierce battle, dewi sekartaji escapes battle and hides in a village far away from jenggala kingdom. for her own safety, she disguises herself as a village girl and serves a wealthy widow, named nyai intan. nyai intan has three beautiful and flirtatious daughters. the eldest is kleting abang, the middle is kleting ijo, and the youngest is kleting biru. dewi sekartaji is adopted by nyai intan and given a name kleting kuning. in the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 90-100 96 widow’s household, kleting kuning must do all the houseworks, such as cooking, washing, and cleaning the house. nyai intan often yells at her and her three other siblings treat her like a slave. in fact, the widow only allows her to eat once a day. (3) meanwhile, in jenggala kingdom, panji asmarabangun and his troop succeed in defeating the enemy’s troop. however, he is saddened because his wife has left the jenggala palace and no one knows her whereabouts. after the peace and security resume in jenggala, the prince decides to find his wife by disguising himself as ande-ande lumut. (4) ande-ande lumut announces a contest of finding a perfect wife. kleting kuning is the only one that can win his heart. the other girls are rejected by the prince because the girls have let themselves be kissed by cunning yuyu kangkang. kleting kuning is confused because she has not found her husband. however, after ande-ande lumut removes his disguise and reveals that he is panji asmarabangun, kleting kuning is taken aback. using the magic whip given by the stork, kleting kuning transforms herself into the most beautiful princess anyone has ever seen. (5) panji asmarabangun finds out in disbelief that kleting kuning is indeed his own wife, dewi sekartaji. finally, the enamored husband and wife are reunited and they live happily ever after. they move to live in the jenggala palace, while nyai intan and her three daughters return to their village, disappointed and disgraced. the panji story in the temple’s reliefs based on the research by kieven (2014), it is revealed that the reliefs in panataran temple show repeating patterns of situations. when streamlined, the reliefs retell an interesting spiritual pilgrimage. the five phases in todorov’s narratology framework can be arranged in the following sequence: (1) yearning and separation: a man and a woman sit in a typical pose yearning for love. (2) the journey of a man wearing a hat and his aides or kadeyan – kertolo and jurudeh. (3) the encounter with a hermit. (4) crossing a body of water. (5) the union of a man and a woman in an intertwining position suggesting a sexual intercourse. compared to the panji story, the narrative sequence of the temple reliefs is different. the third (3) element “the union of a man and a woman” generally occurs at the end of a narrative journey. in kieven’s notes (2014), the (1), (2), and (3) elements are important elements in a panji literature. the strikingly different and most accentuated visual media in the reliefs are depicted in elements (4) and (5). element (4) – the encounter with a hermit – symbolizes the teaching of dharma or high spiritual knowledge. element (5) – crossing a body of water – symbolizes purification and movement from one stage of spiritual awakening to the higher level. finally, it will end in the understanding of the highest wisdom or sangkan paraning dumadi – the beginning of all things (the supreme). hidden allusion kieven’s conclusion (2014) on the symbols of spiritual purification and movement from one stage of religious knowledge to the higher stages is aligned ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 90-100 97 with kuntara widyamartana (1990:8) in his study on arjunawiwaha. according to widyamartana, arjunawiwaha essentially suggests that the marriage between arjuna and his wives (such as drupadi, ulupi, citrasena, subadra) has a religious and philosophical background of tantric hinduism and buddhism. kakawin essentially a symbol or an allegory (robson in widyamartana, 1990:8). thus, an allegory or hidden allusion must be revealed in the kakawin. it is predicted that the panji story has a hidden allusion. this allusion becomes clear when the temple reliefs telling the panji story are studied, as conducted by kieven (2014). the close relationship between the panji story and kakawin arjunawiwaha can be seen in the context and locus of the two stories. according to robson, arjunawiwaha presents the life of airlangga and contains the genealogy of airlangga (widyamartana, 1990:8). meanwhile, the panji story occurs when airlangga divides singosari into two small kingdoms, jenggala and kediri. the theme ‘yearning and union’, as depicted in elements (1) and (3), is understood as two amorous (kama) situations as important experiences in the esoteric concept of “love during absence” and “love in consummation” (supomo, in kieven, 2014). this theme pervades throughout the story of kakawin arjunawiwaha. table 2 below concludes the discussion of hikayat panji semirang, hikayat panji anggraeni, dongeng keong emas, and dongeng ande-ande lumut, and the panji story in todorov’s narratology perspective. table 2. the panji story in todorov’s narratology equilibrium disruption realisation repair restoration (equilibrium) p a n ji s e m ir a n g dewi sekartaji lives happily with her father in the palace of daha (kediri) kingdom. from his concubine, the king of daha begets a daughter, named galuh ajeng, a jealous and spoiled girl. raden inu kertapati realizes that panji semirang and later gambuh warga asmara is actually dewi candrakirana. inu kertapati finds dewi candrakirana cuddling the doll that raden inu kertapati has given her. the marriage of inu kertapati and dewi candrakirana p a n ji a n g g ra e n i raden inu from jenggala kingdom is arranged to marry dewi sekartaji. they know that they will marry each other. raden inu falls madly in love with dewi anggraeni, the daughter of the prime minister of jenggala. raden inu realizes that anggraeni is dead, and he wanders aimlessly disguising himself as kudaweningpati. the spirit of dewi anggraeni reincarnates in dewi sekartaji. inu marries dewi sekartaji who has been transformed into dewi candrakirana. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 90-100 98 k e o n g m a s king kertamarta from daha kingdom has two daughters: dewi galuh and candrakirana. dewi cadrakirana is engaged to raden inu kertapati from jenggala kingdom. dewi galuh is jealous and envious. an enchantress transforms dewi candrakirana into a golden conch (literal meaning of keong emas) and throws it to the sea. the spell will only be broken after dewi chandrakirana reunites with her fiancé. an elderly widow finds a golden conch. after that, food abounds in her house. keong emas shows herself as a princess of daha kingdom who is transformed into a golden conch by an enchantress’ spell. raden inu ventures out in search for candrakirana in disguise. when he sees a girl cooking, the enchantress’s spell is lifted and the girl is freed. raden inu kertapati marries dewi candrakirana. the elderly widow of dadapan is brought to live in the palace. a n d e -a n d e l u m u t panji asmarabangun (the son of king jayengnegara) is engaged to sekartaji (the daughter of king jayengrana). they live happily as a married couple in jenggala. one day, the kingdom of jenggala is attacked by an enemy. princess dewi sekartaji escapes from the palace and hides in a village, disguising herself as kleting kuning. after peace and security reign again in jenggala kingdom, the prince decides to search for his wife by disguising himself as ande ande lumut. ande ande lumut announces a contest for girls to be his wife. kleting kuning wins the contest. other girls do not win because they allow themselves to be kissed by cunning yuyu kangkang. finally, the enamored couple is reunited and they return to the palace to live happily ever after. p a n ji i n t h e t e m p le r e li e fs yearning and separation: a man and a woman are sitting in a typical sensual pose yearning for love the journey of a man with a hat and his aides or kadeyan – kertolo and jurudeh. the encounter with a hermit. crossing the body of water. the union of a man’s and a woman’s flesh in an intertwining position suggesting a sexual intercourse. it can be seen clearly that the cycle of todorov’s narrative in table 2 cannot fully explain the essence of panji story. even though the five narrative units are fulfilled, the new equilibrium in the form of cycle cannot adequately explain the transformation of physical reality to the spiritual reality; from the sexual intercourse and union to the spiritual intercourse and union. therefore, it is suggested that the narrative scheme of the panji story be linear instead of cyclical. the new scheme can be seen in the following figure. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 90-100 99 figure 3 narrative structure of the panji story one problem remains in the equilibrium stage in todorov’s narratology model. using the narrative structure model as seen in scheme 3, it can be concluded that the narrative story of panji is not confined in the same physical circle. the panji story is not a mere romantic love story. the panji story actually represents human’s constant conquest in understanding the origin of his life (sangkan paraning dumadi – the beginning of things) and in uniting with his creator. it is a story of human’s spiritual journey to the higher stage. conclusion the panji story is a very popular indonesian narrative story as a part of a panji culture. the popularity of the panji story is due to the fact that the stories are presented in various communication media, both spoken and written. the story shifts the narrative center from being a palace-centered esoteric stories to commoners-centered esoteric stories. the study of todorov’s narratology proves that the narrative sequences in the panji story have covered the five stages of narrative development, namely equilibrium, disruption, realization, repair, and new equilibrium. however, the results of the study prove that the pattern of the narratology development of the panji story is not circular but linear. there are three layers of meaning in the panji story. first, the panji story reflects a javanese romantic story describing love, faithfulness, and efforts. the panji story teaches virtues of romantic relationship, namely faithfulness, sincerity to love, and efforts to win the heart of the loved one. second, the panji story symbolizes political agreement in uniting two historical kingdoms, jenggala kingdom and daha kingdom, by a marriage bond between panji asmarabangun from jenggala and putri candrakirana from daha kingdom. this political agreement is an important aspect in maintaining peace and harmony. kediri kingdom is famous for the awakening in the classic literature. some classic literary works written in the era of kediri kingdom were kakawin bharatayuddha, hariwangsa, and gatotkacasraya by mpu panuluh, smaradahana by mpu dharmaja, and prelambang joyoboyo, lubdhaka and wrtasancaya by mpu tanakung (kieven, 2014 b). in this context, it can be implied that majapahit kingdom also wanted peaceful and harmonious life by promoting the panji story. third, the panji story containing tantric and spiritual symbols reveals the meaning ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 90-100 100 of panji’s spiritual journey in understanding his origin and purpose of life or sangkan paraning dumadinya (see taum, 2018). the third layer of meaning is actually the hidden allusion which becomes the main message of the panji story. references agung, p.w. (2018). cerita panji masuk dongeng warisan dunia. suara merdeka, 24 februari 2018. kieven, l. (2014) (a), menelusuri figur bertopi dalam relief candi zaman majapahit. pandangan baru terhadap fungsi religius candi-candi periode jawa timur abad ke-14 dan ke-15. jakarta: efeo / kepustakaan populer gramedia. kieven, l. (2014) (b). simbolisme cerita panji dalam relief-relief di candi zaman majapahit dan nilainya pada masa kini. a seminar paper ‘cerita panji sebagai warisan budaya dunia, seminar naskah panji’ in perpustakaan nasional republik indonesia (jakarta, 28 / 29 october 2014). kuntara, i. (1990). kakawin arjunawiwaha. transformasi teks jawa kuno. yogyakarta: duta wacana university press nurcahyo, h, (2016). memahami budaya panji. surabaya: pusat konservasi budaya panji. prasetya, s. hanggar, and dana, i. 2014. panji dalam berbagai tradisi nusantara. a seminar proceedings of tokoh panji indonesia. yogyakarta: fsp isi yogyakarta. richardson, j, (2017). todorov’s narrative theory. downloaded from https://www.slideshare.net/katrinabrookes/todorovs-narrative-theory24244633 taum, y. y. (2011). studi sastra lisan: sejarah, teori, metode dan pendekatan disertai contoh penerapannya. yogyakarta: penerbit lamalera. taum, y. y. (2018). kajian semiotika: godlob danarto dalam perspektif teeuw. yogyakarta: sanata dharma university press. todorov, t. (1971). the two principles of narratives. diacritics 1(1), pp. 37-44. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 110-121 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 110 an analysis of speech functions on the banking and daily need billboard texts muhammad hasyimsyah batubara state institute of islamic studies takengon, aceh tengah, aceh correspondence: muhammad.hasyimsyahbatubara@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i1.2816 received 22 august 2020; accepted 18 september 2020 abstract this research aims at describing speech functions in banking and daily need billboard texts. the objectives are to describe the category and to derive dominantly used and explain the factors of the phenomenon of speech functions. the research method used descriptive qualitative. the data collecting procedures include applying documentary techniques from banking and daily need billboard texts (headline, subhead, slogan, and images) in public places around the city center of medan. the findings describe the three speech functions available used banking and daily need billboard texts, the statement constitutes 15, offer 10, and command 8 from 33 billboard texts. the statement genre is used as the dominant one as it is suitable with the pattern of commercial billboard texts, where the viewer assumed only briefly saw the display of text and images of the billboard with a duration of 5-7 seconds when they were driving. there is a phenomenon, especially in the banking domain, which offers the most dominant is one used. thus, authoritative and straightforward information in the speech function of functional grammar and the language used must be efficient, effective, and able to hypnotize readers, so that results in decisive action on the item advertised. keywords: bank and daily need, billboards, speech functions, text introduction in the current consumer era, advertisers are competing to present advertisements with high ideas, attractive services to their commodities, thus providing information to potential buyers who are looking for information about a product through advertising. advertising can be considered as the most efficient way to reach people for product information. in the end, there is a communication link between producers and potential buyers. in this case, the communication and language used in advertising must be able to convince the buyer. the language used in advertisements sometimes does not follow everyday grammar, this is a common practice in advertising, and word structure is sometimes intentionally made wrong, so it is easy to remember. thus, it takes advertisers' hard efforts to present creative ideas to persuade consumers' choices with advertised content. besides the language used in the advertisement, there is also another important point named visual content and design in advertising have a very high impact on the customer. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 110-121 111 the process of transfer or acceptance of one's utterance can be used with approach interpersonal function, and it was done by being aware of the speech functions, be it in shape statement, question, offer, and command. it will immediately guide the public as speakers/authors or viewers/listeners in capturing the message of utterance in communication. subsequently, we are competent to realize it as imperative if we had familiarity with the speech function at the preceding. therefore, investigator consideration that is necessary to research interpersonal role principally through the speech function angle in outdoor media advertising as a container of promoting used by a corporation, it is the reason the high potential and effective one because directly reach the purchaser. based on these considerations and to see the use of language on billboards in the tactics of marketing products to lure the public’s attention, researchers put an interest in seeing on the uses of speech function communication in banking and daily need billboards texts. interpersonal meaning people use language to interact, construct a relationship with each of them. the fundamental speech roles that they can take on are giving and demanding. at the same time, they choose the speech role either to give or to demand in exchange. they also select the use of commodities that they are exchanging, namely, information, goods, and services. the interpersonal function is to notice interaction among speakers and listeners. it is part of grammar selection that gives the speaker resources to interact with the listener by constructing and maintaining ongoing exchange with him/her, such as questioner and answerer, and by giving or requesting attitudes, comments, and evaluations (morley, 2000a). furthermore, the interpersonal function also refers to a format of activity the speakers or writes in perform something toward the listeners or readers thorough the purpose of language. speech functions according to linguists (halliday, 1994, p. 30; gerot and wignel, 1994, p. 22; morley, 2000b; michael rundell, 2012; halliday and matthiessen, 2014), a speech function is a performance or action by language users in the form of a statement, question, offer, and command. it is applied as the means exchange the experience between speakers and listeners in reserve to comply with their requirements. for example, ‘i read many books in the library’ is the example of a statement that refers to whatever people say, either positive or negative. then, the next model is ‘could you read now, please?’ as a request that relates to something do you want while another example is, ‘would you like to have juice?’ as an offer, this refers to an offering. next, ‘close the window!’ it is the example of a command that refers to whatever you do. statement a statement is a process of providing information in either a positive or a negative pattern. in other words, statement form is a declarative or assertive statement that is intended to provide information in spoken or written language. the format of the statement is subject positioned in front of a verb or before the auxiliary verb (collins, 1998:99; leech and svartvik, 2003; carter and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 110-121 112 mccarthy, 2006; downing and locke, 2006; cobuild, 2011 in batubara and nasution, 2020). then, it is closed with a period (.). besides, (grolier, 1992) specifically, the form of the statement is the process of giving or distribution information not only in speech and but also in writing. question a question form constitutes the process of demanding information within the scheme of interrogative expression, which inquires reply from the listener (grolier, 1992:327; collins, 1998:99; leech and svartvik, 2003; carter and mccarthy, 2006; downing and locke, 2006; cobuild, 2011 in batubara and nasution, 2020). there are three types of question, such as: 1. yes or no-question yes/no question can answer with a (yes) or (no). 2. wh-question wh-question uses an interrogative word to ask information. the question words are who, what, when, where, why, how, which are usually closed with a question mark (?). in further, they cannot be answered only with yes or no but with meaningful information. 3. tag questions tag questions are a grammatical structure form in which a declarative or an imperative fragment (the 'tag"), such as 'right, don't you, doesn't he, etc. for example, is "he still calls his mother, doesn't he?" the tag question can be answered only with two possible answers, namely yes or no. the subject is positioning after the auxiliary verb or wh-question and then followed by a verb. offer an offer is a process of giving goods and services to someone. according to (collins, 1998) an offer in general begun to attach one of the modals, then added by a subject and terminated with a question mark (?). an offer form is also interpreted as an expression of willingness to give something or to continue something for acceptance or rejection (grolier, 1992:268; grolier, 1992:327; collins, 1998:99; leech and svartvik, 2003; carter and mccarthy, 2006; downing and locke, 2006; cobuild, 2011 in batubara and nasution, 2020). command a command is a process of expecting goods and services in the scheme imperative, and maybe the shape is a positive or negative command. further, in the command sentence, the subject is omitted and the primary form of verbs used (collins, 1998; grolier, 1992:327; collins, 1998:99; leech and svartvik, 2003; carter and mccarthy, 2006; downing and locke, 2006; cobuild, 2011 in batubara and nasution, 2020). or else, it begins by the predicate, and it generally terminated with an exclamation mark (!). moods in further, the four types of speech functions above show their realizations in 'mood', which one part of interpersonal meaning in the area of lexicogrammar. form of a statement, question, and command is created by imperative, declarative, and interrogative form, and offer form does not have a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 110-121 113 connected representation with 'mood' (saragih, 2010:15). besides, the speech functions and the responses (halliday, 1994:69) are presented in table 1. it shows that the semantic system can be expanded into four speech function pair choices between initiating and responding moves. the speaker initiates and interaction assigned to the listener to put into the role of responding. the table below briefly explains the speech functions and responses. table 1. speech function and responses initiating expected response discretionary alternative give information statement acknowledgment contradiction demand information question answer disclaimer give goods and service offer acceptance rejection demand goods and services command undertaking refusal billboard billboard is known as outdoor advertising or outdoor sign and poster, which usually seen on busy streets, highways, and freeways. the main purpose of the advertisement is how the ad can persuade the consumer so that they will consume it later (adelaar, et al., 2003; abideen and latif, 2011). furthermore, the billboard widely used in advertising communication related to non-profit causes, product marketing, and political campaigns. there are four types of billboards, namely conservative billboards, mechanical billboards, and recently developed models are digital and mobile billboards (filiquarian, 2008 in batubara, 2020). outdoor advertising is one of the choices of time lately because this advertising media offers a lower budget than advertising on tv. it is useful to advertise products so that product sales increase. it is supported by research conducted by (hussain and nizamani, 2011; franke and taylor, 2017; chopra, 2017; daljit, 2018, conveying that billboards are beneficial advertising media in introducing products amid other advertising media. text a text is a combination of words that have meaning. it can be a phrase, sentence, and paragraph. (saragih, 2008:5) claims that the text is part of a semantic unit may be realized by a sound, word, phrase, clause, sentence, or paragraph. therefore, texts can be found at copywriting, and it contains information about product or service that realized on phrase, sentence, or article in the advertisement. according to (gilson and berkmen, 1980:406), copywriting there exits some types of text, namely: headline, subhead, slogan, and body copy. headline traditionally, the headline was considered the single most crucial element in advertisement. (alstiel and grow, 2007:149) stated that all forms of marketing communication use headlines, even when it is not called headlines such as on ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 110-121 114 television. the headline tends to be prominent and sufficiently compelling to goad or beckon the reader into the ad if the concept can be flashed more quickly as a picture message. if the idea involves an integrated headline and photo, both should probably have about the same weight. subheads subheads or breakers may be used to keep a headline short enough to attract attention by giving more of the vital information in a smaller. however, a long line underneath and it can break up long body copy and capsulate the essential points of the advertisement. according to (alstiel and grow, 2007:163) argued subhead is in general underneath the headline, and occasionally it immediately follows the headline, as if to convey what is meant or wanted. the primary function of the subtitle is to strengthen the headline, to clarify the main idea stated in the headline, to break up large blocks of copy, and to direct the viewer into the body copy. slogan a slogan is defined as a short phrase associated with a particular idea, person, and group. the intension is to drive the thing, person, or group whether in a statement, offer things, command, or even in question, for whatever goal desired. (alstiel and grow, 2007:163) uttered that slogans are usually at the bottom of some advertisement right under the sponsor's name, a tag line may appear, often called a signature of slogan emotionally provocative, and this slogan becomes very meaningful to its maker. e.g., ‘kfc introduces the phrase fingerlickin’ good, and bni bank carries the expression ‘melayani negeri, kebanggaan bangsa’ as slogans to encourage their exclusive products. method this research project is applied a qualitative descriptive method. (bogdan and biklen, 1982:30) explained that the qualitative approach is identical to descriptive. next, qualitative research involves fieldwork in which the researcher physically goes around medan city. then, it used descriptive analysis because this research attempts to determine, identify, and describe. the target of this research is to investigate the prominent speech function by counting the percentage of the existing data. moreover, this study also aimed to find out not only about what categories of speech function are used in banks and daily need billboard texts but also why it is used dominantly. in deep, this research is designed with a single case system where it will be conducted only in commercial billboard texts done in one month. the source of data taken in this research is the commercial billboard texts placing in the area in which there are many middle up people residing in the busiest streets in medan. meanwhile, the data gathered as the sample is only ten percent (33) from the total number of banks and daily need billboard texts are 338. it is as what (arikunto, 2006:131) stated that the sample is a part or as a representative of the population studied. it means that not all the population is necessarily involved in the research. thus, the data collected will describe the accuracy of the report (meleong, 2002:6). data collection is through documentary techniques covering the following steps. first, the bank and daily need billboards texts are identified and located ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 110-121 115 explicitly at the busiest streets or middle up societies in medan. second, the data are recorded or capture both texts and pictures of banks and daily need billboards. last, the data transcribed by printing them out. in analyzing the data, the technique applied is a descriptive analysis to draw speech function in commercial billboard texts. based on (miles and huberman, 1984), the data analyzed through four actions, namely data collection, reduction, display, and conclusions. in the collection of data, it attempted to collect all billboard texts without seeing whether it is commercial or non-commercial. then, in data reduction, the researcher will reduce the data based on the scope of this study in which the data used is only about the bank and daily need billboard text. then, in data display, the classifying of commercial billboard texts based on speech function is done so that the calculation of each speech function in each domain as the percentages will clearly. in conclusion, the result about what and why is the most dominant type used in billboard texts will be gathered. then, it will combine with the theory or previous research as the final achievement of this research. findings and discussion the data collected from two domains, namely, banking, and daily needs. the propositions of commercial billboard texts from the two areas are banking 160, and daily of need 168. then, it is taken as the data sources are equivalent to ten per cent of the total commercial billboard texts in each domain 33 texts, which are considered as the overall subjects of this research. thus, the data of the commercial billboard texts summarized in the following table: table 2. the total number and percentage of the commercial billboard no types of commercial billboard number (f) percentage (x) representative texts 1. banking 160 49 % 16 2. daily needs 168 51 % 17 total (n) 338 100% 33 the analysis of data types of speech functions in banking there were sixteen sentences used in this research as a proportion of texts as the data sources from the banking domain. then, all the sentences were classified one by one so that both the type used and the most dominant one are known from the data. based on the analysis done, it is known that there also a phenomenon found in the banking domain in which there is no question speech function used while there is a statement, offer, and command used. the complete statement in banking commercial billboard texts is three. next, the total number of offers in banking commercial billboard texts is ten. then, the total number of command in banking billboard texts is three. therefore, it concluded that offer speech function is the most dominant one used in banking commercial billboard texts among other speech functions. further, the propositions of speech functions were included in the table. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 110-121 116 table 3. types of speech functions in banking no types of speech number of speech functions percentage 1. statement 3 18.8% 2. question 0 0 3. offer 10 62.5% 4. command 3 18.8% total 16 100% table 3 illustrates that the use of the offer is the most dominant. it is normally accepted in banking because banking always offers its products to customers. besides, it is considered in special regulation about banking that is uu ri no 10 tahun 1998 touches three activities, namely money gathering, money distributing, and other service offerings. it is not easy to do those activities, especially to gather money from the people in society. moreover, the product of banking is invisible such as insurance. as a result, people have little trust to save money in a bank. then, whatever the bank claim in the billboard texts will not persuade the viewers anymore. that has also happened if the billboard texts are using a command. in that situation, an offer comes as one solution because when it is given, the bank lets people logically think the profit they will earn, such as: 1. redhot offer 40% + 0% 3 months installment (hsbc), 2. double mileage, extra privilege with bii infinite card (bii), etc. those sentences 1 and 2 used in offer speech function to be accepted in the viewers’ mine logically that there is profit for them as the consumer, automatically they will trust the bank for many activities such as transferring money, paying credit cards, etc. that is why the offering is used as the most dominant speech function used in banking billboard texts. on the other side, command such as: 3. do the right think for her protection (sinar mas) is not used dominantly, because it is not suited to the strategy of banking advertising. it is less appropriate to force one to do something, such as in sentence 3. moreover, the thing offered in the banking domain is such as services, not goods, so that the way to promote it must be polite by giving back the choice of life whether they accept or reject the offer. therefore, the command use is thought of as an impolite way of promoting services for the consumers. besides, there are only three statements of speech functions. one of them found is (4.) we bring you to the world and the world to you (bni)”. when a statement is used as the following examples in the banking area, it even sounds hyperbole language because it is impossible to bring the consumers the world. as a result, it will not be trusted anymore. that is why, in the banking area, the statement is seldom to be used. types of speech functions in daily needs there were seventeen sentences used in this research as the proportion of texts as the data sources data from the daily needs domain. then all the sentences were classified one by one so that both the type used and the most dominant one are known from the data. table 3 showed at the previous gives a phenomenon as to what happened in the daily need domain in which there are only two speech ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 110-121 117 functions, they are statements and commands. the statement has twelve texts, while the command has five in this domain. in contrast, there is no question and offer speech function found in this case. as a result, the statement emerges as the most dominant speech function in commercial billboard texts in daily of need. further, the propositions of speech functions are included in the table. table 4. types of speech functions in daily needs no types of speech number of speech functions percentage 1. statement 12 70.6 2. question 0 0 3. offer 0 0 4. command 5 29.4 total 17 100% statement and command used in the daily needs domain. the statement is used as the most dominant because of its strength to argue something so that people are challenging to prove the statement. the examples are such as: a. as good as gold (magnum ice cream), b. original recipe tasty to the bone (kfc), c. formula builds strong teeth (formula), etc. sentences a, b, and c show the use of statement speech function because it is the ability to claim the quality of products. when people see the billboard, they will be more excited about consuming the goods because they would like to prove it directly. moreover, the daily need is not a luxurious thing. it was bought because people need it. realizing the fact, the company sometimes is brave in using command even though it sounds quite impolite such as: d. be healthy and make positive moves (susu ultra), e. enjoy your perfect mix (indocafe). sentences d and e show how the viewer hypnotized so that they directly buy the product. it is as what is stated by (elsevier, 1999) in the book that “in the imperative discourse, this responsibility belongs to the hearer; he must bring about the fit (between words and world) by his actions”. research findings based on the data analysis on the type of speech functions and their occurrence in commercial banking and daily need billboard texts, the research findings of this study presented as follows: 1. in general, there are three speech functions found in commercial billboard texts from two domains (banking and daily needs). they are statement, command, and offer. 2. the most dominant type of speech function used in the commercial billboard texts is a statement. 3. in the context of commercial billboard texts, the statement used because billboard texts are advertisements placed on a busy street in which the massage billboard texts must touch people only in 5-7 seconds. thus, the language used must be as effective as possible. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 110-121 118 4. the most effective way to inform a product is by using statement, because of its ability to give information, to declare something in a short time, and to persuade viewers even only in a few seconds. 5. banking has a different phenomenon in which offer is the most speech function used. 6. between these two domains, there is no question form. discussion speech functions in banking commercial billboard texts it is known that there are 16 texts of banking commercial billboard texts as the ten percent of the whole banking texts in billboard. in addition, according to uu ri no 10 tahun 1998 pasal 6. commercial bank businesses include: a. collect funds from the public in the form of deposits in demand deposits, time deposits, certificates of deposit, savings, and /or other forms equivalent ; b. give credit; c. issue a debt acknowledgement; d. buy, sell or guarantee at their own risk or for the benefit and at the behest of their customers; e. move money both for own interests and for the benefit of customers; f. placing funds in, borrowing funds from, or lending funds to other banks, either by using letters, telecommunications facilities or by drafts, checks or other means; g. receive payments from bills on securities and make calculations with third parties; h. provide a place to store goods and securities; i. conduct safekeeping activities for the benefit of other parties based on a contract; j. placing funds from customers to other customers in the form of securities not listed on the stock exchange; k. deleted ; l. conduct factoring, credit card business and trusteeship activities; m. provide financing and or conduct other activities based on sharia principles, under the provisions stipulated by bank indonesia; n. perform other activities that are commonly carried out by banks as long as they do not conflict with this law and the applicable laws and regulations (undang-undang republik indonesia, 1998). based on the government regulations, that is the reason why the offer is to be dominantly used in banking billboard texts. then, another speech functions found in banking commercial billboard text are statement and command. there are three statements (18. 8%) and three commands (18. 8%) and not found question form. speech functions in daily needs billboard texts the objects taken from daily need commercial billboard texts are 17 texts. based on the 17 texts analyzed, it found that there is only two speech function used in daily of need commercial billboard texts namely statement (70.6%) and command (19.4%) while the two others not found in this research. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 110-121 119 with daily needs, alstiel and grow, (2007, p. 28) uttered that actually, people do not buy things. they buy the satisfaction of their wants and needs. it means that they do not need lip service in promoting the daily need because it is not as a passion but as a must to buy it. therefore, it is enough if it is developed by using statements followed by the command. statement and command used in the daily needs domain. the statement is used because of its strength to argue something so that people are challenging to prove the statement. moreover, the daily need is not a luxurious thing. it is bought because people need it. realizing the fact, the company is brave in using command even though it sometimes quite impolite. conclusion after analyzing the data, the conclusion is withdrawn from 33 texts analyzed. it is found that three speech functions existed in, namely statement 15 (62.5 %), command 8 (18. 8%), and offer 10 (15.6 %). in further, it concluded that statement is the most ruling speech function used in this case, proven by the higher percentage. however, there is a phenomenon, especially in the banking domain, in which offer is the most dominant one used. it is based on uu ri no 10 tahun1998 uttering that three activities in banking concerned in services area so that it must use offer in promoting the banking product. finally, the fundamental concept of commercial billboard text that can only see in five to seven seconds, so the language used must be efficient, effective, and able to hypnotize readers, so that was resulting in affirmative action on the item advertised. indeed, it can persuade the viewers strongly. references abideen, z.-u. & latif, a. 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(2012). it works in practice but will it work in theory? the uneasy relationship between lexicography and matters theoretical. proceedings of the 15th euralex international congress, 47-92. oslo: department of linguistics and scandinavian studies, university of oslo. saragih, a. (2008). discourse analysis: a systemic functional approach the analysis of discourse and texts. medan: unpublish. saragih, a. (2010). introducing systemic functional grammar of english. medan: unpublished. terkourafi, m. (2003). the semantics/pragmatics interface from different points ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 110-121 121 of view-ken turner (ed.). oxford: elsevier science. journal of pragmatics, 35(2), 307-313. undang-undang republik indonesia. undang-undang republik indonesia nomor 10 tahun 1998. , pub. l. no. no 10 tahun 1998 pasal 6 (1998). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 1-11 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 1 breastfeeding in public: the intersection of biology and sexuality *marinda p.d. ghaisani1 and dewi h. susilastuti2 universitas gadjah mada, yogyakarta, indonesia1,2 marindaghaisani@mail.ugm.ac.id1 and dewi.haryani.s@ugm.ac.id *correspondence: marindaghaisani@mail.ugm.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.4037 received 28 december 2021; accepted 12 august 2022 abstract breastfeeding is an infant feeding method recommended by health practitioners. many women see it as an advantageous infant feeding method. moreover, they perceive it as their right to provide the best for their children, and it has been legally protected. unfortunately, not everybody looks at breastfeeding in public in a positive light. the united states of america is the bastion of individual rights. ironically women who exercise their right to breastfeed in public often experiment objections from others. those who protest against breastfeeding in public argue that the act is inappropriate as it involves breasts. indeed, breasts have two functions: biological and sexual, but breasts’ sexual function often overshadows their biological function. the objection to breastfeeding in public puts women in an uncomfortable position that is fraught with disagreements. according to the theory of intimate citizenship, multiple voices regarding breastfeeding in public breed conflict. there is a tension between personal concerns of breastfeeding mothers and the discomfort of some elements of the public. in addition, there is a silent agreement that breastfeeding mothers are expected to resolve these competing needs. keywords: breastfeeding, intimate citizenship, public introduction in the united states of america, individualism is an important part of the social landscape. individualism refers to the concept of individual sovereignty, which gives utmost importance to an individual’s will, bound by other individuals’ rights (illievski, 2015). it implies that while individual rights are important, others’ rights are equally prominent and should be respected. individual freedom is one of the key characteristics of a society that adopts individualism as an ideology (ali, krishnan & camp, 2005). breastfeeding is encouraged by health practitioners and organizations (united nations children’s fund, 2018). however, it is a suggestion, not a mandatory policy for parents. therefore, breastfeeding is an individual choice. ideally, other people should respect the decision of mothers to exercise their freedom to choose. https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i1.4037 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 1-11 2 the country legalizes and supports breastfeeding as breastfeeding in public is legal in all states of the united states of america (haller, 2018), but certain quarters of the society reject it. the fundamental reason for different opinions related to breastfeeding in public is rooted in how different social groups regarding human sexuality. the quarters of the society that rejects breastfeeding in public believe that breastfeeding in public is inappropriate as it might show some parts of the mother’s breasts—considered taboo to be seen in public. in relation to this concern, the centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) publishes an annual survey on public acceptance of breastfeeding in public. a recent survey shows that 10.53% of the respondents say that mothers should have no right to breastfeed in public, while 21.45% neither agree nor disagree (summerstyle, 2019). this percentage is relatively low, but the objection to breastfeeding in public persists from one year to the other. this opinion is the root of the persistent rejection of breastfeeding in public. numerous researches about breastfeeding in public explain why it has become controversial. the rejection of breastfeeding in public is concerning diverse social values in the united states. the rejection ranges from denoting breastfeeding as sexual to giving disapproving gestures (mathews, 2019). a part of the american society believes that breastfeeding in public is inappropriate even though it is legal. this is because breast milk is a bodily fluid, which according to the western cultural belief, should be ‘contained’ and the breast is considered sexual (dowling et al. 2012; hurst, 2012; carathers, 2017; mathews, 2019; sheehan et al., 2019; woolard, 2019). these researches discuss breastfeeding within the context of conflicting social norms. in essence, the controversy of breastfeeding in public is a representation of the conflict between two different individual choices in a public place. some people have a tacit understanding that breastfeeding is a personal act, and thus it has to be kept private. this article will draw a connection between personal and public domains by employing plummer’s (2001) theory of intimate citizenship. in reference to the notion of the public place, previous research refers to it as one kind. however, there are many types of public places, and people perceive breastfeeding in public differently depending on the public places they are located in. this article will also analyze different types of objections to breastfeeding in diverse public places. plummer (2001) writes that public places are the meeting point of diverse social and cultural backgrounds. it is only logical that sometimes these differences do not align with one another. these incompatible viewpoints can even end up in a collision course. plummer (2003) suggests that there is a relation between the personal and the political. the term ‘political’ refers to power contestation in a public sphere. in connection with plummer’s (2003) theory, warming and fahnøe (2017) add that the most private decision that a person makes could have a strong public implication. personal belief plays a very important role in women's decision on whether to breastfeed in public. the different elements of the public will either accept or reject that personal decision personal belief is nurtured through a series of lifetime socialization processes. social experiences, activities, and interaction with others shape someone's beliefs, which later influences one’s individual attitude and behavior (mead, 1972; macionis, 2017). in the socialization process, family, schools, peers, and the media play pivotal roles in introducing societal norms and values to the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 1-11 3 younger generation. the way people perceive the appropriateness, or the inappropriateness, of breastfeeding in public is one of the results of the socialization process. the discussion of breastfeeding in public must include the debate on what constitutes the public sphere. according to smyth (2018), a space is not merely a place. each space has embedded meaning, namely the meaning that results from a process. the process includes the initial purpose of building a public space. this objective is then strengthened by the repeated activity conducted in that space. there is a widespread unspoken expectation that breastfeeding is done discreetly in a private space. as a consequence, the social construction of breastfeeding in public is that of a challenge to the widely accepted norms (domosh & seager, 2001). method the purpose of this article is to understand women's experiences with regard to breastfeeding in public. the research used a qualitative approach to see the perception of those who reject breastfeeding in public about the practice. this article uses women’s stories about their experiences when challenged when breastfeeding in public. these stories are published by usa today (2019), an online news website with a high readership. the stories are collected and selected to meet this article's main criteria: breastfeeding in public and must describe women’s experience of being rejected when breastfeeding in public. the articles are coded numerically according to the sequence of publication. they are then coded under categories: place, objector, objecting reason, and reaction. the place shows where the breastfeeding in public is challenged, objector shows who demonstrate the objection, objection reason highlights why the objector shows their objection to breastfeeding in public, and reaction describes how the objection makes the breastfeeding women feel. after being coded, it would be easier to see why a part of society disregards breastfeeding in public and this article would draw a clear link between the personal and the public. finding and discussion choosing to breastfeed and performing it wherever and whenever necessary is an individual right that is guaranteed by all states in the united states of america. ideally, women should face no problem exercising this right, but reality proves different. a part of society still believes that breastfeeding in various public spaces is unacceptable, especially in church during a service, in restaurants, stores, public transit, park, plane, and public bathroom. ballard (2019) publishes a survey on how the respondents think about breastfeeding in public. according to his survey, more people believe that breastfeeding in public is either somewhat or completely unacceptable. table 1. percentage of respondents who have negative responses to breastfeeding in public (adopted from ballard, 2019) public places somewhat unacceptable (%) completely unacceptable (%) public bathroom 6 7 plane 9 9 park 11 11 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 1-11 4 public transit 13 14 store 15 15 restaurant 15 17 church service 14 19 from table 1, we can see that people place a different level of inappropriateness of breastfeeding according to the type of the public place. this finding is in line with smyth’s (2018) argument that each place has a perceived and conceived meaning. indeed, this percentage is relatively low compared to the majority that has a positive response to breastfeeding in public. however, this relatively low percentage is enough for us to indicate that there is a problem within society. those who experience unjust treatment when performing breastfeeding in public deserve a friendlier environment that could appreciate breastfeeding women's freedom of choice. therefore, to complement the survey above, it is necessary to capture women's personal experiences when breastfeeding in public. their stories have been documented by usa today as follows: table 2. identity of articles portraying the stories of breastfeeding in public code title of article article 1 mom fights back after being asked to breastfeed in private space at elementary school (longhi, 2019) article 2 video shows breastfeeding mom confront woman who tells her: 'that's disgusting' (longhi, 2019) article 3 nursing mom gets booted from water park; officer says she can't sit with both breasts out (haller, 2019) article 4 breastfeeding mom asked to 'cover up' at pizzeria. she 'politely declined their offer' (ruland, 2019) article 5 dutch airline says breastfeeding policy is to 'keep the peace' after mom asked to cover up (ali, 2019) article 6 mom settles breastfeeding lawsuit with church that said she could 'cause men to lust' (daugherty, 2019) table 3. the reasons for objection of breastfeeding in various public places code place objector objecting reason reaction article 1 education facility (elementary school) schoolteacher and principal the schoolteacher and principal asked the breastfeeding mother to move to a more private space because they want to “protect” other students so that the students do not need to see a breastfeeding scene as it is not all age-appropriate. moreover, the principal questioned whether breastfeeding is allowed to be done in public the breastfeeding mother refused to move to a private area as it is not in line with the law the breastfeeding mother felt offended, then posted her disappointment through a video on facebook ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 1-11 5 article 2 store (shopping center) another female shopper/ passerby a passerby shouted to a breastfeeding mother, “that’s [breastfeeding] disgusting,” she also added that “the men over there are looking at you” and “my child is allowed to play without seeing that” the breastfeeding mother responded to the passer-by, “it doesn’t matter what they [men] think". then, she added “i am allowed to be here” article 3 public leisure/heal th facility (swimming pool) pool’s lifeguard and manager, then called out a police officer the pool’s lifeguard accompanied by a police officer rudely asked the breastfeeding mother to cover up. if not, they would ask her to leave the swimming pool area as it is mentioned that it is the rule of the pool the mother said that "i’m completely appalled and heartbroken at the comment the officer made to the manager," article 4 restaurant another patron and the manager a patron complained about a mother who was breastfeeding in the restaurant. then, to settle this situation, the manager offered the breastfeeding mother a blanket to coverup the breastfeeding mother declined the offer. later, she also posted what she experienced on her facebook. in her online post, she claimed that the restaurant owner referred to her as selfish, but the restaurant owner denied her accusation. article 5 public transportati on a flight attendant, supported by the flight management the flight attendant wanted to maintain the comfort of other passengers from a possibly uncomfortable situation caused by breastfeeding. should the event occur, the flight attendant would have to deal with it the flight management stated that breastfeeding is allowed, but the other passengers’ comfort must the breastfeeding mother wrote a complaint online and felt embarrassed as asked to cover up when breastfeeding ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 1-11 6 be respected too. therefore, the mother was expected to cover her breast when breastfeeding article 6 worship place (church) the naz – brighton nazarene church (pastor and church staff) previously, the church applied a lawsuit against a mother who breastfed in the church area. it is because the pastor and church staff believe that her action of breastfeeding her child in public was immodest and it could sexually arouse men in the church. the breastfeeding mother and family felt compelled to leave the church to avoid future embarrassment and shame. the breastfeeding mother finally settled the lawsuit. the church apologized and updated the breastfeeding policy in the church the stories above show that objections to breastfeeding in public can occur in a variety of places. the reasons for the grievance vary depending on the public place. similarly, there are different ways to convey the complaints, from asking the mothers to move to a more discreet area or room, asking the mothers to cover up so that their breastfeeding activity would be less visible to verbal confrontation by using an offensive remark. however, those stories share similar features: (1) most of the objectors are acquaintances or perfect strangers; (2) it is always the mother who is asked to fit the ‘rules’ for the others; (3) the reasons for objections reveal a contestation on personal belief about breastfeeding in public; furthermore, all objectors have more power than that of the breastfeeding mother. they are the school principal, church pastor and staff, pool manager and police officer, and flight managerial and restaurant crew who have the authority to run their business as they deem fit. even the passer-by, whose identity is unknown, verbally humiliates the breastfeeding mother. this reveals that she—the passerby—feels that she has the right to judge, monitor, and govern the breastfeeding woman, ignoring the fact that they are complete strangers. the role of the stranger in breastfeeding in public often in the experience of women who breastfeed in public, we could find that their breastfeeding is objected to by someone they barely know. the woman in article 1 might know both the principal and the schoolteacher mentioned. in article 2, the breastfeeding mother encounters a stranger she has never met before. however, her objection is the most hostile compared to those experienced by the other mothers in the other articles. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 1-11 7 based on these data, we could infer that stranger has a role in governing breastfeeding in public. stranger’s negative reaction toward breastfeeding women in public could disrupt breastfeeding continuity. boyer (2018) claims that strangers’ negative reactions to breastfeeding women in public contribute to a mother’s reluctance to continue breastfeeding. they eventually stop breastfeeding. breastfeeding mothers think a lot about how people react to them in public. even though breastfeeding is their right and is legally protected, breastfeeding mothers need assurance from the general public that what they are doing is acceptable. the negative feeling generated from strangers’ disapproval makes breastfeeding women feel uncomfortable or even embarrassed. the hostility towards breastfeeding mothers can also affect other mothers who are thinking about breastfeeding their babies. they may opt not to breastfeed their babies since they are unwilling to stand the wrath of strangers. the emotion of being disapproved in a public place is important to be pointed out because “emotions work to create the very distinction between the inside and the outside, and that this separation takes place through the very movement engendered by responding to others and objects” (ahmed, 2004, p: 28). the aversion to mothers who breastfeed in public conveys a silent but strong message that they do not belong to a place where they happen to be in. breastfeeding mothers in public are accused of disrupting the comfort of others by failing their duty to breastfeed only in a prescribed space (boyer, 2012). those breastfeeding mothers are indirectly classified as the others who are not part of the place where they are. moreover, in many cases, this othering of breastfeeding mothers in public generates the impression that they are the ones trespassing the code of conduct in public places. legally speaking, it is the right of breastfeeding women that is violated. expectations to the mothers when a conflict occurs, the one who is expected to resolve the problem is the breastfeeding mother. they are perceived as the source of the conflict, as portrayed in article 1 to article 6 above. the perception that breastfeeding women cause conflict in public places is attributable to the exposure of their breasts. therefore, breastfeeding in schools, churches, stores, and other public places is considered inappropriate. the main reason for this way of thinking is that women’s breast has paradoxical ambiguity (gripsrud et al., 2019). the ambiguity of breasts could be observed in popular culture (as in popular narratives, films, fashions, and advertisements of popular products) and in everyday life. women’s breast is adored, and their beauty is acknowledged, even used as an attraction to gain more audience. however, the breast in everyday life is censored as it might cause mischief because the breast is regarded as a sexual symbol in most western societies. eventually, there is a belief that women are perceived as seductive temptresses to the male transgressor (stepien, 2014). woolard (2019) states that the cultural belief causes surveillance directed at women’s bodies as women’s sexual body is regarded as potentially deviant. indeed, this is an unfair judgment directed towards women, but it shows that women are often less advantaged in society. as a result, society tends to monitor women more than it does to men. webb et al., (2019) argue that surveillance of breastfeeding women includes how much breast is visible in various social ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 1-11 8 situations. it somehow implies that the problem lies within women’s bodies. people would expect women to dress with a certain dress code in certain places, like in a school, worship house, or office. it implies that women should behave in a certain manner to be considered appropriate. a similar situation happens in the case of breastfeeding in public. the ones who are often asked to behave considerately are the women, instead of those who object to breastfeeding in public. szymanski et al. (2011) believe that the negative attitude directed toward breastfeeding is caused by the objectification of women in the entertainment industry. it limits the perception of society on the breasts as women's body parts that have a sexual function. society neglects the fact that women's breasts also have a biological function as a source of mother's milk which is much needed by babies. as a result, when there is a conflict involving breasts, as in the breastfeeding in public, it is usually the mother who is expected to resolve the problem, for example by moving to a more discreet place or covering her breast and her baby when breastfeeding. personal beliefs as the source of conflict in breastfeeding in public the clash of personal beliefs is the real cause of controversy related to breastfeeding in public. plummer (2001) suggests that multiple voices representing people's personal life in the public are not in sync, hence the conflict. article 2 above clearly portrays how two personal belief collides with one another. in a public place like a store, the objector said that breastfeeding in public is disgusting, as the men who happen to be in the vicinity may see the exposed breast. other objectors would only allow their child to play without seeing such disgusting public breastfeeding on display (longhi, 2019). therefore, it could be inferred that the objectors believe that breastfeeding should not be visible to the public eyes. their perception of breastfeeding in public is related to how they are exposed to beliefs related to breastfeeding. the more someone is exposed to the positive image of breastfeeding, the greater the likelihood that the person will have a positive attitude towards breastfeeding. asiodu et al. (2017) state that early breastfeeding experience as a child—either being breastfed by their mother or witnessing relative breastfeeding—affects their current belief and preference in the feeding method. they will be more likely to choose to breastfeed. this is because engaging in breastfeeding or being familiar with breastfeeding is a social experience that could shape one’s identity. indeed, as macionis (2017) suggests that social experience is a lifetime process. this is because they are a wide variety of agents of socialization from whom someone learns about different societal values. the agents of socialization include family, schools, peers, and media. if a child is exposed to breastfeeding in the family and beyond then learns that breastfeeding brings more benefits for both parent and child, s/he would likely prefer breastfeeding to another infant feeding method. s/he would also give a positive response when witnessing women who are breastfeeding in public. on the other hand, if someone is exposed to a negative image or attitude toward breastfeeding, s/he would be more likely to choose an infant feeding method other than breastfeeding. moreover, that person would feel uneasy toward women who breastfeed in public, possibly believing that breastfeeding is inappropriate as it uses sexual breasts. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 1, september 2022, pp. 1-11 9 the objector in article 2 is not the only one to make her personal beliefs public. a patron requesting the restaurant manager to ask the breastfeeding mother to cover up in article 4 and the flight attendant in article 5 shows that their different actors who contest the appropriateness of breastfeeding in public. unfortunately, all of them directly ask the breastfeeding mothers to do something about the discomfort of others, rather than request those who are bothered by breastfeeding in public to move to a different spot breastfeeding in church areas is considered inappropriate. smyth (2008) states that a place is not merely a place. every place has meaning attained to it through a conceived and perceived process. a church is a sacred public place where the main activities conducted in church constitute of praying, singing gospel, religious preaching, and other religious activities. these activities shape people’s idea that the visitors must conduct themselves properly. breastfeeding in this area would be considered problematic because it involves breasts which are culturally associated with the sexual body parts. breasts are in contrast with the perceived meaning of church. consequently, in article 6, the pastor and church staff addressed the breastfeeding mother as immodest and can sexually arouse men. conclusion intimate citizenship emphasizes the connection between the personal and the political. personal beliefs contribute to people’s attitudes towards breastfeeding in public. this is because one's personal background shapes one's perspectives, including how they perceive breastfeeding in public. this article highlights the objections directed at breastfeeding in public, mostly done by strangers, who believe that such action is too vulgar. the objectors also believe that they have the power over the breastfeeding women, so subsequently, they correct the conduct of the breastfeeding women. therefore, breastfeeding women would behave in accordance with society's standard of appropriateness. this attitude is fueled by the two functions of breasts, biological and sexual. the objectors tend to focus on the sexuality of the breast and fail to see their biological function. this tendency is attributable to the perception of breasts as a sexual symbol in most western cultures, including the united states of america. the sexualization engenders the governance of women who breastfeed in public references ahmed, s. 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https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/parenting/2019/07/01/breastfeeding-woman-asked-cover-up-pa-pizzeria-upper-crust-gettysburg/1616334001/ https://doi.org/10.1186/s13006-019-0216-y https://doi.org/10.1177/1350506808090305 https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/data/healthstyles_survey/index.htm https://doi.org/10.1186/s13006-019-0217-x https://doi.org/10.1177/2292550318800500 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 152-162 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 152 orientalism and post-colonial reading of the u.s. policy toward indonesia during nixon administration baskara t. wardaya sanata dharma university, indonesia correspondence: baskara@usd.ac.id doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i2.3088 received 6 february 2021; accepted 2 march 2021 abstract through the examination of documents pertaining to the united states policies toward indonesia, this paper studies how washington viewed indonesia almost three decades after colonialism had been officially over. more specifically, this paper studies u.s. assistance programs provided for indonesia during the administration of president richard m. nixon. by using the perspective of postcolonial studies on international relations, it shows that while on the surface the assistance programs of the nixon administration appeared to be altruistic and helpful, a deeper look at them shows that the programs were imbued with subliminal eurocentric liberal international theory of international relations. it further shows that the administration’s programs were not only self-serving, but were also implemented with an orientalist spirit by the united states as part of the “superior” west over indonesia that was considered part of the east and therefore was “inferior” and in need of help from the west. in light of edward said’s postcolonial studies of west and east relations, the policies clearly reflect orientalist views and practices, even long after colonialism formally ended. keywords: orientalism, english school theory, neoliberal international theory, the nixon administration, indonesia introduction during the administration of president lyndon b. johnson (1963-1969), the united states (us) was hostile toward indonesia (robinson, 2018; roosa, 2020; wardaya, 2012). among the reasons for the hostility was washington’s view of president sukarno as being not only pro-communist but also anti-western, resulting in the leftist political and economic system that had caused indonesia’s economic troubles. washington was also unhappy with sukarno’s favorable attitudes toward the indonesian communist party (pki); his refusal to join the western side of the cold war; and his maintaining close relations with the people’s republic of china (wardaya, 2007). in the eyes of washington, sukarno’s actions were an indication of his opposition to the u.s. washington then began to seek ways to undermine president sukarno and his leftist supporters ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 152-162 153 while hoping to replace president sukarno with a pro-western leader, as shown by a sizeable body of research (e.g. clark & mortimer, 1975; hess, 1974; taylor, 2019). a great opportunity for the us to turn tables in indonesia came when beginning in mid-1965, and following the accusation that the pki was launching a move to take over the government, between 500 thousand and one million members and sympathizes of the communist party were massacred (robinson, 2018). many more were imprisoned and exiled, while the party was destroyed and officially banned (roosa, 2020). when in 1967 general suharto officially took over power from president sukarno in the wake of the mass violence, washington was pleased and took a different approach toward indonesia. it changed course from being hostile to indonesia into being friendly toward it (easter, 2010; simpson, 2020; bevins, 2020). washington began to fully support the government of president suharto. the support became more explicit when in the us the administration of s. president johnson ended and was succeeded by the administration of president richard m. nixon of 1969-1974. under the nixon administration, washington provided various assistance programs to help the pro-western government of president suharto. among the assistance programs were: (a) building close personal relations between president nixon and president suharto; (b) supporting the suharto government in its effort to diminish the influence of president sukarno in indonesian politics; (c) helping indonesia through the paris club, a consortium of western nations that would provide loan for indonesia; (d) using international institutions to help the suharto government re-build indonesia’s economy; and (e) encouraging the suharto government to play greater role in southeast asia. that being said, this present study would argue that president nixon’s policy has orientalist predispositions, i.e. indonesia remains the subordinate other in the us-indonesia relation. in his foundational work orientalism, edward said argues that for a long period of time europe and the west in general described people outside the western world (also known as the “east” or the “orient”) in a specific way. they mostly depicted the people of the so-called east as ”irrational, psychologically weak, and feminized” (said, 2003). according to said, such a depiction of the people of the orient helped the west to dominate and colonize non-western people. following the end of the colonial period at the conclusion of the second world war, western domination continued, including the domination that was done by the united states (said, 2003, p. 18). in the absence of formal colonization, he further argues, the west continues to exploit the human and natural resources of non-western nations to serve its own purposes (said, 2003). in explaining the scope of orientalism, said states that orientalism encompasses different dimensions, which are interdependent of each other. other than being an academic field and “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the orient’ and ... ‘the occident’”, according to said, orientalism is also “as a western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the orient” (said, 2003, pp. 2–3). he believes that, again, these dimensions of orientalism continued to influence the west’s views and practices after the end of colonialism or the post-colonial period. for said this is clearly reflected in the fact that even after the age of colonialism was formally over, “[t]he relationship between occident and orient is ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 152-162 154 a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony…”(said, 2003, p. 5). implementing said’s views on the west’s attitudes toward non-european nations, (hobson, (2012) argues that such approach and attitudes were continued to be implemented in western nations’ diplomatic relations with the people outside the western world. according to hobson, during the pre-1945 period the dominant international relations theories were explicitly eurocentric, in which europe was depicted as the main source of ideas for modern international system, known as the “eurocentric big-bang theory of world politics”. in the post-1945 period the explicit eurocentric theory was abandoned. it was replaced by what hobson later construes as the liberal international theory. although the liberal international theory abandoned explicit eurocentrism, according to hobson, in practice it continues to carry remnants of the explicit eurocentrism, albeit subliminally, hence “subliminal eurocentrism” (hobson, 2012, p. 214). thus, hobson continues, although in the liberal international theory “there is no explicit discussion of ‘civilizations versus barbarians’, or of ‘whites versus non-whites’,” in practice “the traditional civilization/barbarism discourse is sublimated rather than exorcized” (hobson, 2012, p. 214). within the liberal international theory itself, as reported by hobson, there are two more-specific theories, namely english school theory and the neo-liberal institutional theory. while the english school theory is explicitly eurocentric, the neoliberal institutional theory carries eurocentrism subliminally, through supporting european-initiated international institutions (hobson, 2012, pp. 215–216). with regard to the english school theory of international relations (henceforth es), hobson provides some key features. in general, the es tends to award the east “various degrees of agency”, but “these are always inferior to the pioneering agency that is awarded to the west.” more specifically, the east is “awarded emulative ‘conditional agency’ whereby it assimilates the institutions and practices that were pioneered by the europeans as they were delivered courtesy of the western civilizing mission, ultimately so that the east could join, and therefore enjoy the benefits of, western international society.” further, the es awards the east “a degree of ‘predatory agency’, ... in which the refusal to fully westernize gives rise to the contemporary ‘eastern problem’ that in turn destabilizes both global international society/world order and western civilization” (hobson, 2012, pp. 214–215). according to hobson, es theory “visualizes ir through the eurocentric ‘big-bang theory’ of world politics.” by using the big-bang theory, adherents of es believe that “europe pioneered development and self-generated through the eurocentric logic of immanence before exporting its institutions (via imperialism) to the east in order to remake the world as far as possible in its own image” (hobson 2012: 215). concerning the neoliberal institutional theory (henceforth nli), hobson explains that it “...does not openly advocate imperialism and ostensibly rejects it” (hobson, 2012, p. 216). however, he suggests that “a paternalist conception of neo-imperialism creeps in through the [nli’s] sub-liminal eurocentric back door” (hobson, 2012, p. 216). he further argues that by adherents of nli “key international institutions are portrayed as paternalist western vehicles” needed to help “the cultural conversion of third world states to western liberalcivilizational precepts” (hobson, 2012, p. 216). according to hobson, nli ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 152-162 155 adherents do not usually discuss “the rise of the west and the rise of the western state, given the theory’s lack of interest in historical international systems.” instead they prefer to discuss “western states as fully formed and then considers how they subsequently come together to create and reproduce the major international institutions through iterated cooperation” (hobson, 2012, pp. 215– 216) using hobsonian postcolonial approach of the liberal international theory, this paper intends to show that despite their altruistic impression, in practice washington’s assistance programs were self-serving. more importantly this paper will show that the assistance programs were conducted with orientalist approach, in which the u.s. perceived itself as part of the “superior” west, while perceiving indonesia as part of the “inferior” east. this paper will further show that when viewed from the perspective of postcolonial studies of international relations, the nixon administration’s assistance programs were permeated with features of the english school theory and the neoliberal institutional theory of international relations. this study will use these features to observe elements within the assistance program carried out by the nixon administration in its relations with indonesia. method this study is a qualitative research using document analysis method (bowen, 2009; corbin & strauss, 2012; rapley, 2011). document analysis method is “a systematic procedure for reviewing or evaluating documents—both printed and electronic (computer-based and internet-transmitted) material” (bowen, 2009, p. 27). as further stated by bowen, “[l]ike other analytical methods in qualitative research, document analysis requires that data be examined and interpreted in order to elicit meaning, gain understanding, and develop empirical knowledge” (bowen, 2009, p. 27). the analytic procedure of this paper involves “finding, selecting, appraising (making sense of), and synthesizing data contained in documents” (bowen, 2009, p. 28). the research results are then organized into major themes, categories, and case examples specifically through content analysis (bowen, 2009; labuschagne, 2003). in this current study, the data gained were interpreted using hobson’s liberal international relations theory with its two branches, namely the english school theory and the neoliberal institutional theory. as for the data source, they were procured from an archival research on documents stored at the richard m. nixon presidential library and museum in yorba linda, california, usa and at the national archives, college parks, maryland, usa, in 2014 and 2017 respectively. the documents are memoranda of conversation among foreign-policy makers, diplomatic memos and diplomatic communication pertaining to policies of the united sates under president nixon toward indonesia under the government of president suharto. findings and discussion this section details the five features of the us-indonesia international relation using hobson’s theories outlined above. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 152-162 156 granting the east with “emulative” or “conditional” agency according to hobson, the es theory grants the east with “emulative” or “conditional” agency. by this he suggests that the es theory regards the east as being keen on imitating and reproducing political values and institutions that had been produced by the west, even after the success of the decolonization process. this view makes the adherents of the es theory confident that all the political values and institutions of the west are also good for the east (hobson, 2012; watson, 1987). applied on the case of us-indonesian relations during the nixon administration, one can see that such a view was present, albeit implicitly. a document titled “briefing book for nixon trip to indonesia” clearly reflects such a view when it describes suharto as a political leader from the east, in this case from indonesia. the document describes the indonesian president as having “limited experience as a statesman” while declaring that “he is still a bit unsure of himself in the world arena.”(nara/national archives and record administration, document no. 690709, 1969, p.3). based on this observation president nixon’s policymakers suggested that the us president should build a personal relationship with suharto (“nara document no. 690203, ‘memo for kissinger on indo econ performance and us aid,’” 1969). they believed that a close personal relations between the two leaders would provide “reinforcement for achieving understanding and cooperation on range of usg-goi [united states government-government of indonesia] relationships.”(nara document no. 690816, 1969, p. 3). seen from the es theory what the policymakers’s belief implies that through personal relationship with nixon, suharto would be able to emulate the american president in coducting affairs in international political arena while strengthening us-indonesian relations. in the document, the policymakers also urged president nixon to “encourage indonesia to continue its sound internal economic policies”. for these officials, the “economic policies” were certainly the same economic policies that the us was using, namely the capitalist economic policies. by imitating the us in using the capitalist economic policies these policymakers believed that indonesia would be economically proseour just like the us. implicitly they also suggested that indonesia should abandon the populist or socialist economic policies that had been implemented by president sukarno. such a belief, in turn, reflected what hobson says about the english school theory’s feature of seeing the east as imitator of western political values and institutions of the west. viewing the east as a “predatory” agency hobson argues that the es theory grants the east not only with emulative or conditional agency, but also with “predatory” agency, especially to eastern leaders who refused to embrace western political values and institutions. as further explained by hobson, es theorists believe that eastern leaders refused those values and institutions eventually caused problems not only for their respective states but also for the political world order in general (hobson, 2012, pp. 214–215). in the case of us-indonesian relations, such a view was clearly reflected in the nixon administration’s regard for president sukarno. in the administration’s view, sukarno was an eastern leader who rejected western political values and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 152-162 157 institutions as shown in sukarno’s refusal to join the western side of the cold war, and therefore the administration regarded him as a “predatory” agency. sukarno was also viewed as rejecting western political values and institutions by adopting populist economic system while building close relations with communist nations (such as with people’s republic of china) and preventing western corporations to invest in indonesia. as a result, in the view of the es theory, sukarno was causing various problems. among the problems were indonesia’s “shattered economy”, the creation of “communism as a domestic political force” and iresponsible regional cooperation and leadership in southeast asia, as one doccumment entitled “indonesia annual policy review and assessment” dated february 16, 1970 shows (nara document no.700216, 1970, p. 2). it was not surprising then, that in light of such a view the nixon administration was willingly supporting the suharto government in the effort to diminish sukarno’s influence in indonesian politics—an effort often called desukarnoization campaign (adam, 2018). trusting that the chief of the lingering support for sukarno’s influence came from the navy branch of the indonesian armed forces, the the policymakers of the nixon administration were pleased that “the purge of pro-sukarno military leader currently underway in jakarta is primarily aimed at settling old scores dating back to the sukarno period and at removing elements, mainly from the indonesia navy, with potential for future disloyalty” (nara document no.700122, 1970. p. 1). these officials were hoping that the de-sukarnoization campaign was “intended in the longer term to prepare the groundwork for an army victory in the 1971 elections by completing the process of de-sukarnoization…” (nara document no. 700122, 1970, p. 1), in which the army was considered more emulative toward the political values and institutions of the west since many of their officers had been trained in the u.s. in es theory’s term, the indonesian army was a potential “emulative” or “conditional” agency of the east. the nixon administration’s policymakers believed that by replacing sukarno the predatory agency with president suharto as an emulative agency, indonesia would become in tune with u.s. interests and policies in indonesia itself as well as with u.s. interests and policies in the southeast asian region. stated in one of the administration’s documents called “indonesia annual policy review and assessment”, dated february 16, 1970 as follows: with the replacement of sukarno regime by a government under general suharto, indonesia has reversed directions and is now seeking, with some early success, to rebuild its shattered economy, to attract foreign investment, to eradicate communism as a domestic political force and to play a responsible role in regional cooperation and leadership (no.700216, 1970, p. 2). while sukarno as the “predatory” agency was associated with “shattered economy”, suharto as the “emulative” agency was expected not only to attract foreign capitals, but also to save indonesia from communism and to make indonesia open itself for collaborations with other pro-u.s. southeast asian nations. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 152-162 158 implementing subliminal eurocentrism hobson observes that the es theory often views relations between west and east by using “eurocentric ‘big-bang theory’ of world politics.” in light of this view, es theorists believed that the west had endeavored to assimilate “the institutions and practices that were pioneered by the europeans” and “delivered courtesy of the western civilizing mission” to the east. the purpose of the west in this endeavor, in the view of the same es theorists, is to make the east able “to join, and therefore enjoy the benefits of, western international society” (hobson, 2012, p 214). implemented in the case of us-indonesian relations during the nixon administration, such a view was evident when the administration joined the socalled “paris club” in an effort to help indonesia’s economic recovery. paris club was a consortium of mostly-european nations based in paris, france, intended to provide loans for indonesia. in return, members of the “club” expected to be given access to invest their capital in indonesia and to extract indonesia’s natural resources. the administration viewed the club as part of “the “institutions and practices that were pioneered by the europeans” and wanted to join it in order to help deliver the “courtesy of the western civilizing mission”, in this case to indonesia, and orient nation. indeed, the developed countries’ urban design for latin american and asian countries post-1945 was helpful albeit its orientalizing tendencies as shown by members of the paris club (feridhanusetyawan & pangestu, 2003; hebbert, 2012). guided by such a view, president nixon’s advisers suggested that in order for the u.s. to help indonesia recover from its economic instability, “we [the u.s.] participate fully with the ‘paris club’ of indonesia’s creditors.”(nara document no. 690709, “briefing book for nixon trip to indonesia” p. 10.). the participation was important, according to the advisers, because it would give opportunity for “other developed nations” to help indonesia in the country’s economic recovery efforts. what they meant by “other developed nations” were certainly european nations. in other words these advisers were believers in the hyper-agency of europe as the best solution for the problems of the emulative or conditional agency of the east. the attitudes of the advisers in turn, reflecting hobson’s contention that in the nli theory of international relations, “a paternalist conception of neo-imperialism” which, according to hobson, “creeps in through the subliminal eurocentric back door” (hobson, 2012, p. 216). approving international institutions as paternalist western vehicles hobson argues that in the eyes of the nli theory adherents “key international institutions are portrayed as paternalist western vehicles” which was necessary to help “the cultural conversion of third world states to western liberalcivilizational precepts” (hobson, 2012, p. 216). in other words, nli theorists support the idea of urging nations of the east to adhere to the policies of international institutions that are created by the west. in the case of us-indonesian relations during the nixon administration, this was clear from the us participation in (therefore support for) the paris club mentioned above. the paris club was seen as a “key international institution” and was utilized to urge indonesia as a third world state to embrace the precepts of the west to becoming “liberal-civilizational” in the footsteps of the western ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 152-162 159 nations. along this line, the nixon administration paternalistically believed that “aid donors, foreign investors and the various international institutions” of the west will best cure indonesia’s economic woes (nara document no. 690203, “memo for kissinger on indo econ performance and us aid”, february 3, 1969, p. 7.). the us also urged a similar international institution, namely the iggi (inter-governmental group on indonesia), to collaborate and help indonesia (nara document no.700216, 1970).. like the paris club, the iggi was an association of multilateral governments of mostly western nations, except japan, that provided loans for indonesia under suharto to rebuild the country’s economy. members of the iggi included japan, england, france, australia, west germany, italy and the us itself. although not publicly announced, some hidden political motives were also involved. “our major objective in the political sector”, a report said, “is a friendly and cooperative government which has a reasonable degree of support from the people” (nara document no. 700216, “indonesia annual policy review and assessment”, february 16, 1970, p. 2). meanwhile, “in the sociocultural sector, our [us] primary objective is the acceleration of modernization within a value structure compatible with our own” (no.700216, 1970, p. 1). supporting international cooperation hobson also argues that in addition to approving international institutions as paternalist western vehicles nli theorists also view “western states as fully formed and then considers how they subsequently come together to create and reproduce the major international institutions through iterated cooperation” (hobson, 2012, pp. 215–216). the formation of paris club and the iggi to remedy indonesia’s economic stability mentioned above clearly indicate such a view. both institutions were international in nature, and together as fellow members of the “superior” west, they iterated cooperation among themselves in order to solve problems of the “inferior” east, in this case indonesia (national archives, 1969). the cooperation, however, was not merely to benefit the east. it was also to benefit the west itself. as stated in a document from the nixon administration titled “indonesia annual policy review and assessment”, among the aims of such international cooperation was to open indonesia: to american trade and investment, by encouraging the effectivene use of foreign, including u.s., economic assistance; ...to encourage and improve the climate for the growth of private investment, both foreign and domestic, as a major contribution to over-all economic development; ... to insure that indonesia is a good trading partner of the united states. (nara document no.700216, 1970, p.1.) some political motives were also involved. “our major objective in the political sector”, the document also stated, “is a friendly and cooperative government which has a reasonable degree of support from the people”. meanwhile, it was further states that “in the socio-cultural sector, our [us] primary objective is the acceleration of modernization within a value structure compatible with our own.”(nara document no.700216, 1970, p. 2) even within the east itself, the us wanted to encourage indonesia to initiate international cooperation under the frame of us international politics. this was ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 152-162 160 clear especially when the nixon administration provided military assistnce for the suharto government. the assistance was inteded for “the eventual cooperation of indonesia with its neighbors in maintaining their collective and individual security.”( nara document no.700216, 1970, p. 2). in other words, military assistance to indonesia was important to “assure indonesian competence to maintain internal security and to encourage indonesia’s interest in a responsible role in the security of the area friendly to u.s. interests” (nara document no.700216, 1970, p. 2). because of that reason the administration was convinced that the us “should plan and implement a slightly enlarged program of military assistance...” (nara document no.700216, 1970, p. 2). hobson himself dislikes the precepts of the english school and the neoliberal institutional theories of the international relations. however, by employing his depiction of the features of the two theories, this paper has shown that the u.s. policies toward indonesia during the nixon administration clearly reflect features of both the english school and neoliberal institutional theories. it also became clear that despite the altruistic appearance of the administration’s policies (and the policies of the west in general) toward indonesia, when looked from the perspective of the post-colonial international relations they show the signs of west’s attempts to continue dominate the east, even after colonialism officially ended. in the specific case of the nixon administration’s “helps” and “assistance” for the suharto government, we can see that the help and assistance were also motivated by the desire to perpetuate western domination over indonesia, albeit subliminally. conclusion this study has shown the orientalist crux of us-indonesia relations following hobson’s english school and the neoliberal institutional theories as parts of the liberal international theory of international relations between the west and the east in the post-colonial period. viewed from the perspective of postcolonial studies of international relations, the nixon administration’s assistance programs were marked with features of the es and nli theories of east-west relations. these features include: considering the east as “emulative” or “conditional” agency; regarding the east as “predatory” agency; harboring subliminal eurocentrism; approving international institutions as paternalist western vehicles to exploit the east; and viewing international cooperation as a legitimate way for the west’s domination over the east. this study has also shown that the anti-indonesian attitudes of the american policymakers during the government of the indonesian president sukarno took a different path in the wake of the anti-communist purge and the removal of the president in mid-1960s. when president suharto came to power, and especially during president richard nixon administration, washington became very supportive of the indonesian government. the support included building personal relations between president nixon and president suharto; assisting suharto in the “de-sukarnoization” efforts; helping rebuilt indonesian economy; helping indonesian to join intern atonal financial institutions; and helping indonesia play greater role in southeast asia. finally, seen from saidian postcolonial studies, the policies of the u.s. under the administration of president nixon clearly reflected orientalist views and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 152-162 161 practices, despite the fact that colonialism had for so long disappeared. therefore, this study suggests future research to pursue either by refuting such notions or examining the same issue from the perspective of the so-called “east” itself. references adam, a. w. 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(1987). hedley bull, states systems and international societies. review of international studies. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210500113701 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 141-152 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 141 an analysis of the unnarratable in fae myenne ng’s bone sufen wu guangdong university of foreign studies, china correspondence: 1477263803@qq.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.3897 received 19 november 2021; accepted 15 march 2022 abstract bone, a novel written by chinese american novelist fae myenne ng, is concerned with the fictional history of a family of chinese immigrants who live in the chinatown of san francisco from the 1960’s to 1990’s. in bone, ng not only does a good job in speaking out the difficulties and hardships the immigrants encounter on the new soil but also hides some information beneath the surface, leaving it unnarrated, like ona’s inner activities and mah’s adultery and the chinese exclusion law. therefore, this study, drawing on the theory of the unnarratable put forward by warhol, aims to study the supranarratable, the antinarratable, and the paranarratable, three categories of the unnarratable, so as to discover the connection between the author’s intentions with the text and to fumble out the hidden plot within ng’s bone. only when we find out the unnarrated and combine it with the narrated can we better understand the chinese americans’ stories and their unspeakable bone-piercing pain. keywords: fae myenne ng, bone, the unnarratable, pain introduction fae myenne ng (1956-) is a first-generation chinese american novelist. as the offspring of chinese immigrants in america, she has seen her parents’ hardworking and has experienced a difficult life in the new country. and she writes those sufferings into her first novel bone (1993), which mainly talks about the story happening in a chinese immigrant family of five. leila is the narrator. her stepfather leon is a “paper son”, marrying mah, who has cheated in their marriage. even though they toil and moil every day, they still cannot build a happy family because a succession of defeat, friend’s treachery, and most importantly, the death of their daughter ona, give them a huge hit and cast a shadow over their lives. although the story is melancholic, bone still has been welcomed around the world once published and is a finalist for the 1994 faulkner fiction award. https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.3897 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 141-152 142 there are already quite a lot of studies dealing with bone. the research can be segmented into five groups. the first one is concerned with ona’s committing suicide and her bone. for example, chang (2010) analyzes ona’s death from the perspective of racial-political essentialism. the second group copes with the characters’ trauma. for instance, juliana chang studies the main characters’ traumatic experience. the third group focuses on self and subjectivity. to name a few, leblanc (2000) elaborates on the relationship between leila’s quest for self and “the invention of new language promised in leila’s neologism ‘backdaire’” (p. 12). and ferguson (2015) delves into how “the subjectivities of ng’s characters are informed by the unstable and shifting binary of chinese/american identity within the american capitalist economic system” (p. 248). the fourth one concentrates on the characters’ position in society. for instance, szmanko (2018) discusses how ng presents chinese american characters’ positionality in chinese american community and american society through “the representation of whiteness” (p. 131). the last category is about narrative strategies. gee (2004) elucidates how leila takes advantages of her status as the first-person narrator to create “a distinguishable hierarchy based on her attempt to find a center that is neither too chinese nor too american” (p. 129). gee (2004) discovers that in leila’s discourse, herself and her boyfriend who “share a hybrid space between the american and the chinese” (p. 139) enjoy the highest hierarchy. and gee finds that leila puts other characters in the lower level of the hierarchy because in leila’s eyes they either strictly confirm to the chinese tradition or are completely americanized. from the literature review, we can see that there is no one analyzing the unnarratable within the novel. and the unnarratable is very important for us to comprehend the unspeakable sufferings those chinese americans have experienced. therefore, this paper tries to study the unnarratable in bone based on american literary scholar robyn warhol’s definition and classification of the unnarratable. method the method applied in this essay is close reading, which is helpful for us to discover the unnarratable in ng’s bone. in order to find out why ng chooses not to make the narrator speak out the unnarratable, this study takes into consideration the historical factors, cultural difference, and intertextuality. as early as in 1994, warhol has discussed “the unnarratable” in essay “narrating the unnarratable: gender and metonymy in the victorian novel”. and in 2007, in “neonarrative; or how to render the unnarratable in realist fiction and contemporary film”, warhol, based on the word “the disnarrated” which is newly-coined by gerald prince, puts forward another word “the unnarrated”. it “refers to those passages that explicitly do not tell what is supposed to have happened, foregrounding the narrator’s refusal to narrate” (warhol, 2007, p. 221). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 141-152 143 warhol further points out that both the disnarrated and the unnarrated belong to the unnarratable. and the unnarratable can be classified into four categories. they are the subnarratable, the supranarratable, the antinarratable and the paranarratable. based on warhol’s remarks and classification regarding “the unnarratable”, this paper aims to analyze the supranarratable, which is ona’s psychological activities, the antinarratable, namely mah’s committing adultery and the paranarratable, chinese exclusion law. through the analysis, it can be figured out how ng takes advantage of the three types of “the unnarratable” to hide secrets from readers and the bone-piercing pain in the hidden plot can be dug out. findings and discussion the supranarratable: ona’s psychological activities in terms of the definition of the supranarratable, warhol points out that it means something that “can’t be told because it’s ineffable” and “is not susceptible to narration”. the prefix “supra” is “above”, which means that something has gone beyond the reach of narration. and it “comprises those events that defy narrative, foregrounding the inadequacy of language or of visual image to achieve full representation, even of fictitious events” (warhol, 2007, p. 223). warhol also gives some examples to better illustrate what supranarratable refers to, one of which is “the shock she received can better be imagined than described” (warhol, 2007, p. 223). from this example, we can see that how other characters feel is beyond the narrator’s comprehension or that the narrator’s narration of other characters’ emotions can hardly match up with their true feelings. so we can conclude that except the narrator’s inner feelings, other characters’ psychological activities are supranarratable. it is also the case in bone. the narrator is leila, and she cannot tell us how her sister ona feels. nor can she inform us of what kind of psychological activities ona goes through. in bone, due to the limitation of focalization, ona’s psychological activities are supranarratable. whether when she is forced to break up with her beloved boyfriend, or when she is seen crying in the bathroom, or when she decides to commit suicide, there is no description about her inner feelings and psychological activities. and the most noticeable example is her shoplifting. when she gets caught shoplifting, leila and their father leon come to pick her up. from leila’s perspective, we can see that ona “looked as calm and rested as if she were lifting her head from a nap” (ng, 1993, p. 139). later, leila repeats that “ona looked like little miss no-big-deal” (ng, 1993, p. 139). from the two descriptions, we can sense that in leila’s eyes, ona behaves in a queer fashion. even though leila confesses that she feels “surprised” towards ona’s abnormal reaction of being caught shoplifting, she doesn’t question ona why she behaves in that weird manner and leila fails to provide readers with ona’s inner feeling. this is quite strange because we can see that later when leon takes them to eat ice-cream, leila mentions that they “sat in a lipstick-red booth” (ng, 1993, p. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 141-152 144 140). instead of saying that it is a red booth, she adds that it is lipstick-red. so we can sense that leila cares greatly about her sister’s stealing lipstick and her mind is occupied with it, that’s why she sees the booth lipstick-red. but leila still fails to find the reason behind ona’s aberrant reaction, nor does she narrate ona’s psychological activities. seeing this, we cannot help wondering why leila doesn’t ask about ona’s inner feelings. in an interview with shaw (1993), ng herself confesses that sometimes she purposefully leaves out some information and she holds the following view: i wanted the narrator’s trueness to invite the reader into this world, and i allow the unfolding of the story itself to sustain this intimacy between the narrator and the reader. reading is a very private experience and the reader brings their own worlds of insights and possibilities to the book. (8) with her words, we readers can make bold assumptions regarding the reasons for the supranarratable. the assumption i come up with is that ng wants to expose the pseudo communication within the immigrants’ family. in terms of the definition of pseudo communication, the psychology dictionary gives the following explanation, “pseudo communication refers to distorted attempts at communication using fragments of words and apparent gibberish. some cases also include gestures.” in the case of ona’s shoplifting, leila chooses to remain silent even though she realizes that ona’s reaction is abnormal. this is the extreme version of pseudo communication. and leon also doesn’t question ona about her misdeed, instead, he asks his girls not to tell mah. “our secret. it was only a little thing. only lipstick.” (ng, 1993, p. 139-140) ostensibly, what he conveys to his daughters helps ona get rid of being scolded by mah and it seems that leon solves the problem quickly. but profoundly speaking, leon has done a piece of pseudo communication because the communication is not two-way; he has not listened to ona’s inner feelings. what he has done is just to makes ona accept what he says, ignoring her willingness. another question follows, why is there pseudo communication among them? one sound reason is cultural difference. leon has been brought up within chinese culture and he is influenced by the creed of turning problems into small ones and small problems into no problems at all. so he speaks such kind of words and takes no account of ona’s real need. ona who receives more western education than her father does, in fact, needs others to regard her as an individual and care about her inner feeling. but what she obtains is only the pseudo communication. however, the pseudo communication is not merely confined to leon and ona. in terms of mother-daughter, husband-wife relationships, there also exists such kind of communication. leila notices the pseudo communication within her family and reveals her inner desire for a sound and effective conversation with others. i wanted to say: i didn’t marry in shame. i didn’t marry like you... i wanted to shake [mah] and ask, what about me? don’t i count? don’t i matter? ... i ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 141-152 145 should have asked ona, why are you crying, what are you sad about? ... we didn’t talk about leon’s bruised and swollen face or his limp. (ng, 1993, p. 23, 91, 137, 171) from leila’s plea, we can notice that her family is imbued with pseudo communication. because they have no opportunity to express their inner feeling, just as some scholar points out that “leila’s role as second-generation caretaker, as manager of immigrant labor, requires that her own feelings become encrypted secrets: the unspoken” (j. chang, 2012, p. 34). they are accustomed to hide their feeling and they take it for granted not to question others’ emotions. gradually, their conversation is pseudo communication. based on the above analysis, it is sound to conclude that ng exposes pseudo communication through the supranarratable, namely ona’s psychological activities. and there is a need to recognize that the pseudo communication has something to do with the difference between chinese culture and the american one. through the exposition, we readers come to realize the grave consequence culture clash brings about and the family hardships the immigrants have to experience in the new and vast territory. the antinarratable: mah’s committing adultery as for the antinarratable, the prefix “anti” means “against”. and warhol thinks antinarratable is the equivalence of “what shouldn’t be told” because it antis “social convention” and “the antinarratable transgresses social laws or taboos, and for that reason remains unspoken” (warhol, 2007, p. 224). she also mentions in her paper that “[s]ex ... is always antinarratable, and can only be known by its results as they play themselves out in the plot (for instance in the presence of new babies, disillusioned hearts, or ruined reputations)” (warhol, 2007, p. 224). from this, we can see that because of social taboos, sex is usually the topic that authors make narrators avoid talking about, not to mention adultery. in bone, ng, without exception, arranges characters to circumvent narrating mah’s committing adultery. “leon and mah never talked about tommie hom.” (ng, 1993, p. 112) tommie hom is the man whom mah has sex with. therefore, if leon and mah refuse to mention tommie hom, it means that they are reluctant to speak of mah’s adultery. yet the adultery is still known by “ruined reputation”. other chinatown people talk about it. “wives have told their husbands, who told their park-bench buddies, who told the newspaper man, who kept on telling till it was old news.” (ng, 1993, p. 156) among chinese american writers’ works, another book also involves chinese woman’s adultery in america. that is louis chu’s eat a bowl of tea. in this novel, chinatown people also spread out the female protagonist mei oi’s adultery. one chinese says, “i told you the last time that ah song... i saw him coming out of wah gay’s daughter-in-law’s apartment. he didn’t go there just to pin a flower on her dress this time either.” (chu, 1979, p. 116) the narrator uses ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 141-152 146 negative sentences to express a positive meaning, in an attempt to pass on the scandal to others. with the two examples, we can see that adultery is something antinarratable and usually known in the presence of “ruined reputation”. but why do authors, following the social taboos, make characters avoid narrating adultery? in bone, ng does it with the purpose to show the traditional chinese way of dealing with a family scandal, which is to hide it and deliberately forget it. in the woman warrior, a novel written by maxine hong kingston, there is a story about the unnamed aunt’s adultery. when the narrator’s mother is going to tell her the aunt’s story, her mother says, “[y]ou must not tell anyone what i am about to tell you. in china your father had a sister who killed herself.” (kingston, 1997, p. 3) the aunt commits suicide because of the villagers’ abuse and attack towards her adultery. the whole family members regard it as a scandal and purposefully remove the aunt from their memory and give her no name. following the traditional chinese way, family member’s adultery is antinarratable. but does hiding is a reasonable way? from the example in the woman warrior, the narrator refuses to hide the unnamed aunt’s story and even imagines the love story between the aunt and the man. this example makes us wonder which way is better, the hiding one or the telling one. from my point of view, ng seems to be in favor of the latter because she senses that keeping too many secrets is a burden for everyone. those main characters are all very good at keeping secrets. we learned it from mah and leon. they were always saying. don’t tell this and don’t tell that. mah was afraid of what people inside chinatown were saying and leon was paranoid about everything outside chinatown. we graduated from keeping their secrets to keeping our own. (ng, 1993, p. 112) the secrets are too many for them. for ona, scholars are analyzing the reasons for her committing suicide. what they find “is not a singular cause, but rather the diffuse unfolding of hardship, sorrow, and endurance” (j. chang, 2005, p. 114). the endless sorrow and difficulties and unspeakable secrets are too much for ona, so she chooses to end her life. ona’s death is for escape and freedom, which accords with some scholar’s remark “ona’s falling to her death is imagined as a flight, a common association of death with transcendence and freedom.” (zhou, 2014, p. 112) so we can sense that ona’ death, to some extent, is an act to pursue freedom, getting rid of the endurance of keeping those countless unnarratable secretes. and for nina, the youngest daughter, after her parents’ marriage gets broken and ona’s death, she leaves home and gets rid of those secrets immediately. even “leila herself seeks to be released from mah, this alley, chinatown” (lee, 2008, p. 28). and for leon, some scholar notices that “mah’s affair cannot be spoken of because of the pain that it causes leon” (j. chang, 2012, p. 34). but not mentioning mah’s affair doesn’t ease leon’s pain, instead, it leads to his escape. some scholar contends that leon’s sailing is a kind of escape, forty-days outside ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 141-152 147 chinatown is a medicine to cure his broken heart (zhou, 2014, p. 112). from these, it is fair to say that hiding or not narrating the secrets is not the ideal way and it even results in serious consequences. in the interview with shaw (1993), ng also claims that “[t]he book is about the desire to escape and the dangers of doing so”. seeing the danger, the author thus arranges nina to set an example for leila to tell secrets out. nina is brave to speak out that she has a miscarriage, regardless of others’ opposition towards it. influenced by nina, leila gets the courage to narrate the family secrets in the reverse chronology within the novel and she presents the story to readers step-bystep. therefore, we can conclude that ng thinks telling out is the better way to deal with those secrets. in short, after studying the antinarratable, which is mah’s committing adultery, we readers get to know the traditional chinese way of dealing with such kind of scandal, that is they choose to hide it. however, hiding a scandal makes people involved in it suffer more and unable to cope with it but escape from it. taking this, ng hopes to give chinese americans a suggestion, namely, telling out their secrets. the paranarratable: chinese exclusion act in light of paranarratable, warhol defines it as “what wouldn’t be told because of formal convention”. it “transgresses a law of literary genre” (warhol, 2007, p. 226). for readers’ better understanding, warhol presents an example: “[i]n the feminocentric nineteenth-century novel, ... the heroine can in the end only get married or die... for a victorian novelist to choose an alternate outcome to a heroine’s marriage plot, then, would be to attempt to narrate the paranarratable” (warhol, 2007, p. 226). in this example, we can see that if the author intends to give a detail that runs counter to the “formal convention”, then the writer is narrating the paranarratable. in chinese american literature, the chinese exclusion act is the paranarratable because “[d]ominant narratives of the modern nation-state are structured by enlightenment values of development and progress” (j. chang, 2012, p. 32) and the chinese exclusion act is the opposite type, so it is left paranarratable. some scholar adds that narrating the chinese exclusion act is against the “dominant narrative of assimilation, progress, and the american dream” (zhou, 2014, p. 100). therefore, in bone, ng writes the act vaguely. she only mentions that “the laws that excluded him now held him captive” (ng, 1993, p. 57). so why does the author follow the trend and refuse to illustrate the laws in a detailed manner? before that, we should talk about why there is the chinese exclusion act. from 1848, many chinese came to america because of the lure of gold. later in 1865, the construction of the transcontinental railway needed a large number of workers and numerous chinese were attracted by it. yet in the 1870s, america came across economic recession and the labor market became saturated ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 141-152 148 and many americans started to complain that the chinese took their job opportunities away. so the whole society was hostile to the chinese, just as western scholar philip chin maintains, “economic misery led to xenophobia among many white americans” (chin, 2013, p. 8). and in 1882, the chinese exclusion act was enacted and the chinese became the mere community that was excluded from america by the federal government (chan, 1991; t. kim, 1999). after knowing how the chinese exclusion act comes into being, we can go back to the question why is the chinese exclusion act paranarratable under ng’s pen? one supposition can be made that ng makes this novel embedded with the paranarratable, in an attempt to drive the readers to participate in the meaning construction of the novel by digging out the hidden text of the narrative and finding new clues of the novel. such being the case, the author succeeds in enriching the text. to put it specifically, she aims to let readers themselves find out the hidden interrelations among the dilemma and hardships chinese americans go through. as it is seen by some scholar, “ng weaves together...the chinese american workingclass paper sons and bachelors, inscribing the chinatown space with chinese american histories unavailable in the official history of the u.s. nation-state, invisible in the dominant narrative of assimilation, progress, and the american dream.” (zhou, 2014, p. 100) the first interrelation among hardships and the chinese exclusion act is “paper sons”. because of the severe restriction laws, it’s almost impossible for chinese to land on american soil since 1882 (ng, 2009). later in 1906, the earthquake in san francisca caused a great fire, which damaged almost all the files collected in the city hall (lai, lim, & yung, 2014; lowe, 1996; ng, 2009). some chinese took advantage of this opportunity to change their identity information and lied that they were born in america, aiming at getting a green card. some even grabbed the spoon to claim that they had children in china, in an attempt to get the immigration quotas. they then sold these quotas to others and many chinese went to great lengths to get these quotas. in bone, leon is a case in point. goellnicht (2000) notices that leon’s birth year in accordance with his false immigration papers is 1924, “the very year in which a new american immigration act was passed specifically … making it impossible for chinese men to immigrate unless they could prove that their fathers were born in the u.s” (p. 304). leon enters into america as a “paper son” with the hope of making a fortune in the vast territory. however, leon gradually comes to realize that his american dream is extremely hard to fulfill and being a “paper son” is not a good thing. because “paper son” is a false identity, leon cannot claim his identity in front of the authority for fear of deportation. when leila takes him to apply for social security, the officer “asked leon why he had so many aliases? so many different dates of birth? did he have a passport? a birth certificate? a driver’s license?” “leon had nothing but his anger, and like a string of firecrackers popping, he started cursing.” (ng, 1993, p. 56) faced with the officer’s questions, leon can say nothing but a curse. because ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 141-152 149 once his false identity is revealed, he will face the punishment of being sent back to china. such kind of worry is so strong that even though the government offers “a confession of illegal entry bought you naturalization papers” program and guarantees that “paper son” will not be sent back if they admit who they are in the confession program, leon still declines to confess his false identity because he “didn’t trust the government” (ng, 1993, p. 57). what’s worse, the exclusion law and leon’s “paper son” identity bring him a traumatic experience, which makes him can merely find a sense of security in keeping things. “leon kept things because he believed time mattered. old made good.” (ng, 1993, p. 58) the paper he saves and “all the letters addressed to leon should prove to the people at the social security office that this country was his place, too. leon had paid; leon had earned his rights.” (ng, 1993, p. 58) the habit of keeping things, in leon’s eyes, is a way to prove his identity and offers him a sense of safety. in long days’ journey into night (1962), the protagonist james also lacks a sense of security because when they immigrate to america, his father abandons them. this traumatic experience makes him can merely feel safe with the possession of motionless land. both leon’s and james’ queer habits demonstrate that they have been greatly hurt by the new identity and new environment. and it can be seen that the stranger their habits are, the less secure they feel in their inner hearts. the second interrelation among dilemma and the chinese exclusion act is the “bachelor society” in chinatown, just as some scholar observes that “ng further indicates the connection between the deprived lives of chinese immigrants like leon and the history of chinese exclusion through...her observations of other old bachelors in other places of chinatown” (zhou, 2014, p. 100). and ng (2009) herself acknowledges that “the creation of the exclusion act resulted in a bachelor society that interrupted the continuity of a generation of chinese americans” (p. 120). the chinese exclusion act makes it clear that chinese women are prohibited to enter into america to reunite with their husbands and american women will lose their green card if they marry chinese immigrants, which leads to many chinese men being single in the rest of their lives. quite a lot of chinese american writers have described the “bachelor” scenario in their works. to name a few, in eat a bowl of tea louis chu mentions wang wah gay and lee gong can only contact their wives who are in china through letters. they live as “married bachelors” (e. kim, 1982, p. 97) even though they have wives. just as certain scholar puts forward, “eat a bowl of tea portrays the waning years of wang wah gay and his fellow chinatown ‘bachelors’, men whose labor was recruited by the united states and who ended up unable to establish families” (j. chang, 2012, p. 36). likewise, in bone ng also describes the “bachelor society”. leila once walks past the chess tables where groups of bachelors gather there and she confesses that “i never liked being the only girl on the upper level of the park. more than once, an old guy has come up and asked, ‘my room? date?’ ‘it was just pathetic.’” (ng, 1993, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 141-152 150 p. 8) those “bachelors” can only sleep with prostitutes. that’s why the old guy questions leila if she wants to go to his room. and the word “pathetic” expresses not only leila’s feelings but also the author’s. ng expresses her sympathy for those “bachelors”. another interrelation among hardships and the chinese exclusion act is racial discrimination, which makes chinese people encounter many rejections in their lives. “a rejection from the army: unfit. a job rejection: unskilled. an apartment: unavailable” (ng, 1993, p. 57). even when those chinese immigrants are lucky enough to get a job, it is a base one with a low salary. the jobs they undertake can illustrate the discrimination to a greater extent. in bone, leon has been “a fry cook at wa-jin’s, a busboy at the waterfront restaurant by the wharf, a janitor at a print shop downtown” (ng, 1993, p. 55). he takes the basest job and even though he works very hard, the salary is not as per his hard sweat. some scholar names this situation as “racial labor exploitation” (j. chang, 2012, p. 35). when mah says that the money leon makes is not enough, he replies, “it’s as much as i could. you don’t know. you’re inside chinatown; it’s safe. you don’t know. outside, it’s different.” (ng, 1993, p. 181). the narrator purposefully doesn’t inform us of the detailed harsh reality outside and how different it is outside chinatown, in an attempt to let us imagine how hard it is. just like leila, she can see that “leon hardly slept. he worked double shifts one night slipped into another, tied together by a few hours’ sleep” (ng, 1993, p. 181). but leon says that “it wasn’t time he was spending, it was sweat. he said life was work and death the dream” (ng, 1993, p. 181). his perception of life and death stuns us but it appropriately interprets chinese americans’ tough lives brought about by racial discrimination. from the above three kinds of hardships the chinese americans experience, we can find the common point within the three, that is “bone continues to confront the lingering effects of u.s. exclusionary laws on working-class chinese immigrants and chinese americans, including the psychological impact of spatialized social positions of race and class on the major characters” (zhou, 2014, p. 95). the author purposefully doesn’t narrate the act so as to make readers associate these difficulties with the chinese exclusion act and come to realize that its lingering effect has embedded in every chinese american. conclusion to conclude, in the process of reading bone, we readers not only need to pay attention to the narrated but also should concentrate on the unnarratable, which entails countless difficulties and troubles chinese immigrants encounter. ng, as an offspring of chinese immigrants in america, has experienced the unspeakable hardships and she is fully aware of the fact that the unnarratable can be better understood by readers through their exploration of the unnarrated discourse. so in bone, she manipulates this effective narrative strategy to guide readers to enter into ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 141-152 151 the novel’s hidden text and plot. and only when we readers combine the narrated and the unnarrated can we fumble out the author’s intention and the hidden plot in the text and better understand the chinese americans’ stories and their bonepiercing pain. reference chan, s. (1991). entry denied: exclusion and the chinese community in america, 1882-1943. philadelphia: temple university press. chang, j. (2005). melancholic remains: domestic and national secrets in fae myenne ng’s bone. mfs modern fiction studies, 51(1), 110-133. doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2005.0022 chang, j. (2012). melancholic citizenship: the living dead and fae myenne ng’s bone. in inhuman citizenship: traumatic enjoyment and asian american literature (pp. 28-61). minnesota: university of minnesota press. doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816674435.003.0002 chang, y. (2010). chinese suicide: political desire and queer exogamy in fae myenne ng’s bone. modern fiction studies, 56(1), 90-112. doi.org/10.1353/mfs.0.1657 chin, p. (2013). the chinese exclusion act of 1882. chinese american forum, 28(1), 8-13. chu, l. (1979). eat a bowl of tea. seattle: university of washington press. ferguson, a. 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(2014). “our inside story” of chinatown: fae myenne ng’s bone. in cities of others: cities of others reimagining urban spaces in asian american literature (pp. 94-116). seattle: university of washington press. https://doi.org/10.5817/bse2018-2-8 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 73 translation of english-indonesian noun phrases: identification of loss, addition and skewing i gusti agung sri rwa jayantini1, i komang sulatra2, donatus darso3, ni komang arie suwastini4 1,2,3 universitas mahasaraswati denpasar 4 universitas pendidikan ganesha sri.rwa.jayantini@gmail.com; soelatra01@yahoo.com; donatus_darso@yahoo.com; arie.suwastini@undiksha.ac.id correspondence: sri.rwa.jayantini@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v5i1.3711 received 18 september 2021; accepted 26 september 2021 abstract this study focuses on the analysis of how information may be lost, added, and skewed in the english-indonesian translation of noun phrases in the novel the valley of fear. this study utilized descriptive qualitative method through note-taking technique. nida’s principles of translation were applied to investigate how these three principles occur. the results showed that loss, addition, and skewing were found with several classifications, namely (1) omission of adjectives and indefinite quantifiers as well as different grammatical points of view for loss of information, (2) different linguistic and cultural aspects for addition of information, and (3) deviation of meaning and the choice of closest natural equivalence for skewing of information. of the 507 cases found, addition of information occurs on the highest percentage, i.e. 54,81% (278 data), loss of information takes 41,42% (210 data) and skewing of information takes the lowest percentage, i.e. 3,74% (19 data). these findings indicate that actually loss, addition and skewing take place in translation of noun phases from english into indonesian for the sake of finding naturalness without neglecting the accuracy of transferring meaning. keywords: translation, loss, addition, skewing, noun phrase introduction in translation studies, loss, addition and skewing of information are the representations of how equivalence takes place. these are the principles of translation as mentioned by (margono, 2002) following nida’s concepts (1975) to show that the information in one language may not be transferred exactly the same either in form and meaning. linguistically, forms refer to linguistic units ranging from words to sentences while meaning can be further investigated through semantic approach like componential analysis and meaning components (newmark, 1988; lobner, 2013). the features of these three principles involve the linguistic and cultural aspects of source and target languages. to prove that these three principles exist, two methods may be applied, namely undertaking comparative analysis on ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 74 source language (sl) and target language (tl) syntactic units as well as applying semantic theory to compare meaning components (margono; 2002; lobner, 2013; jayantini et al. 2017). the forms in different languages must be comprehensively analyzed in order to understand how information in sl texts is lost, added and skewed in tl texts. loss, addition and skewing occur in various cases. loss of information may take place by omitting the lexical item of sl to meet the grammatical or semantic aspects of the tl. the omission occurs when the meaning expressed through grammar is not really significant (baker, 2011). meanwhile, addition of information is sometimes triggered by the needs of giving emphasis and making the expression more coherent that causes the change of syntactic units in different level, e.g. shifts in translation (sabrina, 2015; wulandari, 2014). skewing of information may potentially occur when meaning is shifted. as a result, meaning components in sl and tl forms are not exactly the same, showing the phenomenon of meaning deviation (hatim, & mason, 1997; yasin, et al., 2018; dhyaningrum, 2020). nida’s concept of loss, addition and skewing of information has been elaborated from many perspectives with different focus of analysis. linguistically, the investigation of loss, addition and skewing involves two significant aspects that show the analysis of form and meaning; the syntactic and semantic perspectives. these two aspects cannot be separated since the interpretation of meaning is based on the forms i.e. the grammatical units in which meaning contains. for example, the translation of passive voice from english into indonesian that result in the mapping of how forms are related to their meaning, thus the investigation must be based on the logical intention expressed in the sentences. meaning of passive forms can be lexically, grammatically, textually and contextually interpreted to meet the natural expression in the target language (oktariani, et al., 2018; jayantini, 2016). the change of form in translation is irrefutable. it involves different kinds of shifts like the change from the grammatical way of expressing a particular event to a lexical representation to explain the specific time. for example, the present participle in english showed by the pattern “have/has+v3” is expressed by the word telah or sudah ‘already’ in indonesian. from translation studies point of view, this is called as level shift termerd by catford (1965), in which tenses in english is expressed only by a lexical marker in indonesian. it is one among other examples of how shifts occur in the case of english-indonesian translation. the rank shift that demonstrates the downward and upward changes, the change of sl phrases to tl words or words to phrases as well as phrases to clauses becomes the object of investigation to show that in order to meet the natural closest equivalent, forms may be changed for the sake of finding equal expression in meaning (rakhmadinah &asmarani, 2013; (wulandari, 2014); darso, 2018). the focus of this present study is the analysis of loss, addition and skewing taking place in the translation of noun phrases, particularly the complex ones. here, the term complex is used to refer to the noun phrases that have been modified in their construction. the head noun may be modified by pre-modification and postmodification, or the complexity that makes them having several items like adjectives and noun strings that modify the phrases. this study attempts to demonstrate a developed model in analysing how particular information in sl text as represented in noun phrases may be lost, gained and skewed. it is expected to complete many previous studies that investigate shifts of noun phrases. it is this paper that will show ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 75 the detailed components in the source language texts that are translated into target language texts. three principles of translation involving loss, addition and skewing of information are closely observed. the noun phrases to be analysed in this paper are taken from the novel entitled the valley of fear, the work of sir arthur conan doyle (2009). the focus of study is supported by sufficient data in the novel so that the analysis can be made to show the mapping loss of information, addition of information and skewing of information. literature review noun phrases investigating noun phrases and their translation from english into indonesian is worth doing since the two languages have complex noun phrases with similar components in terms of the head and its modifier yet different position for its constituents. for example, the phrase a good sweeping generalization taken from the english novel the valley of fear (doyle, 2009:29) that is translated into generalisasi yang bagus, which is also a noun phrase in indonesian. noun phrases in english consist of several elements such as determiner a (non-definite article), the first premodifier good (adjective), the second premodifier sweeping (adjective), and head generalization (noun). despite the universal concept of noun phrases in the world languages showing the head and its modification, a noun phrase (np) in english positions the head is preceded with modifier, as found in a good sweeping generalization, while in the indonesian the head is followed with its modifier as it is seen in generalisasi yang bagus. here, the indonesian noun phrases are structured with modifiers following the heads. the noun phrase involves the head generalisasi (noun) and postmodifier yang bagus. in english grammar a noun phrase (np) includes minimally a noun having the role of head that is frequently extended with several elements. the significant aspect in a phrase is the head and that is what a phrase is named, like a noun phrase which means the head of the phrase must be a noun (plag et al., 2015). an np has the heads as the core of the phrase, which may be modified with modifiers preceding heads (premodification) or modifiers following heads (postmodification). premodification includes prehead determiners, i.e. articles and prehead modifiers, i.e. adjectives. postmodification is occupied with posthead modifiers, i.e. preposition phrases or relative clauses. the construction of noun phrases with prehead in english includes articles, determiners, quantifiers, demonstrative determiners, possessive determiners, and adjectives. meanwhile, the construction of postheads is realized by means of relative clauses, non-finite clauses, appositive clauses, as well as preposition phrases. (depraetere & langford, 2012) noun phrases in indonesian are also defined as the phrases with nouns as their heads. an np is formed by expanding the head to the right side and left side with the addition of several words or a group of words functioned as determiners like quantifiers, demonstratives, possessors, classifiers, partitives (sneddon, 1996; moeliono et al., 2017). sneddon (1996) also adds that noun phrases in indonesia may be modified by diminutives and honorifics as found, for example in sang harimau ‘tiger’ and sang merah putih ‘the red and white (the indonesian flag)’. this process indicates the left expansion of nouns as explained by moeliono et al. (2017) with different examples yet the same construction to show that noun phrases may be derived from the addition of a word or words on the left of the heads. in different ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 76 cases, nouns phrases are constructed through modifying nouns like “toko buku” ‘book shop,’ (sneddon (1996). this is the process of right expansion of noun phrases that are further categorized through the addition of modifying nouns, modifying adjectives, modifying verbs, modifying prepositional phrases, modifying clauses and modifying appositives (moeliono et al., 2017). loss, addition and skewing of information a clear explanation on nida’s principles of translation showing loss, addition and skewing of information is given by margono (2002). loss of information is a phenomenon when the translation of the sl items does not contain the full information of the tl. here, the features of meaning in sl linguistic units are not completely brought into the translation. addition of information indicates that the transfer of items is followed by additional information. skewing of information is shown when the meaning of the sl and tl items are not the precisely equal. furthermore, jayantini (2016) discusses the examples given by margono (2002) to describe the potential of lossing and adding some information in the translation of english clause “she was sad” into “dia sedih.” in this case, feminine gender (she) and past tense (was) in the english clause are not translated in indonesian (tl). conversely, when the tl and sl reverse, addition of information occurs in the transfer of “dia sedih” to “she was sad.” feminine gender and past tense are added in tl. meanwhile, skewing, which is also called as distortion of information is represented in the example of “you are silly,” that is translated into “kamu tolol.” the english sentence can be uttered playfully in the context that this utterance is used to show that the insensible action of the addressee. on the other side, the expression of “kamu tolol” may indicate that the addressee is very stupid. as they are named, loss, addition and skewing of information reflect that translation results may not be as exactly the same with its original version in sl. equivalent is the key term in conducting a translation task to gain the same impacts that may be perceived by the readers of the tl texts after the rendering of information is done idiomatically, in terms of meaning and style to by the closest natural equivalent in the form of meaningful text in the target language (nida, 1975; newmark, 1988; bell, 1991; margono, 2002). since translation involves the transfer of form and meaning that is inseparable, translation as a product may be seen from several factors like linguistics aspects, socio-cultural aspects and moral aspects (kamil et al., 2018; hartono, 2009). loss of information may be triggered by several conditions such as the insignificant role that an sl item plays in developing the text, cultural words that are not known in the target language, as well as the existence of different semantic equation (baker, 2011; yasin et al., 2018). the additional information is mostly related to the existence of cultural values existence by taking into account the differences in cultures that both sl and tl have. besides, gaining information may also possibly occurs in accordance with the topic being discussed, and linguistic aspects that are related to the choice of words (newmark, 1988). skewing of information has the similar condition to the phenomena of linguistic deviation involving the possibilities of giving modification in meaning that is, actually, a condition that may lead a translator to the problems of translation (hatim & mason, 1997; dhyaningrum, 2020). several studies have been conducted to identify loss, addition and skewing of information. the implicit discussion on these principles is usually added in the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 77 discussion of shifts in translation. the identification leads to a developed model to the identify loss, addition and skewing of information have been conducted by analyzing shifts in translation. a linguistic approach on translation studies can be applied here, that is seen from syntactic and semantic perspectives. (sabrina, 2015; darso, 2018). from a semantic perspective, the application of principles of translation can be revealed by comparing the meaning found in different level of syntactical units. meaning is found to be that results in different sentence patterns like passive constructions (oktariani et al. 2018). method this study is qualitative research that reflects the characteristics of descriptive translation studies. such studies are characterized by their theoretical and descriptive aspects aiming to investigate several linguistic and cultural phenomena found in the product of translation. with this approach, the activities are undertaken systematically to describe the data accurately and make a comprehensive analysis. the process of data collection and data analysis is made according to the characteristics of descriptive translation studies, that is, to describe, explain, and predict translation phenomena (baker & saldanha, 2011). several activities are planned in data collection and analysis, namely (1) reading the english novel and its indonesian translation intensively in order to collect the sentences containing the noun phrases with their various modification, (2) all data in the form of sentences are carefully observed to highlight the noun phrases, which are further broken down into its constituent structure, (3) the collected data are categorized based on the three principles of translation by comparing the construction of english and indonesian noun phrases including their prehead and posthead modification, and lastly, (4) the identified data representing loss, addition, and skewing of information are analyzed carefully so that the specific features can be used to explain the translation phenomena. in collecting the data, the documentation method was utilized through a notetaking technique to classify the data. utilizing baker's term, parallel corpora, as further explained by kenny (1998), this study's language pair is english-indonesian, involving a novel originally written in english entitled the valley of fear (doyle, 2009) alongside its translation into indonesian. given that loss, addition, and skewing of information are the focus of this study, the english novel and its translation are considered representative to be the source of gaining various phenomena to be thoroughly described and analyzed. the identification is expected to give more reliable explanation of the features of loss, addition, and skewing of information. for data analysis, this study involves several systematic activities. as the first step of analyzing data, the collected data were listed in a table showing the comparison of the sl and tl sentences in which noun phrases were found as fascinating aspects to be explained in accordance with the translation principles, namely loss, addition, and skewing. the second procedure investigates how meaning, concept, and information conveyed through syntactic units in the sl phrases are lost, added, and skewed in the tl phrases. next, the reduction of data was undertaken as the third step to obviously show the phenomena regarding the characteristics of loss, addition, and skewing of information (newmark, 1988; baker, 2011; margono, 2002). lastly, interpretation of the phenomena to strengthen the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 78 analysis was given according to the exact classification of each principle supported by relevant references like theories covering translation studies, syntax and semantics, and dictionaries. findings and discussion of 507 data in the form of english noun phrases and their translation, a gain of information occurs in the highest percentage, i.e., 54,81% (278 data), loss of information takes 41,42% (210 data), and skewing of information takes the lowest percentage, i.e., 3,74% (19 data). specific cases of loss, addition, and skewing of information show how the transfer of components with their meaning of noun phrases occurs. loss of information occurs in the omission of adjectives and different grammatical points of view. addition of information takes place due to linguistic and cultural differences. skewing of information can be observed from the deviation of meaning and the sl and tl items' closest natural equivalence. having found these phenomena, loss, addition, and skewing of information are unavoidable. this finding also confirms that principles of translation consisting of loss, addition, and skewing of information exist in the transfer of english noun phrases into indonesian. to sum up, loss, addition, and skewing of information in this study are presented in table 1 below. table 1. the occurrence of loss, addition, skewing of information no principles of translation occurrence percentage 1 loss of information 210 41,42 % 2 addition of information 278 54,81 % 3 skewing of information 19 3,74 % total data 507 100 % loss of information loss of information can take place due to several conditions. loss is the omission of information that may be presented by a lexical item that is omitted that influences grammatical or semantic aspects of the target language (baker, 2011: 40). the omission is made if the meaning expressed by certain items or a statement is not significant enough in developing the text. given this condition, translators usually omit particular words or statements. this study found that loss of information in the translation of english-indonesian noun phrases is due to the omission of items like adjectives and different grammatical points of view. omission of adjective datum 1 sl: the worthy country policeman shook his head. tl:polisi pedesaan itu menggeleng. (doyle, 2009) source language target language the itu worthy country pedesaan policemen polisi ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 79 the example above shows that there are not all components in the source language are translated into the target language, especially the word "worthy," which means ‘berharga’ or ‘bernilai’ in indonesian. “the worthy country policemen” consists of the word “policemen” as the head that is pre-modified by the words “worthy and country” and the definite article "the." to support the description about the country policemen, the sl noun phrase adds "worthy" (usually before the noun) to emphasize the quality of the country policemen as those who are having qualities that deserve respect, attention or admiration and to be used in the example, “a worthy member of the team” (https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/worthy_1). because the adjective “worthy” is not brought into the tl phrase, loss of information is found. it can be assumed that this is done because the translator considers the adjective “worthy” is not very significant in representing the meaning of the polisi pedesaan. besides, it is still understood by the tl readers who can interpret that polisi pedesaan means the policemen who are in charge in the countryside (pedesaan) without adding information that is represented by the adjective “worthy.” datum 2 sl: the poor old fellow was white and quivering from the shock. tl:pria tua tersebut masih pucat pasi dan bergetar karena shok. (doyle, 2009) source language target language the tersebut poor old tua fellow pria from the translation of “the poor old fellow” into pria tua tersebut, it is found that the complex noun phrase in the sl is not correctly translated. not all the sl phrase information is presented in the tl phrase. the word "poor" in the sl phrase is not translated in the tl phrase. the adjective "poor" can be translated into miskin in the case that the meaning of “poor” in sl is having very little money; not having enough money for basic needs, and tidak beruntung in the case that it is meant to explain the condition of the old fellow referred in the phase as “unfortunate” (https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/poor?q=poor) in indonesian but in this case, it is not translated by the translator. in the excerpt, loss of information occurs due to the omission of the adjective "poor," which is not transferred to the tl phrase. in this example, the omission of the lexical item of “poor” significantly affects the meaning of the phrase “old fellow” since it gives no detailed information on how the “old fellow” is like. different grammatical point of view datum 3 sl: mcmurdo made a wry face. tl:mr. murdo mengernyit. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/worthy_1 https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/poor?q=poor ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 80 source language target language a wry mengernyit face the classification of all components of complex noun phrases above shows that the noun phrase a wry face is translated into a verb phrase mengernyit. the lexical item of face is not translated into the target language. the word face is usually translated into wajah or muka in the tl. the word mengernyit refers to a person’s face or feature. in kamus besar bahasa indonesia (kbbi), mengernyit means frown one's forehead or eyebrow. both the forehead and eyebrow belong to part of the face. it can be concluded that the verb mengernyit equals the feature of someone's face. loss of information takes place when the phrase "wry face" is translated into mengernyit. from its lexical meaning, “wry” means “of a person's face or features” and “twisted into an expression of disgust, disappointment, or annoyance.” (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/wry). the information that is also not fully transferred is the features of “disgust, disappointment, or annoyance” because the verb mengernyit in indonesian presents a different perspective that does not directly relate to the feeling of disappointment. it tends to be more about a particular situation that people may not understand. datum 4 sl:…i should recommend a nice country walk for both of you. tl:…kusarankan kalian berdua berjalan-jalan di desa ini. source language target language a nice country walk berjalan-jalan di desa ini for both of you kalian berdua the datum shows that the english complex noun phrase “a nice country walk for both of you” is translated into kalian berdua berjalan-jalan di desa ini. in this case, loss of information occurs because the translator does not translate the word nice in the source language, which means ‘menyenangkan’ in indonesian. however, the use of the verb berjalan-jalan gives a description that it is done in a casual way (sneddon:1996:20). with this reduplication, the lexical item excellent means ‘baik’,’bagus’ is not totally transferred into the target language. hence, in this translation, loss of information happens due to different grammatical points of view. the translation may be understood by the readers in accordance with the context of the story, especially to the closest situation described by the translator. datum 5 sl:…he continued with an exulting smile upon his face. tl:…lanjutnya sambil tersenyum bangga. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/wry ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 81 source language target language an exulting bangga smile tersenyum upon his face it is obvious to see that the english complex noun phrase “an exulting smile upon his face” is translated into tersenyum bangga which is a verb phrase. in this data, the prepositional phrase “upon his face” is not translated into the target language. this prepositional phrase can actually be translated into ‘pada wajahnya.' however, the translator omits this information. the change of form classified as a different grammatical point of view makes the tl phrase lose the information in the "exulting" and "upon his face." again, this is called the loss of information taking place in the translation of the english-indonesian complex noun phrase. the word "exulting" means "feeling or showing elation or jubilation.” (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/exulting). the strong features brought in “exulting” are great happiness that is not shown in the adverb bangga (tersenyum bangga) in indonesian. thus, in this case, loss of information is classified to different grammatical points of view that results in different interpretations in transferring the adjective "exulting" into the adverb bangga completing the verb tersenyum. addition of information the addition of information may occur because of the differences between sl and tl culture and the existence of technical and linguistic aspects. this finding is in line with the classification of newmark (1988: 91) concerning the addition of information in translation. this is frequently related to cultural factors considering the differences between the sl and tl cultures, the topic of discussion, and linguistic aspects related to choice of words. the examples of addition of information are presented below to support the classification found in this study. differences between sl and tl cultures datum 6 sl: i am a good catholic; but the priest would have no word with me when he heard i was a scowrer, and i am excommunicated from my faith. tl:aku penganut katolik yang taat, tapi pastor tidak bersedia berbicara denganku sewaktu mendengar aku anggota scowrer. source language target language a good yang taat catholic katolik penganut the datum shows that some information found in the source language is added to the target language. it is found in the word penganut. the translator adds it to make the meaning of word of katolik clearer to the readers. here, in the english language, the word catholic refers to a person whose religion is catholic. it does not need to be explained with the person who has this religion, but in indonesian it must https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/exulting ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 82 be emphasized by "penganut,” which means ‘followers.’ by adding the word of penganut into the target language, the phrase is expected to be clearly understood by the target readers. datum 7 sl: after that he gave a long sigh of satisfaction; for it seemed to him that he was safe. tl: sesudah itu ia mendesah panjang penuh kepuasan, karena tampaknya ia telah aman. source language target language a long panjang sigh mendesah penuh satisfaction kepuasan the source language's complex noun phrases in the datum above, “a long sigh of satisfaction," are translated into mendesah panjang penuh kepuasan. the addition of information occurs in the process of translation, especially the word penuh (literally means ‘full’), which is added to the target language. to get a more natural translation, the information that is not present in the source language text is found in the target language text due to the naturalness and to give emphasis. the word penuh is given to support the word kepuasaan (satisfaction) so that the expression in the target language (indonesian) is vital to describe the situation described by the verb phrase mendesah panjang penuh kepuasan. linguistic aspect datum 8 sl: there was a dead silence in the room. tl:kesunyian total menguasai ruangan. source language target language a dead silence kesunyian total menguasai in the room ruangan the table indicates that the complex noun phrase “a dead silence in the room” is translated into a clause kesunyian total menguasai ruangan. the gain of information is found in the process of translation in that the word menguasai is added into the target language. this word disappears in the source language. this addition aims at making more natural and acceptable translations in the target language. on the contrary, the translation of "dead" into total is actually not the exact equivalent. in the phrases above, it is clear to see that the article “a” is not translated into “sebuah” or “sesuatu," “dead silence” becomes kesunyian total. it is found in the target language phrase to present the “dead silence” that is meant to be described in the target language. here, addition of information is found in the translation of a noun ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 83 phrase into a clause with the addition of a verb in the target language, menguasai which means occupy. literally, kesunyian total menguasai ruangan means total silence occupies the room. this is how the translator brings the idea of "a dead silence in the room" into indonesian and calls it as kesunyian total menguasai ruangan. skewing of information skewing of information indicates the translation of items from the source language that cannot be done precisely as expected with the exact equivalence. the data involving skewing of information are presented below with the analysis on the condition of the deviation of meaning and the finding of the closest natural equivalent. deviation of the meaning datum 9 sl:…he had a very definite theory about the murder. tl: ia sudah menyusun teori sendiri yang kuat mengenai pembunuhan tersebut. source language target language a very definite yang kuat theory teori sendiri about the murder mengenai pembunuhan tersebut the two sentences demonstrate that a very definite theory about the murder is translated into teori sendiri yang kuat mengenai pembunuhan tersebut. in this case, the adjective definite with the equivalence pasti in the target language is translated into kuat. since it is not the exact equivalent from the source language to the target language, the translation can be categorized as one example showing skewing of information. besides, the adverb very in the adjective phrase “very definite” in the source language is not translated into the target language. it can be translated into sangat, but it seems that the translator regards it as a less critical part of the development of the text. thus, in addition to skewing of information, which is obviously seen from the translation of the adjective definite into kuat, loss of information occurs. meanwhile, the lexical item sendiri is added into the target language phrase to express how the “theory” in the target language is operated. it is done to make the meaning of the head teori clearer in the target language. datum 10 sl:…and would give their last dollar to know that they had got me. tl: …mempertaruhkan seluruh uang mereka untuk memastikan mereka sudah berhasil menghabisi saya. source language target language their mereka last seluruh dollar uang ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 84 the noun phrase the last dollar is translated into seluruh uang mereka. the lexical item of last is translated into seluruh, which is not the exact equivalent of the word last. the word last can be translated into terakhir (adjective) but the translator translates it into seluruh that literally means “all” or “the whole” so that there is a skewing of information in this translation. in addition, the word of dollar is translated into uang. in fact, dollar is the american currency. it is not the exact equivalent of uang. the exact equivalent of uang is money, so that this translation also belongs to skewing of information. it happens to make the translation more natural since it is clear that the term dollar used in the story refers to uang (money). closest natural equivalence datum 12 sl: white mason is a very live man, if i am any judge. tl:white mason orang yang cerdas, kalau aku boleh menilai. source language target language a very live yang cerdas man orang the complex noun phrase in the source language is “a very live man," which is translated into the indonesian noun phrase "orang yang cerdas." the translation of very live into yang cerdas involves the selection of the target language word, which is not the exact meaning of the source language item. the word of live can be translated into yang hidup (live), bersemangat (excited). therefore, the translation of the noun phrase above involves skewing of information. besides, loss of information is also found here in which the word very is not translated into sangat. in this case, it is regarded as less vital to the development of the text. the omission of this lexical item belongs to the loss of information. conclusion the translators must perfectly know the principles of translation to cope with the problems of finding the lexical equivalent of the source language in the target language. these phenomena may happen due to various existing aspects of linguistic and cultural aspects. the lexical meaning of two lexicons in different languages may not be exactly the same. as they have been widely known as principles of translation, loss, addition, and skewing information in the translation are, in fact, parts of translators' efforts to find the closest natural equivalence. in this study, loss, addition, and skewing of information are also found in translating complex noun phrases from english into indonesian in the valley of fear novel. these three principles of translation are primarily caused by the structural and cultural differences of the source and target language. specifically, loss of information occurs in the form of omission of adjectives and different grammatical points of view. addition of information includes differences between sl and tl culture as well as technical and linguistic aspects. skewing of information can be found through the deviation of meaning and the choice of closest natural equivalence between the sl and tl lexicons. loss, gain, and skewing of information in english-indonesian translation of complex noun phrases may take place to meet the accuracy, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, september 2021, pp. 73-86 85 naturalness, and acceptability. naturalness and acceptability in translation may evoke loss, gain, and skewing of information, while accuracy can be observed by transferring noun phrases' components in the source language. the findings of this present study show that loss, addition, and skewing occur in the translation of noun phrases from english into indonesian to be able to present 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(2018). analyzing the english translation of the novel ‘laskar pelangi’ (the rainbow troops). studies in english language and education, 5(1), 54–68. https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v5i1.9864 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 41-47 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 41 surviving typhoon yolanda (haiyan) in the lens of comtean altruism dennis moreto bautista leyte normal university, philippines correspondence: dennisbautista1974@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i1.2644 received 10 june 2020; accepted 8 august 2020 abstract altruism for august comte is a belief of disinterestedness and an unselfish concern for other people. it is a theory that postulates the generous side of a person even in times of difficulty and even death. the onslaught of the strongest typhoon ever recorded in history brought substantial damage to different spheres of a human life. despair and unwillingness to live were evident. however, despite severe damage to both body and soul to almost everyone in the hardest-hit areas, the victims managed to survive, share, and assist even the minutest that they have to others. supplies were depleted and people have nowhere to buy food and other necessary elements. this study collected narrative experiences from individuals who were caught up in the storm and its aftermath. the study utilized the philosophical and critical social type of qualitative research, which aims to provide knowledge, which involve the existing social structure. this described, evaluated, and interpreted the different personal experiences of yolanda survivors anchored on the comtean philosophy of altruism. keyword: auguste comte, altruism, despair, solidarity, yolanda, haiyan introduction helping someone in a certain situation is not always automatic in a person. there are those who elect to help, while there are those who choose to ignore. there are reasons whether valid or invalid that an individual has and such reasons are at his disposal. the act of rendering support to another creates an admirable atmosphere between two or more parties. when a community is hit by a calamity and everyone dwelling in it is a victim causing shortage of food, no electricity, wanting of security, and many other inequities, the same survivors experiences a feeling of helplessness and despair. there were times when victims themselves opt to take advantage of the scenario, while there were those who wanted to help and even gave it an extra mile. when super typhoon haiyan made history when it destroyed the localities that it directly hit, the victims were shocked. they literally did not know what to do, and they figuratively behaved like zombies because they were walking through the streets with all the debris with no direction looking for elements for ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 41-47 42 survival. as a victim myself who lost loved ones and even valuable properties, i noticed two sides of behavior shown by the victims. there were those who showed there undesirable side but there were those who showed there extraordinary part. the good side was extraordinary that even i myself was in disbelief of what i experienced. i was skeptical of the goodness of the victims that i was made to remember of the comtean altruism. theory comtean altruism auguste comte was a french philosopher responsible in the development of positive philosophy. the idea of his philosophy was to cure the sickness the french society was experiencing during its revolution. further, comte introduces the word altruisme in 1851, and two years later it entered the english language as altruism (comte a. , 1973). altruism or ethical altruism is an ethical doctrine that holds that individuals have a moral obligation to help, serve or benefit others, if necessary at the sacrifice of self interest. in his work catechisme positiviste, comte wrote that altruism “gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence,” and therefore “cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such a notion rests on individualism.” (comte a., 1852). more precisely, an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone except the agent. the core of this teaching was a human person living for others. a person works and lives for the benefit of other people (golub, 2014). he believed that a human person has the moral obligation to love and help another. to fulfill this responsibility would mean the total development of a person as a truly human person. altruists prefer to experience his success with other people to fulfill the same status. in other words, he feels happy when other people are happy and sad when they are otherwise. the ethical philosophy of altruism is an important tool in securing better relationships among men in all societies. for instance, a family needs to practice this philosophy in order to enhance and solidify the strong bond between husband and wife, among children and the family as a whole. it is given for a parent to teach within the family goodwill towards brothers and sisters and help each other solve problems and similar situations for each member to achieve and contented life. from a larger scale, by motivating cooperation rather than conflict, it promotes harmony within communities of any size. of course, peace within communities does not necessarily herald peace between communities, and the two may even be inversely related witness for example, the way in which social strife tends to decrease within countries at war. altruism is often seen as a form of consequentialism, as it indicates that an action is ethically right if it brings good consequences to others. altruism may be seen as similar to utilitarianism, however an essential difference is that the latter prescribes acts that maximize good consequences for all of society, while altruism prescribes maximizing good consequences for everyone except the actor. spencer argued that since the rest of society will almost always outnumber the utilitarian, a genuine utilitarian will inevitably end up practicing altruism or a form of altruism. effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement that maintains that the consequences of our actions for ourselves and others are important, and seeks ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 41-47 43 to maximize the overall quality of these consequences (comte, 1973a & comte a. , 1973b). comte’s altruism urges man to prioritize the social perspective over personal that is, man should live for others. this belief has permeated modern philosophical thinking on morality. c.d. broad characterizes altruism as "the doctrine that each of us has a special obligation to benefit others." (cheney, 1971) w.g. maclagan considers altruism "a duty to relieve the distress and promote the happiness of our fellows...altruism is to...maintain quite simply that a man may and should discount altogether his own pleasure or happiness as such when he is deciding what course of action to pursue." (maclagan, 1954) james fieser states the altruist dictum as "an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone except the agent." (fieser, 2009) b.a.o. williams is a little bit more inclusive, defining altruism as referring "to a general disposition to regard the interests of others, merely as such, as making some claim on one, and, in particular, as implying the possibility of limiting one's own projects" (william, 2006). another author posit that altruism is one ethical prospect that is based on solidarity and justice in catastrophes indicating the disturbance of nature such as the typhoon yolanda (haiyan) (kahambing, 2019) to illustrate, an act of saving a drowning person is an example of altruistic tendency. saving a drowning person is a serious matter for it may cause the loss of life of both the savior and the victim. when a person disregards danger to his life just to save another is a selfless and heroic act. this commendable act values the life of another person at the same time endangering the giver’s own life. helping a neighbor who is in great need whether financially or morally without expecting something in return is another showcase of altruistic approach. just imagine how grateful can that neighbor be when an unexpected genuine assistance is imparted to him. theory application comte and victims of haiyan (yolanda) when haiyan, the strongest typhoon ever recorded in history made landfall, the people living in the hardest hit areas were all victims. there was lack of food and water. many lost their clothing and livelihood. some were desperate since help came late and politics was at its worst when some politicians became idiots rather than leaders. however, these victims even those who lost family members, relatives and friends tried their best to become resilient. instead of resorting to despair and eventual insanity if not death, they stood up and tried to defy odds. there was spontaneous inclination from these people to stand by and embrace with other victims to survive another day and eventually the succeeding days. the survivors were able to withstand the strongest typhoon ever recorded in history to make landfall. the terrible situation after it happened may have been an issue but the survivors view it as another opportunity. an opportunity to help specially their fellow calamity victims. their being victim themselves did not hinder them from being resourceful. these things are characteristics of resiliency, a known attribute of filipinos. resiliency is the ability to be strong in the midst of adversity. defined in the general sense as “efforts to restore or maintain internal or external equilibrium under significant threat by means of human activities ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 41-47 44 including thought and action” (smith & carlson, 1997 p. 236). consistent with this view, resiliency is the capability to organize and make use all available resources not only to help oneself, family and community. it is also an attitude to help everyone out of the devastating impact of the traumatic experience brought by yolanda. it played a very important task in the recovery, rebuilding and in motivating the survivors to move forward toward a secured future. one participant said, “kon deri kita magtrahaho, deri liwat kita makaka-kaon. gin testingan kita han diyos kay maaram man gud hiya nga kaya naton” (daisog, 2014) (if we will not work, we cannot eat. god gave us this trial because he believes that we can survive). another participant also said, “mga buhi kita kay gin tagan kita hin bag-o nga higayon. kinahanglan kita mabuhi. aada naman ngani it mga kauropdan ngan mga kabarangay” (de paz, 2015) (we are alive so this gives us another chance. we have to survive. besides, our families and community are there helping us). they persistently help each other to get back to their feet and move on. four years after the devastating typhoon, leyte has already recovered and is in full gear in its rebuilding efforts. although the whole experience is very hard to forget but the spirit of pakikipagkapwa (being one with the other) pakikisama (being along with) and bayanihan (community spirit) binds them together to rise again. pakikipagkapwa, pakikisama and bayanihan are sacred values that also define who the filipinos are. kakikipagkapwa is treating another person as a fellow human being. pakikisama according to fr. frank lynch, is a camaraderie that makes the filipinos flexible and easy to be with. bayanihan is also a form of camaraderie among the people in the community that connotes helping one another in time of need (jocano 1999, pe-pua & protacio-marcelino, 2000, reyes, 2018). the above mention values were utilized by the survivor themselves to cope with their loss. it was also their tool used to survive the aftermath of the catastrophe. through pakikipagkapwa, pakikisama and bayanihan, they help one another by providing food, shelter, jobs and even burying their dead in the absence of the government help. the said action can be liken to or is analogous to an act called pooling of resources. they put their acts, supply and resources together to be able to do greater things (halstead, 1989). such act helped them survive the calamity. one respondent shared that “pagkatapos gud la han bagyo ngan pag hutos han tubig, kumadto kami han balay han amon uropod. didto kami naki-serong kay na ruba man an amon balay” (espina, 2014) (after the storm and when the flood water subsided, we went to the house of our relatives. we stayed with them because our house was totally destroyed). another participant quips, “madali kami siguro nga naka recover han trauma han yolanda tungod kay nakada man an supporta han amon mga kapamilya” (barantes, 2015) (the reason probably why we were able to recover easily from the trauma of yolanda is because of the support of our families). all of them sustain wound either physically or emotionally, but it did not deter them from supporting one another. nor the wounds sustained by the survivors, stop their aggressiveness to be of services to their fellow men. the sharing happens not only with-in the family and friends but with-in the community. in the community a very strong bond of friendship was developed. the bond formed between these people was a consequence of their smooth ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 41-47 45 interpersonal relationship rooted in their blood ties. together with their strong faith in god, their “formidable armor against suffering caused by disaster” (bankoff, 2003), they eventually arose from the rumbles. as a former seminary professor, fr. isagani petilos, said, “even if we have this kind of situation, there is still hope. yes, we may have been damaged and devastated, but we are not dead” (petilos, 2016). the survivors were challenged by the good pastor to continue to live and be of help to others. help came from ordinary people, most of them from other unaffected places from within and outside the phillipines. the volunteer “panday” (carpenters) from pagadian city, mindanao, for instance are one of them. they were ordinary individuals who belong to the so-called “basic ecclesial comminities” (bec) of the island of mindanao. they came in to help clean the debris and built the destroyed houses of the victims. most of them belong to poor families of pagadian city. despite of the fact that they also need financial help, this did not deter them to travel to the devastated areas in leyte to help. not withstanding what would happen to their respective families if they left to venture on volunteer work, they proceed to help those who need help. when asked they responded that “mas manginahanglan ug tabang ang mga taga deri kaysa sa amo. ang among pamilya ngadto sa amoa, tabangan man pud sa among mga silingan. deli mi magproblema sa ilaha ngadto ngan kasabot man to sila nga gikinahang mi deri. ang mga taga leyte, silingan pud mamo sila.” (anonymous, 2014) (the people from this place need our help more than us. our individual families we left behind will be taken good cared by our neighbors. we are not worried about them, and besides they knew the very reason why we came here. the people of leyte are our neighbors too.) they believe that man has a duty not only to himself, but likewise to his fellow men. if people needs help one is obliged to extend a hand on them. there were many unsung heroes who did volunteer work after typhoon haiyan, doctors, linemen, construction worker, soldiers both from within the country and abroad. they all came to help the people of leyte raise back from the rumble. in the lens of august comte, this is what altruism is, to be a person for others. every individuals have a moral obligation to serve, help, or benefit others. if necessary one has to sacrifice his own self-interest for others. one author posits that comte's system is viewed as both ethical and religious. happiness is not only found in living for others as the supreme end of an act, “but regulative supremacy of social sympathy over the self-regarding instincts” (moran, 2009). his ethical theory may be summarized in this proposition. the dominion of feeling over thought is the normative principle of human conduct, for it is the affective impulses that govern the individual and the race. while it is true that man is under the influence of two affective impulses. which are the egoistic or personal, and the altruistic or social impulses. the egoistic impulse of man refers to an action “which makes any good of the ego the end and motive of action” (fox, 1909). the altruistic or social impulse on the other hand refers to the willingness of man to do things for others (graham, 2010). however, a just balance is impossible between these two existing impulses, one or other must preponderate. this was evident during the aftermath of the said super typhoon. survivors helping each other cope with their loss. there were stories of heroism wherein individuals risk their lives to save others. this particular act of helping, clearly ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 41-47 46 manifest the two affective impulses mentioned by august comte. as to the kind of impulse affected the agent doing the act, depends on the one acting. but if the social or altruistic impulse preponderate, is what comte believe to be morally right because the consequence of that action was more favorable than unfavorable to others except the agent (steiner, 2014 & bykov, 2016). this the first principle of morality according to comte, the regulative supremacy of social sympathy over self-regarding instinct or the subordination of self-love to the benevolent impulses. conclusion typhoon haiyan (yolanda) may have been the strongest typhoon in history to make landfall, but the survivors were stronger to have overcome the adversities and painful effects of it. it may have been hurting and insurmountable for a number of survivors but the ability to cope positively was illustrated no matter what, by the victims. the idealistic standpoint of comte’s altruism was evidently displayed by the survivors as well as non-victims from neighboring town and provinces. first, the victims themselves helped each other by sharing what they had and what was left of them. it is true that the major rule in life is selfpreservation, but not so much with the case of the victims of haiyan. sharing the smallest things they had was spontaneous. many lost there loved ones and properties yet they still managed to give to their fellow survivors. secondly, it was obviously dangerous to enter the severely damaged areas because there were no police forces and other authorities right after the typhoon since they were also victims, but many of these responders from other regions proceeded to the ravaged places to comfort the victims and give anything of great value. these valuable acts are immeasurable and priceless for the giver deliberately neglected the dangers to themselves all for the good of the victims. there are valuable lessons that people can get out of certain tragic episodes in life. the intensity may vary from one experience to another. every human person will have to experience sad moments in life. nobody is spared from such unwanted scenes, nevertheless, he should overcome it and the ability to heal the hurt should be utilized. comte’s altruism is a benevolent doctrine. more so, it is gem in times of adversities. helping a person is excellent, but helping another in times of great difficulty is exceptional. references anonymous (2014, august 14). helping disaster victims. (d. bautista, interviewer) bankoff, g. (2003), cultures of disaster –society and hazard in the philippines. london: routledge. barantes, r. (2014, august 14). helping disaster victims. (d. bautista, interviewer) batson, c. (2011). altruism in humans. new york: oxford university press. cheney, d. r. (1971), broad's critical essays in moral philosophy, allen & unwin, 283–301. comte, a. (1852). catéchisme positivist: ou, sommaire exposition de la religion universelle en treize entretiens systématiques entre une femme et un prêtre de l'humanité (2éd ed.). paris: e. leroux. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 41-47 47 comte, a. (1853). cours de philosophie positive. paris: bachelier. comte, a. (1854). système de politique positive. république occidentale. système de politique positive, ou traité de sociologie instituant la religion de l'humanité. (troisième édition. république occidentale. ed.). comte, a. (1973a). system of positive polity (vol. 1): containing the general view of positivism & introductory principles. translated by john henry bridges. new york: burt franklin. comte, a. (1973b). system of positive polity (vol. 4): containing the theory of the future of man. translated by richard congreve and henry dix hutton. new york: burt franklin. daisog, e. (2014, august 14). helping disaster victims. (d. bautista, interviewer) de paz, a. (2015, january 5). helping disaster victims. (d. bautista, interviewer) espina, n. (2014, july 24). helping disaster victims. (d. bautista, interviewer) fieser, j. (2009). great issues in philosophy. retrieve from www.utm.edu/staff/jfieser/120 fox, j. (1909). egoism. in the catholic encyclopedia. new york: robert appleton company. retrieved may 9, 2019 from new advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05328a.htm golub, c, (2014). altruism: a natural thought history of an idea. honors thesis collection. 190. retrieve from http://repository.wellesley.edu/thesiscollection/190 halstead, p., & j. o’shea. (1989). introduction: cultural response to risk and uncertainty. in bad year economics cultural response to risk and uncertainty. cambridge: cambridge university press. jocano, f.l. (1999). working with filipinos – a cross-cultural encounter. quezon city: punlad research house. kahambing, j. (2019). living the anthropocene ‘end of natures’ to ethical prospects. eubios journal of asian and international bioethics, 29(4), 149150 moran, g. (1991). understanding religion and being religious. pace, 21, 249 252. maclagan, w.g. (1954). self and others: a defense of altruism. the philosophical quarterly, 4(15), 109-127. pe-pua, r., & protacio-marcelino, e. (2000). sikolohiyang pilipino (filipino psychology): a legacy of virgilio g. enriquez. asian journal of social psychology, 3, 49-71. retrieve from http://ww.indigenouspsych.org/members/pepua,%20rogelia/pepua_marceli no_2000 petilos, i. (2016, august 14). helping disaster victims. (d. bautista, interviewer) reyes, m.e., et al, (2017). death anxiety & self-esteem of filipino youths & older adults. north american journal of psychology, 19(2). smith, c., & carlson, b. e. (1997). stress, coping, and resilience. social service review, 71, 231-257. williams, b.a.o, (2006), ethics and the limits of philosophy. london: routledge. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 123-133 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 123 hawaii’s ecological imperialism: postcolonial ecocriticism reading on kiana davenport’s shark dialogues kristiawan indriyanto universitas gadjah mada kristiawan.i@mail.ugm.ac.id doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2019.020202 received 2 january 2019; revised 21 february 2019; accepted 2 march 2019 abstract recent studies of postcolonialism have explored the interconnection between postcolonial and environmental/eco-criticism. studies from huggan (2004), nixon (2005), cilano and deloughrey (2007) counter the underlying assumption that these criticisms stand in opposition toward each other by pointing out the overlapping areas of interest between postcolonial and ecocriticism and the complementary aspect of these two criticisms (buell, 2011). postcolonial ecocriticism, as theorized by huggan and tiffin (2010) and deloughrey and handley (2011) asserts the intertwined correlation between environmental degradation and the marginalization of the minority/indigenous ethic groups which inhabit a particular place. the underlying capitalist and mechanistic ideologies in which nature is perceived only of their intrinsic values and usefulness toward (western) humans illustrates total disregard to the original owner of the colonized land, the indigenous people. this perspective is underlined by serpil oppermann’s (2007) concept of ecological imperialism to underline the anthropocentric perspective that legitimate western domination toward the colonies’ natural resources. although discussion of postcolonial ecocriticism has encompassed diverse regions such as caribbean, africa and asia, scant attention has been given toward pacific archipelago especially hawai’i. through reading on kiana davenport’s shark dialogues (1994), this paper explores how american colonialism results in ecological imperialism in this island chain. it is hoped that this analysis can contribute toward enriching the discussion on postcolonial ecocriticism. keyword: postcolonial ecocriticism, ecological imperialism, hawai’ian literature. introduction locating postcolonial ecocriticism one of the latest developments in literary criticism is the recognition that environmental problems are inseparable with the marginalization of the people which inhabit a particular region. several environmental issues such as climate change, deforestation, food and water shortages, and also the steady increase in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 123-133 124 nuclear and chemical pollutants remains linked with the question of race, how the minorities and indigenous people are more prone in facing this environmental problem (feldman and hsu, 2007, pp. 199). this increasing ecological awareness calls for further refinement in literary criticism to better represent this problem. although one branch of literature criticism, ecocriticism which emerged since the publication of the ecocriticism reader (1996) by glotfelty and fromm is motivated by the assertion that “scholar of human culture can no longer ignore the environment” (in james, 2015, pp. 23), it is only in the recent years that the question of environmentalism from the minorities has been represented. this white-sided bias is criticized by one foremost scholar of ecocriticism, cheryll glotfelty. she argues that “as a predominantly white-movement, ecocriticism will only become a multi-ethnic movement after it begin to incorporate diverse voices in their discussion.” (1996, pp. xxv) the increasing scope of environmental criticism by incorporation of third-world literature and also ethnic minorities lead into intersection with postcolonial criticism which has represent the socio-political dimension of minorities’ marginalization and othering. postcolonial ecocriticism as the intersection between postcolonialism and ecocriticism emerges in the early 2010’s through publication of two seminal works, postcolonial ecocriticism (2010) by huggan and tiffin and also postcolonial ecologies: literature of the environment by de loughrey and handley (2011). although these aforementioned books become the forerunners of postcolonial ecocriticism, several studies, either books or academic articles already explore the connection between colonialism and environmental injustice. several early works of postcolonial ecocriticism are ecological imperialism (1986) by crosby, green imperialism (1995) by grove and romanticism and colonial diseases (1999) which underline the “historical embeddedness of ecology in european imperial enterprise” (huggan and tiffin, 2010, pp. 3). these studies reveal how colonialism also transform the ecology in new world (america) through exploitation of the non-human materials for the benefits of the metropolitan centre. regarding academic articles, there are two notable articles, first is “greening postcolonialism” (2004) by huggan that explores the devastation of narmada valley and the resulting uprooting of the local adivasis ethnic group. second article, “environmentalism and postcolonialism (2005) by nixon argues more sceptically concerning the seemingly polar opposite nature of postcolonialism and environmental/eco-criticism. nixon (2005, pp. 247-249) underlines several contrasting premises, (1) postcolonialism focuses more on hybridity and cross-cultural interaction instead of the ‘pure’ nature which is stressed by ecocritic –mainly of romantic tradition(2) postcolonialism underlines the displacement of people and their alienation while ecocriticism focuses on reconnecting people to the world around them and lastly (3) postcolonialism excavates the forgotten pre-colonial past, while ecocriticism is more ahistorical and timeless in outlook. the antipathy and hostility towards reconciling postcolonialism and ecocriticism actually failed to recognize that even the forerunners of postcolonial theory has addressed the aftermath of colonialism in the exploitation of the landscape for the benefit of the western imperial power. as stated by estok (2014, pp. 22), postcolonialism has underlined “the joint oppression of the original owner of the land and of that the land itself”. this perspective is further ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 123-133 125 highlighted through edward said’s statement that “imperialism after all is an act of geographical violence, though which virtually every space in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under control” (1993, pp. 77). moreover, said stresses also that “the main battle of imperialism is over land.” (1993, pp. xiii). summarizing prior opinions from prominent postcolonial scholars, it is proved that the scepticism addressed by nixon is incorrect, as postcolonialism already concern with environmental issues especially relating it with colonialism. to restate, “the easy assertion that the postcolonial field is inherently anthropocentric (human-centred) overlooks a long history of ecological concern in postcolonial criticism” (huggan and tiffin, 2010, pp. 2). contextualizing postcolonial ecocriticism, it can be underlined that this theoretical perspective has developed into a well-developed paradigm which encompasses premises from both its parental disciplines. postcolonial ecocriticism stresses that “postcolonialism and ecocriticism is more as complementary as contrary forms of activist (or proto-activist) intervention” (buell, 2011, pp. 98), this illustration negates the worrying spectre that surrounding the advent of postcolonial ecocriticism. instead of standing in opposite spectrum through the assumption that postcolonialism only advocates human issues while ecocriticism places more emphasis on non-human, postcolonial ecocriticism asserts the connection between situation of marginalization and othering of minorities and the degradation of their environment. this interconnectedness is aptly summarized by deloughrey and handley statement that “biotic and political ecologies are materially and imaginatively intertwined” (2011, pp. 13). why hawai’ian literature? this paper aims to contribute in enriching the discussion of postcolonial ecocriticism through the reading of a hawai’ian novel, shark dialogues (1994) written by kiana davenport. although the analysis of postcolonial ecocriticism has encompassed various regions such as minority groups in united states (adamson, 2001 and reed, 2009) caribbean (james, 2015), and asia especially india (mukherjee, 2006) scant attention has been given toward the impact of colonialism through environmental degradation in pacific region. the isolated locations of several island chains in pacific oceans conceal the fact that this region is highly affected by colonialism of western powers that persist into the present day in which hawai’i is not excepted. (kay-trask,1993, pp. 25). as a by-product of colonialism, it can be underlined that the ecology in pacific islands especially hawai’i is an example of postcolonial ecology, an ecology which was and still is shaped by colonialism (deloughrey and handley, 2011). the arrival of the white settlers (haole) which started from james cook’s expedition in the 1778 irrevocably changed the landscape and political situation in hawai’i. while in the bygone era the interaction among the islands were limited through small canoes, the arrival of the whites (haole), first as traders, later as missionaries, settlers, and colonizers shaped the demographics in hawai’i through diseases that devastated the indigenous islanders. (kuykendall, 1965, pp. 1) this situation in hawai’i is firmly illustrated by said’s quotation: “a changed ecology also introduced a changed political system that, in the eyes of the nationalist poet or visionary, seemed retrospectively to have alienated the people from their authentic traditions.” (1993, pp. 77) american colonialism does not only ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 123-133 126 permanently alters the hawai’ian landscape but they also introducing western epistemology of human and non-human relationship that threatened the hawai’ian ancestral alona aina (love and respect towards the land and their entities). this is primarily underlined by how tourist brochures and pamphlets only emphasise hawai’ian hospitality to the foreigners through aloha (sasaki, 2016, pp. 643) instead of promoting aloha aina as the more proper terminology. sasaki marks that what is marketed into the outside world as hawai’i is an idealized tropical paradise in the middle of the pacific while foregrounding the ongoing racial and environmental problems in this archipelago. criticism towards american colonialism especially regarding the forced appropriation of indigenous land for military, tourist, and industrial purposes is particularly addressed through hawai’ian literature. writers such as kiana davenport, kristiana kahakauwila and victoria nalani kneubuhl challenges the stereotypical depiction of hawai’i as south seas paradise by asserting the impact of american domination both on hawai’ian ecology and the marginalization of indigenous islanders. davenport in both her shark dialogues (1994) and the house of many gods (2006) explores the degraded and putrid environment in wainae coast and o’ahu islands where the locals are forced to live in shanties while their ancestral homeland in makua valley is being used by american navy to test heavy artillery from its battleships. the conflict between western epistemology and traditional hawai’ian way of living as a result of american imperialism also becomes a prevalent subject matter in hawai’ian literature. davenport highlights how the anthropocentric bias concerning environment propagated by the western colonial irreparably transform the hawai’ian landscape. to conclude this section, this paper asserts that reading of kiana davenport’s shark dialogues can provide further insight regarding postcolonial ecocriticism as a discipline. the rising number of criminal cases is no longer a strange matter in indonesia. criminal cases might happen anywhere. along with this issue, the duty of the police officers increases as well. conducting investigations is one of them. in conducting investigations special abilities are needed by investigators. the ability to communicate, the ability to make questions that can reveal the motives of the crimes committed, and the ability to disclose the secrets of the suspects are included in the category of capabilities that must be possessed by investigators. investigation processes are done to uncover the motives for crimes committed. investigation is not an easy thing to do because the reported party does not always disclose the motives. therefore, the researchers examined the investigation processes of several criminal cases situbondo police station. investigation processes are related to the question and answer processes that are carried out by investigators and interviewees. in this study, the investigation processes were examined with pragmatics, a branch of linguistics that discusses languages in their application. this research focused on speech acts carried out by investigators and interviewees. therefore, the research problems were formulated in a number of ways, namely the types of illocutionary acts found during the investigation processes and how the use of illocutionary acts influences the interviewee’s trustworthiness. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 123-133 127 related researches have been carried out by several researchers. hadyani (2014) in her research, examined the types of questions, responses and presuppositions that emerged in investigative interview processes. the research findings show that in the case of fraud and embezzlement, most of the questions are open and a small number of questions are closed. meanwhile, in the case of dump truck theft, most of the questions are open and a small number of questions are closed. another research that is also still related to this study has been conducted by aziz (2014). his research on forensic linguistics focuses on the quality of the question formulas put forward by police investigators and their relation to the potential for full and correct disclosure of information provided, the construction of discourse developed by police investigators to disclose information specifically in relation to the strategy of changing the topic of conversation during the investigation, and the level of compliance or regularity of police investigators in compiling bap as a report containing complete information. theoretical review as a burgeoning discipline, one of the difficulties faced by postcolonial ecocriticism is the definition of key terminologies or concepts. to solve this polemic, postcolonial ecocriticism appropriates several terminologies that has previously been coined by other scholars. one notable example is ecological imperialism which is originally theorized by a botanist, alfred crosby through his book ecological imperialism : the biological expansion of europe (1986). crosby highlights how the european colonialism to the new world (america) is followed also by the introduction of non-native biomes such as pigs, cows and horses, further ensued by the european way of domesticating animals, plantations and also farming. crosby addresses how “the colonial practices of farming, plantation crops, livestock raising, clearance of tress, and the introduction of non-native species are the main component of biological expansion, which ultimately altered” (1986, pp. 75) crosby’s seminal work of ecological imperialism is further theorized by serpil oppermann through her article ecological imperialism in british colonial fictions (2007). oppermann underlines how the european expansion to the new world which irrevocable alter the indigenous ecosystem is supported by anthropocentric western paradigm that considers non-human merely as community. ecological imperialism is not seen only as “apparently a simple pattern of invasion, land-clearing, and destruction” (huggan and tiffin, 2010, pp. 8) but instead is an “intentional destruction through exploitation, extraction, and transfer of natural resources of the colonized lands in the interest of scientific and economic progress” (oppermann, 2007, pp. 180). the view that nature exists only for the benefit for (western) human empties nature of its intrinsic values and turned it into a wholesale commodity (2007, pp. 186). in western epistemology which derives from john locke and rousseau, an uncultivated land is considered a wasteland (terra nihilus). western settlers considered that their annexation and appropriation of indigenous land is justified, as the indigenous people were ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 123-133 128 considered unable to tame and cultivate nature based on western way of agriculture, plantation, and animal husbandry. thus, the land of indigenous people can be appropriated directly by the ‘industrious and rational’ colonist. (benton, 2007, pp. 37) the concept of ecological imperialism is closely linked with environmental racism as the guiding paradigm that places the indigenous people in the nonhuman sphere. hence inhumane treatment toward them is justified as they are considered in the same domain with nature. as illustrated by val plumwood, environmental racism is employed to “rationalize the exploitation of animal (and animalized human) ‘others’ in the name of a human –and reason centred culture that is as least a couple of millennia old” (2003, pp. 53). plumwood derives her concept of environmental racism from the seminal work of orientalism by edward said (1977) which asserts the necessity of an alter ego in constructing identity. expanding on said’s terminology of orientalism, plumwood underlines that othering as a process is linked also with the indigenous people’s closeness with nature. western epistemology strongly enforces the duality of nature and culture, in which “humans as a group were set apart as rational and mindful agents against mechanistically conceived nature elements of “nature”, reduced to mere matter” (plumwood, 2007, pp. 251). the closeness of non-western civilizations toward nature caused the west to regard the indigenous people as part of ‘nature’ instead of ‘culture’, as is exemplified by plumwood’s assertion; “the sphere of ‘nature’ has been taken to include women and supposedly ‘backward’ or ‘primitive’ nature, who were exemplifying an earlier and more animal stages of human development” (2003, pp. 52). findings and discussion davenport’s shark dialogues can be considered as an example of generational saga in which the scale –both regarding the characters and the plotis epic. although the primary point of view and the most memorable character in this story is pono, a kahuna (shaman) who is also the grandmother of four granddaughters –jess, vanya, rachel, and ming –, davenport also employs multiple narrations or polyvocality to narrate the situation in hawai’ian archipelago in more details. davenport also explores the spiritual dimension of pono as a shaman in which she possesses the ability to peer into the life of her ancestors, a haole (white person) named matthys conradson as her great-great grandfather, pono’s grandmother emma and her maternal lineage from lili. the shifting temporality regarding the plot of shark dialogues, in which the story moves back into past events before coming back into present era enables davenport to chronicle the story of hawai’i’s ecological imperialism from the arrival of the white settlers. the first phase of hawai’ian ecological imperialism by the haole is underlined by two main factors, the establishment of hawai’i as a major trading post in the middle of the pasific ocean and also the forbidding of indigenous customs by christian missionaries. davenport employs matthys as the primary point of view in this period through his relationship with kelonikoa, a kanaka maoli (islanders). their intended marriage is marred by the unwillingness of a christian congregationalist bishop who asserts that, “if you are sure you want to marry a kanaka, she must take introduction, become a christian first…. they are ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 123-133 129 without morals, the women row out to ships, offering themselves” (davenport, 1994, pp. 56). refused marriage sacrament in christian rites, matthys and kelonika are married in hawai’ian customs, by a kahuna. their dialogues emphasize the disdain and hostility the hawai’ians perceive towards the christian missionary, the mikanele who “teach hawai’ian forget language, gods, taboos. even forget respect to the sea.” (davenport, 1994, pp. 56). the temptation of wealth caused the hawai’ians to lease, and then sell their vast land into the haole settlers, without realizing that the terms of the contrast is vastly disadvantaged for the indigenous people. “the terminology in the forms was so entangled and complex, even matthys could not translate it. it was a ploy, a way to encourage natives to selling their land, which left more land available for haole.” (davenport, 1994, pp. 58-59). the strategic location of hawai’i in the middle of the pacific causes commerce to flourish, first from trading and secondly by the establishment of sugar plantations. both legal regulations or unsavoury acts such as smuggling of opium and human traffics are seen in ships from america, europe and the far east that docked in hawa’ian archipelago. “in the early 1840’s, wealth was being accumulated overnight in honolulu –human cargo smuggled in from the orient as cheap labour, opium packed in champagne bottles, rare jade and gold slipped past immigration authorities.” (davenport, 1994, pp. 58). followed the vast interexchange of both people and goods, diseases struck the hawai’ian isles. trading and whaling ships from around the world spread syphilis, measles, typhoid, whooping cough and smallpox. the calls of general vaccination are too late to restrict the spread of diseases especially in the slums which killed thousands of hawai’ians. faced with this situation, the hawai’ian government regulates a law which forbid the trading of opium. the decline of trading enables sugar industry to develop, all over the hawai’ian landscape vast tract of lands are being converted into sugar plantations. “…. sugar was the real king in hawai’i. a reciprocity treaty – which would later give the united states control of pearl harbour – allowed duty free access of hawai’ian sugar into the mainland. new steamships and railroads moved sugar away from isolated plantations to the docks. but large amounts of capital were needed to finance the plantations. sugar stock trading boomed, and mathys invest heavily” (davenport, 1994, pp. 77) one pivotal event that illustrate the beginning of hawai’ian ecological imperialism in this early period is the signing of great mahele or land divisions by king kamehameha iii. the terms of great mahele abolishes the long-held feudalism of the clans and enables the haole to “buy lots in fee simple from the rest of the islands’ acreage.” (davenport, 1994, pp. 58) davenport underlines how the enforcement of this treaty symbolizes “the exact moment these islands had become an american colony, officially separating hawai’ians from their land” (davenport, 1994, pp. 71). this moment marks the vast seizure of hawai’ian ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 123-133 130 landscape by the haoles and transform it through plantations and industry which remains in place decades later. “rich haoles build huge plantation estates as the quality of life deteriorated for hawai’ians.” (davenport, 1994, pp. 63) while the haoles live extravagantly in excess, the indigenous people are driven away in shelters near the plantations or living in the slums’ back alley. this deteriorating situation worsen by the increasing needs of workforce to supplant the native islanders which lead into immigration from asian countries. “compounding the tension in honolulu were the diverse ethnic groups imported for “slave work” on plantations. chinese or japanese. each week groups of them went on strike for decent wages, humane living conditions, the constant threat of rebellion and revolution frightening away international trade, throwing the islands into chaos.” (davenport, 1994, pp. 82) davenport’s depiction of pono as a kahuna, symbol of the dying remnant of hawai’ian old tradition further underlines the impact of ecological imperialism in hawai’i. the ruined fortune of matthys after kelonika is caught helping the last disposed hawai’ian queen lili‘uokalani forces his descendants to live in poverty such as pono and her mother, lili who has to work in a plantation. their life is marred by harsh works and harassments from the haole supervisors. it is depicted henceforth, sunbaked years. machete chorus of workers hacking in unison, sickly sweet smell of pineapple clogging their pores. years later, the smoke of cigars would float a remembrance of old wahine in baggy pants, googles and rubber boots, harvesting by hand, then squatting over cold tea, puffing cigars. (davenport, 1994, pp. 102) ironically, although matthys is one of the earliest forerunners of vast plantations in hawai’i, his descendants are forced to work in it. davenport employs shifting focus in point of view to better explore the plight of hawai’ian workers in the plantation in the form of pono and her family. previously, the deteriorating live of hawai’ians is only mentioned in brief, and from pono’s perspective davenport is able to explore the harshness of plantation life in full spectrum. the kanaka workers are treated similar with their crops, merely as commodity that exist for the benefit of the haole owners. one event that underlines the parallelization of indigenous people with ‘nature’ is the false accusation that the kanaka labourers are running a distillery, selling bootleg liquor. “one day when she was thirteen, four haole cradling rifles rode towards the plantation. workers ran for their pistols while the horses were still trotting specks….a man leaned down from his horse, whacking ben with his rifle butt. lili ran forward, swinging a machete, planting the blade in his forearm. rifles exploded, soil shot up in their faces. outnumbered, workers dropped their guns, were bound by rope in a circle.” (davenport, 1994, pp. 103) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 123-133 131 davenport portrays the shifting nature of hawai’ian landscape, from vast plantations into the establishment of several metropolises through pono’s journey into adulthood and later venerable years. from pono’s venture across the islands, she recognizes the beauty of her native lands, “it was like gliding across an old, old tapestry –farmers guiding ox teams through emerald rice paddies…. the searching beauty and wealth of her birth-sands, that whites were stealing away.” (davenport, 1994, pp. 105). although the terms of the great mahele –land division – were finally repealed through the hawai’ians homes commissions in 1920, the old ways of living are already gone. “instead of verdant little acres where people could plant small gardens and live on a fish-and poi-economy, what pono saw were sad little homestead plots on barren lands, no irrigation, no forest, or running water.” (davenport, 1994, pp. 105) the previous passage underlines the far-reaching impact of american ecological imperialism that displace the hawai’ian from their ancestral living condition. it should be asserted that although the land itself are returned through the abolishment of great mahele, reconciliation with the past living of indigenous hawai’ians prove to be impossible. it is not possible to sustain harmonious connection with nature through personal gardens in the rapidly growing western settlements in hawai’i. honolulu, the capital of hawai’i has become a western city similar with the cities in mainland america, a symbol of the entrenching american colonialism in hawai’i and the victory of anthropocentric way of living. the last phase of hawai’ian ecological imperialism is continuation of military domination in hawai’i which started since the second world war. the attack on pearl harbour which lead to american intervention in the war causes the american navy to keep on garrisoning hawai’i in fear for future attacks. although the second world war had ended decades ago, the continuing spectre of soviet invasion during the cold war causes the stockpiling of nuclear weaponry and nuclear-powered ships in pearl harbour. toxic, pollution, and the danger of nuclear radiation keep on accumulating every year without any adequate means to dispel it. davenport summarizes this ongoing ecological imperialism through this passage. irreversible pollution of coral gardens at kāneohe. stockpiling of nuclear weapons at waikele. radiation of productive fishing grounds at pu’uloa by nuclear submarines. a proposed rail transit system on o’ahu, that would devastate the tiny island’s fragile volcanic foundations, traumatizing hawai ‘i’s entire ecological system. (davenport, 1994, pp. 364) pono’s status as a kahuna which possesses close connection with her surroundings, both biotic and non-biotic material causes her to suffer from the destruction of the landscape near her home island in keahole. she occasionally hears the land cries out in terror, “ainaaa…. ainaaaa…the land…the land” (davenport,1994, pp. 214). she strongly denounces the disrespect shown by american government’s intention to build five power plants, just above the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 123-133 132 ancient, burial shrines of local hawai’ian ancestors. moreover, the sacred trees all around the burial site will be “splintered into wood chips, burned to generate further electricity.” (davenport, 1994, pp. 214) these acts illustrate the lack of respect the american has toward nature and the presence of sacred grounds as they merely consider the necessity of land-clearing in order to construct power plants for electrical usage. toxic pollution and nuclear radiations due to the militarization of hawai’ian archipelago marks the closure of davenport’s narration in shark dialogues. davenport contextualizes how her homeland in hawai’i has undergo a far-ranging process of ecological imperialism since the arrival of american haoles which persists into the present era. through the character of pono, and her ability as a kahuna to recall her past ancestors davenport chronicles the beginning of hawai’ian colonialism until how it is depicted in the contemporary period through more recent issues. the anthropocentric perspective of the colonizers caused them to consider the richness of hawai’i as merely commodity to be exploited for the benefits of the metropolitan centre. modern hawai’i, with all the environmental degradation that occurs is an aftermath of the ongoing american ecological imperialism, as it is depicted in davenport’s shark dialogues. conclusion to summarize, it can be stated that davenport’s shark dialogues aptly chronicles the different phases of hawai’i ecological imperialism. the shifting temporality and multiple protagonists in the narration enables davenport to chart the beginning of ecological imperialism in hawai’ian archipelago from the arrival of the haoles until the continuing presence of the whites in the contemporary era. this process started with the prohibition of indigenous way of living especially concerning nature, and is marked by the terms of great mahele or the land division. this unequal treaty causes westerners to own vast land in hawai’i and transform the landscape into vast plantation for the benefits of the whites. the kanaka maoli are forced to work harshly in the plantation in which their lives are considered not more important than the crops they yield. moreover, other forms of ecological imperialism also manifest in the lingering presence of american military which pollute the nearby waters and also the desecration of sacred lands and grounds for electrical purpose. to restate, it can be asserted that reading of hawa’ian literature in general and shark dialogues in general can provide further insight regarding postcolonial ecocriticism. references adamson, j. (2001). american indian literature, environmental justice and ecocriticism: the middle place. arizona: university of arizona press benton, t. (2007). humans and nature: from locke and rousseau to darwin and wallace. the sage handbook of environment and society, 35-49. buell, l. (2011). ecocriticism: some emerging trends. qui parle, 19(2), 87-115 cilano, c., & deloughrey, e. (2007). against authenticity: global knowledges and postcolonial ecocriticism. interdisciplinary studies in literature and environment, 14(1), 71-87. crosby, a. w. (1986). ecological imperialism: the biological expansion of europe. cambridge: cambridge university press ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 2, march 2019, pp. 123-133 133 davenport, k. (1994). shark dialogues. new york: penguin group deloughrey, e. & handley, g. b. (2011). postcolonial ecologies: literature of the environment. oxford: oxford university press estok, s. c. (2014). afterword: reckoning with the irreversibilites in biotic and political ecologies. ariel: a review of international english literature, 44 (4), 219-232 feldman, m. b. & hsu, h. l. (2007). introduction: race, environment, and representation. discourse, 29, 199-214 glotfelty, c. (1996). introduction: literary studies in an age of environmental crisis. in c. glotfelty and h. fromm (eds.), the ecocriticism reader: landmarks in literary ecology. (pp. 15-27). athens: university of georgia press. huggan, g. (2004). greening postcolonialism: ecocritical perspectives. modern fiction studies, 50(3), 701-733 huggan, g. & tiffin, h. (2015). postcolonial ecocriticism: literature, animals, environment. routledge. james, e. (2015). the storyworld accord: econarratology and postcolonial narratives. lincoln: university of nebraska press kay-trask, h. (1993). from a native daughter: colonialism and sovereignty in hawai’i. honolulu: university of hawai’i press. kuykendall, r. s. (1965). the hawaiian kingdom. vol. 1, 1778-1854: foundation and transformation. university of hawaii. mukherjee, u. p. (2006). surfing the second waves: amitav ghosh’s tide country. new formations, 59, 144-157 nixon, r. (2005). environmentalism and postcolonialism. postcolonial studies and beyond. oppermann, s. (2007). ecological imperialism in british colonial fiction. journal of faculty of letters prof. dr. hacattepe universitesi, 24(1), 179-194 plumwood, v. (2003). decolonizing relationships with nature. in william h. adams and m. mulligan (eds.), decolonizing nature: strategies for conservation in a post-colonial era. (pp. 51-78). london: earthscan. plumwood, v. (2007). “environmental ethics” in the sage handbook of environment and society. ed. jules pretty, et al. london: sage publication. p. 250-266 said, e. (1993). culture and imperialism. london: vintage. sasaki, c. t. (2016). threads of empire: militourism and the aloha wear industry in hawai’i. american quarterly, 68(3), 634-667 https://www.google.com/search?safe=strict&rlz=1c1vsng_enid693id695&q=athens,+georgia&stick=h4siaaaaaaaaaopge-luz9u3scgytihxajmnlbpn8rq0msqt9jpzc3jsk0sy8_p084vse_myqxjbngkr9msiosxiohbg4sjwfsesjns8yh0f91sgqsxeabkap4buaaaa&sa=x&ved=2ahukewjn7vzcri7hahw57hmbhr0bbegqmxmoatategqicban ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 21, march 2023, pp. 240-250 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 240 blurring the boundaries: the east-west predicament in pamuk’s a strangeness in my mind catharina brameswari sanata dharma university, indonesia correspondence: catharinabrameswari@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.4930 received 27 july 2022; accepted 22 february 2023 abstract this research focuses on orhan pamuk’s a strangeness in my mind. since the ottoman empire, modernity that is represented by the west has become a threat and seduction. due to the issue, this research is conducted to highlight the transformation of i̇stanbul, analyse turkey’s political agenda which enormously affects i̇stanbul and its citizens’ identity formation process, and investigate the result of the east-west predicament towards the main characters. this research is a descriptive qualitative method which employs homi bhabha’s discourse on postcolonialism to uncover the predicament of the oscillation. the findings unveil 1) how i̇stanbul’s cosmopolitanism and uniqueness that have disappeared bring such a grieve towards the life of the citizens; 2) the ambivalence that is caused by both atatürk and erdoğan’s political agendas; and 3) the east-west oscillation which has led to melancholy and confusion. in addition, mevlut’s strangeness mind is a bridge that tries to connect his friends and relatives who have different political views. importantly, he also tries to blur the boundaries and promote tolerance towards various groups, religions, cultures, and traditions. keywords: boundary, hybridity, modernization, oscillation introduction this paper aims to unveil the predicament of the east and west which is presented in pamuk’s a strangeness in my mind (asimm). his love for i̇stanbul is beautifully captured to challenge the boundaries which always separate eastern and western group in turkey. since the ottoman empire, the reign of mustafa kemal, and the rise of the islamic movement in present time, turkey is always in an ambivalence and oscillation to have a fix-ideal identity. in this novel, orhan pamuk, who usually discusses the issue on modernity, now comes with the same theme but in a different area. since the akp won the election, erdoğan’s agenda to bring back the glory of the islamic tradition is unstoppable. he starts removing atatürk’s secular law on the banned headscarf, the access to buy alcohol, and religion that is under the state control. this condition leaves confusion to many people who have lived under the founder’s ideology for many decades. the problems on the identity searching and identity formation process are topics which are always interesting to be discussed. in fact, the issue related to mailto:catharinabrameswari@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v6i2.4930 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 240-250 241 identity formation is quite universal. being caught between worlds, living in the ambivalence, and bargaining the oscillation are pamuk’s major subjects which represent turkey’s recent political crisis. the ethic-cleansing policies happened as the struggle to develop and construct a turkish national identity (jain, 2019). on the other hand, indonesia also has a quite similar experience in building its national identity since there are various cultures, races, and ethnics. some groups also have an agenda to simplify indonesia’s enormous cultural diversity, heterogeneity, and complexity. moreover, both turkey and indonesia also face a big massacre and ethnic cleansing that happened in the past. a strangeness in my mind underlines the binary opposition between east and west, secularists and islamist, traditionist and modernists. through mevlut—the main character in a strangeness in my mind—pamuk wants to criticise the conservatives who insist that turkey should live under another identity. furthermore, pamuk also tries to reflect the real-life problem which happened in turkey. in his novel, pamuk also illustrates and describes the feeling of melancholy that is felt by the people of i̇stanbul towards the old memories of the grand of the ottoman empire or even the worsening economic conditions and istanbul’s impoverished population. through this novel, pamuk wants to criticise the ruling leader of his country and the future by using the past events that are beautifully presented. this novel is important to be analysed because we are asked to take a look at the real problem in turkey and how the citizens try to find their happiness. moreover, readers are also invited to observe how the authoritarian leader has brought melancholy in people’s life. this historical novel was also selected because it contains a criticism towards the traditionalists and the secularists that want to create a single ideal identity for turkey. based on the issues mentioned above, this research puts special focus on the attempt to scrutinize the predicament of traditional and modernity which leads to the movement on finding a new ideal identity. moreover, readers are also invited to respect and maintain the diversity of all cultures and traditions. importantly, it is also a reminder to develop future generation’s empathy to understand the suffering of others and the feeling of melancholy caused by poverty and the repressive political movement. this research is also an attempt to reveal the issue on in-betweenness, ambivalence, mimicry, and hybridity that the novel intends to propose. as we can see that mevlut actually wants to be modern though he is a religious man who is afraid of god. pamuk’s works which mostly problematize the tension, oscillation, and predicament of the east and the west always invite many scholarly discussions. the romanticization of turkey’s tensions, reproduces these tensions of turkey in reality become another way to highlight turkey’s dualities by highlighting turkey’s hybridity (yalkin & yanik, 2018). from two previous research, none of them problematized turkey’s never-ending problem in the search of what is called as official identity. as a result, this paper tries to full fill the niches that is still possible to be explored. babayev (2015) focuses on the postmodern narrative mode of the novels which highlights the relation between the text and the readers. moreover, another research conducted by gülnur demirci in “decentred epical hero in orhan pamuk’s a strangeness in my mind” highlights “the cultural memory of modern turkey” (p. 42) by using postmodern approach to “deconstruct the modern(ist) epic heroes” (p. 32). the on-going process of finding ideal identity ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 240-250 242 is always an interesting topic to be discussed. however, the other researchers’ perspectives on this novel are essential to be discussed and used as the stepping stones to start this research. based on the background and the issues mentioned above, this study is conducted with the goals: 1) the depiction of i̇stanbul and mevlut’s complex relationship with the city; 2) turkey’s political agenda which enormously affects i̇stanbul and its citizens’ identity formation process; and 3) the result of the eastwest predicament towards the main characters. since this new perspective underlines the problem in between choosing a left-wing or a right-wing, i employ homi bhabha’s discourse on postcolonialism which focuses on in-betweenness, ambivalence, mimicry, and hybridity. method this research is a descriptive qualitative method which uses documentation as the data collection technique. the researchers used two types of sources which were primary and secondary sources. the primary source of this research is a strangeness in my mind (2016), a novel by orhan pamuk. to support the primary datum, the researchers collected the secondary data which were taken from journals, articles, interview, and book review. the research was conducted in four steps. firstly, the researchers found the topic and carefully chose the literary work to be discussed. in this study, the researchers analysed pamuk’s agenda in criticising the modernization project which led to the finding of turkish “ideal identity”. secondly, after reading the novel, as the most essential step, the researchers formulated the questions and searched for the secondary sources and theory. in order to highlight the relationship between mevlut and i̇stanbul, the researchers also employed pamuk’s non-fictions: i̇stanbul (2006) and other colours (2008). this book was used to support the main datum as well as discovered the city transformation which was caused by the modernization project. thirdly, the researchers applied homi bhabha’s theory on postcolonialism to investigate the east-west predicament and the consequences of both atatürk modernization project and erdoğan authoritarian agenda. bhabha’s theory was used to unfold the complex relationship between the main characters and i̇stanbul that focused on ambivalence, in-betweenness, mimicry, and hybridity. although those four elements of the theory are essential, hybridity had more portions in this research. this was for the reason that hybridity was a weapon to challenge the boundaries, a space to blur the binary, and a way to find turkey’s new ideal identity. furthermore, the secondary data were used to find the answers of the formulated questions. those were employed to discover the connection between the sociohistorical context and the events illustrated in the novel. lastly, the researchers ended the analysis with the result of the analysis and a conclusion. in addition, some suggestions to the other researchers who wanted to analyse a strangeness in my mind were also offered. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 240-250 243 findings and discussion mevlut’s complex relationship with i̇stanbul in this section, the researchers highlight mevlut’s relationship with i̇stanbul by describing his love towards the city. istanbul is a memoir both of his own life and his city (erol, 2011). i̇stanbul—the most populous city in turkey—is an important city in most of orhan pamuk’s novels because this is the city where he spends most of his life (vadivukarasi & geetha, 2020). similar to pamuk, mevlut also loves this city and awes with its atmosphere, streets, and rich culture. pamuk sums up that “i have described istanbul when describing myself, and describes myself when describing istanbul”. originally, pamuk’s story is istanbul because he is a product of istanbul, therefore he claims his story is equal istanbul’s story (erol, 2011). mevlut is amazed with the new face of the city that is now rapidly moving forward when he move to i̇stanbul at twelve to help his father. internal migration is a common thing for turkish people. similar to other turkish people, mevlut and his father want to have for a better life and bring brighter future for their family. vadivukarasi and geetha (2020a) underline that people came to i̇stanbul because they aspire to have a better life (p. 132). the other benefits are that they want to get a well-paid job, own a property, and have easy access for some facilities (tekin, 2017, p. 625). in this novel, pamuk tries to describe the city by reflecting its social and physical changes as the result of the westernization project. mevlut is such as character that always sensitive to change in the city, one of the factors is because his profession has a great influence on it (şenyiğit & tuğba, 2019). mevlut has been in istanbul for forty-three years. in the first thirty-five years of this, he felt every year he spent in the city connected him here more (pamuk, 2016. p. 457). in mevlut’s eyes, i̇stanbul is a place which has a soul where he can meditate and find peace while walking down the street. when he pushes his cart at night, he likes to talk with the walls, billboard advertisement boards, posters, and the grave. furthermore, his migration to i̇stanbul also results in the strangeness in his mind where he processes the predicament of the binary. both pamuk and mevlut describe i̇stanbul as a unique city whose cosmopolitanism has disappeared. jain (2019) mentions that istanbul lost its diminishing and dusty glory through the relics of the past trying to reach the threshold of power, wealth and self-confidence hat it has borrowed from the west. in i̇stanbul, pamuk (2006) describes how the founding of the republic and the rise of turkification have turned the city into black and white (pp. 238-39). turkey’s new identity is shifted into one monotonous identity which was a beautiful mosaic back before the nationalist dominates the government. through mevlut’s eyes—a boza seller who has good behaviour, optimism, and goodwill (pamuk, 2016, pp. 3 & 33)—i̇stanbul is depicted as a modern city that is surrounded by european images. he describes i̇stanbul as a modern city, whose “city lights sparkling from afar” (pamuk, 2016, p. 76). another example is the alteration of the architecture and function of certain buildings like an armenian theatre company that now has turned into elyazar cinema which screens adult films (p. 117). the modernization of this city make it “lost its natural beauty due to environmental problems…[caused by]…factories, skyscrapers, and tall buildings” (karadağ, 2020, p. 56). the process of modernization defined “western” as an ideal identity. “west” is perceived as the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 240-250 244 marker of universal history and the “east” as its inferior follower (akcan, 2006, p.42). i̇stanbul is a city where the secularists, the conservatives, and even those who embrace both parties live. mevlut describes this city as a place where conflict and reconciliation may happen at the same time. in line with hezam (2020), he portrays the city “as more than a setting in the novel for it is presented as a character or a force with which the protagonist is in love and conflict at the same time” (p. 92). in addition, vadivukarasi and geetha (2020b) mention that “i̇stanbul is a bridge between the east and west” (p. 5455). ferhat, mevlut’s friend, also describes three types of buildings in this city: “1) those full of devout families where people say their daily prayers and leave their shoes outside, 2) rich and westernized homes where you can go in with your shoes on, [and] 3) new high-rise blocks where you can find a mix of both sorts (pamuk, 2016, p. 25).” in the novel, mevlut helps readers to describe the way people from different groups interact each other and the city’s enormous transformation. furthermore, mevlut may also feel the sadness of the city when i̇stanbul’s transformation brings such a grieve towards the life of the citizens. pamuk in istanbul stands as a local, european, and westernizer, and these constantly varying viewpoints to mixes melancholy and joy, he calls it “delicious melancholy” (helvacioglu, 2013, p. 164). the effects of turkey’s political agenda both atatürk and erdoğan’s political agendas have enormously affected turkey in its journey on the finding of a new ideal identity. istanbul has a contradict history which spans across two empire and a republic which signifies that there are two istanbuls (jain, 2019). the researchers claim that one culture which defeats another will only leave the citizens in confusion, ambivalence, and melancholy. it is in line with brameswari (2015) who states that embracing only one culture may put turkey in danger (p. 157). the rise of the islamic movement and akp’s domination in the government have caused a clash among the groups in turkey. in addition, communists and secularists group which try to get the place on stage do not want to sit still and watch but try to make some movements and actions to get more followers. through the eyes of a boza seller, readers may witness some political movements and coups, like the tension between the turks and the kurds (pamuk, 2016, p. 158). furthermore, pamuk also displays the abrupt changes from decades of modern appropriation to the movement to bring islamic tradition back to turkey. the desire to westernize and modernize has change the republican mindset to reduce religion to a strange and sometimes amusing set of rules on which lower classes depended. therefore, it creates “spiritual void” among the westwardlooking population (helvacioglu, 2013, p. 166). this event is brilliantly captured and written in a simple narration. the researchers claim that these radical changes have led mevlut in his strangeness mind which actually is the third space created by the author. mevlut uses what so it called the “in-between” space (ashcroft et al., 2007, p. 109) to survive from the communists, the conservatives, the secularists, the left-wings, or the right-wings. he writes his hybrid identity to fight for the suppression from both sides and to bridge the east and west. pamuk has said that the finest view of istanbul is not from the shore of europe nor the shore of asia, however from a ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 240-250 245 bridge between cultures that unites them (yalkin & yanik, 2018). his strangeness mind is also a place to make peace with the weird situation around him when he was tricked by süleyman. the incident happens after mevlut falls in love with a beautiful girl at korkut’s wedding (pamuk, 2016, p. 12). he starts writing love letters to that girl which are delivered by süleyman. after his military service, the girl agrees to elope with mevlut and gets married. however, mevlut’s love letters are intentionally sent to the wrong girl, rayiha. through this mistake, mevlut realizes that finding a true and genuine love is more important than fulfilling his passion to marry samiha. he accepts this as an unexpected gift which later determines the rest of his days (p. 3). in our view, mevlut’s acceptance can be seen from his action when he does not openly mix the tradition and modernity. inside mevlut’s strangeness mind— which is the symbol for bhabha’s liminal space—he struggles to negotiate the binary between east-west, tradition-modernity, and secular-conservative. bhabha (1994) emphasizes that this tension and oscillation can be resolved in this space as a way to combine, or mix the two strange things altogether. in this case, mevlut does not mix those cultures altogether but he tries to embrace them and live between the strangeness. he chooses to be the bosphorus bridge, which connects and mediates the eastern and western sides of i̇stanbul by making friends with ferhat, maintaining good relationship with his secular cousins, and learning islamic teaching. in line with fischer (2015), “mevlut uses his imagination to revise the past and make peace with the present, between rural past and urban present, and between isolated self and outside world”. the quotation shows that living with those cultures is not a sin and turkish people can embrace western values without leaving their ottoman traditions. in addition, turkey’s political agenda also brings some transformations in mevlut’s life as a street vendor. the researchers discover that this 600-page-novel presents not only the tradition and culture of the city but also the food, the atmosphere, the drinks, the beliefs, and the political groups. those aspects are the symbols and the binary of tradition and modernity, for instance boza. boza is a clear symbol of predicament of tradition and modernity for people begin to leave it when raki and the imported liquors are legal in the republic. it is mostly consumed by the religious people while beer and wine are drunk by the modern people. in line with bhabha (1994, p. 85), the researchers find that boza is actually the strategy to fight against ataturk’s power and agenda to modernize turkey. mevlut actually knows well that there is a low amount alcohol in boza and it “is invented so that muslims could drink alcohol under the reign of ottoman era” (pamuk, 2016, p. 340). furthermore, the researchers argue that boza is presented as a tool to criticise the modernists, the conservatives, and the new confusing era under the akp. even if mevlut claims himself as a capitalist—was one of the socialists’ supporters—he is also a religious person who believes in god and mostly in boza. more importantly, he will not let anyone who tries to mock boza. when he has an argument with süleyman, he insists that boza is holy and contains no alcohol. he mentions that, “just because something isn’t strictly islamic doesn’t mean it can’t be holy. old things we’ve inherited from our ancestors can be holy, too” (pamuk, 2016, p. 341). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 240-250 246 from this quotation, it can be seen that boza is actually the symbol of binary, complexity, and predicament in this novel. it is a drink which contains low alcohol level but is still consumed by the islamist. boza is a symbol of ottoman old tradition which its popularity will soon vanish for during the reign of atatürk—when raki and wine are legal—there is no room for boza. it is a symbol of the vanishing past and the street vendors or soon to be a lost heritage because boza was forbidden during the ottoman rule. by the time, the republic of turkey in 1923, closed down the boza street vendors that still carried forward the old tradition of boza selling, in order to let people free to consume raki (jain, 2019). additionally, when the new elected party starts to ban alcoholic beverages, mevlut hopes that people can appreciate the existence of boza more. for mevlut, boza is a remembrance of the good old days when “families spend gazing out the window at the boza seller on the pavement to wait for him to arrive and listening to the feeling in his voice” (p. 215). the results of the east-west predicament europe always becomes turkey’s image in constructing its national identity. in most aspects, europe is always depicted as superior and ace in knowledge and science (vadivukarasi & geetha, 2020). it means that europe is much more progressive in many aspects. however, the agenda to “separate the religion to the state and strictly prohibit its practices in private sphere” (özel, 2007, p. 20) is actually an irony because people are forced to mimic their “colonizer” and accept that as their true identity. the image of europe is adopted by the elites to “civilize” turkey through mimicking their culture. some believe that in turkey, the westernization process acts to globalization promote by the state as an attempt to gain entry into the european union (jain, 2019). the rich people in turkey will follow western lifestyle while the poor people will stay to embrace the islamic tradition, support the islamist party, and perform its religious practices (pamuk, 2016, pp. 28-29). the east-west predicament is used by pamuk as his main discussion in his works. in a strangeness in my mind, pamuk illustrates how this predicament has brought such a great impact and may totally change the life of the turks. the oscillation to embrace ottoman identity or modern-secular identity has led to melancholy and confusion, which is experienced by the characters in the novel. mevlut’s remembrance of the past and intermingling of fantasy and memory of nostalgia about the old city and finds out that the past can never seems like real thing (kumari, 2022). in this case, identity is fluid and never steady. in consequence, the identity searching becomes a mystery and its process happens in the third space. in other side, pamuk suggests that melancholy caused by poverty, defeat and the feeling of loss, that a principal emotion of istanbul that unites its residents (akcan, 2006). through mevlut’s strangeness mind, we can also see how he tries to embrace all groups and try to “bridge” his relatives and friends who have different political views. he makes friend with ferhat who is leftist, maintains a good relationship with his cousins who are seculars, and even performs religious practices. on the other hand, karadağ (2020) also finds that the east-west encounter, the city transformation, the city life, and the industrialization have created environmental changes and pollution (p. 55). through mevlut who is a hard-working, innocent, and humble person (p. 3), pamuk has talked a lot about the clash and the oscillation ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 240-250 247 to be a militant secularist or an islamist. additionally, mevlut even witnesses various events that have changed i̇stanbul for four decades. in the novel, pamuk also symbolizes mevlut as the bosphorus bridge which is nestled between the hills on the asian and european sides of i̇stanbul (p. 62). mevlut’s choice to embrace both traditions is a tool “to overcome the failure of the colonizer to create the stable and fixed identity” (loomba, 2005, p. 92). it has been mentioned in the previous section that mevlut’s strangeness mind is the in-between space that is used to bargain, argue, and find a safe place from the radical groups around him. in this space, mevlut may have the negotiation peacefully without any claims which can distract them from this process. bhabha (1994) mentions that this third space is an ambivalent space where there is no fix meaning for cultural identity. the researchers see that uncertainty and strangeness that mevlut often feels is a way to ease the confusion caused by the political changes in turkey. the radical changes in turkey’s national identity have led to the predicament and the oscillation of the old and new identity. göknar (2004) mentions that “turkey’s self-colonialism desires uniformity and rejects multiculturalism, multi-ethnicity, multi-lingualism, and cosmopolitanism” (p. 55) [which lead to the authoritarian and dictatorship for both atatürk and erdoğan]. thus, the researchers argue that the agenda to bring the islamic values back to turkey has led to what is called as self-colonialism that later brings sorrow (hüzün). sorrow (hüzün) is the feeling of melancholy and refers to the pain and sadness over the loss of the grand ottoman empire and some social problems such as urbanization, radicalization, and poverty. pamuk uses melancholy with the turkish word hüzün, in association of melancholy with the feeling of loss (akcan, 2006). in this novel, pamuk also pictures how the crisis in turkey has developed “a strangeness in mevlut’s mind” which happens since the story begins. this feeling is also shared by the citizens of i̇stanbul who witness when “the army has destroyed the buildings that seem dirty, untidy, and old dating back to the ottoman era” (pamuk, 2016, p. 102). from this perspective, hüzün is intrinsically tied to the gradual decline of the ottoman empire as an object of love, resulting the historical losses that resulted from the westernization and modernization efforts of the twentieth century (helvacioglu, 2013, p. 166). moreover, just like the other citizens, he will keep that strangeness and choose to employ it to overcome sorrow (hüzün). by contemplating the historical context, it shows melancholy as a historical condition of modernity and melancholy as a cultural condition (helvacioglu, 2013, p. 165). mevlut also eagers to solve this predicament and brings up the old good time of the past era when he can bring “the ancestor’s favourite drink” (p. 342) in the present time turkey. the researchers claims that boza is pamuk’s strategy to deal with the predicament. he describes how mevlut is as happy as “most people [in istanbul] are happy just to listen to the boza seller’s call” (p. 32). furthermore, mevlut also brings the nostalgia of street vendors and as the “songbirds of the street who are the life and soul of i̇stanbul” (p. 33). mevlut is depicted as a melancholic person that insists to keep selling boza for the rest of his life (pamuk, 2016, p. 743). mevlut’s profession is a symbol of a glorious yet decaying tradition of istanbul. mevlut’s strangeness mind, when he feels melancholic, selling boza makes him feel better, because for doing that he walks in the streets of the city for hours. he can keep on hallucinating heritage of the city as a dating all the way back to ottoman times (kumari, 2022). the east ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 6, no. 2, march 2023, pp. 240-250 248 west encounter does not only create predicament, the feeling of melancholy, but also nostalgia of the lost old ottoman tradition. this feeling is shown by mevlut and shared with the boza seller he meets in the last few pages of the novel. mevlut feels sad because the old face of i̇stanbul will soon disappear. however, he also feels grateful that it will be more beautiful and modern in the future (p. 401). though some old i̇stanbul places are not completely destroyed by the urban transformation, mevlut still misses the old i̇stanbul where he has spent his happy times with his late wife. in the last part of the novel, pamuk narrates a melancholic event in mevlut’s life. in his dream, mevlut meets his wife in an old wooden mansion. this event symbolises how mevlut actually longs for the old happy times with rayiha in the old i̇stanbul it shows “the old ottoman legacy [that] has cultivated mevlut’s fantasy world” (chengiz, 2021, p. 208) and a scenery of the old i̇stanbul. furthermore, it illustrates how mevlut has connected his soul with i̇stanbul when his friends and relatives boast their financial achievement. conclusion this research is conducted to find the answer on the problem of the oscillation between east and west. this dichotomy has been a threat and also seduction whether to preserve the islamic tradition or to live with the european culture. this oscillation is stunningly captured by orhan pamuk in a strangeness in my mind. this novel is pamuk’s media to respect multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism around the various political groups in turkey. moreover, it is also a way to challenge the border, which tries to create and maintain the binary opposition. through mevlut’s experience in i̇stanbul, pamuk highlights the clash of atatürk modernization project and erdoğan authoritarian agenda. atatürk’s and erdoğan’s political agenda have enormously affected the entire i̇stanbul and its citizens. this movement had led to confusion and the movement of finding and forcing the new ideal identity. before and after the grand of the ottoman empire, for mevlut creates such a cultural and political changes in i̇stanbul—this city is a place full of memories, hope, and melancholy. the feeling of melancholy caused by the nostalgia of the ottoman empire, which in the time of prosperity. his complex and special bound with this city result to what is called as hüzün. hüzün is the answer that can save him from the confusion, ache, and melancholy as well as the oscillation between two worlds. through mevlut, pamuk tries to create a bridge for turkey’s divided soul. mevlut, pamuk, and a strangeness in my mind invite the readers to appreciate and respect multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism around us since this problem is universal. this novel is also a reminder that forced identity will only lead to confusion, ambivalence, and irony. in addition, indonesia as a complex country faced the same problem on the identity searching. therefore, the issues mentioned in the novel related to indonesian issues in the past, and it can be employed to increase indonesian people’s awareness to keep, maintain, and increase the tolerance towards various religion, culture, tradition, and parties. references akcan, e. 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(2017). patients and healers in zaabalawi by naguib mahfouz and a strangeness in my mind by orhan pamuk. uludağ university faculty of arts and sciences journal of social sciences, 18(33), 619-630. https://doi.org/10.21550/sosbilder.297751 yalkin, c & yanuk, l. k. (2018). entrenching geopolitical imaginations: bbrand(ing) turkey through orhan pamuk. journal of international relations and development, 23, 339-358. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-018-0153-1 vadivukarasi, r. & geetha, c. (2020a). pamuk’s vision for the link between the west and the east in a strangeness in my mind. international journal of research, 31(6). _______. (2020b). conservative and liberal citizens of istanbul in aa strangeness in my mind. mukt shabd journal, 9(5). https://www.jstor.org/stable/40262169 https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/cuefd/issue/44511/466216 https://doi.org/10.21550/sosbilder.297751 https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-018-0153-1 185 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 185-193 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia saving “joged mataram” via youtube: preservation and disemination of local culture in the digital age arif eko suprihono institut seni indonesia, yogyakarta correspondence: arifeko@isi.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.4304 received 24 january 2022; accepted 22 march 2022 abstract this research examines the paradigm shift of cultural policy within the yogyakarta royal palace in embracing technology by means of social media to make the palace performance called “joged mataram” known to public. the data used in this qualitative research include various youtube uploads of the screendance. ethnographic method and detailed analysis of the uploads were put to use in this study. the results prove that the yogyakarta royal palace had anticipated the digital age development by involving cultural citizens through the use of social media. dance documentation products can be seen as cultural strategy in participating in the digital life. it is also proven that the artistic approach of the yogyakarta royal palace requires netizens’ participation to opine as to whether the palace performances can still meet the demands of the changing times. keywords: dissemination, screen-dance, preservation, youtube uploads introduction the last few years before the pandemic had seen an explosion of interest in flash mob dance videos on youtube. it began in mid-2019 when a flash mob dance “beksan wanara” was shown in the malioboro street area of yogyakarta, indonesia that won the attention of shoppers and passers-by in this famous tourist and business district. the recorded event was uploaded via youtube and went viral on social media. all the dancers are young people performing not on stage but in the middle of the road, in front of people who pass by for shopping and sightseeing along malioboro street. youtube is indeed one popular social media platform with a very high level of community engagement (hadley, 2017; aronczyk, 2021). this interactive medium provides opportunities to communicate almost all aspects of people’s lives alongside its limitations and advantages (thelwall, 2018). the videos on screendance featuring yogyakarta palace performers, for example, is an evident of the power of youtube to attract viewers who formerly may know very little about the culture. it is worth predicting that the strategy of uploading the otherwise exclusive palace activities has its own political interests. behind the http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs mailto:arifeko@isi.ac.id https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.4304 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 185-193 186 content uploads is interest in cultural preservation. it is only natural, as suggested by ardalan (2009) and li & yao (2021), that netizens often respond to any posts with negative thoughts, questioning as they do, the political purposes behind the publicizing of one’s cultural activity. netizens are unlikely aware of the motivation in uploading the classical dance via social media. gong (2017) is right to say that there is negotiation in cultural identity in this digital age. the digital community may presumably have no idea whether the use of youtube has some particular impacts on the cultural atmosphere within the yogyakarta palace. meanwhile, the public is also curious to know the view of the noble citizens themselves about the uploaded videos. citizenship in a digital society is justified when attempting to gain recognition because technology matters for both individuals and communities (fernandes, 2020; mossberger & tolbert, 2021). it is safe to say for now that dissemination and digital documentation of such cultural activity as classical dance is a form of cultural strategy (cfr. lee, 2019). the internet community tends to think that the implementation of technology is no other than the digital human capital. as it is, the netizens have the freedom to react, play role, and get involved in the cultural dynamic. every social media content upload is sure to have a specific purpose, not limited to the socialization of ideas, but also its impacts on cultural business through the media. the cultural communication between content uploaders, in this case yogyakarta palace, and the community has involved cultural facts, emotional ties, as well as the aesthetics knowledge of the uploaded material. the number of respondents to various content posts on social media has financial consequences that help boost creative economy. the cultural citizenship of digital society is a cultural phenomenon that oscillate between rights and obligations, to say nothing of the community dialogue with various issues of self-identity. digital platforms have provided an opportunity to collect and share myriads of data. just as digital platforms in bioscience are helpful for community-based monitoring (johnson et al., 2021), so do data from multiple knowledge systems including indigenous knowledge that comes from individuals and communities identified as traditional societies. given the often-alleged meaning of social media activity for cultural institutions (suvattanadilok, 2021), it is worth investigating whether yogyakarta palace dance (henceforth called “joged mataram”) uploads on social media can be seen as a form of digital strategy. it is also important to examine how the cultural activity has attempted to deal with globalization. here, globalization should not be simplified to mean a flow of trade and finance or to convergent markets worldwide. rather, it must be interpreted as a complex phenomenon of the international outlook and progress in several cultural dimensions. this article will deal with these issues by closely examining the reason and passion behind the uploads of “joged mataram” via youtube. method this qualitative research follows that of berends & deken (2021) in terms of composing the process; and the systematic methodology is built on gioia (2021). in other words, the method is ethnographic with detailed analysis. data on “joged mataram” were found on youtube. the sample was assessed to accord with ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 185-193 187 specific criteria used as data. following jayathilaka (2021), verbal data from several artists/dancers were used to compare with the uploads. here, methods on ethnography were used systematically to explore the cultural phenomenon of the “joged mataram” uploading from the point of view of the research subject in youtube media. data analysis was done using the atlas.ti application. data analysis was conducted to see the aesthetic impact of the adaptation from the stage into a screen display. the analysis was done to examine the development of selfidentity vis-à-vis cultural identity within the global digital era of today. findings and discussion from the classic to the masses “joged mataram” or the classical dance style of yogyakarta refers to the cultural products of the yogyakarta palace. sultan hamengku buwana x’s heritage dance has a philosophy of life, functioning as it does to mould the noble citizens’ character of boldness known philosophically as sawiji, greged, sengguh, ora mingkuh (rini, 2020, p. 267). the yogyakarta people’s view of life is imbued within this philosophy. “joged mataram” functions as behaviour or a way of life. this dance style is therefore a display of the yogyakarta palace’s authority in introducing a dance movement that is created with a level of technical excellence to display such confidence and self-assurance (yogyakarta dik, 2018). the dance is thus not limited to the basic understanding of dancing but it further instils self confidence in society. as such, the classical dance style of yogyakarta requires its own training (rini, 2020). the basic concept of the classical dance refers to traditional forms with unique norms, rules of the state, and standard techniques to maintain the quality of the dance’s artistic values. historically, the yogyakarta court dance was an exclusive activity of the noble citizens since the reign of sultan hamengku buwana vii. yogya dance learning was expanded out of the palace walls during sultan hamengku buwana vii (putranto, 2019). it was not until the reign of sultan hamengku buwana ix that the dance was taught at informal educational institutions since (hadi, 2017). next, with the authority of sultan hamengku buwana x, freedom has been given to the dance to enter as a citizen of world culture through social media. cultural citizenship has accordingly been fought for during the reign of sultan hamengku buwana x through the use of social media (putranto, 2019; anderson, 2021). the application of joged mataram is wide open not only for classical yogyakarta dance performers, but to the masses, for instance by way of flash mob dance. a simple form of action is shown in jogja flash mob dance. dancers in flash mob called “beksan wanara” and “beksan menak” are no longer bound to wear dancers’ costumes but they are free to wear their casual clothes. the main idea in presenting “joged mataram” without the attributes of traditional dance clothing shows the palace is now open to new adjustment in accordance with the staging environment as shown in figure 1 (https://tinyurl.com/ybxkuc6v). https://tinyurl.com/ybxkuc6v ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 185-193 188 figure 1. people behind the flashmob screen-dance as preservation and expansion the yogyakarta palace arts and cultural activities are deliberately packed with screen-dance to reach the wider community. the palace attempts to overcome the limits of noble exclusivity, local cultural ethnicity, and demographic fragmentation. the audience’s presence in the stage environment of the show is expanded with the company of netizens in various separate places. screen-dance uploads provide vast possibilities to show the preservation movements to the wider audience. as shown in figure 2 (https://tinyurl.com/y9dqdlq2), only a limited audience can enjoy the dance performance. this is to say that the classical dance style of yogyakarta has entered a new era when reaching out wider audience via screen dance. the technical issue of creating dance products to be aired on social media is known as screen-dance (anderson, 2021). screen-dance works require a model of aesthetic understanding of the screen to be the final product of a stage shows that change in shape (arendell & barnes r, 2016). screen-dance creates at least three layers of perception over the original image of the dancer’s movements and motion that is mediated through the camera. there is a change in the aesthetic stage of the show into a screen aesthetic. the actualization of the preservation movement is indicated in the form of documentation and dissemination through the interaction of internet culture. aspects of cinematography define the aesthetics of the screen-dance at the time of documenting the events. the camera’s shooting angle shows the details of the figure 1. sekaten – gandawerdaya puppet show https://tinyurl.com/y9dqdlq2 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 185-193 189 show to the audience. the camera framing option replaces the stage distance of the show. for clarity, figure 3 (https://tinyurl.com/ycztb9wv) is provided below. figure 2. closing of the exhibition sang adiwira—wayang wong jayapusaka the staging environment is no longer a particular part of the palace building. the opportunity to use such environment as malls and other crowd settings does not limit flash mob staging as shown below in figure 4 (https://tinyurl.com/ybv8syn8). as a result, the broader reach of the netizens’ understanding will significantly benefit business opportunities in the digital era. figure 3. beksan menak flash mob embracing global community digital communication technology has entered all levels of society and various forms of cultural activity. the utilization of social media by the yogyakarta palace is a strategy used by a traditional institution to join the global community. the existence of kawedanan hageng punakawan kridha mardawa keraton yogyakarta is a form of control to enter the cultural community of the world. social media includes many different online platforms such as twitter, facebook, instagram, linkedin, podcasts, youtube, etc. youtube, as one of the social media becomes the chosen platform by the yogyakarta palace, coupled with the strength of the community base to conduct preservation and heritage conservation that is both sustainable and comprehensive. the performing arts stage cannot do without the application of new technologies with internet protocols. the exciting thing behind digital technology interventions in dance performance art, as anderson (2021) argued, is documentation and preservation. https://tinyurl.com/ycztb9wv https://tinyurl.com/ybv8syn8 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 185-193 190 the impact of social media on society is massive and it eliminates demographic and geographical barriers (mckenzie, 2019). the influence of “joged mataram” on youtube can be seen in various forms of uploads. through these uploaded materials, it can be understood that interactive video is the aesthetic work of video commonly found in streaming culture. during the reign of sultan hamengku buwana x, the use of social media can be considered as one form of cultural institution’s involvement in global life. in flash mob posts to break muri (indonesia record museum) records, for example, it is clear that efforts have been made to socialize and democratize palace art into the dance activities of the wider community. youtube opens up opportunities to upload and disseminate various forms of community cultural activities. the beauty and uniqueness of the jogja dance has attracted the attention of netizens. the potential of digital media environment makes it possible to perform narrative descriptions of ideas, motion, and activities regarding “joged mataram”. shyu et al. (2020) have shown that the screening of good public health service is beneficial to recovery due to public engagement. similarly, public engagement through social media is highly relevant to the preservation efforts and cultural documentation of the palace traditions. this upload material provides appropriate value to build experience in understanding, appreciating, and preserving the classic heritage. this finding is comparable to the study done by zabulis et al. (2020) that investigates the representation and preservation of heritage crafts in greek. creativity and business opportunity a number of studies have shown that social media can be both creative and income generating. youtube has a great chance to be used as a business institution (onder & zengin, 2021). several providers are found with jogja dance contents. indeed, motivation in uploading such contents is open to different interpretations (burgess, 2009; liang et al, 2021). the stage audience carried various forms of uploads; and the yogyakarta palace institution provided critical information about “joged mataram” claiming that it has an excellent charm quality. the seriousness of the creative work of the yogyakarta palace in preparing preservation products for uploads on youtube is shown first to the innovative team. at the end of each uploaded product, the names of the creative actors with each varied chores are given due credits. as such, the uploads are prepared and well planned by the creative teams. creative teams are issue of importance in any aesthetic production (dandekar, 2021). one example of flash mob dance from the yogyakarta palace is shown in figure 5 (https://tinyurl.com/ycrbs8bd). https://tinyurl.com/ycrbs8bd ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 185-193 191 figure 4. golek menak llashmob in malioboro at this stage, cultural dissemination and the preservation of local cultural activities is clear. preservation of cultural traditions can be the basis of the civilization of a society. it can even be tangible in the development of art traditions to become stronger. in the long run, confidence in managing a culture of tradition can increase self-confidence. dance posts on youtube show the openness of appreciation of people from various regions. geographical and demographic limitations are no longer characteristic of the uniqueness of jogja dance in the palace environment. the post proves the struggle of cultural citizenship for the local arts to get a response in the digital community. the show’s function is no longer limited by the rituals of noble citizens in the palace but can be extended to the netizen community of performance observers. staging flash mob by using public areas is very profitable for connoisseurship of the beauty of the jogja dance. although the presence of the audience in traditional performances is different from the involvement of netizens on social media, netizens’ presence is significant gallardo et al. (2021) claim that digital inclusion has significance impacts on community development. the participation of the dance viewers on youtube provides evidence of some achievement in cultural communication, both in documentation and in the democratization of palace culture. this article thus has made known to us the concept of performing arts documentation as digital parity – the level of connectivity, devices, and production skills that lead to an inclusive community of dance arts in the digital age. conclusion this article has shown that youtube upload products involve five fundamental aspects of forming cultural preservation actions. first, attention to classical dance uploads on youtube will be seen as the critical activity of the yogyakarta palace in affirming the life of dance arts. second, there is an opportunity to enter the digital community with confidence. third, the yogyakarta palace becomes the guardian agency of dance traditions and performing dance activities in a broader sense. fourth, an opportunity has occurred to build a connection between citizens of the world’s culture and performers of the otherwise nearly extinct or least known culture. lastly, creative business opportunity is another advantage of this digital transformation. thus, the idea of ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 1, march 2022, pp. 185-193 192 utilizing social media for the socialization of cultural activities of yogyakarta palace is very strategic. upload content production activities open their way for the dance artists’ creativity in adopting stage art to screen art. awareness of uploading footage of the “joged mataram” on youtube is an instrumental act of cultural preservation. the change of aesthetics from the stage to screen dance is worthy of appreciation. cinematography technology is a challenge for the aesthetic adjustment of youtube. the consequences of cultural activities in the palace environment require institutional as well as cultural anticipation. the administration of creative work uploads will significantly determine the success of every artistic effort in the scope of yogyakarta nobles. references anderson, c. 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(2020). representation and preservation of heritage crafts. sustainability (switzerland), 12(4), 1–26. doi.org/10.3390/su12041461 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 101-113 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 101 women stories of the violent conflict in poso and trauma healing y. tri subagya sanata dharma university, indonesia tsubagya@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.020111 received 5 july 2018; revised 2 august 2018; accepted 30 august 2018 abstract this article intends to unfold women experiences in coping with trauma of the violent conflict and their efforts to release its burden. in the last decade, the victims of violence are referred to get a psycho-theuraphy of trauma due to their depression from the disaster. development agencies often initiate the program of trauma healings for the victims with the posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd) model, especially for women who were described as passive actors and became the most vulnerable victims in the violent conflict. the fact that women were involved in the conflict as active social actors was less accounted due to the healing mechanism. their experiences, such as individual memories on vengeance and struggles for family survival tend to be inarticulated, except their attempts to forget traumatic burdens. this article defines the articulation of women stories as both a crucial factor in healing their past traumatic experiences which in turn the stories could be as an effective approach to pave a way for reconciliation. the contribution of narrative for releasing the burden of traumatic experiences from the past atrocities has been the subject of the recent discussion in the academic field. keywords: poso, trauma healing, violent conflict, women stories introduction the series of violent conflict become a part of historical narratives in indonesia. even, after the country independence from dutch colonialism, violence continuously displayed particularly during the authoritarian new order regime between 1965 and 1998 (anderson, 2001 & schulte nordholt, 2002, pp. 36-42). indeed, the violence also happened during soekarno regime, the predecessor of the new order, but it was less massive and brutal. in this period, violence was instigated by the state mainly to overcome separatism and rebellion, such as the darul islam/ tentara islam indonesia (di/tii) rebellion of kartosuwiryo in west java and kahar muzakar in south sulawesi, the communist party revolt in madiun, 1948, the proclamation of republik maluku selatan (republic of south moluccas, rms) in 1950 and pemerintah revolusioner republik indonesia ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 101–113 102 (revolutionary government of indonesian republic, prri) in bukittinggi 19581962. if military operations against anti-state insurgencies constituted the main efforts of soekarno’s government to reach unity in diversity, soeharto’s new order deployed military operation to strengthen his power. beginning with the extermination of hundred thousands of communist party sympathizers in 1965 after the military took over power from soekarno, violence was used again and again by the new order to silence people who criticized or subverted the regime (hüsken and de jonge, 2002, pp. 1-10). state violence was, for example, perpetrated in several regions, e.g. the military invasion of east timor in 1975 (simpson, 2005, pp. 285-291), the petrus or ‘mysterious killings’ of criminals in the 1980s (van der kroef, 1985, pp 745-759), the military attacks against an islam radical group in tanjung priok in 1984 (thufail, 2010, pp. 211-212), as well as against an islamic radical group in talangsari, lampung in 1989 (fadilasari, 2007), and the military operations in aceh between 1970s and 1990s (robinson, 1998, pp. 129-132). the collapse of the new order did not result in the end violence in indonesia. due to the weakness of the state after soeharto’s downfall, violent conflict between ethno-religious groups erupted in several regions, such as between dayak and melayu against madurese in the west kalimantan and central kalimantan, as well as christians against muslims in kupang, ambon and the north moluccas and poso. in poso, the collective violence between muslim and christian groups was triggered by the fight between youth gangs whose members had the different religious identities in december 28, 1998. since then, the tension between moslem and christian communities continuously heightened and sporadically broke out into violence in several villages. there was no exact number of casualties and victims, but the estimation was more than a thousand people dead, thousands more injured and more than 145,000 persons displaced. it was about a half of the district population seriously affected with the conflict which at the time amounted 231,893 (badan pusat statistik poso, 2001). among the property damages, there were more than 12,000 houses and public buildings burned down. livelihood and economic activities were paralyzed while people lost their material belongings and disintegrated from their familial ties as well as distrust to their neighborhood and communities. as the escalation of the violent conflicts was up and down along the time, observers and mass media generally oversimplified the chronology of poso conflicts into five phases. first phase was in 25-29 december 1998 when the fight of youth dragged the religious identity into the social unrest that was then controlled by state apparatus and religious leaders. the second phase occurred in 16-22 april 2000. again, youth gangs fighting in the bus station provoked the different religious communities of islam and christian into an open battle. houses, churches and schools in several villages in the district of poso kota were burnt down. in this phase, the battle was still isolated in the urban center of poso. the third phase erupted on 24 may to 2 june 2000 in which it was speculated as the retaliation of christian groups against the attack to their communities during the second phase. the nuance of religious violence was salience in this conflict because people were split into two different religious identities. in the name of solidarity, people from other regions began to arrive in poso to support their ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 101–113 103 groups in the battle field. the attack and raid on religious symbols reaches the climax in the fourth phase from july 2 to october 23, 2000. the conflicts were exacerbated with the arrival of jihad militia from java and south sulawesi in july 19, 2001. the battle between two communities continued with greater escalation and spread widely to rural villages. more houses, churches and mosques became the target of raid. people who fled from their home were divided in accordance with their religious alignment. after being interrupted for a week, the battle continued to break out in the outskirt of poso, which was then called the fifth phase (november to december, 2001). this last phase happened prior to malino peace accord intervened by the central government team from december 19-20, 2001 (ecip, 2002; damanik, 2003). however, the violent conflict had not come to end with the peace accord although the mobilization of the groups in the open battle declined after the agreement. the attack then turned into underground and sporadic terror. the target was no longer religious groups, but persons in public areas. since the agreement of malino, there were still incidents of mysterious killings, random bomb explosions, and abductions. the police alleged that the perpetrators of the violence after peace agreement were groups connected with asian terrorist network that backed them up with military training and automatic weaponry support (tempo, 2 november 2003; icg, 2006 & 2007, mcrae, 2016). the deescalation of violence took place gradually after peace accord and various efforts of grass root reconciliation, judicial prosecution and security measures to restore coexistence. like in the other areas of conflict in indonesia, the violent conflict in poso brought about bitterness and suffering to people who lost their families, and displaced from their home and neighborhood. more than that, it was also disrupted social solidarity, kinship relations or other social ties that it turned into prejudice distrust and hostility. the effect of violence led survivors to shoulder the traumatic burden that affected not only individual relationship, but also social cohesion of the community. theory the trauma project and survivors of mass violence one of the common popular programs during the conflict in poso was trauma healing therapy. humanitarian agencies, non-government organizations (ngos) or relief workers carried out the program to response stress and depression of the violent survivors. their activities were often integrated with other services i.e. food distribution and shelter building in the refugee camp, micro finance, health service provision, water and sanitation, to dialog for reconciliation, etc. in the absence of government intervention, their activities were important due to the need of victims and survivors. unfortunately, most of ngos were dependent on the fund support of the donors. so, when the donors had leaved them, their activities did not last long. it could be reflected from the declining number of ngos and grassroots activities after international agencies and donors moved out their humanitarian programs into natural disaster relief in other parts of indonesia. certainly, few local ngos and social workers were still persistent and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 101–113 104 continuously facilitated peace buildings indiscriminative to people in their activities. regarding with the trauma healing activities, the relief agencies assumed that the program were urgent because people getting accustomed to frequent random acts of violence during the conflict. they became numb and insensitive due to the suffering from a constant threat of violence exposure. so, they had to be assisted to release their traumatic burdens such as witnessing widows who were lost children or husband in front of their eyes, finding children whose parents were killed on the street or watching their houses and properties were burnt down, etc. a psychiatric consultant in the trauma healing program said that she found many symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd) such as depression, flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares and even worse, the signs of being insane in the area. she convinced if the mental disturbance left untreated it could debilitate an individual permanently, and expressed itself in physical manifestations. the mental health problems could affect entire families, for instance, if a mother is too depressed to leave her home, her children must bear this burden alone. the impact of mental health could also be serious for the community as it could spin them into a spiral of violence in which out-group hostility and vengeance remain intact. dealing with the situation, such as trauma healing program was certainly needed as priority but the method and approaches to carry on the activities should be put into consideration. healing or psychological recovery would make the life of the survivors getting better, reducing vengeance and help them becoming open to engage with process of reconciliation (kriesberg, 1998; staub, 2006). nonetheless, the wrong mechanism of the healing program could lead to maltreatment or victimization of the survivors because the survivors of the violent conflict were different with the victim of criminal or domestic violence. the ptsd model that was often adapted as trauma healing model was certainly insufficient while the humanitarian agencies that supported the process might not realize its impacts (pintar, 2000, pp. 59-60; silove, et al., 2007). several warnings are alarmed by the scholars dealing with the trauma healing activities for the victims of collective violence in which the idea grounded from the ptsd. silove and his colleague (2007) critically reminded that the concept of psychological trauma based on western culturally bond theories on psychopathology rather than cross culturally applied to describe psychological problems. ptsd was created for historical and political reasons, particularly to legitimize the suffering of usa veterans from the vietnam war. so, the underlying context of the use was specific that it could not be applied without understanding socio-cultural context of the violence. this point is true to my experiences since the victims and survivors of collective violence would rather keep their traumatic memories for themselves due to the fact that they remained living together in their neighborhood with the perpetrator. moreover, if we asked them to identify their problems aftermath violence, they rarely mentioned having mental problems. the symptoms as indicated by ptsd are also generic and normative like reactions of anxieties so that it should not been defined as illness or abnormality. local concepts of stress or other forms of depression do not specify as symptoms of ptsd. they have their own constructs and attributions in relation to mental disorder. the traumatic memories could not be solved by personal therapy ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 101–113 105 isolated from the sociopolitical and cultural context. the individual memories could be understood by linking the individual experiences with the collective history of the communities because the memories are meaningful to survivors in that serving to mourn losses, strive for justice, learn from the past and maintain a cultural legacy of a society’s history. in this regard, the trauma healing should be put in socio-cultural context to support reconciliation by redeveloping trust and reweaving social fabrics torn by the conflict and atrocities. the complexities of violent conflict made a difficult to define victims who needed help for healing traumatic burdens. one day someone become victim, on the other day they could become perpetrator, and vice versa. the common expression was that everyone felt as the victim who was the most suffering from the conflict. some of my informants in poso also told that they recognized a few of their neighbors either taking a part in destroying their houses or doing nothing when strange people attacked them during the conflict. most of them also remembered that the targeted houses being burnt down seemed to be selected. the dominant christian villages were attacked by those people who worn and yelled muslim attributes. oppositely, the dominant moslem settlement was also ransacked by allegedly christians dressing in black shirts with red bandana. they wondered how the harmonious life in their areas was torn by the conflict and the religious symbols could inflame them into a series of bloody violence. indeed, people were also confused of what really happened in the area. during the conflict, women and men have different experience and problems due to the different gender role and sexuality. in several cases, women were not harmed by people who attacked their villages because they were neither seen as the threatening enemy nor regarded as being responsible for causing the conflict. some women said they were released without physical injuries when their villages were under the siege of the enemy. but, they had to flee due to the uncertain situation. while men were obliged to defend their villages or to seek the way out escaping from the violence, women took care of children and the elderly in looking for safe places. they did it simply because there was an absence of men along with them as well as for life. in refugee camp, women’s struggle to make a living in any remunerative activities for the survival of their family when men lost their job or were absorbed in voluntary emergency programs such as the reconstruction of their destroyed villages and public facilities (putranti & subagya, 2005). rarely and only exceptionally did women perpetrate in violence. a few of women indeed mentioned that they joined the groups as combatants during the conflicts, but their roles were just to give support to their men in the battle field, such as providing logistics for the group in defending their villages or praying for the awakening of their bravery. a woman who once joined the civilian paramilitary group told me that there were only seven women in her paramilitary group. like her, the women became combatants because they were angry and wanted to take revenge for her parents’ death. they joined simple military training for the battle, but they were never in the frontline because their task was to prepare logistics and to take care of injured combatants. together with the other members of combatants, she eventually quitted from the group after realizing that the conflict would not be solved by vengeance. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 101–113 106 women were marginal because of masculinity character of the conflict and the gender division of labor in the community. the marginal position of women had been taking place even before the violent conflict. the division of labor between men and women seemed complement one to another but the status and its relation was not equal. compared to men, women were lack of accessibility and less involvement in any public sectors. during the conflict and its aftermath, women expanded roles in the public spheres for the family survival since men productive activities were reduced by the insecurity and distrust within the conflicting communities. the greater role of women also appeared in their involvement in the institutions and women’s organizations in promoting reconciliation and peace building, but they were still excluded in the formal political discourse and less represented in the decision making even if the decision was addressed to tackle their problems. the government policies were even discriminative to women in a sense that any program beneficiaries in grassroots level only registered men as the household head. furthermore, violence against women as the effects of the conflicts remained being neglected. due to complexities of the violent conflict, trauma healing activities should be integrated with the larger process of reconciliation. if the trauma healing model is only isolated to personal therapy like the ptsd, it is not sufficient (mendeloff, 2009, pp. 613-614). in the collective violence such as in poso, the survivors and the victims lived together with the unrepentant perpetrators in the same area. moreover the stronger ethnic and religious identification and social and residential segregation as result of the conflict limited their social space of interaction. in this condition, trauma facilitator might also be hardly to work if the facilitator was demanded to stand up in ‘’neutral’’ position among the groups while there would be enormous people who claimed as victims of the violence. theory application story telling as trauma healing and a pathway of reconciliation telling story is the mechanism to release traumatic burdens of individual experience. psychiatry makes it as the therapeutic method and considers it as the appropriate mechanism for people who were stress or suffered under the oppression. by telling their experience about the horrific events, they have undergone facilitates the recovery. if the story telling is intended by psychiatrist to cure the client and keep it confidential for clinical record, the social scientist and humanitarian agencies use the document of the story in the mass atrocity or collective violence as part of reconciliation process. the use of storytelling for both purposes has been recognized by the humanitarian agencies and human right activists, but in practice it is often carried out in the separated programs and unrelated one to another (pintar, 2000; chaitin, 2003; zurburchen, 2005, mendeloff, 2009). the potential worth of storytelling to heal the traumatic past experience and reconciliation process relate with the human basic capability that is capacity to speak. it mediates the construction of individual identities and positions in relation with other people and communities (senehi, 2000, pp. 103-104). dealing with the past violence, storytelling leads the healing of the traumatic experiences through a process by which the feelings of shattered pieces of the self are reconnected. the process have to involve state representatives or truth commission and publicly ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 101–113 107 acknowledged since the individual stories are part of larger narrative of their past violence and to know that one’s suffering is not solely a personal experience. the state support of the truth telling would make the past events became the lesson and prevent the reoccurrence of the atrocities or violent conflict in the future. storytelling refers to speaking about one’s life. it manifests a capability of what it means to be human. in relation with the notion of justice that is a fundamental part of reconciliation, the story telling becomes a vital process to attain it. there are six dimensions of the story telling in relation to justice. first, the story telling is an essential human activity in that people make their life meaningful. second, the story telling constitutes to restore the victim’s ability to speak or to tell story with their owned words that was taken away by the uncertainties and horrible condition during the violent conflict. it was particularly to the victims who were tortured as they were forced to follow the language of torturer who show of their superiority. third, storytelling reveals truth, especially in the free atmosphere without constraints of talk such as in judicial process. fourth, stories serve as translation, communication and recognition. in the conflict situation that are deeply divided communities culturally, economically, politically, the sharing of personal narratives could be the only means by which such diverse people can begin to understand each other. when stories translate events into a shared language, they arouse our emotions. it can express and transmit human emotions such as pain, loss, separation, desperation. stories provide a common language by which the less powerful can communicate with the powerful. the public act of storytelling can lead to both self and mutual recognition. fifth, the story telling is a kind of ritual that renewed the status of one who told their stories by acknowledgement of the audience. it reborn individuals in new social space where allows them to talk freely and to be liberated from the forms and fears that might restrain them. sixth, the story telling make the invisible memory of the past could be remembered. it enables past oppression, pain, atrocity that was shattered putting back together. it gives them a meaning and learning materials to prevent the recurrence of atrocityy in the future (phelps, 2006). taking into accounts the victim’s experiences is substantially significant not only to understand the causes of the conflict, but also to look for the ways for social reconciliation. within their experiences, there are collective memory, psychological burden of trauma and perhaps vengeance. by listening to their experiences, we can learn the other side of historical narratives as well as their aspirations for the conflict resolution. it is due to the fact that the experience of violent conflicts, as with social life, is not built upon a single discourse. it is constructed from a stock of available discourses that are shared with other individuals and social groups. indeed, the concept of truth has no single meaning as it disentangles from the power relations. there is multiple meaning of truth in the discursive practices by which the meaning is contested and unstable. in this limitation, truth underlies ethical consideration of social justice at least for victim and survivor of violence. from the victim perspective, the need to tell truth stories of the past violence and the demand for social justice is very fundamental. priscilia hayner (2002) shows a variety of benefits to enforce telling the truth for uncovering secret abuses and legacies of violence. accordingly, zurbuchen (2005, p. 11) pinpointed the advantage of the truth commission including clarification and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 101–113 108 acknowledgement of ‘what happened’, through lifting veils of denial and secrecy; responding to the needs and interest of victims, through enabling them to tell their stories and have their suffering recognized; contributing to justice and accountability through gathering information that may be used in formal legal proceedings; outlining institutional responsibility and recommending reforms; and promoting resolution of conflicts and reduction of tension. however, not all countries could accept the founding of truth commission due to the remaining strong position of the agents who supported the violence still dominant in negotiation for the state’s rule and policies. in poso, several attempts to end the conflicts have been made since the outbreak of the violence but the efforts did not meet a sense of justice in the grass root. i meanwhile, the legal process got stuck since each community intimidated the juries, prosecutors and witnesses or even provoked mass violence whenever people that belonged to their group was prosecuted on trial.ii despite the stagnancy of judicial system, the peace agreement that had been made was not really implied on true reconciliation because the agreement were focused on the consensus to end up group mobilization, and to build peace as well as to reconstruct the public facilities, but absence for revealing truth and public acknowledgement of the conflict. there was no recommendation in the peace agreement to seek the truth for the grassroots that wanted to know what had been really happening in their area. however, the conflict gradually declined along the time in the area, but leaving the population traumatic burdens of the past as appeared in the sharply social and residential segregation based on ethno-religious identities. the domains of woman stories and their agencies for reconciliation the experiences of women in poso were more or less similar with stories of women in the other conflict areas in terms of gender based violence, discrimination and injustice. but, it was specific in relation to the local context of the conflicts, in which ethnic and religious nuances became salient identification. there were several topics of traumatic events which people told me during my fieldwork in the area. these include depression for the death of their spouse, family members or relatives; suffering for family survival, material lost and the damage of their properties; flee looking for safe place in that they had to move or to hide several times; protecting children or family members due to the absence of their spouse; flexibility make interaction crossing ethnic and religious boundaries that was sharply divided during the conflict; participation of violence supporters from other regions who exacerbated situation; the late intervention of state and security apparatus to assist them in their danger or midst of difficulties; forgiving people who had made them sufferings, but not forgetting their wrong doing in the past. several women also suffered from sexual violence such as sexual harassment, forced abortion, rape and battering. certainly, there were much more various topics spoken depending on situation and persons who we encountered, but the domain of stories above were repetitively articulated either by the same informants or other persons in the different times whenever i talked with them.iii in the absence of government to set up truth commission, the reconciliation process in the grass root was initiated by ngos and civil society elements. the organizations worked in a wide range of activities such as trauma healing and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 101–113 109 provided assistance for the socio-economic rehabilitation in the post conflict as well as redeveloping trust in the community. they also involved women as the main actor of reconciliation at the grass root. it was assumed that women had no interest with the conflict root. so, women were relatively less prejudice and inclusive in social interactions. the socio-economic intervention would empower their position, and by extension their household resilience. thus, together with women’s engagement in the socio-economic activities, the social reconciliation could be enhanced in the community. besides non-government organization’s support through their programs, women had been playing a prominent role to reweave social fabric in the grass root that was torn along with the conflict. while men kept up their past memories of the other groups as threatening enemies, women interacted and developed the mutual understanding among them to end the conflict. women had less burden of fear to interact with others. when the tension of the communal conflict was still high, they could still safely cross over ethnic and religious boundaries. some of them could made cooperation in small business activities as well as encouraged the recovery either in the refugee camp or in the villages. some others who were engaged in the public domains such as civil servants, traders or peasants also smartly rebuild social relationship not only among their colleagues and clients, but also among wider societies. the reconciliation in that women played as key actors went on in two different levels. at the household level women responsibility to educate children enabled healing traumatic experience of their children from the bitterness of conflict. at the community level, those who became traders, teachers or religious leaders, etc enable to cross borders of ethno-religious segregation and build trust among the conflicting groups through their activities. women initiated and participated in any public gatherings for reconciliation in many villages. their greater involvement in public spheres contributed to the development of peace. through their engagement in public arenas, they could tell to different community members about the recovery situation of everyday life in their areas. to the extent of social reintegration, such activities pave a way for reconciliation in regard to the decline of social trust and a sense of insecurity. even though women play important role in promoting reconciliation and peace, many obstacles hindered them to fully participate in the peace building process and activities. this limitation stemmed from cultural constraints in that the ideal type of woman was those who were obliged to take care of household chores and to look after their children. doing activities outside their house was considered an extension of their responsibilities to keep up their household welfare. women’s involvement in public space was mainly intended as a protection for their families and communities rather than with a conscious attempt to the development of peace. aside from that, their contribution in the reconciliation process was neglected by the government. only a few women were in fact involved in the decision making for peace building, and they were not assigned for rethinking about appropriate public policies sensitive to women’s problems. most of the reconstruction programs after the conflict were gender bias in a sense that the programs were undifferentiated in their implementation, specifically to women’s problems such as reproductive health, vulnerability to ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 2, no. 1, september 2018, pp. 101–113 110 sexual violence, and women’s accessibility to public services. it was an irony that the potential role of women as the important agent for reconciliation process was less supported by the state and formal institutions. to overcome the conflict needs an integrated approach. to end violence, the agreement of leaders of the conflicting groups to ceasefire was not enough. it was neither adequate solution if the government only deployed more security troops and rebuild the destroyed public infrastructure, but they did not pay attention to the victims and vulnerable groups. the reconciliation was also not enough with asking forgiveness without addressing social justice. in this way, the collective memory of the bitterness from the violent conflict should be properly reconstructed by seeking truth, and their past psychological wounds should be healed by public recognition and rehabilitation. the meaningful reconciliation could not be achieved without justice in that it based on the fundamental human rights including women who experience the conflict differently and have different access to resources. conclusion the violent conflict has multi-dimension effects on the victims. it was not just a matter of losing or damaging their properties, but also leaving traumatic burdens to people whose family member died, and displaced from their homes. the violent conflict had also disrupted social solidarity, kinship relations or other social ties that it led to rising up social prejudice, distrust and segregation on the basis of religious and ethnic identities. regarding with this complexities, the trauma healing program that is commonly proposed to heal the violent victims may inadequate if it is only reduced into individual therapy. it should be integrated and complement with other reconciliation activities to meet the needs of victims and to fulfil justice. storytelling which is used in the psychological therapy and also used as the media of telling truth in truth commission of several countries might be an appropriate mechanism to release the traumatic burden of the past violence. however, this mechanism needs sensitivity to local cultural context by which the stigmatization to the victims should be avoided and the re-victimization could be prevented. women stories from the violent conflict in poso gave a lesson how they could be key actors in the grass-root reconciliation while healing the wounded past through their interaction across the borderline of ethno-religious identities. however, their stories were less recognized in the formal peace process. none of their activities were accounted for the rehabilitation in the post 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(2010). collective violence in indonesia. boulder, co: lynne rienner publishers. wijaksana, m. b. (2002). reruntuhan jiwa: trauma perempuan poso. jurnal perempuan, 24. zurbuchen, m. s. (ed.). (2005). beginning to remember: the past in the indonesian present. singapore: singapore university press & university of washington press. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 246 perception of islamic cultural policy in burundi simon ntamwana ecole normale superieure du burundi, burundi correspondence: nituntasi@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.4522 received 9 april 2022; accepted 23 may 2022 abstract the purpose of this paper was to examine the perception of islamic religious cultural policy in burundi. the research focused on the perception of cultureshaping policies based on islam by burundians. the discussion of the views of informants was based on syed muhammad naquib al-attas’ approach to islam and secularism. primary data were collected from 40 university christian students through questionnaires. the subjects included undergraduates and postgraduates studying in the department of languages and social sciences at ecole normale supérieure. secondary data were obtained from books, policy documents, and internet resources. it was found out that christians in burundi do not desire the islamic cultural policy that is applied in islamic states due mostly to its relation to radicalism and terrorism and the rejection of christianism as a divinely revealed religion. additionally, it was found out that some habits and practices among muslims such as marrying many women, growing beard, and the secret bathing of the bodies of dead muslims generate a negative perception of islam. however, some values and arts that are practiced among burundi muslims such as women veiling, fashion, cookery, knitting, and embroidery are highly appreciated. keywords: cultural policy, islamic cultural policy introduction as reflected through the 2018 constitution of the republic, burundi has innovated governance and public administration by introducing the concept of god in the constitution. as stated in the preamble, burundians are responsible before god. in addition, following this new constitution, the president and vicepresident of the republic and all the members of the government have to swear oath in the name of god by the constitutional court (art. 107, 126, 138, 162). moreover, like the earlier constitution versions, the republic of burundi recognizes equality of religions, races, ethnic groups, languages, and gender categories (art.13). following the enactment of this constitution, the members of the government organize thanksgiving crusades (présidence, 1 janvier 2022). in a similar vein, the members of the ruling party meet once a month (last thursday of the month) to worship and praise god (nkurunziza, 2022). this indicates that the government system is a secularism that is greatly influenced by christianism and layers of western civilization originating from the belgian mailto:nituntasi@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.4522 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 247 colonization. while the muslims are included in the governance, their cultural system is submerged by christianism and especially catholicism which involves the majority of the people (more than 60%). this, however, goes contrary to the colonial administration that marginalized muslims by undermining the influence of their language (swahili) in schools and official settings, abolishing some of their habits and subsequently christianizing them. during the colonial era, muslims were excluded from performing their islamic rituals or liturgy in christian dominant quarters (gakumba,1987,p.15). with the new constitution and derived secular government, it is expedient to investigate the perception of islamic cultural policy in burundi. through this evaluation, democratic governance and its interfaith dimensions in burundi are grasped and all their implications to the administration of public affairs. islamic cultural policy in “secular cultural policy in islamic countries: desirability and feasibility” (2015), abbas mehregan defines cultural policy as “a set of policies through which values, norms, beliefs, and traditions, in political, social, economic, legal, educational, and gender spheres are shaped and changed” (2). from this definition, islamic cultural policy suggests any culture-making policy that is based on or grounded in islam. in the context of religion, j. ahearne views cultural policy as a form of sociocultural transmission system through which identity is defined, maintained, and reshaped; habits and values are inculcated; and the past and future of the society are represented (154). this means that this paper does not study cultural policy as a type of public policy that is related to art and culture, but, in the sense of aysegul guchan (2014) as a religion-related cultural policy. in other words, as oliver bennett maintains, religious cultural policy means “forms of cultural action” that are linked with a particular religious system and that shape attitudes and patterns of behavior of people in a particular society (2009). this means that islamic cultural policy is different from any secularism that josé casanova refers to as a form of political system that constructs or symbolizes human experiences and traditions in a way void of any religious or church regulation (57). even though cassanova makes a distinction between religious cultural system and secularization, syed muhammad naquib al-attas links secularism to the western civilization and ipso facto to christianism. securalism in this way as admitted by bangstad (2009) is a form of civil religion that is used by political leaders to manage the public affairs of the country (189). according to naquib al-attas, islam does not have anything to do with secularism (25). contrary to other religions especially christianism that is viewed “as a part of culture, of tradition; as a system of beliefs and practices and attitudes and values and aspirations that are created out of history and the confrontation of man and nature, and that evolve and undergo a process of development” […], islam is a revealed religion which keeps its inherent political and social dimensions that christianity lost due to its “misapplication of greek philosophy in western theology and metaphysics” (22). in addition, due to its divine revelation, islam has a revealed law (shariah) that is “expressed in the teachings, sayings and model actions” (i.e., sunnah) (28). furthermore, al-attas refuses to refer to “the social, political, and economic dimensions of islam” as socialism in islam. he advocates that these sociocultural aspects of islam evidence the integrating ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 248 nature of islam rather than a form of secularism permeating it (44). this view is to some extent sustained by mclennan (2015, p.126). he considers secular governments to conceal to ironical by claiming public affairs administration void of layers of religiosity. actually, as supported by jahanbegloo (2009, p.317), totally secularized society does not exist, for any government is imbedded in the sociocultural tradition of the society whereby the religiosity is sine qua non. islamic cultural policy in this paper is then apprehended from this approach by al-attas as a sociocultural and political framing based on islam. this culture making policy implies bringing islamic religious values as a whole including wisdom, judicial system, arts, folklore, and aesthetics to public policy, administration, and governance. jahanbegloo refers to this as “the spiritualizing of public space” and contends that it is essential to harness human rights and humanism in the society by setting up a conducive islamic jurisprudence capable of a modern islamic society having nothing to do with islamic state. for ahearne (2014), this form of cultural policy differs from the mainstream cultural policy that is centered on the arts and creative economy. it is rather an “informal cultural policy” that deals with “strategic endeavors” by the government to shape national cultures, that is “sets of norms and symbolic matrices” (320). in the same spirit, scullion and garcía (2005) make a distinction between cultural policy based on political economy and cultural studies on the one hand and cultural policy based on humanities and arts. for them, the former is formal cultural policy in the sense of ahearne as it deals with the “study and management of cultural provision” (115) whereas the latter dealing with “aesthetics, taste, art and culture, policy and citizenship” is informal cultural policy (116). this second approach to cultural policy can easily be grounded in a religious system. thus oliver bennett points to the existence of catholic cultural policy (2009). he admits that the roman catholic church uses the deliberations of vatican ii whereby the pope and congregation of the doctrine of the faith use their theological and cultural authority to delineate and promote christian consciousness that has to characterize catholics (155). in a similar vein, vital da cunha argues for the existence of pentecostal cultural policy in brazil by pointing out the development of a pentecostal culture in urban peripheries whereby changes made by the church in various social aspects affect the national culture that has hitherto been influenced by catholicism (2018, p.1). as far as islamic cultural policy is concerned, pirouzfar and absalan (2013) view it as islamic cultural policy as government legislation that is grounded in islamic culture or simply a form of policymaking that is anchored upon islamic principles in such a way that “everything must be islamic” and […] “everything […] should be based on divine regulations” (6). this paper looks with the views of christians about programs, laws, or political practices that are grounded in the islamic culture and worldview. in other words, in islamic cultural policy, islam plays an agent role in the promotion of cultural policy whereby the islamic consciousness is envisioned. islam in burundi this research on the perception of the role of islam in public affairs and administration among burundians is of a paramount importance in the study of political islam in burundi. the life of the muslims and the expansion of islam in burundi has been dictated by social regulations which had for times marginalized ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 249 and discriminated muslims. earlier in the history of burundi, records of islam are traced back to the early 1880s. apart from traditionalism or animist religious practice, islam is the first religion to be introduced in burundi in 1830 (butoyi, p.54). the early muslims were slavers from zanzibar, the present tanzania (gakumba, p.5). the second wave of muslims dated back to the 1890s. these were mainly asians who came for trade under the auspices of the german colonisation. others were auxiliaries helping in the colonial administration of burundi. they included indians, pakistanis and arabs, mulattoes from east africa, swahili or black muslims from tanzania. religiously, the history of burundi has been characterized by intolerance. during the german colonisation (1896-1916) and belgian colonisation (1916-1962) as well, even though early muslims in burundi did not do proselytization to convert burundians to islam, they were despised by the european missionaries and catholic church (gakumba, p.8). thus, in addition to preventing them from circulating among non-muslims especially autochtones, muslims were heavily taxed by the colonial administration, they were socio-culturally repressed in many ways, and their koranic school was decreased by legislations which favoured colonial schools and missionary schools. in this vein, the economic legislation no 20/94 of 1st april 1921 excluded muslims from doing business in burundi by requiring them documents like european language proficiency certificate, primary school certificate, and certificate proving their skills in accounting (gakumba, p.15). this was a stumbling block to the muslim community who were mostly speaking swahili, arabic and other asian languages. likewise, the majority of muslims had not completed primary schools and were not trained in business management. moreover, the legislation no 19/93 of 29 march 1921, was also another oppression to the muslim community of burundi. following this law muslim’s plots of land were expropriated by the government. they were dispossessed of their urban land in the capital bujumbura and were displaced to farther places or peripheral zones like rumonge in bururi province or muzinda in bubanza province. this colonial policy aimed to prevent muslims from converting people and influencing them in the decolonisation of burundi. the limitation of islamic influences in burundi was also characterized by the law no 56 of 12 december 1924 and the decree of 17 july 1931 which abolished polygamy, a practice that was favoured among muslims. the catholic church also contributed in weakening islamisation in burundi. all the muslim pupils in missionary primary schools were constrained to convert to catholic church after the fourth grade (gakumba, p. 32). subsequently, many muslim children were then forced to convert to catholicism since secular schools were very few. to further this anti-islamist policy, the local catholic church referred to the few secular state schools which did not proselyte muslim children as atheist and prevented catholic believers from sending their children to them. thus muslims parents had two options, that is, to send their children to the very few secular state schools and protestant schools or to send them abroad. the muslim community was referred to by the government and catholic church as the swahili to negatively connote them to liars. despite oppression of early muslims in burundi, islam did some progress in the early 1900s (gakumba, p.48). mosques were built in many places among ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 250 others in rumonge (1902), in nyanza-lac (1921), in bujumbura (1928), in muzinda (1934), in kayanza (1937), and in rukago (1950). these islamic worship places spread muslim faith and quranic teachings among burundians. these early islamic institutions relied on tanzania, libya, qatar, kuwait, egypt and saudi arabia for qualified teachers. thus after the quranic teachings, burundians had to further their studies in the aforementioned countries. islamic strife to education climaxed with the creation of the first junior high school in buyenzi quarter in 1946 (gakumba, p.53). muslims’ efforts to cope with this oppressing history are galvanised through their sociocultural organizations and fellowships. the main association is comibu which stands for islamic community of burundi. it was founded in 1983 and was agreed by the government order no 560/19/83 of 13 april 1983 (gakumba, p.58). in addition to strengthening islam by consolidating all muslims, its intent is the triumphant dissemination of islam through burundi and the claim of muslim rights locally and internationally. in its objectives, comibu has to couple to the propagation of islam the building of infrastructures such as mosques and schools in all provinces. to train muslims morally and intellectually, comibu built schools for primary, secondary, and higher education focussing on religion, technical skills, sciences, and humanities. comibu like other islamic movements in burundi draws from the past of burundi which has strongly limited the diffusion of islam through public regulations and other practices. that is why as defined in its objectives, all its structures envision to expand islam (butoyi, p.91). thus, having been the other among christians, it becomes fascinating to do research on how islamic cultural policy is perceived among the majority non-muslims in burundi. in what follows, the research methodology, literature review, objectives, and research questions, are described before the presentation of analysis and conclusion. method the mixed method (qualitative and quantitative method) is central to this research. firstly, the analysis of data is based on an explanatory survey method that is achieved through quantitatively collected data. the research instrument that is used is questionnaire. the obtained data were analyzed using the statistic descriptive analysis. secondly, the quantitative analysis is coupled with the qualitative analysis to account for the views and feelings of the informants about the islamic cultural policy in burundi. the research subjects used are christian students studying at the burundi higher institute of education (ecole normale supérieure du burundi). all the subjects live in the municipality of bujumbura. the parameters of gender, age, and religious background are taken into account. 40 subjects in total were used. the convenience sampling method was used. after collection, the data were classified, interpreted, and analyzed through the lenses of al-attas’approach to islam. the theories of religion as foundation of ethics and morality and knowledge as the essential feature of the nature of man and humanity are used. in the application of the theories, five sets of questions were used. the first one deals with the personal parameters of respondents. this includes the religion or religious denomination, gender, age, and education level of the respondents. second, the respondents were asked about the significance of religion and islam in public affairs management and policy. thirdly, the respondents were asked about islamic education as a core point in islamic cultural ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 251 policy. fourthly, the respondents were asked about their perception towards cultural practices including elements of material culture, customary culture, and folklore. finally, they were asked about the establishment and promotion of islamic cultural policy in burundi. answers to these questions were rated through tables. then they were discussed based on the aforementioned theoretical framework. from various theoretical approaches, many authors have studied the role of religion in public policy and management, among others mark o’neill (2011), oliver bennett (2009), marrion maddox (2011), tobias harding (2015), jane woddis (2010). in the furtherance of this point, many studies have been conducted on the issue of islam and cultural policy. these include karim tartoussieh (2009), nedret kuran-burc burçoğlu (2011), karim tartoussieh (2011), aysegul guchan (2014). the first sets of works on religion and public policy discussed religion in general or many religions excluding islam and their interrelations to public policy and management. some of them apprehended cultural policy as a broad term to mean the politics of the cultural system of nation. others focus on the economic approach to cultural policy tackling therefore the issues of cultural heritage, urban regeneration, cultural education, intellectual property, cultural tourism, cultural mapping, and cultural and creative industry. the existing literature on islam and cultural policy deal with how the islamic sociocultural universe informs the muslim world and their policies. to the best of my knowledge no research has been done on the islam and public policy in burundi and more specifically on the attitudes of muslims towards cultural policy. this study differs from the aforementioned writings by the fact that it focuses on the burundi muslim minority and examines their relations to public policy and the sociocultural system in which it is grounded. this paper aims at: 1. investigating how burundi non-muslims perceive the role of religion in public policy and administration 2. examining how islamic cultural policy is perceived by non-muslims in burundi to achieve these objectives, the research attempts to answer the following questions: 1. how do non-muslims perceive the role of religion and specifically islam in public administration and policy? 2. how do non-muslims view the islamic cultural policy and rationale behind it? findings and discussion the personal parameters of the respondents (table 1) reveal that they were all christians including catholics (62%) and protestants (37.5%). they were mainly men, that is 90% over 10%. actually, in the university ecole normale supérieure, the number of women is still very inferior to that of men. even though the majority of the informants were undergraduates (87.5%), they were all informed about christian and islamic religions. they were students majoring in english, kirundi-swahili, history, and french education. their age varied between 20 and 30. as some of them witnessed, many of them had responsibilities in their churches. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 252 table 1. display of personal parameters of respondents description number of respondents % of respondents gender male 36 90 female 4 10 religion catholic 25 62,5 protestant 15 37,5 education level undergraduate students 35 87,5 postgraduate students 5 12,5 age 20-25 23 57,5 26-30 17 42,5 the frequency distribution of answers to the questions about the perception of religion and islam in administration and public policy reveals that 47.5% of the respondents strongly agree or agree to the idea that religious politicians fit in public affairs administration and governance. this demonstrates that the elected government actors including the executive power, the legislative power, and the judicial power. this reaction is backed up by the religious background of the respondents. actually, according to syed muhammad naquib al-attas christianism does not involve significant social and political dimensions due to its historical development (22). in its teaching, christianism advocates the separation of the religious and temporal powers. consequently, any government which does not separate the church and the state is viewed as a theocracy. while the participants’ views about the significance of religious politicians reveals a low rate, there is a high percentage with regard to religion and public administration. thus, the frequency of those who strongly agree and agree is 80%. this is an indication of a high belief that front line and non-elected bureaucrats or administrators can be religious without impinging on the secular character of the government that is promoted by christianism and its denominations. even though religion may impact on the discretion of the local administrators, it cannot affect the democratic character of the government. this view is grounded in christianism and the european secularism that is linked with it. this goes, according to al-attas, contrary to the islamized world. in fact, islam supports a world that is “disenchanted or deprived” of “magical, mythological, animistic, national, and cultural tradition” rather than those that are ingrained political power and authority of god and his prophet and of those who follow his prophet (183). this divine inspired government is shunned by nonmuslims. in the research, only 7.5% agreed or strongly agreed to the question “burundi should implement only the laws of the sharia”. the negative answers (92.5%) highlights the bad perception of islam among the research population. among the reasons given by the respondents is that islam lacks intolerance spirit and does not recognize the truth preached by other religions; islam discriminates women by condoning polygamy; islam marginalizes christians by calling them infidels (kafir). the other question in the rubric was about islam and its democratic import and good governance. the respondents were asked whether it was democracy if government officers were all religious. upon this question, 67.5% of the participants agreed or strongly agreed. this rate insinuates that the respondents do not make a mutually exclusive relationship between religion and democracy. religiosity does not hinder good ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 253 governance. the answers of the informants on the role of religion and islam in public affairs management and policy show that apart from the central government and elected government that should not be religious, other government members’ involvement in public affairs would not hamper good governance in burundi. but due to their religious background the respondents refuted any sharia-based government. the rate frequency is displayed in the table below. table 2. perception of religion and islam in administration and public policy aspects of politics perception number of respondents % of respondents religious politicians agree 2 5 disagree 7 17,5 strongly agree 17 42,5 strongly disagree 14 35 religious administrator agree 14 35 disagree 3 7,5 strongly agree 18 45 strongly disagree 5 12,5 sharia legal system agree 0 0 disagree 12 30 strongly agree 3 7,5 strongly disagree 25 62,5 islamic governance agree 15 37,5 disagree 7 17,5 strongly agree 12 30 strongly disagree 6 15 to measure the desirability of islamic cultural policy among christians, questions about education were used. the connection between education and islamic cultural policy is justified by al-attas’ view of islam. actually, the islamic universe revolves around knowledge or education. the holy qur’an is knowledge that includes “ethical, axiological, aesthetical and logical norms” that are immutable and that transcend time and space (46). this centrality of knowledge to the core values of islam reveals that any islamic cultural policy must promote education policy. to the question about islamic education policy, the respondents were asked whether the islamic values should be included in the school curriculum in burundi. only 7.5% approved the idea. this low share proves the non-desirability of islamic cultural policy among burundi christians. the respondents view in teaching islamic values in burundi schools a kind of islamization that would uproot the christian cultural traits that have been introduced and cemented by the western tradition since the colonialization. the reality on the field is that the subject of religion in primary and secondary school is optional and minimized in terms of credit and weighted average. except for islamic-based schools wherein the learners can partake in the religion course, in other schools, the pupils and students choose between protestantism and catholicism. muslim children who cannot choose between the two religious systems go outside to wait until the course period ends. this is a kind of marginalization on the side of the muslim children. muslim believers are, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 254 however, allowed to perform their worship rites. in many schools they are given rooms for daily and weekly prayers. thus, the respondents were asked about this aspect of islamic cultural policy. the findings of the research show that 65% of the participants support islamic worship in schools. this positive share among respondents pinpoints their belief in religious tolerance and liberty of religious expression. in addition, the frequency distribution reveals the respondents’ decline of proselytization. actually, they admit that the learners who are already muslims should be allowed to meet for their prayer meetings. moreover, they agree that religious infrastructural facilities should be given to them. in contrast they refuse to make the curriculum more multicultural by introducing islam as a subject in the curriculum. the frequency distribution to islamic cultural policy and education is displayed in the following table: table 3. islam and education policy islam and education perception number of respondents % of respondents values in curriculum agree 2 5 disagree 18 45 strongly agree 1 2,5 strongly disagree 19 47,5 worship in schools agree 16 40 disagree 8 20 strongly agree 10 25 strongly disagree 6 15 the respondents were also asked about islamic cultural policy by focusing on some aspects of culture. six questions were mentioned in the questionnaire. the questions include elements of islamic material, customary, and verbal culture. the focused elements and practice of culture include veiling for ladies, polygyny, long beard among men, knitting-embroidery, funeral rites, and worship ritual. about the desirability of these cultural practices, the frequency distribution of answers to the questions show that the vast majority of respondents strongly agreed or agreed to knitting and embroidery (97.5%). this points to the success of this handicraft practice among muslim women in burundi. the second element in share rate is veiling among muslim women. the share percentage among the respondents is 70%. these two elements point to the image of the muslim woman among burundi christians. apart from the religious belief which ‘tarnishes her’, she is viewed as entrepreneur and beautiful. this representation is shared by both female and male respondents. the following practice in rate frequency is the way muslims devote to prayers. the share percentage is 60%. it shows that the worship adoration ways of muslims do not disturb christians. the following cultural areas that were object of analysis were the long beard practice and funeral rites. these were rated at 30%. the majority of respondents did not agree with the funeral rites and body attire of muslims. this is associated with the respondents’ religious affiliations and background. actually, while some churches mostly, protestants boost veiling and long skirts for ladies, they discourage long beard or any long hairy style. some people use beard to pejoratively refer to muslims. the long beard exaggerates the stereotypes that muslims are womanizers and polygamous. the funeral performance on the bodies of dead people complicates the negative image ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 255 of the muslim man who is viewed as vigorous male and a bull for mating. through it, the muslims are viewed as the fetish, witch, and dark man to fear. this negative signification of the muslim has been exaggerated by the fact that the government has separated the cemetery into two parts, that is, one for christians and another one for muslims. finally, in the questionnaire items, a question was asked about the respondents’ desirability about islamic policy in the perspective of marriage. only 5%, that is, 2 persons of the responded agree to the spousal practice of muslims. this is linked with the christian doctrines that condemns polygamy and stresses monogamy. the answers prove the belief distance that exists between christianity and islam religion. the islamic cultural policy is explained by al-attas as patterning to the divine revelation to the holy prophet and great teacher ahmad (muhammad) who first interpreted the sacred law and delineated the model actions (sunnah) to be followed by all muslims (30). on the other hand, as al-attas admits, the core foundational pillars of the christian cultural policy, especially the catholicism, are the nicea, constantinople and chalcedon creeds, roman laws, and graeco-roman philosophy. these main pillars have dictated christian cosmology, arts, and sciences (29). thus, while in the christian universe and world view of burundi christians a long beard and polygamous man are condemned and associated with uncleanliness and a primitive character, burundi muslims view them as honor (heshima). this different view on the same cultural products corroborates oliver bennett’s idea in “the manufacture of hope: religion, eschatology and the culture of optimism (2011)” that religion has the capacity to endow human beings with a sense of meaning and purpose (7). the differentiated feelings of the informants show that religions have enculturated the spirits of burundians and ipso facto manufactured in them a signification system that is pertinent to the cultural policy embedded in their religious universes. moreover, it is realized that the image of the muslim woman is more positive than that of the man. the veiling for instance is bequeathed to the veiling of the catholic nurses and that of the born again pentecostal christians in some churches. while the woman is perceived as the meek, persevering, aesthetic and entrepreneur character; the man is viewed as being passionate, lustful, fetishist and dirty in nature. the results are displayed in the following table: table 4. perception of elements of islamic cultural practices elements of culture perception number of respondents % of respondents knitting and embroidery agree 26 65 disagree 0 0 strongly agree 13 32,5 strongly disagree 1 2,5 marriage institution agree 0 0 disagree 13 32,5 strongly agree 2 5 strongly disagree 25 62,5 veiling (jilbab) agree 17 42,5 disagree 7 17,5 strongly agree 11 27,5 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 256 strongly disagree 5 12,5 men attire (long beard) agree 9 22,5 disagree 18 45 strongly agree 3 7,5 strongly disagree 10 25 funeral rites agree 10 25 disagree 12 30 strongly agree 2 5 strongly disagree 16 40 worship rituals agree 20 50 disagree 8 20 strongly agree 5 12,5 strongly disagree 7 17,5 finally, questions were asked about what the respondents think of islam and use of it as pillar to government affairs and administration in burundi. the first question asked whether islamic cultural heritage should be protected by the burundi government. the second question was whether islamic values and world view were democratic and should ipso facto be promoted in burundi. the distribution of frequency reveals that only 45% agree for the protection of islamic cultural heritage in burundi. the low rate proves the negative perception of the shariah and sunnah upon which all genuine islamic practice and virtues are based (al-attas 94). there was fear among the informants that the protection of the islamic cultural heritage by the government would bring about the establishment of islamic state in burundi. since in the understanding of many burundi christians, islamic state is connected with terrorism and violence like that of the boko haram in nigeria, el-shabaab in somalia, and al-qaïda in afghanistan, and the hezbollah in lebanon; many people (25%) strongly disagree and more others disagreed (27.5%) on it. for the issue of promoting islamic values, 57.5% of respondents agreed. their views are influenced by the new cultural policy to develop a creative economy that valorize the cultural products and arts produced in burundi. this shows that even though some habits of muslim men such as growing a long beard and marrying more than one wife are mostly despised by the burundi christians, the practices of moslem ladies such as knitting, culinary arts, and fashion are accredited. this explains why some cultural entrepreneurship models commonly developed among muslim communities such as knitting, embroidery, culinary arts, and food ways have been adopted by non-muslims. in the capital of bujumbura, there many shops, houses, and restaurants wherein nonmuslim women use moslem models of knitting, handicraft, and culinary aesthetics in their creative industry. on the country as witnessed by the informants, some men who cannot control their sexual drives convert to islam so that they marry many women. others, to avoid complying with the civil policy demanding burundi men to marry and get registered with one wife, they run to islam so that they can keep the additional wives. this evidences why some of the respondents associated muslim men with dark and fraudulent ways. the perceptions of the respondents are demonstrated through the following table: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 257 table 5. establishment and promotion of islamic values in burundi policy perception number of respondents % of respondents islamic cultural heritage protection agree 13 32,5 disagree 11 27,5 strongly agree 5 12,5 strongly disagree 10 25 promotion of agree 23 57,5 islamic values disagree 15 37,5 strongly agree 0 0 strongly disagree 2 5 the respondents were asked to justify their rejection of the establishment of shariah and sunnah in burundi public policy and administration. 6 respondents, that is 15%, did not give any reasons. they maintained that they strongly disagree on the islamic cultural policy. this ensures a kind of radicalism that they avoided to disclose on the questionnaire sheet. this is because many of the respondents who abstained had confessed to belong to christian youth movements such as scout and schoenstatt and biblical fellowships. the informants (34 or 85%) who explained why they did not support the islamisation of burundi or simply the enactment of the islamic cultural policy give 7 reasons, namely false doctrine which does not promote the holy bible and jesus christ (61.7%); polygamy and poor family care (38.2%); strange worship that consume time, disturb neighborhood and that is satan-oriented (17.6%); radicalism and eschatology that support homicide (61.7%); practices which marginalize women (11.7%); the use of arabic language in worship rituals and ipso facto sounds strange to neighborhood (14%); and lack of patriotism for men (41%) who act against local cultural values (grounded in christianism) by growing beard, wearing robes, marrying many women, janazah or funeral rites especially washing the body of a dead muslim whereby muslims seclude themselves by keeping the corpse away from other people. the distribution of the frequency rates, shows that the first reason behind the rejection of islamic cultural policy by christians in burundi is their religious beliefs that are not in accord with the bible and the mediator to salvation jesus christ. this perception is coupled with the view of islam that goes with radicalism and criminal acts towards non-muslims or kafir. the other significant reason behind the negative perception is the cultural values held among muslims that are uncommon among christians among others growing long beard and secluded bath of the bodies of muslim people. conclusion based on their background that is rooted in a secular cultural policy linked with christianism, burundi christians perceive islamic cultural policy as form of radicalism and terrorism that is coupled with a rejection of the bible and the character of jesus-christ. the islamic cultural policy is not democratic and denies the principles of good governance because it supports the killing of non-muslims through youth leagues and radical organizations. moreover, due to habits observed among muslims such as growing long beard, secretly washing dead bodies, using foreign language for communication, burundi christians view islam ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 246-259 258 as a counter discourse to the national cultural heritage. furthermore, the practice of polygamy that is not condemned by islamic ethics marginalizes women and children by refusing them equal care. this is contrary to any democratic governance, for it does not recognize the inalienable rights of women and children. in the furtherance of research on islamic cultural policy in burundi, scholars should add to these findings by conducting a study on the minority muslim group that live in burundi. this would provide new findings from the perspectives of muslims. in addition, religious cultural policy should be integrated in the 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can they not create spaces to express their opinions and disagreements despite being dominated? these are questions that i look into as i analyse everyday tactics among dominated individuals to see how practices of othering “shape experiences of everyday life and how social actors [dominated individuals] are not passively subjected to the essentializing othering processes” (bendixsen, 2013, p. 120). as udah and singh (2019) advocate, questioning, challenging and rejecting negative representations and stereotypes of the other is at the forefront in scrutinising the effects of othering practices in the society. in this backdrop is where i attempt to argue that dominated individuals have agency, are capable of creating safe spaces, and are active resisters when confronted by perpetuators of othering. using michel de certeau’s (1984) concept of tactics in the practice of everyday life (1984) and postcolonial ideas on othering, lualhati bautista’s gapo and ngugi wa thiong’o’s matigari are analysed to reveal the everyday tactics employed by “dominated” characters. the setting of these novels depicts a neo-colonial milieu and their characters incorporate a strong stance toward resisting neo-colonial practices. firstly, i will identify the characters and the context of their domination. a discussion on the character’s tactics will be provided displaying how dominated individuals employ such schemes and can disrupt othering practices. by examining these tactics, this paper attempts to respond to the ongoing demand of resistance literature from the perspective of the periphery. othering and tactics othering occurs when a dominant group chooses who is “in” or “out” in the society based on certain characteristics that correspond to the dominant group’s identity. as a process, it accommodates individuals or groups who belong to an ingroup that produce and sustain “rhetorical and physical distance between themselves and an out-group” (mcallum & zahra, 2017, p. 2). it simply means that the dominant group is defining itself (kitzinger & wilkinson, cited in traustadóttir, 2001). on the act of defining the self, othering marks and determines those perceived to be different from the self called the other (weis, 1995, in udah & singh, 2019). thus, canales (2000) elucidates that othering is a power that includes and excludes (in udah & singh, 2019). according to powel and menendian (2016), othering discloses a set of shared conditions and processes that proliferate groupbased marginality and disparity (in baak, 2018). it intersects with other terms in social sciences, such as “stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination” (celik, bilali & iqbal, 2016, p. 2) that, in basic practice, set one apart from the other. in the experience of othered persons, they are perceived as unacceptable failing to meet recognised socio-cultural and normative ideals (bendixsen, 2013). as udah (2017) speaks of africans in south east queensland, their otherness is constantly ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 275-286 277 secured by physical appearance, skin colour, ways of speaking, and ways of dressing or of doing (in baak, 2018). because they are demoted as “cultural inferiors” (khrebtan-hörhager & avant-mier, 2017, p. 3), being in such circumstance partakes experiences of “marginalisation, decreased opportunities, and exclusion” (murtagh, 2017, p. 4). following these concepts, it is not hard to see how scholars have considered othering as an essentialising practice that submits othered individuals to images of degradation, mystification, romanticism, and exoticism (inokuchi & nozaki, 2005). while othering is now widely criticised in cultural studies, it continues to persist, say celik et al. (2016), that is created and reinforced by “institutions, norms, and practices” (p. 22). scholars however have made progress in understanding the lived experiences of dominated individuals and have developed different lenses to interpret their means of resistance. for one is de certeau’s conceptualisation of “tactics” from the practice of everyday life (1984) that will be my basis on identifying various means of resistance, or tactics, among dominated individuals. a tactic, he says, “is a calculated action determined by the absence of the proper locus” performed by the weak, or dominated individuals (p. 37). the absence of locus means that tactics work on a territory controlled by foreign power or, as friday (2011) puts it, outside forces. without an organised territory, tactics rely on time by taking advantage of surprises, tricks and opportunities (de certeau, 1984). these tactics include “dwelling, moving about, speaking, reading, shopping, and cooking” that can be ingenious ruses to subvert the opponent (de certeau, 1984, p. 40). bendixsen (2013) views these as dominated individuals’ expression of “autonomy by using tactics that contest oppressive forces, such as othering processes” (p. 125). in frisina’s (2010) study on young muslims in italy, she provides two types of daily tactics: visibility and individual promotion. as the word visibility denotes, young italian muslims use visibility tactics “to generate a regime of visibility” to be recognised (p. 560). in the public eye, they display themselves as respectable muslims as a way to give a positive image to their religion. on the other hand, muslims who have discursive abilities use individual promotion tactics. being experts at speaking, these muslims are publicly identified in italy as teachers of islam and the muslim community. these young italian muslims call themselves “progressive muslims” which, according to safi (2003), means “continuing beyond the course charted by liberal islam…concentrating questions of social justice…and of pluralism outside and inside the umma (the islamic community)” (in frisina, 2010, p. 568). however, tactics have limitations, “what it wins it cannot keep” (de certeau, 1984, p. 37). hence, tactics of visibility and individual promotion are not redemptive and do not question the dominant system (frisina, 2010). similar to frisina’s study is bendixsen’s (2013) analysis on young muslims’ tactics in germany. bendixsen considers how the youth employ everyday tactics or manners of resistance in everyday situations. she enumerates tactics used by young muslims like joking, rehearsal, normalisation and corrective practises. firstly, joking tactic is performed using wit, jokes, satire, and irony against othering practices faced in the streets. second is rehearsal tactic that is made by teaching young women to learn ways to deal with othering. in religiously oriented meetings, leaders would have a simulation or role-plays for young women to practise reacting towards othering situations. thirdly, normalisation tactic makes methods that offer similar attitudes between muslim germans and other germans. watching similar ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 275-286 278 tv shows, retaining german name (for converts) instead of changing to muslim name, and/or dressing fashionably are a few samples of normalisation tactic that young german muslims do to share belongingness with the dominant german culture. in utas’ (2005) study on tactics, he discusses tactics of young women in the liberian war zone. while utas (2005) do not portray women as essentially victims in the warfare, he states that women are at a disadvantage. in such environ, women perform tactics called social navigation such as victimcy, girl friending, and soldiering to survive the war. in doing victimcy for rape, women present themselves as victims despite consensual sex to successfully establish themselves as legitimate recipients of humanitarian aid and to free from social blame. girl friending, on the other hand, is done by having relationships with multiple high-ranking soldiers to give themselves and their family protection from violence and economic stability. because provisions are scarce, women dress up as soldiers where they take up arms and fight to take advantage of the war loots. this tactic is called soldiering. ratcliffe (2000) considers eavesdropping a tactic. she calls it rhetorical eavesdropping which is used to pay attention to the “discourses of others, for hearing over the edges of our own knowing, for thinking what is commonly unthinkable within our own logics” (p. 90-91). there are only a few tactics that dominated individuals make and do to survive in their daily struggles of othering. as can be observed, tactics employed can vary from different people depending on the political, economic and/or cultural realities that dominated individuals are in. also, tactics are only immediate benefits to everyday situations thus they are not solutions to systemic issues. and, by doing tactics, dominated individuals merely rely on luck that is not a guarantee to subvert the enemy. it is in this framework that i attempt to analyse the tactics of dominated individuals in the context of neo-colonialism. how these individuals grapple with, respond to and, later on, overcome society’s exclusionary practices in everyday life. method applying de certeau’s (1984) concept of tactic along with other proponents mentioned above, i investigated lualhati bautista’s gapo and ngugi wa thiong’o’s matigari to reveal the everyday tactics among dominated characters in these novels. firstly, i will provide the dominated characters who perform tactics using discourse analysis and the postcolonial concept of othering to identity othered characters. simultaneously, i will discuss how they become society’s dominated individuals through othering practices based on race, class, and profession. a discussion on character’s tactics will follow, displaying how dominated individuals employ these tactics and how these tactics can disrupt othering practices. by examining these tactics, this paper attempts to respond to the ongoing demand of resistance literature from the perspective of the weak. findings and discussion lualhati bautista’s gapo in the novel gapo, bautista chose olongapo city as the perfect archetypal setting of neo-colonialism in the philippines for the city used to cater in its shore the u.s. naval base. since this society heralds (white) american ideals, filipinos have become othered thus dominated individuals, the more to those who shun ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 275-286 279 american standards of living. in this community, some filipino characters have to deal with cultural assimilation and subjugation so their living conditions can perk up. such is how prostitutes and waiters in the bar give more priority to american than filipino customers since americans pay more handsomely and known for giving dollar tips. consequently, services are given to americans with urgency and eagerness. in this outlook, prostitutes and waiters have helped progress the practise of othering. conversely, dominated individuals are finding ways to counter their being othered and its perpetuators. gapo’s tactics made by the novel’s characters are (1) pestering, (2) mockery, (3) ridicule, (4) informing, and (5) language. first is modesto who works in the american naval base. in the beginning, bautista conceals modesto’s real identity. as a filipino husband, modesto embodies a traditional machismo conception of a father. he is the source of the family’s livelihood and a heavy drinker. in front of his son, modesto likes to display himself as a well-respected employee at work. eventually, bautista reveals his real identity when his son, jun, witnessed a white man johnson call modesto “yardbird” – an insult for filipinos that means extremely hungry. while eating at the kitchen table, modesto feels naked as jun recounts this happening to him. this disclosure sheds light on modesto’s nightly excessive drinking at the red-light district. discussing modesto’s tactics, modesto practises “pestering” and “mockery” to americans in places where he can resist without possible retaliation. a place can be a space among dominated individuals when processes of othering can be combated either partially or completely depending on the “distribution of different kinds of resources or capital” (quoted from bourdieu, in dube, 2017, p. 396). bourdieu enumerates economic capital (wealth), cultural capital (education), and symbolic capital (prestige) as forms of resources (in dube, 2017). in this paper, however, i expand his typology by considering place as resource. for instance, at a bar largely occupied by filipinos and black americans, a white american is enjoying the company of rosalie (hostess/waitress) on his table while modesto and mike are drinking beer on another. to pester the white american, modesto calls rosalie to get something for their table. seeing the american’s annoyance, modesto feels better so he repeatedly summons rosalie to their table. in the same situation, modesto notices rosalie throwing meaningful glances to mike. modesto capitalises this opportunity to “pester” yet again the white man. modesto engages rosalie in a talk and invites her in their table. not for long, the white man grows impatient that he calls out rosalie loudly. soon, a black man yells “shut up!” (bautista, 1988, p. 59) that got the white man’s friend terrified. recognising they are outnumbered, the white men choose to leave the bar. soon after, filipinos and black americans have a laugh (mockery). modesto then says “sabi na sa ‘yo, hindi kakasa ‘yon! kampi-kampi ‘ata tayo rito” (told you, he won’t fight back. we’ve got allies here) (bautista, 1988, p. 61). the mockery implies that pestering americans makes modesto (and black americans) feel good about himself. the scene also further demonstrates how dominated individuals (filipinos and black americans), despite race, support one another when confronted with the same enemy. as the us largely adheres to eurocentric ideals, the novel casually enlightens us about black and white americans’ great divide. even in olongapo, blacks and whites live separately and differently. there, the blacks share similar sentiments with filipinos. in this scene, pestering and mockery ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 275-286 280 are tactics that help dominated individuals make themselves feel good about their identity. mike is the second character who is a constant critic to white americans and their culture. normally, in a neo-colonial landscape, being white is a privilege as a lingering impact of western aesthetics. while women laud him for being attractive, mike however finds his whiteness a demerit. left behind by his white father, mike is desperately searching for a paternal love that turns into hate against (white) americans who deceivingly promise filipino women with fortune and marriage. as a result, mike finds comfort, shares sentiments, and seeks belongingness among filipinos. however, when filipinos question his claim to filipinohood, he gets conflicted with his identity and cannot come into terms with what homi k. bhaba (1994) calls hybridity. for instance, when someone calls him american or white, michael feels “radically alien” (bron in baak, 2018). it is reminiscent of liu and self’s (2019) analysis on the perception of american expatriates feeling an outsider being called laowai (foreigner) while staying in china. thus, in essentialising filipinoness, mike becomes an outsider characterised as “problematic units of the nation” (yilmazok, 2018, p. 2). despite rejection, mike still asserts his filipinoness. kabir (2016) makes of this as the fluid process of identity taking place that “may depend on the family one is born into, the culture and religion one belongs to, one’s community and one’s life experiences” (p. 528). even so, at times, he is left to deal with being nationless having abandoned his affinity to america. in this position, mike utilises the tactics ridicule, informing, and language. mike’s criticisms are mostly directed to american sympathisers such as magda, a prostitute, who is a fervent american worshipper. magda wants mike out in their shared apartment so she can bring her american customers easily. to convince mike to leave, one day magda brings sam, a white man, in the apartment. she intends to be seen naked with a white man in the living room. as observed, magda plays to be a perpetuator of othering bringing a white man whom mike hates. as soon mike arrives, he pounds on the floor as he walks towards his bedroom and bangs the door after. as a result, sam grows furious thinking that magda is using him to make her boyfriend jealous. “lemme go, dammit! i don’t wanna have nothin’ to do with you no moh!” (bautista, 1988, p. 21). in a moment, magda helplessly pleads for him to stay but sam still leaves the house. in this scene, what mike performs is the tactic of “ridicule” to agitate sam and magda. sam’s anger and magda’s desperation are validation of the effectiveness of the tactic. in the words of bendixsen (2013), tactics are capable of interrupting, disturbing and preventing a dominated individual from being subjected to othering discourses. another scene where mike dislocates a symbol of american culture occurs in his conversation with magda about cuisine. magda pridefully convinces mike to take her imported corn beef (american symbol) however mike declines with a grin. embarrassed, magda heightens her othering through sarcasm. “sabagay, meron ka pang de boteng bagoong diyan. mumurahin at gawang pinoy!” (well, you still got your fermented fish in a jar. cheap and filipino-made!) (bautista, 1988, p. 45). at that strike, mike begins relaying the news about us being criticised for exporting defective food. subsequently, magda feels her stomach rumble and throws up what she had eaten. mike further expresses his distrust to american food and, instead, promotes the filipino bagoong. apparently, bautista creatively employs cuisine to serve as markers of identity for food can be indicative to cultures and communities. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 275-286 281 and, so, bautista chose the filipino bagoong to contrast with the american corn beef as symbols of countries in rivalry. houston (2007) explains this as the attempts among postcolonial authors to express local identities as a substitute to colonial ideals. how mike dislocates this othering is through the tactic of “informing” drawing facts from the news as counter-discourse. not only did he convince magda that us export foods are unsafe, similarly mike advertises filipino cuisine. as seen, mike attempts to dissuade magda’s delusional american worshipping. every time magda attempts to other mike, he immediately responds negatively. moreover, the situation shows how the tactic of informing dislocates magda’s othering. but regardless of the positive result, the situation has drawback because it is dependent on luck. the vomiting could not have happened without the writer’s intervention. thus, it would have decreased the impact of the tactic and magda would not have believed mike’s information. progressing to mike’s resistance, mike absentmindedly reaches to black men’s row, a place for black americans in olongapo, and tactics of “informing” and “language” save him from the possibility of death. these tactics transpire when mike helps an old black man who becomes alarmed after seeing mike’s complexion. another black man is approaching asking why mike is helping. according to uptin, wright, and harwood (in baak, 2018, p. 4), “skin colour or visible difference” can be basis of othering thus leaves mike an immediate target to blacks’ hatred. yet, through informing and language tactics, mike pacifies the possible hostility. “it’s all right, friends... i am not an american. pilipino ako!” (i am filipino) (bautista, 1988, p. 119). in consequence, the black man leaves mike alive. as evidenced, the amalgamation of tactics spares mike’s life. it acknowledges how languages shape human identities and validates the importance of native languages as identity markers. as owen (2011) expresses in his study of canada’s aborigines and the role of their language, “heritage language is highly symbolic of the aboriginal identities” (p. 5). hence, shifting to tagalog legitimises mike’s claim to filipinohood. this scene further affirms that the performance of tactics mitigates a dangerous place. through his skin colour, black men’s row is clearly antagonistic for mike, although he transforms the place into his space. as de certeau (1984) puts it, “tactics do not obey the law of the place, for they are not defined or identified by it” (p. 29). ngugi wa thiong’o’s matigari in matigari, wa thiong’o depicts a corrupt and authoritarian society and, although independent, western residents have relative influence over the country. the government’s preference towards western capitalists and indifference to factory workers expose the economic and political realities between the powerful and the powerless. and so, like in gapo, assimilation and subjugation are everyday experiences of the people. nevertheless, othered characters find ways to cope with their situation and emerge to confront these inequalities. the tactics performed in this novel are (1) menacing, (2) defaming, (3) scolding, (4) informing, and (5) arson. muriuki lives an orphan life along with other boys in the vehicle cemetery (home), a dumpsite for junk cars. in order to survive, they scavenge for provisions from the garbage yard but, to do so, they have to pay fine before the police allows them to. at times, adults accuse orphans of thievery just so they can take their rummages as their own. to simply put, these orphans are the most othered in the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 275-286 282 society. how orphans respond to society’s othering is what i call “menacing” tactic. by pelting stones or beating adults up, the orphans realise that they can threaten adults. an instance is when matigari unknowingly enters their village and the orphans, as a preventive measure, throw stones at him believing that matigari would also take their gains. this tactic of “menacing” harmonises de certeau’s effect of tactic that is to “create surprises within the spaces” (cited in round, williams & rodgers, 2008, p. 174). the scene displays the orphans defending their gains from outsiders. with similar experiences as orphan, they work together for the group’s protection and, in doing so, overcome society’s othering. as observed, menacing converts the place into a space for security and belongingness. apart from the village, the orphans can also go to other places and feel safe provided that they go out in groups. as proof to the tactic’s feat, muriuki says that scavenge -grabbing adults are “not so much now” since they have learned to deal with them (wa thiong’o, 1989, p. 13). it further subscribes to kerkvliet’s (1990/2013) third dimension of everyday resistance, or tactic, that is to produce “immediate benefit, including material gains, to the resisters” (quoted by santiago, 2015, p. 143). the second character is guthera, a prostitute woman from a poor family. like many societies, the novel portrays prostitutes as society’s untouchable. apart from that, women in this fictional society are constructed as cornerstones of the home. thus, guthera is an easy target for bullying, discrimination and violence like how the police officers abuse her. she nevertheless deems necessary to find means to grapple with her circumstance. one time, guthera enters a restaurant to hide from the police officers wanting her service. seeing the police approach the restaurant, guthera goes out but not before she exposes the officer’s depravity. “it’s just that one of the cops is after me. he keeps on following me like i am a bitch on heat. he ought to be ashamed of himself, whistling at me like that in order to make me stop. who is going to stop to let cops chat her up, and in broad daylight? definitely not guthera!” (wa thiong’o, 1989, p. 28) what guthera makes is a tactic of “defaming” the enemy. guthera reveals how the officer takes advantage of his authority for his self-interest. however, guthera finds the chance to defame the officers and makes herself feel good. without personally resisting, guthera succeeds on reacting to the police officer’s potential othering. another dominated individual whose tactics disrupt othering processes is matigari ma njiruungi. he had worked as a slave for settler williams, a white colonialist before he turned a patriot who took arms against white colonial government in their country. after the war, matigari plants to reclaim his house where settler williams used to occupy. shortly, he finds out that johnny boy now owns the house – son of settler williams’ cook who was then his accomplice. he realises that little has changed in his country. in a neo-colonial developing country, a poor black man like matigari, homeless with worn-out clothes, is othered in the society. within this narrative, the society considers matigari a “cipher, or nonperson” (bullis & bach in bach, 2005, p. 259). as the lead character, wa thiong’o humanises matigari’s character with more tactics than others. these tactics include “scolding”, “informing”, and “arson”. the first situation involves guthera, the prostitute woman, and two police officers. because guthera has declined a sexual favour to one of the officers, he terrorises guthera with his growling patrol dog. as the crowd seems thrilled at ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 275-286 283 guthera’s predicament, matigari arrives in the area. dumbfounded, matigari berates the crowd at their inhumanity. “are you going to let our children be made to eat while you stand around nodding in approval?” (wa thiong’o, 1989, p. 31) says matigari. then, matigari tells the policeman to leave her alone, pointing his finger at them. “why don’t you admit that it’s because she won’t open her legs for you that you are harassing her?” (wa thiong’o, 1989, p. 31). matigari defames him publicly. what matigari does here is the tactic of “scolding”. surprised that someone actually has confidence to protest, the officers and the crowd leave wondering about matigari’s identity. as tactics rely on “surprise, trickery, and chance encounters” (friday, 2011, p. 173), matigari subverts them when officers are caught off guard. coupled with confidence and ridicule, scolding becomes an effective tactic to stop the police officer from harassing guthera further. with the harassment of police officers and the crowd, the place is primarily antagonistic and might not be a good place to get involved into an argument. despite that, matigari turns the place into his favour. eventually, guthera is saved from further violence. like mike in gapo, matigari uses “informing” tactic. matigari arrives gleeful at the gate of his house. as he enters, a young black man named johnny boy suddenly stops him. from there, matigari narrates the history of the house how settler williams took everything from him. as his story continues, johnny boy gets annoyed when matigari elaborates how a cook kept him from shooting settler williams. unaware that he is talking to the cook’s son, matigari calls the man “fat as a pig; no, like a hippo” (wa thiong’o, 1989, p. 47). at that, johnny boy whips matigari twice for insulting his father. despite that, he stands up and continues his narration. seeing that, johnny boy turns speechless and immobile. interpreting the situation, what tactic matigari performs here is “informing” with the use of history. as observed in johnny boy’s annoyance, the tactic of informing has achieved on challenging his othering. furthermore, the performance of the tactic has afforded space to matigari. in fact, had the police officers not arrived who arrest him, matigari could have entered the house with a stunned johnny boy. the next time matigari confronts othering happens near the novel’s ending. surrounded by massive security, matigari is inside his house while spectators from the country are cheering for him. an officer urges matigari to surrender but matigari bursts out the windows with fire, burning the house. the crowd starts looting from the house while singing merrily with lyrics “it’s burning/yes, bad boy’s house is burning” (wa thiong’o, 1989, p. 166). helping matigari, the orphans encourage the crowd to burn other properties. with that, the crowd start setting the coffee, tea, and cars on fire, causing panic to the soldiers and policemen. what matigari produces here is the tactic of “arson”. according to scott and kerkvliet, arson is a manner of resistance of the weak, or dominated individuals (cited in santiago, 2015). in this scene, matigari becomes the crowd’s motivation to join in his resistance. the once fearful start to sing songs of resistance and burn the property of oppressors and traitors. matigari employs the tactic to create a diversion. he succeeds on pulling this trick having been able to escape the house. as de certeau (1984) explains, tactic is an “art of pulling tricks” that seizes opportunities (p. 37). however, the ending reveals that matigari, along with guthera, gets shot by soldiers chasing them. their death simply confirms the transitory element of tactics as everyday resistance has “no formal organization, no ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 275-286 284 formal leaders, no manifestoes, no dues, no name, and no banner” and so they are “rarely accorded any social significance” (scott, 1985, p. 35). conclusion examining dominated individuals’ everyday tactics immerses us with a knowledge of how othering processes impact their everyday experiences, their coping mechanisms, and their triumphs on overcoming such inequalities. tactics of the weak can provide us with a lens to interpret their experiences of domination away from the common, mostly insufficient and western-centric viewpoint of dominated individuals. based on the analysis, the paper reveals that popular representation among dominated individuals as being meek and despondent are insufficient in capturing their experiences of domination. the paper further shows that they have means of resistance that are employed in daily confrontations of othering practices. likewise, tactics are an avenue with which they can express their opinion and disagreement. however, tactics, as illustrated, must not be 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(2018). persistent othering in turkish cinema: the stereotyped and gendered greek identity. turkish studies, 20(1), 1–20. doi:10.1080/14683849.2018.1470898 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 99-109 99 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia underlying master narrative and counter-stories on selected american online news irma febriyanti universitas pgri madiun correspondence: irma.febriyanti@unipma.ac.id doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i1.2680 received 25 june 2020; accepted 26 august 2020 abstract this paper extrapolates the contrasting discourse of master narrative and counter stories through an analysis of online news articles dealing with the marginalization of africanamerican students in newark. the discourse of master narrative works to maintain the ongoing racism that limits the opportunity of african-american community in newark educational field. the claim of equal opportunity, as is propagated by the discourse of cami anderson, the superintendent of newark works to conceal the prevailing ideology of whiteness and color-blind view that deny special privileged to the whites. employing fairclough’s cda (2010) under the framework of critical race theory (crt), the study underlines micro-structures of linguistic features within the wider scope of racism in american education. this paper argues that whiteness as ideology remains prevalent in american educational system, and one avenue to subvert this view by increasing the involvement of marginalized group in the policy making decision. the discourse of the public, as seen in baraka’s narration aligns with the african-american community’s struggle for equal access to through its advocatory tone as a catalyst for social change. keywords: critical race theory, critical discourse analysis, master narrative, counter stories introduction the united states of america is perceived as a democratic nation which is founded upon the pluralistic ethos of the multi-ethnicities that constitute america as a nation. the myth that “the u.s was created by god as an asylum in which liberty, opportunity, and reward for achievement would prosper” (fuchs, 2012, p. 3) places multiculturalism as a central tenet in american society. america invents itself as ‘the first global, cosmopolitan polity…. a cosmopolitan federation of foreign cultures…a world federation in miniatures’ (jusdanis, 2001, p. 12) in which equal opportunity exists for any citizen and immigrants. proclamation such as american dream becomes the prevailing symbol for equity in american society. a critical outlook concerning american multiculturalism conveys a more distressing outlook of america. multiculturalism in american society, as proposed by tate (1997, p. 216) actually works to “legitimate [the dominant culture’s] power and position” in which the claim to equality obscures the repression of ethnic minorities. tate positions multiculturalism as one example of master narrative, stories woven by the dominant culture into the fabric of social structures in which the discourse of multiculturalism works to http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 99-109 100 conceal the disparities within american society. while multiculturalism is foregrounded as a shared bond among the diverse ethnicities that constitute america, this myth conceals disparities based on racial divide. the minorities remain struggling for equality up into the contemporary period. the recent movement of black lives matters (blm), initially a response towards a police officer, george zimmerman’s acquittal for killing trayvon martin in 2013 underlines the ongoing struggle of the african-americans community against the disenfranchisement of the ethnical minority. (chase, 2018) blm movement underlines the stark disparities between the privileged whites and the disadvantages african-american ethnicity. this movement further implores the hypocrisy of american multiculturalism, while america proclaims itself to be a tolerant nation founded on the fundamental aspect of freedom, democracy and equality, its history is marred with racial injustice, discrimination, and forced assimilation into the dominant white, anglo-saxon protestant culture. (boyer, 2012; sowell, 2008; taylor, 2014) one factor that hinder the erasure of racism is the denial of the existence of racism itself. sensoy and diangelo (2017) criticizes how racism is only associated with certain action of individual labelled as ‘racist’ while disregarding the systematic and structural apparatus of racism. in other words, racism is only conceptualized in its micro levels, dealing with individual without perceiving the existence of a structure, the macro level that reproducer racism. moreover, relating with education, by proclaiming that equal opportunities exist for all children, regardless of racial background, the whites refuse to admit that they are benefitted by their status as white. this ‘colorblind’ view that claim to represent equal opportunity and meritocracy, actually functions to conceal systems and structures given to the maintenance of racial inequity. (ladson-billings & tate, 1995)(wing, 2016)(bukowczyk, 2016) the city of newark, new jersey provides an avenue in contextualizing the racialized state of american education and the contrasting discourse among the educators, students and parents, and the local authorities. the city’s historical significance by hosting black power conference in 1967 and the newark riots in 1967 highlights its importance in the struggle of achieving african-american’s struggle for equality (2007). despite this historical fact, glaring disparities remains between the whites and the ethnic minority in which educational field is not exempted. tractenberg, orfield, & flaxman (2013)articulate how racism remains an unsolved problem and black students suffers from lack of access to higher education. moreover, their study of the condition in new jersey public schools conceptualizes the term ‘apartheid school’ due to the disparities of racial demographics in several schools. the present state of racialized newark education system is further imperiled by the prevailing master narrative that the equal opportunity already exists. the prevailing master narrative works to conceal the educational achievement gap -the differences between the test scores of minorities and their white counterparts –(paik & walberg, 2007, p. 7), in which the family socioeconomic factors are strongly related to educational outcomes. in 2014 newark instituted a universal choice system, ‘newark enrolls’, to replace the previous allocation that assigned students to a district schools based on the location of their residence. while this policy is a step in the right direction, the condition in newark remains disadvantaged for the african-american community. this paper seeks to explore the contrasting discourse between the master narratives and counter stories through analysis of several online news articles. seen from the perspective of delgado (1989) there exist a struggle between the dominant discourse (master narrative) which is employed to legitimize and naturalize the ongoing domination and the counternarrative that aims to challenge the master narrative. the dominant discourse as manifested through the account of school authorities proclaims that education ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 99-109 101 is accessible to all, regardless of race, a statement which is denied by the testimony of african-american parents. this study explores the contradictory discourse by employing fairclough’s model of cda, especially genre and style to underline the microanalysis within linguistic features. lastly, this study positions the findings among the macrostructures of present-day american education in which disparities remain a lingering problem. several prior studies have exemplified the applications of cda in analyzing newspapers articles. a recent study by mardikanto et al (2020) concerning the construction of news texts in indonesian newspapers focuses on two dimensions, macrostructure and superstructure. their study argues on the existence of the contrasting discourse that either reinforce or oppose the news statements. another finding by todo and budiarta ((2018)concerns with how the macro and super-structure of the texts are employed by kompas newspaper to demand the settlement of the profiteering on the name of the president and the then vice president. furthermore, a study by yuniawan (2017) contextualizes how several articles found in indonesian suara merdeka newspaper contains the language expression of conservation events, which is linked green discourse that criticizes the reification of living beings based on economic values. the present study builds upon the prior argumentation concerning the contrasting discourse and the two-steps fold of analysis, connecting the macro and super-structure of the texts although differs in several aspects. in line with the critical race theory (crt) as the framework, this study elaborates more on the racialized status of american educational field and how mass media works to contextualize the contrasting discourse of master narrative and counter stories and how they either support or challenge the dominant discourse of whiteness. theoretical framework this paper applies fairclough’s concept of cda, mainly related with discourse, styles and genres within the broader scope of critical race theory that expounds the racialized status of american society. critical race theory (crt) argues that race, especially the special privileges attributed to the white social group, or whiteness is particularly important in ensuring the continuation of racism. one theorist of crt, delgado (1989) proposes the framework of master narrative and counternarrative to underline mechanisms that work to either conceal or uncover the ongoing racial oppression. concerning the application of crt in american education, the master narrative or dominant discourse is the belief that equal opportunity exists for all children, regardless of race. in harris (1995)’s opinion, this master narrative perpetuates the privileges associated with being white by their refusal to acknowledge racism. by refusing to admit that certain privileges exist for white people or ‘colorblind’, this dominant discourse normalized the presence of racism. counter stories, as proposed by delgado (1989, p. 32) challenges the master narrative and the hidden agenda, ideologies or values which works to perpetuate the inequalities of american society. the conflict between master narrative and counter stories determines which discourse will be upheld in the society. how can there be such divergent stories? why do they not combine? is it simply that members of the dominant group see the same glass as half full, blacks as half empty? i believe there is more than this at work; there is a war between stories. they contend for, tug at, our minds (delgado, 1989, p. 9). in order to highlights how the discourse in online news articles either maintain or challenges the master narratives, this paper employs several cda concepts proposed by fairclough mainly on discourse, genres and styles. fairclough considers discourse as “ways of representing aspects of the world –the processes, relations and structures of the material world, ‘the mental world’ of thoughts, and the social world” (2003, p. 124) in other word, discourse can be defined as the way an individual socially, physically and mentally ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 99-109 102 constructs the world, which is varied among individuals. genres is the linguistic features that regulate people’s utterances, interaction, social rules or norms and the construction of identities within these interactions. fairclough defines genre as the way people “produce, reproduce, enact or counter particular kinds of social relations” (fairclough, 2010a, pp. 418–419)). closely related with genres is what fairclough coins as style, the various identity adopted by people regarding the way of representation, either themselves or by others and the social relations or identities in the way they talked. furthermore, fairclough differentiates between autobiographical self, how individual convey their life experience and discoursal selves, the role individual plays in creating various discourse, whether support or challenge the dominant discourses. (fairclough, 2010b, pp. 45–46) the interplay among discoursal selves result in a struggle to achieve master narrative, the discourse held by the dominant group that normalizes power over others. method this research is a qualitative study that explores the phenomenon of educational inequity of african american students through the lens of critical race theory (crt) and critical discourse analysis. crt offers a framework for a race-conscious approach to understanding educational inequality and structural racism. (parker & lynn, 2002, p. 15) the analysis is conducted through cda methodology based on the framework of fairclough. cda methodology emphasizes the connection between written/verbal texts within the larger social processes and/or ideologies. aleshire (2014) argues to employ fairclough’s model in terms of relating both the analysis of written and verbal texts as the microanalysis with the ideology and social processes as the macro structures. by employing fairclough’s model within crt framework, the present study aims at highlighting the linguistic features as a manifestation of institutionalized racism within american educational field. this study foregrounds several online sources as the primary data. the online sources mainly consist of local events on newark concerning educational disparities in both local and national online sources. the articles are taken from www.chalkbeat.org, https://www.huffpost.com and www.njnews.com. the data concerns on the utterances which is positioned as discourse as a site of struggle between local school authorities, black students’ parents and government official to maintain or challenge the dominant discourse. besides the data from online new articles, this study also examines the data from several reports, american census bureau on demographics, new jersey department of education and newark public schools (nps) board of education as secondary data. it is hoped that the information from the secondary sources can conceptualizes the macro-structure of present-day american education, with newark as the case study or the lens in viewing wider american contexts. findings and discussion the analysis on this section utilizes the fairclough (2010) three stages dialecticalrelational approach of cda. the first stage, transdisciplinary focus on social work focuses on a social wrong through a transdisciplinary outline. from the perspective of cda, all data as language is inseparable from a wider social context, or in fairclough’s assertion, moving from biological phenomenon into a social phenomenon which focuses on “connection between language use and unequal relations of power” (1983, p. 1). on the second stage, understanding the social wrong to right social wrong, the emphasis is on the interplay of various discourses that represent master narrative and counter narrative. within the scope of the analysis, this paper focuses on underlying the existence of master narrative, whiteness and the counter narrative of the minorities. lastly, the final stage, need for the social wrong in the social order concerns with the necessity of social order ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 99-109 103 in which it cannot be righted without radical change. as stated by fairclough (2010, p. 9), cda does not concerns with interpreting the world but should contribute in changing it, that implies the necessity of finding ways to challenge the dominant discourses. the analysis concludes by arguing that the counter narrative and empowerment of the disadvantaged group can challenge the master narrative. in the first part of the analysis, this study positions the data within the present state of newark educational system, or in other word, a transdisciplinary analysis of a social wrong. deriving from fairclough’s dialectical-relation approach of cda, discourse as meaningmaking is a part of social process which is inseparable with others. (2010, p. 230). language on online media, as it is used to convey meaning is inseparable with the wider context, in which racism is a recurring theme in selected news article that concerns with newark public schools (nps). this paper posits that employing cda to studying issues of race and racism is in line with the framework of critical race theory that already devote particular concerns on this field. several online news articles highlight the educational disparities based on racial lines through the exposition of racism in newark public schools (nps). on an online article with the headline “racial tensions flare at newark’s elite science park high schools amid debate over admissions policies” (2019), patrick wall contextualizes the difficulties students who originated from largely black population to enroll in this school. his article elaborates the disparities over school demographics, in which students are overwhelmingly consists of whites and small share of blacks. on his other article (2019b), “newark school board members call for investigation at science park hs after reports of cultural insensitivity”, hall underlines several reports of racial abuse. he states how “reports of some students using racial slurs, including the n-word, prompted the school to hold a forum on racism and cultural insensitivity.” similarly, another of hall’s article (2019a), “lingering anger over teacher’s trump-hat halloween costume fuels racial tensions at top newark high school”, foregrounds the “deep polarization across the country” after the election of donald trump. preceding paragraphs have contextualized racism in educational field as a major theme in selected online news articles. moving into the second stage of fairclough’s formulation, this study underlines the contrasting discourses through the analysis of linguistic features of styles and genres that either support or challenge the dominant discourse. as previously stated, the prevailing master narrative in american educational system focuses on the myth of multiculturalism and equal opportunity and accessible public schools. through the analysis of the contrasting discourse in selected online news articles, this paper argues that the ideology of whiteness and the color-blind view is the underlying presumption that maintain the educational disparity in newark. this study analyzes the differing discourse of master narrative and counter narrative through fairclough’s (2010) differentiation of subjects, clients, and publics. in this context, the subject is the former superintendent of newark as the policy makers and the clients consists of the students and their parents. furthermore, publics, as fairclough concerns are the group in which the messages are addressed and plays a part toward validating a particular discourse without direct interaction with the subjects. (2010, p. 41). the discourse of this group within the context of this study is local authorities’ statements to posit whether the discourse of the publics aligns with the subject or the clients. several information concerning anderson and her policy is important to underline here. anderson who was employed in 2011 had changes many aspects concerning educational policy in newark through his controversial policy, one newark. although this policy is planned to eliminate the segregated neighborhood school by offering families to choose from both district and charter school, this program is then followed by mass sacking of headmasters and teachers, a lot of schools were closed and the city grows even more ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 99-109 104 depended on charter schools instead of publicly funded one (welner, mathis, & molnar, 2017, p. 22) this policy disproportionately impacts the african-americans minority as african-american students made up 53.4 percent of the student enrollment in 2011-2012 school year. (bureau, n.d taken from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/essexcountynewjersey/pst045218) anderson’s reform led into mass criticisms for producing irreversible changes and creating instability in the nps system and she later resigned in 2015. (mooney, 2014) the discourse of cami anderson, the former superintendent of newark articulates the prevailing master narrative of whiteness and color-blind discourse. her article, published in 2015 entitled “boldly breaking patterns” illustrates the aforementioned ideologies which is analyzed through fairclough’s terminologies of genre and style. on her narration, anderson (anderson, 2015) exclaims the success of newark public schools in reducing the rate of dropouts and graduation rate, “last year, 68 percent of our students graduated – up, from 54 percent in 2009.” it can be underlined how the style of anderson’s article, using personal pronoun such as ‘we’ and ‘our students’ positions herself as her discoursal selves. the genre of her article is informative, in which she is speaking in her official position as the superintendent of newark board of education and describing various achievements under her tutelage. although it should be noted that later on, the style of anderson’s article also evokes her autobiographical selves, mainly concerns with positioning herself as one of the educators and also her life history, experience and personal connection with people of color. this following passage changes the style used into autobiographical, in which she recounts her past experience in new york city and asserts her qualification as a superintendent: during my tenure in new york city, i worked with a group of people to found a network of high schools for court-involved youth called roads (reinventing options for adolescents who deserve success). roads — and other schools like them across the country — are building models that combine intensive counseling, extended school day and year, career connections, and cutting-edge work on literacy and numeracy for students who either struggle academically or who have missed many years of school (anderson, 2015). besides exclaiming the success of her administration in reducing the dropout rate and increasing graduation rate, anderson’s article also foregrounds the issue of multiculturalism in newark education. anderson notes how the newark public schools is able to eliminate the ‘drop out problem’, in which ethnically disadvantaged students are more prone of being unable to continue their education. she states that in newark, all schools, including elementary schools such as quitman street, are accountable for equity. every newark public school has chartered a student support team comprised of teachers, administrators, guidance staff, and relevant service providers, trained in a “case management” system to identify and discuss students who begin to struggle academically, behaviorally, or both. (anderson, 2015). through anderson’s contextualization of the success of nps in reducing dropout rate and how nps is ‘accountable for equity’, her narration put a blind size toward the ideology of whiteness and color-blind view. through her proclamation that nps is ‘accountable for equity’, she glosses over the unfair advantage the whites have, simply because they are white. as proposed by crt theories such as di angelo (2016)), whiteness as ideology arise from the unwillingness of the whites to admit that they are benefitted for being white. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 99-109 105 the acclamation of multiculturalism, such as the case is nps is intended to promote this discourse. moreover, by focusing on the graduation and reduced dropout rate, anderson omits the issue of enrollment, in which she is heavily criticized for her intended reform. equality concerning enrollment, as is later seen in the counter narration does not exist, as the ethnically diverse children, coming from less-well neighborhood and lower quality schools have a hard time in grasping the higher level of education. she also does not mention about her intention to close many of the neighborhood schools in favor of privatization or charter school. this following excerpt, although describes ‘different and new models’ does not provide clear illustration of her major scheme, when traditional schools — even those that have been redesigned — do not work, we need different and new models with even more intensive academic acceleration, time on task, and social-emotional support (anderson, 2015). while anderson’s narration is positioned as the master narrative that works to sustain the ideology of whiteness, the counter discourse of the students and their parents articulates their critique toward this prevailing discourse. this counter narrative particularly addresses the entrenched racial disparities between the whites and the blacks, which is denied through anderson’s claim of equality. on his article, “racial tensions flare at newark’s elite science park high schools amid debate over admissions policies” (2018), wall conducts an interview towards one african-american student in this school to contextualize his experience. the student, aze williams considers that racism remain a troubling issue in his school. his recounts, which used first-person personal pronoun, “we” foregrounds the uncomfortable situation himself and his fellow minorities faced due to their ethnically disadvantaged status. different with anderson’s narration which primarily employs discoursal selves to inform readers on nps achievement under her tutelage, williams uses autobiographical selves to recounts his personal experience of being racially excluded, “we don’t feel comfortable, black students, in particular feel outcast –we feel like we are not protected.” from williams’ experience of being subjected into racial disparities in science park high school, this counter narrative challenges the master narrative of whiteness. contrary to the claim that the situation in nps is ‘accountable for equity’, the personal experience of the african-american student conveys a different state of education in newark. similarly, this discourse of the black parents reveals the difficulty of enrolling process in one of the reputable schools of newark. the style of the narration is activism, as defined by urrieta (2005, p. 185) as the various ways people actively participate and advocate a particular set of issues. the activist, or the advocacy tone of the african-american parents can be underlined through this following passage from kevin maynor, “i told them quite clearly: we need more african americans in that school — and we have to do it now, immediately,” said kevin maynor, whose son graduated from science park and whose daughter is in 10th-grade there. presently, the school’s population “doesn’t reflect the brilliance that’s here in the city” (maynor in wall, 2018). from the prior assertion, it can be stated that the style of maynor’s narration emphasizing on the autobiographical self. he is speaking from the position of an africanamerican parent who criticizes the disparities of demography in science park high school. compared to the demographics of newark which is a majority-minority city, the enrollment rate of african-american students do not reflect this reality. the africanamerican community remains hindered in their quest to achieve equal education ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 99-109 106 opportunities. the data from nps summaries fall 2017 contextualizes the differing opportunities white and ethnic minorities student in enrolling toward prestigious school.(newark public schools, 2018) similar with the situation in science park high schools, three of the most reputable higher education, wilson avenue, ann street schools, and lafayette street only has the enrollment rate of 2% african american students. focusing on the situation in science park hs, it can be stated how the claim of equal opportunity for all children, regardless of racial background advances the ideology of whiteness. their admission test is purely based on state test score, in which african-american students who graduate from lower quality school is distinctively disadvantaged, a fact which is unaddressed by the policy makers. hence, the claim of equality and accessibility in nps is designed to maintain the privileged situation of the whites through the discourse of whiteness. such a lawsuit drives directly into new jersey’s core, a practice of generation in which mostly white children have the opportunity to attend better schools, with better staff, in better environment. and for the others? old often outdated schools, with lackluster results, in the state’s poorer communities (woolston, panico, & haydon, 2018). after analyzing the discourse of anderson as the subjects and the african-american’s student and parent as the clients, it is important to underline the discourse of the publics. within the scope of this paper, the publics is ras j. baraka, newark’s major. this discourse aligns with the clients’ discourse or the counter narrative that seeks to reform and challenge the whiteness within nps administration. moreover, the articulation of baraka’s discourse, especially through his discoursal self as the major foregrounds the resistance of the local power towards the state appointed superintendent. the resistance by the local voices is primarily intended to “restore local control to the newark public school system” (tat, 2017). for many years, the african-american community in newark, although demographically speaking are the majority remains unable to regulate their own educational policy. the superintendent, in this case anderson is directly appointed by the governor which might not acting in behalf of the local community. for more than 20 years, local administrators have had little leverage over the finances or operations of the state’s largest school district. choices about curriculum and programs were made mostly by a state-appointed superintendent, often an outsider. the city could not override personnel decisions” (chen, 2017) baraka’s discourse and his strong condemnation toward anderson’s policy is reflected through two of his letters, one addressed directly to anderson and another toward the then president, barack obama. his discourse is advocatory in tone in which he seeks to address the catastrophic ‘one newark’ plan that will lead into the closure of many neighborhood schools, mass sackings of the teachers and privatization of public schools. although baraka employs first person pronoun, “i” to emphasize his personal opinion in this particular issue, his discoursal self also prominently features in which he is speaking through his official status as the major of newark. being an african-american himself and a local of newark, he especially criticizes anderson’s lack of accountability in her “one newark” plan, this plan affects 28 of the district’s 70’s schools and was designed without a community engagement process that is representative of the diversity of people and perspectives that make up our city. this lack of community engagement is a violation of state and federal laws requiring parent and community engagement. (baraka, 2014) extrapolating baraka’s prior assertion, it can be underlined how the “accountable for ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 99-109 107 equity”, as is propagated by anderson’s narration is just a false premise. instead of promoting the local neighborhood schools and african-american community in which anderson is accountable of, her proposed project will disturb education in newark. by commenting her ‘one newark’ plan without any community engagement, in can be foregrounded how anderson only advances the ideology of whiteness in which her intended plan will bring turmoil to the african-american community. baraka’s discourse, especially the advocatory genre in which the emphasis is on a social critique towards the marginalization of african-american students under the master narrative of whiteness reflects the third stage of fairclough’s model, need for the social wrong in the social order. on his article, fairclough contemplates whether the failure, or the social wrong in society is inherently linked with the dominant social order. to rephrase, the prevalent ideology within society works in a certain way to maintain power and marginalize the outgroup. in fairclough’s words, stage 3 leads us to consider whether the social wrong in focus is inherent to the social order, whether it can be addressed within it, or only by changing it. it is a way of linking ‘is’ to ‘ought’: if a social order can be shown to inherently give rise to major social wrongs, that is a reason for thinking that perhaps it should be changed (fairclough, 2010, p. 238). phrasing fairclough’s assertion under the context of african-american education in newark, it can be stated that the dominant ideology of whiteness, as reflected in anderson’s discourse deliberately restrict the opportunity of the ethnically disadvantaged group. under the guise of multiculturalism and equal opportunity, anderson’s discourse omits her intended policy that aims at breaking down the african-american community and neighborhood schools. to challenge this discourse, baraka proposes his idea of local control, in which policy-making in nps should be in the hand of a locally appointed superintendent. locating baraka’s policy under fairclough’s model, this paper concurs that the social wrong, in this case the ideology of whiteness can only be addressed by empowering the disadvantaged group, by enabling african-american community in newark to shape the future of newark educational system. conclusion this paper posits that based on the analysis of online news articles dealing with the african-american educational system in newark, the contrasting discourse of master narrative and counter narrative can be underlined. anderson’s discourse, as the state appointed superintendent focuses on her various achievements in reducing the dropout rate and graduation rate, while omitting the controversy of her one newark plan. the idea of equal opportunity for all children, as stated by anderson through her master narrative is challenged by the counter discourse of african-american student and parent. the discourse of the client counters the claim of equality by presenting evidences concerning the continuation of racism and limited opportunity for african-american students. the discourse of the public, as seen in baraka’s narration align with the african-american community with its advocatory tone as a catalyst for social change. in line with fairclough’s third stage of need for the social wrong in the social order, this present study conceptualizes the idea that the ideology of whiteness, which is entrenched within american educational system can only be countered by empowering the disadvantaged group and including them in the policy-making decision. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 99-109 108 references aleshire, s. p. 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(2017). ecolinguistic study of conservation news texts in indonesian mass media. in international journal of humanity studies (vol. 1). https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2018.010203 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 172-184 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 172 thinking with roy and žižek on the freedom of a forced covid-19 ‘new normal’ allan m. abiera1, prakriti mukherjee2, & jan gresil s. kahambing2 1 southern leyte state university, philippines 2,3 university of macau, sar china allan.abiera@yahoo.com1, prakriti92@gmail.com2, and vince_jb7@hotmail.com3 https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.4392 received 15 febbruary 2022; accepted 17 march 2022 abstract the increasing imagination of crisis within the contemporary scene is set within the state of emergency that is the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic. in this background, there is the problem of redefining the conditions of normality. the paper aims to take some insights about how to think through this predicament from arundhati roy and slavoj žižek who are, the authors deemed, subversives against the normal regulatory course of thought. to do this, the study applies the method of textual hermeneutics on both thinker’s oeuvre, particularly those that relate to the pandemic and specifically roy’s azadi and žižek’s pa(ndem)ic! 1 and 2, and contextualizes their energetic radical visions to one of the co-authors’ compiled takes on various cases during covid-19. in this paper’s reading, which attempts to succinctly open a leeway for such takes by aligning the implications with both thinkers’ views for thinking forward and enacting possibilities, roy’s resolve through love and žižek’s notion of a forced choice can be reflected on in traversing the inevitable portal of the ‘new normal.’ keywords: covid-19, forced choice, freedom, love, new normal, thinking introduction the covid-19 ‘crisis’ and the ‘new normal’ background as of this writing, the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic has already recorded 410 million cases with 5.81 million deaths. the pandemic has shown, at this point, the many faces of a loaded disaster in the sense that for some areas, one can experience an ecological crisis, a medical emergency, and terrorism (kahambing, 2021a). comparable to the ecological crisis in living in the end times, the situation is also a mishmash of sociological, technological, and biological systems (žižek, 2010). in slavoj žižek’s pandemic!: covid-19 shakes the world (2020), three conspicuous faces are obvious: “medical (the epidemic itself), economic (which will hit hard whatever the outcome of the epidemic), and psychological” [even at the level of “simple bodily contact”]. peters (2020), for instance, mentions this idea of pandemic love that stays distant from its object of affection, which for žižek means realizing “a new appreciation of the intimate bodily contact” wherein “one should therefore turn around the common wisdom according to which sexual lust is bodily while love is spiritual: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.4392 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp.172-184 173 sexual love is more bodily than sex without love” (2020b, p.3). on the outset, economies are crumbling and new forms of relationalities (but also of oppressive systems) are emerging, effectively damaging the ways in which people live. it has redefined and stacked the meaning of ‘crisis’ particularly as it affects what it means to be human, human decency (and its obverse of dehumanization; see markowitz, et.al.), or in education, the humanities (duque, et.al. 2021). like adorno’s minima moralia (2020 [1951]), a suspicion to thinking after a damaged life permeates. it seems, then, that with the rise of these “new” modalities of living, the question of the novelty of thoughts arising and the conditions ahead describe and prescribe a problem that would be and is already labeled as “new normal.” as galfarsoro (2010, p. 3) laconically claims: “there is no possible return to the normality of the past. another new ‘normal’ is needed.” and this necessity confronts us with the burden of choice albeit it appears that forced decisions are already being made in the everyday dispositions of everyone under a global vulnerable situation. because of the virus, “we are united by our escape from the lowest form of life. this is not a matter of choice. rather, we are already responding in this way” (kremer, 2020, p. 7). the branding of the “new normal” might be, to put it in heideggerian terms, the simultaneous veiling and unveiling of what is supposed to be the situation of normalcy as a kind of ‘old’ normal. the new normal could just be old wine in new wineskins, and the choice is mired by obfuscatory language and setups. the increasing imagination of crisis within the contemporary scene is, therefore, set within the state of emergency of the pandemic. in this background, there is the problem of redefining the conditions of normality. the paper aims to take some insights about how to think through this predicament from arundhati roy and slavoj žižek who are, the authors deemed, subversives against the normal regulatory course of thought. theoretical framework to assess the theoretical framing of the background, the sides of the analysis should also be complex, thinking simultaneously of the new and the old, of the forthcoming and/or the ‘always-already.’ arundhati roy and slavoj žižek both have taken the task of writing possibilities in this enigmatic state-of-affairs under the name of ‘normal.’ for instance, what žižek (2020, p. 16) designates as “a modest conspiracy theory”—where “the representatives of the existing global capitalist order are […] ruthlessly exploiting the epidemic in order to impose a new form of governance” under which “many old and weak people will be sacrificed and left to die” so that the “most probable outcome […] is that a new barbarian capitalism will prevail,”—roy already counts as fact especially in her country, india. throughout her works, one can see that this ‘new barbarian capitalism’ is an existing and continually damaging threat to freedom. her reflections of india’s dismal state range from mass displacements from dam projects in the cost of living (1999), unseen local and fringe-forms of struggle in walking with the comrades (2011), and the unjust plight of the kashmir region in kashmir: the case for freedom (2011). it is interesting to emphasize this ‘for’ in freedom rather than of freedom because, like the migrant and displaced indigenous groups in the philippines (molabola, et. al., 2020; kahambing, 2021j), ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp.172-184 174 the struggle is still ongoing. with the pandemic, these past problems become graver and mystified with what can be described in a compounding metaphor as blacker darkness. reviewing žižek’s pandemic, gunkel aptly hits the problem: “the question therefore is not, ‘when can things go back to normal?’ the question should be ‘why do we want things to go back to normal, when in fact things have never been normal?’” (2020, p. 6). the backdrop of forced choices, under the conditions of uncertainty, ironically tarries this contingency with necessity – that we have to move along – and this makes up an inevitability, the inescapability of trudging a portal and the role of thinking that comes with it. arundhati roy in her latest work, azadi, says that “…as the covid-19 pandemic burns through us, our world is passing through a portal […] we may not always have a choice—but not thinking about it will not be an option” (roy, 2020; see also webster & neal, 2021). method for the methodology, the paper uses textual hermeneutics to gather insights for contextual application. this aims not just to clarify what is obscure (see kahambing, 2020) but, based on hermeneuein’s original directional meaning, also to ‘translate’ (palmer, 1969). this paper then both 1) explains and 2) translates both thinker’s oeuvre, particularly those that relate to the pandemic and specifically roy’s azadi and žižek’s pa(ndem)ic! 1 and 2, and contextualizes their energetic radical visions to one of the co-authors’ compiled takes on various cases during covid-19. the translation juxtaposes their ideas to some contexts, with some relevant reflections from the other co-authors as well. as palmer (1969) says, ‘translation, then, makes us conscious of the clash of our own world of understanding and that in which the work is operating’ (p. 30). results think! on freedom in/through forced choices “not thinking about it will not be an option” is the forced reflective stance roy directs. not writing about this forced choice, in this case, is also not an option. when roy met snowden in the moscow un-summit, it was the same impulse of necessity to write it: “yet it definitely cannot not be written about. because it did happen” (roy & cusack, 2016, p. 81). tied with responsibility, this form of writing is, for her, azadi – the urdu, originally persian, name for freedom (roy, 2020, p. 31). faced with the current covid-19 crisis, the question of normality again should be met with the choice to trudge its portals. to quote at length her ending words to ‘the pandemic is a portal’: whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality,” trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. but the rupture exists. and in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. nothing could be worse than a return to normality. historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp.172-184 175 their world anew. this one is no different. it is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. we can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. and ready to fight for it. (roy, 2020, pp. 117-118) what can be initially inferred from this is that maybe there is nothing so wrong about the light reimagination of the new world, of the use of writing, or of fiction. in the case of zižek, maybe even “a cute pair of mittens” could do it. in heaven in disorder (2021), no simple universal formula can provide the answer—there are moments in which pragmatic support for modest progressive measures is needed; there are moments when a radical confrontation is the only way; and there are moments when a sobering silence (and a cute pair of mittens) speak more than a thousand words. (zižek, 2021, p. 3). this complex global predicament we are confronted with locates the power of fiction against a fascist hegemonic power. capitalism ingrained with fascist, totalitarian governance seems to dictate power not just over life but also over death when biopolitics à la foucault (1976) becomes what mbembé calls ‘necropolitics.’ roy sees this power as reductive of the governed by relegating them as ethereal subjects like spirits. fictionalizing can include forwarding a different kind of story. quoting marx and engel’s communist manifesto, roy mentions capitalism as the sorcerer unable to secure the netherworld’s powers, enabling the market middle class to have a life adjoined to the dead – of the “ghosts of 250,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the 800 million who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. and who survive on less than twenty indian rupees a day” (2014, p. 11). while film director michael moore (2009) has narrated capitalism as a (rather doomed or tragic) love story – the richest 1% in the american capitalist system owning more than the rest of 95% combined – india’s case is a ghost story: “in a nation of 1.2 billion, india’s one hundred richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of the gdp” (roy, 2014, p. 10), reducing the rest as ghosts with ephemeral lives of survival, living between life and death. with the covid-19 crisis, this story is brought into a ‘new barbarism’ in žižek’s words, openly corrupting the economy in broad daylight, robbing the poor ghosts of capitalism with their life essences. in her conversation with nick estes (2020b), roy speaks of azadi—freedom for the kashmiri— fascism, and fiction, the very subtitles of the book. accordingly, freedom is to live with dignity. a viable way to do that is thinking through literary imagination, without the option of keeping quiet. as an architect by education and then working in cinema to her first fictional book, the god of small things (1997), traversing the ‘end of imagination’ does not mean telling the truth to power, but telling the story of our fight. with the modi government and ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp.172-184 176 the fascists around him, under a ‘one nation, one language’ symbolic violence, language is “a perfect entry point.” the problem of fascism is a problem of caste (jāti) and its modern proliferations. while anthropologists now use ‘ethnicity’ rather than race, and while race is different from caste, there are comparable elements when the caste system becomes permanently woven in the fabric of cultural and societal relations. roy, however, speaks of caste’s dangerous underpinnings, that is, when caste has given itself religious sanctions. with this divine guarantee in caste, priests (brahmins), warriors (kshatriyas), traders (vaisya), workers (sudras), and the untouchables (dalits), retain their standing with little and no chance of social mobility. in the doctor and the saint: caste, race, and annihilation of caste, she connects this quandary with the apparatuses of capitalism. can caste be annihilated? not unless we show the courage to rearrange the stars in our firmament. not unless those who call themselves revolutionary develop a radical critique of brahminism. not unless those who understand brahminism sharpen their critique of capitalism. (roy, 2017, p. 104). such a critique would be possible if its radicality can combat the fake history that enlivens the role of caste in india, where fascism, hand-in-hand with capitalism, controls every aspect of life that the dishonesty becomes unbelievable. with massacres happening in the modi-trump meeting and news channels, media outlets including bollywood make resistance disappear as major human rights activists, students, are put into prison. the poor, roy says, no longer reside in the imagination of the elite, even in literature, so that they are simply attached to the environment or background. the economy is crashing and the lockdowns – which is merely social compression for people who don’t have homes – displace a lot of workers. all this with warfare, classes, surveillance, polarizations in mind. imagining this, along with global climate change coupled with what naomi klein (2007) calls ‘disaster capitalism’ where those in power profit from crises, and when chaos and things break down, the transition will not be easy. the poor, those in lower castes, indigenous groups fight displacement and are begging for citizenship, but democracy is compromised because the election machinery is controlled by the party. and gandhi didn’t change his caste-based views but only sugar-coated the system, that yes, it is one’s hereditary job to clean shit, but it is a holy job! concerning writing, roy (2020b) says that “the problem is not always simplification, the problem is of a kind of nationalism that eulogizes the densest occupation in the world and demonizes the people.” and out of necessity, “these things have to be said. ultimately, india needs azadi from kashmir almost more than kashmir needs azadi from india. india’s ship is sinking and a lot of this is because of this hate-fuelled blind rage that it can’t manage to see through.” the possibility for solidarity at this point is a way of understanding one’s position, both subjectively and in the big picture. in her words, “before any kind of solidarity can be embarked upon, one needs to understand what’s going on there. solidarity could begin with reading. read and understand what has been going on to people” (roy, 2020b). in her conversation with imani perry, roy (2020a) ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp.172-184 177 states: “what can we do except stand up and keep speaking about it and writing about it, putting ourselves in the way of it, telling a different story.” roy calls for the azadi that rethinks the future and the cleavage humanity has created that enabled the living conditions of people with non-ideal environments. a line in her the end of imagination can continue with a more active proposal: “railing against the past will not heal us. history has happened. it’s over and done with. all we can do is to change its course by encouraging what we love instead of destroying what we don’t” (roy, 1998, p. 67). roy is radically suspect about this absolute eulogy for nationalism. “what sort of love is this love that we have for countries? what sort of country is it that will ever live up to our dreams? what sort of dreams were these that have been broken?” (roy & cusack, 2016, p. 91). for her, an old-growth forest, a mountain range, or a river valley is more important and certainly more lovable than any country will ever be. i could weep for a river valley, and i have. but for a country? oh man, i don’t know... (roy & cusack, 2016, p. 95). speaking about the portal with the freedom to trudge it promotes a radical way of thinking about thinking: that thinking is about finding possibilities out of seemingly deadlocked choices. they speak of moving forward amid the stalemate of an event where, in our current predicament of covid – the world health organization (who) says – will “mutate like the flu and is likely here to stay” (mendez, 2021). for žižek, this portal, within a global frame, also presents a choice. featherstone (2021) abstracted his review quite clearly: žižek founds the basis of humanity in our (human) mortality and being toward death that open out onto a new horizon of releasement (gelassenheit) beyond biotechnoeconomic nihilism. žižek imagines that the pandemic presents humanity with an existential choice about the way we organize social life. this choice is between the biopolitical domination of chinese authoritarianism that seeks to control every aspect of life, american disaster capitalism that accepts the brutality of the state of nature, and finally žižek's utopian spirit of communism based on a recognition of human and planetary finitude. a pressing problem here is the ignorance about choosing the right choice. in pandemic 2: chronicles of a time lost, zižek (2020) combats this “will not-toknow”, the “refusal to take the pandemic seriously that is now apparent” in the form of “it is better to act as if nothing serious is occurring—let the scientists search for a vaccine but otherwise leave us alone to continue with life as usual” (p. 142). here, he presents 5 crucial points. first, the refusal to think is often taken as a special “excess-knowledge” on the part of conspiracists claiming and imposing a secret ‘deep state’ plot that takes control of everything. this refusal makes up for a kind of ignorance that has ‘eyes wide open’ but listens only to conspiracy theories. second, the refusal is ‘not direct denial’ but is, in psychoanalytic terms, a ‘fetishistic disavowal’ that assumes the stance of “’i know ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp.172-184 178 very well (that the pandemic is serious), but’—but i cannot accept it, i suspend the symbolic efficiency of my knowledge and continue to act as though i don’t know it” (p. 143). third, we mustn't trust science absolutely because, citing heidegger, ‘science doesn’t think’, that is, it lacks the reflexive procedure proper in ethics to reflect on subjectivity and the current “social and ideological presuppositions and implications” (p. 144). fourth, this non-thinking aspect of science, which is different from non-cognition – thinking is different from cognition – is a strength because ‘to function in our daily lives, we have to ignore many things’ (p. 144). and finally, this refusal to think is not about the oppressed manipulated by those in power. those in power are also manipulated by their own ignorance since they also don’t know what they are doing. consequently, the ignorance of the oppressed is ‘not simply imposed on them from outside, but is immanent to their way of life.’ as zižek explicates concerning mandatory masks and manipulative policies that the oppressed perceive as violent threats to their freedom and dignity: “people ‘ignore’ the full truth of the pandemic not because of some epistemological limitation or animalistic will not-to-know, but because of a deep existential anxiety: are we still human when we are forced to act like this?” (p. 146). herein lies the full calling for a choice is laid open as he caps it: this is the choice we all have to make: will we succumb to the temptation of the will-to-ignorance or are we ready to really think the pandemic, not only as a bio-chemical health issue but as something rooted in the complex totality of our (humanity’s) place in nature and of our social and ideological relations—a decision that may entail that we behave “unnaturally” and construct a new normality? (zižek, 2020, p. 146). thinking with possibilities can even extend to thinking about utopias. the irony of utopia under totalitarianism, however, is the existence of a gulag, an adjoining hell (kundera, 1980). here, žižek claims that “we should dare to enact the impossible, we should rediscover how to, not imagine, but to enact utopias” (žižek, 2004; 2017). this is freedom. for žižek, one can paradoxically have freedom in forced choices. he says that: “in the subject’s relationship to the community to which he belongs, there is always such a paradoxical point of choix forcé—at this point, the community is saying to the subject: you have the freedom to choose, but on condition that you choose the right thing” (žižek, 1989, p. 186). this connects to roy’s line that we might reword as: it’s not that we may not always have a choice but we have nothing but a forced choice to enter the portal of the new normal. that is to say, we need to confront the new normal by ‘encouraging with love.’ roy and zižek’s words provide an impetus for thinking and it is along those lines that we confer with responding and reflecting one of the co-author’s takes on various cases and contexts during the pandemic. thinking about some covid-19 public health cases in reflecting on this fact, whatever we do with and in this portal, the concept of the ‘vanishing mediator’ hovers over the historical horizon (kahambing, 2019; 2021f). the ethical choices to be made in the portal can synthesize a new structure of the world. the specifics of this in the pandemic are crucial decisions. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp.172-184 179 the first case could be to rethink public health in crowded facilities, particularly the determination of prisons and, consequently, the persons deprived of liberty (pdls) as an extremely vulnerable population during the pandemic (kahambing, 2021c). drawing from one of the co-authors’ weekly apostolate visits to one of the metropolitan jails in the philippines (2013-2014), for instance, the dismal situation can be exposed as the conspicuous inequality and depravity of the pdls’ basic right to have adequate sleeping space (kahambing, 2021g). taking this into account, there is the requirement for contact-tracing methods in preventing contagion, which can follow the irish model albeit with some insufficiencies for application. the problem is noticeably much graver than simply proposing to form contact tracing teams (ctts). here, not just in prisons but also in spaces that are highly dense with overpopulation, the decisions for these are critical in future contagion and viral waves. reimagining these spaces can mean ethically thinking about mass vaccinations, moral arguments for prioritarianism, and compact forms of communal solidarity (bautista, et.al, 2020) that engage with thorough collective-based decisions. it is difficult to remember the mass cremations in india, in another case, which signaled the failure to act imaginably in preventing the fatal effects of contagion. a second case could be to rethink food and sustainability. in the pandemic, a sustainable diet and cruciform ethics – sacrificing affluence for the planet – can be crucial (kahambing, 2021e). however, this decisive move is not a universal duty but must be context-specific. that assertion that: ‘everyone must really do this. however, not everyone can practice these things, due to the covid-19 pandemic, some individuals cannot afford to eat, much more have a healthy diet’ (cabatbat, 2021), and taking this merely as a starter for awakening the community is not the point. the context of cruciform ethics is, in reiteration with emphasis, to assert self-emptying habits like lessening of consumption, particularly – and not universally – to affluent human societies that ‘practice a gluttony of excessive or wasteful eating, or energy profligacy,’ which categorically excludes ‘some individuals’ who ‘cannot afford to eat’ in a seemingly moralizing stance. the position argues for a kenotic element of sustainability, which was later complemented with the consideration of the very same individuals under the disturbing condition of eating recycled food waste in the philippines called ‘pagpag’ (kahambing, 2021h). in india, the pandemic has enabled the poor to refuse any kind of work because they are getting food at a minimal cost just by sitting at home. a co-author from such country claims that the lower class is receiving food and money (given for their survival), the upper class never suffers that much but it is the middle class that are the guinea pigs, or “the new poor”, the new ghosts living off of the cadavers of bad governance. this brings us to the third and critical case on global health governance (kahambing, 2021a). after stipulating that an ethical consideration can adopt an ‘open-minded epistemology’ in vaccinations (also expounded this elsewhere; see kahambing, 2021b), one can proceed to an original position of a radicalization – an opening up from solidly shut or conserved moral dispositions – of certain strict interpretative forms of shut conservatism that impede the achievement of herd immunity: the ethical principle of autonomy (e.g. waiting and preferring vaccine brands) and the philosophical and religious reasons for vaccine exemptions (e.g. personal hesitancies, often without proper health education, or religious mandates, ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp.172-184 180 including those that seem to expect blind obedience) (kahambing, 2021d; 2021i). rights-based rethinking of the use of ‘mandatory’ in covid-19 vaccinations should be balanced with the risk-based arguments (yu & kahambing, 2022), which avoids stigmatization (kahambing & edilo, 2020). there is a need for proper health education and an aversion to blind obedience. an important feature of this radicalization is not terroristic. not all radical means are necessarily impositions in the same way that radical extremist islam implies the ideological apparatus for global terrorism. another is that herd immunity does not necessarily mean 100% inoculation to be ‘imposed,’ but the definition of the concept also mutates like the virus – hence the possibility of zugzwang (kahambing, 2021). this is not a moral imposition but an amoral way of traversing deeply molded cultural kinds of moral conservatism similar to roy’s critique of caste. in modern uses, caste should be contextually different from class. one coauthor lives in a small town in west bengal, a city known for its progressive thinking, where the caste system is not viewed in a harsh way and caste is only noticed when you go to mandir for offerings or to get married or other special occasions. in which case, those in the earlier generations preferred same-caste or upper-caste marriages but the current generation tends to prefer to look for partners in lower caste so that they can look for a secured future. due to the pandemic situation, some special policies were necessary for the survival of the lower class but because the lower class very often consists of the people from the lower caste, these policies also strengthened the caste system as an unintended consequence. that means that these policy measures need a fresh look so that more productive, sustainable situations prevail. there are ways to circumvent the system and with the pandemic, new opportunities arise with odd mobilities. the radical move, of course, is not a form of mental gymnastics in a sanctuary or ivory tower. and the ethics of thinking at this point in the pandemic for žižek has a huge caveat: we should be wary of certain radicalities that do not change anything, or to “pseudo-radical intellectuals who criticize the existing order from a comfortable morally superior position, well aware that their criticism will have no actual effects” (žižek, 2021a). a vital certain lesson in the cambridge textbook of bioethics is imperative: “religious points of view cannot be allowed to dominate the ethical aspects of clinical decision making. these traditions should have a voice but not a veto” (boyle & novak, 2008). a voice but not a veto – such heavy words do not of course mean moral imposition but a plea for voices to have a genuine dialogue, hence producing a more cogent view with a proper understanding of context. otherwise, we would be correctly hitting tennis balls but on different tennis courts. the new normal should be about finding the right forced choices. here, the idea of absolute unity is again counterproductive under the impulse of emergency. “while we have not unified humanity, maybe the pandemic driven discovery of the necessity of quiet time, personal coping tools, authentic love, and the beauty of basics will move us one step closer towards each other and žižek’s vision of global solidarity” (whitcomb, 2020). solidarity is not about hastened results, and for roy, this can even take a terrifying turn of events. that is to say, thinking must not hasten to overestimate or underestimate matters. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp.172-184 181 conclusion thinking must not be confined to dualistic modalities such as whether actions are obligations or impositions, but must radically find possibilities, especially in a state where the term ‘new normal’ seems to be a forced condition we must accept. in this setup, we are confronted with a forced choice to enter the ‘portal.’ with the existence of variants and the prospect of covid-19 mutations represented currently by omicron, and going towards the end, possibly by omega, what does this mean for thinking amid a forced choice? roy recollects from previous essays in my seditious heart that thinking out of love is a necessary path to take because of the stakes at hand so not thinking is not an option. she says, “but let’s not forget that the stakes we’re playing for are huge. our fatigue and our shame could mean the end of us. the end of our children and our children’s children. of everything we love. we have to reach within ourselves and find the strength to think. to fight” (roy, 2019, p. 23). as another co-author puts it in one of his books, “nothing matters except your love” (abiera, 2019, p. 22). finding an existential meaning is a life-altering event that gives a shot of hope (egargo & kahambing, 2021). isn’t this the same energy for freedom? here, freedom too as fighting out of love is not about the contingent demands and wants that voluntary choice demonstrates. freedom is not making petty choices or just choosing binaries – between pizza or ice cream perhaps – but is instead a matter of choosing one’s fate (kahambing, 2019). fate, much like forced choice, is not fixed and we can still choose our forced choice albeit paradoxically through its necessity. in this sense, thinking, which latches on to the concept of freedom as love, seeks to find radical possibilities within the 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(2021a). we have to live till we die. the journal of ethical reflections, 1(4), 57-68. goffmann’ dramaturgy on movement concept in setan jawa film by garin nugroho ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 287 goffmann’ dramaturgy of movement concept in setan jawa film by garin nugroho agustina kusuma dewi institute teknologi bandung agustinakusumadewi.3881@gmail.com doi: https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030213 received 31 december 2019; accepted 2 march 2020 abstract dramaturgy goffmann closely related to the model of the interaction between the persona by assuming that a mode of social relations as a stage show. there are self-raised, there are purposely hidden for management to create a certain impression. setan jawa film by garin nugroho, as an art film, the issue of movement as the media said the film that marks the cultural code of java to interact. this study aims to identify the perception of motion applicable to the 'movement' in setan jawa film using test questionnaire responses on the perception of respondents from diverse ethnic, which was later confirmed by the method of focused group discussion with goffmann’ dramaturgy analysis as the basis of interpretation. keywords: setan jawa film, cultural code, movement’ code, goffmann dramaturgy introduction camera obscura discovery in 1250 laid the years 1250-1895 as the prehistory films, one of which caused these years is a period where there are new discoveries that emerge from the obsessions of the people of europe, one of which create an instrument that could recording of motion (which until now used to make a film). in 1895, precisely on december 28, 1895, for the first time in the history of cinema, a film stories were presented in public. the film was made by the lumiere brothers, louis lumiere (1864-1948) and auguste (1862-1954), the famous french inventor and pioneer of the film industry. where the film was at the grand cafe on boulevard des capucines, paris. although at the beginning of 1885 has produced the first moving picture, thomas a. edison held a cinema in new york on april 23, 1896, max and emil skladanowsky appear first in berlin on 1 november 1895; but the brothers lumiere's film titled "workers leaving the lumiere factory" is considered as the first cinema films that marked the birth of the film industry. movies and cinemas are then held, in england (february 1896), soviet union (may 1896), japan (1896-1897), korea (1903) and in italy (1905). changes in technology and the film industry, along with the strong dominance of the hollywood industry system, change the status and role of the film as a product of visual culture. initially the film was born as a public spectacle mailto:agustinakusumadewi.3881@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.2020.030213 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 288 (the early 1900s) because of sheer become big business alternative entertainment services in the future city and stamped humans 'entertainment lowly' the city; then the film is considered capable of regeneration to penetrate all layers of society, as well as middle and upper layers, including intellectual and cultural layers. appearing resistance films that want to escape from the face of hollywood uniforms, which gave birth auteur films, namely personal film director who often referred to as art films. (brodwell, 1997, pp.169) art film builds a narrative film that develops dilemma (an element of the dramatic problems in the structure of the story in the film) was built and investigated by means pensive, begins and ends without a clear resolution at the end of the film, even very likely to have a secondary role to the development of the characters and the exploration of ideas through a series of lengthy dialogue-is usually a sequence of episodes of vague or ambiguous, there is a gap that cannot be explained in the film in the form of a sequence that is deliberately unclear or sequences that are not related to the previous scenes-which forces the audience to subjectively make their own interpretation of the message film. (brodwell, 1997, pp. 180) even very likely to have a secondary role to the development of the characters and the exploration of ideas through a series of lengthy dialogue-is usually a sequence of episodes of vague or ambiguous, there is a gap that cannot be explained in the film in the form of a sequence that is deliberately unclear or sequences that are not associated with the scene earlier-that forces the audience to subjectively make their own interpretations of the message of the film. (brodwell, 1997, pp. 188) even very likely to have a secondary role to the development of the characters and the exploration of ideas through a series of lengthy dialogue-is usually a sequence of episodes of vague or ambiguous, there is a gap that cannot be explained in the film in the form of a sequence that is deliberately unclear or sequences that are not associated with the scene earlier-that forces the audience to subjectively make their own interpretations of the message of the film. (brodwell, 1997, pp.202) art films often 'has a characteristic visual style' of the writer and / or director (brodwell, 1997, pp.205). an art film often refuses to provide 'conclusions prepared to answer', but on the contrary, give the task to the audience thinking about "how the story was delivered?"; or "why tell it this way?" therefore, all that's typical, bordwell (1979) was, then, to claim that the cinema (film) art itself is a different genre convention. (brodwell, 1997, pp.207) in 1918, the phenomenon of art films is supported also by the emergence of film editing as a dramatic narrative that reinforces a film-forming structure. editing the film in the film approaches the art, one of them for example, appear in on one chase scene using the approach characteristic of comic films at melies silent film masterpiece, "le voyage dans la lune "(1902), the first science fiction film and one of the most influential cinema films are inspired by a wide variety of sources, including jules verne's novel "from the earth to the moon" and "around the world in 80 days". it is undeniable that the main contribution of this melies in cinema is to recognize the possibility of a medium to be used to convey narration and performances, combining / collaborate with elements of traditional theatrical motion pictures, trying to present a show that is not possible in theatre performances. melies created the basic vocabulary of special effects, manipulate and distort time and space to create techniques that are not prevalent in his time ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 289 when it was like the first double exposure, the first split screen, the first overlapping dissolve, fade in fade out, stop motion photograph. (retrieve from https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/early-cinema-the-magical-worldof-georges-melies/ on 12/15/2019) dw griffith was, then, in the film "broken blossom" (1919) production gaumount develop a chase scene while using a picture phone and letter after another. through the editing techniques of montage, griffith's films began to describe a shift space (brodwell, 1997, pp.205). this means that, in its growth, the pattern of development of art films cannot be separated from development film technology continues to evolve. the movie that refers to the hollywood entertainment or art films sometimes grow side by side, each other but also stubborn. each has its own character diversification of markets, festivals and its own development pattern; one of which is a silent film. silent film, the silent era (1890s 1929), is a film that film music performed by each theatre, both with the phonograph or the like are carried out directly by the musician. pianist improvises a movie or a small group of musicians perform classical works, in the background, during the film, as is done in the screening of the silent film star mary pickford. until the 1936's silent film was produced. after the discovery of the sound production technology that has the ability to synchronize music and sound to celluloid in 1929, the music quickly became an integral aspect of the storytelling process, and commissioned by hollywood composer started to write new compositions especially for the film. silent films began to be abandoned the art form for practical purposes. in the indonesian film industry, the emergence of film mute has been underway since december 5, 1900 in batavia, with a non-story film screenings (documentary) and the silent film imported products, among others from france and america. at that time, the dutch tend to make documentaries that portray the daily life of indigenous people, including customs and other traditions, also depicting the beauty of nature as a tourist attraction. meanwhile, the first feature film in black and white format, preceded by l. heuveldorp and g. krugers with the making of the film titled "loe-toeng kasaroeng" (1926). (eddy d. iskandar, 2006, pp. 2-5) in order to support the messages in the silent film, this time among filmmakers has emerged the idea to equip indonesian films with subtitles, so that the story can still understand the audience in the area. (eddy d. iskandar, 2006, pp.7) failure in the field of sound reproduction that occurs in later years is one of the drivers for the indonesian film to use the system after leaving the practice of recording and live recordings, including utilizing the background of the actual reality, and began to apply the superficiality of the film needed to provide experienced qualities in the film, and can be seen in the form of framing, cgi (computer generated imagery), montage, directing technique, dialogue, acting, etc; arranged with a certain narrative and takes in perceiving image that is displayed in film, as a form of camera-consciousness (deleuze, 1986, pp.8). this means that a technique chosen, it may have a distinct meaning in the film and / or be characteristic of a director. (david brodwell, 1997, pp.207) in 1990, in the presence of cinema advertising are already contained in the papers, film shows indonesia growing and developing spawned a variety of films in various genres. in addition to film a commercial that targets the industry, in https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/early-cinema-the-magical-world-of-georges-melies/ https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/early-cinema-the-magical-world-of-georges-melies/ ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 290 these years, there are also films non-commercial more emphasis on high-culture, game symbols, which has won awards everywhere, one of which is made by garin nugroho of them titled “bulan tertusuk ilalang” (fipresci film of the year, 1996), and then proceed with the next project 'opera jawa' (citra ffi for best adapted screenplay, 2006), 'guru nation: tjokroaminoto' (cup maya to directing selected, 2015 and indonesian movie actors award for best ensemble, 2016). garin nugroho, as mentioned above, is an indonesian film director who started his career as a director through the production of documentary films, contributes to the development and revival of indonesian cinema. garin has aspects of quality and capability of a number of achievements with the medium, technique and style he revealed himself to express his ideas in the film, and is often considered as a director who has a visual aesthetic in contrast to most indonesian film director, including cinematic techniques in films homemade (budiman, abdullah and simatupang, 2015, pp.33-38). one of the film made, 'setan jawa', is the first black and white silent film masterpiece and directed by garin nugroho, who was accompanied by a live orchestra gamelan music made by rahayu supanggah and premiered in september 2016 at the jakarta theater building. the release of film 'setan jawa' in jakarta is the first appearance before the world premiere screened at the opening night of the asia pacific triennial of performing arts in melbourne in february 2017. 'devils java' whose documentation is shown in figure i.1 raised the grand narrative is the beginning of the century 20th as the background story (garin nugroho, 2019), in line with the growth of a black and white film once widespread fashion, literature and art forms of entertainment at the peak of dutch colonialism. figure 1. documentation film performances sine-orchestra satan java (source: www.facebook.com/setanjawamovie accessed may 29, 2019) the early colonial era of the 20th century is the era of industrial development with infrastructure development are also growing nationalist movement and java human identity are represented in everyday life, art, language and mystical. in this era, growing as the growth of javanese mystical theosophy, a harmony-based religiosity movement diverse perspectives of trust. this film is not a historical drama, but a history in this film is a frame of reference for ‘setan jawa’. http://www.facebook.com/setanjawamovie ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 291 until 2020, the film was scheduled to tour around the world and obtain positive appreciation in the state as a medium of cultural discourse at once works are black and white silent movie with cinematic-orchestra approach, allowing inter-cultural collaboration space (iain grandage, 2017). cinematic-orchestra itself is a term used by music ensemble founded and directed by jason swinscoe in the late 1990s who reworked the musical accompaniment for silent films of the legendary documentary of 1929 works of dziga vertov, "man with a movie camera." referring to david bordwell (1979), a movie based on high culture tends to be an art film than the entertainment industry (brodwell, 1997, pp.207); and just like film 'opera jawa' as well as several films garin more a lot of play in the area of signs of semiotics (belasunda et al., 2014, pp. 108-129), 'setan jawa' garin nugroho also show the expression of filmmakers and more concerned with the mission of (the idea) as a tool to educate the 'culture' audience; though often considered communicative, does not follow the standard conventional film theory and elusive. in the foregoing, the human understanding in a movie or the awareness that the reality of a film in the film and the overall viewing experience as a whole form of events (understanding), can occur because the images are arranged sequentially. the sequence according to deleuze (1987) referred to as a 'collection of images'. the set of images will be understood if it presupposes the existence of the movement. movement presupposes the existence of time. similarly, it can be said the same movement with time (deleuze, 1988, pp.36). within this framework, the film creates its own reality regardless of what is envisaged regarding the basic reality that we live, which means that the film is not entirely a replication or mimesis of the daily reality we face, but instead creates its own reality. the image, in this case, is an intermediary to reach idea, a 'language' in a film that can take humans back to the creative power of man to reconstruct the idea in real terms in the imagination. in film, an image becomes an important part that cannot be separated. without imagination, the film is not an art that plays images on a screen. the image at this point is very important in a film, may not be so. (sugiharto, 2013, pp, 308-309). 'movement' is exactly what the audience was aware of a tradition, where it covers a specific time and space and all forms of understanding had before, including presupposes an image of moving autonomously to build all its reality. reality presupposes in which there is a movement as a motile and can give a qualitative change. if something does not move to look as though the move, it is a form of illusion, which is then referred to as camera-unconsciousness (deleuze, 1986, pp.11). hall (1976) states that if we observe how people move: whether they move together, they are synchronous or not, the kind of rhythm of their movements, including their motion in silence, will provide a certain cultural meaning (et hall, 1976, pp. 129). publication birdwhistell's introduction to kinesics in 1952, marking the beginning of a technical study of body movements; since then, many people have been stimulated and influenced by the work birdwhistel. one of the few branches of this study show a very significant data on the issue of synchrony (move together). synchronize 'movement' may mean the interactions move together (in whole or in part) or they do not and fail to perform movement ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 292 synchronization and even disturbing others around them. basically, every person in social interaction similar moves on the type of dance movement, but the 'movement' is often not realized as synchronous movements performed without music or orchestration conscious. become synchronized in the 'movement' as the message body (inside or outside of consciousness), well-read technical or not, is a form of communication. a number of scientists have been working on the subject kinesis and synchrony and significance. the field is growing ever more extensive and complex every day, in the early sixties, william condon who work in pennsylvania's western state psychiatric institute, start the analysis on 16mm film depicting the characters talk to each other. every movement, however small, is recorded on a large sheet of paper along the lines of the film passage of time (duration), making it possible to identify all the movements that occur at a particular moment in time. results of the study revealed that when two people talk to each other, there is a 'movement' synchronized, sometimes occurs in a manner that is barely visible, occur simultaneously and in harmony with certain parts of the code verbal (words, tone and pressure) when it decomposes. seeing the film in motion very slowly, looking synchrony, as disclosed by lawrence halprin, will make people realize that what is known as the dance is a derivative version of 'movement' are synchronized, which is actually a hidden message in a variety of social relations in society as part of the representation of cultural identity. (et hall, 1976, pp.153). in film 'setan jawa', 'movement' offer different representations of the javanese culture, relation to the representation of motion universe karma as an inevitability. referring to marcel danesi (2004) which defines representation as the recording process of ideas, knowledge, or messages physically, more precisely be defined as the use of signs to show you the things that are absorbed, in the senses, fantasize, or felt in the form of physical, 'setan jawa' was using the signs 'movement' built from a variety of art forms, so that whole visual aspect in the film, then became an important practice that produces culture. in harmony with this, stuart hall (1992) revealed that the representation is a very important concept in the culture; deals with the understanding that someone said to come from the same culture if the men who were there the same share experiences, share code the same culture, speak the same language and share the same concepts. hall also argued that the representation must be understood from the active and creative role to interpret the world, hall showed that an image will have a different meaning and there is no guarantee that the images would function or work as they decreased or created (stuart hall, 1992, pp.277-280). in connection with the otherness of the function, it can be said that the 'setan jawa' film there are two processes that occur representation. first, mental representation, namely the concept of 'something' that exists in the mind (conceptual map) and still something abstract; second, the representation of 'language' which plays an important role in the process of construction of meaning. abstract concept in mind as translated in the 'language' that is prevalent, in order to connect concepts and ideas about anything with a sign of certain symbols. in that position, film 'setan jawa' can be seen as fulfilling the function of symbolic interactionism in culture. symbolic interactionism function means that society and themselves seen as a process, creative and innovative in an ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 293 atmosphere that cannot be foreseen; humans act on the meanings on 'something' for them. meaning derived from / to appear on 'the interaction of a person with others' (in the film; and improved through a process of interpretation during the 'process of interaction takes place'. (rohendi, 2011, pp. 155-157). in this regard, ‘setan jawa’ film could be a symbolic form of social interaction, which has a film-forming elements (code), which includes elements of the film, theatrical elements, element-gamelan orchestra. these elements are then formed by the visual, sound / voice (audio), effects and settings. visual elements in film 'setan jawa' surrounding the character / characterizations, motion / gesture and background. the phenomenon of 'fusion' elements of movement leaders, camera movements and elements of the sound / voice (audio) to position 'movement' in film 'setan jawa' is important; mainly because the story is presented through the collaboration of a wide range of motion images in the performing arts such as; visual art, theatre / opera, classical javanese dance and contemporary art contemporary javanese music, western music art. the combination is becoming a visual aspect that gives strength to the said medium and style revealed in film 'setan jawa' and distinguish it from national films today. on the other hand, visual separation and 'movement' with sound as a film-forming element, making the process of understanding the film's story is not as easy to understand films in general. rules (code) 'movement' leaders, 'movement' camera combined with a sound structure on ‘setan jawa’ film represents a phenomenon / symptom fusion or collaboration of the three elements, which are outside the convention film in general. the pattern of the three elements blend allegedly gave rise to the phenomenon of cultural identity in ‘setan jawa’ film. this assumption is also the position that the process of representation occurs in ‘sean jawa’ film is very likely to produce the meaning of the modification area, through the transposition of the creative image of 'movement' in the film is also a means of adaptation that puts the source language into a new context for a specific purpose, subversion of verbal language, which refers to the process intersemiosis metalingual operating one way in which the linguistic signs creatively reshaped or transformed into non-linguistic elements and code (gorlée 2008 in e.chou wu, 2014). the code is a system of symbols with a previous agreement between the source and destination, used to represent and convey information. code with regard to systems with significant unit combining rules and transformation; system of rules provided by the culture (miller, 1951 and eco, 1968 in noth, 2006). collaboration between technology, art and design of traditional javanese and contemporary with the art of western aesthetics allow ‘setan jawa’ film to uncover and identify the noble values of a culture, including special and distinctive characteristics of the cultural identity of the people of indonesia, both nonitems, and manifested in the form of concrete material, though later involved in a variety of forms of interaction in global relations space. the foregoing which in turn will make the individual can still have and maintain its cultural identity, making it then possible to create a code collaboratively with other cultures. this study expected can peel 'movement' in film satan java as a code for cultural identity and its relation with the collaboration of a variety of motion not only related to technical factors, but also allegedly gave rise to the growth of the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 294 circulation of meanings, objects and cultural identity that is built in space and time diffusive as a result of the development of digital technology, and in the end, the collaboration of cultural identity. method this study will use testing aesthetic response and approach focus group discussion. testing study of the aesthetic response as a form of response to a work of art and design has been done by many researchers, one of which is hoege (1984), which examines the influence of emotion on the aesthetics of painting. through 16 indicators semantic differential, hoege found that aesthetic assessment includes four factors: empathy, emotions, activity, and clarity. construction aesthetic response, later adapted in this study to test the response of the audience aesthetic 'setan jawa' film as a form of testing the concept of 'movement' or dynamics which are elements that evoke or stimulate feelings (emotions). indicators of testing will be integrated with the research findings roger long (1979) deals with the classification of motion in javanese wayang, as well as the concept of dramaturgy goffman (1959), which revealed the interaction in the form of the order of social relations. hoege emotional aesthetic development indicators (1984), roger long (1979) and goffman (1959) constructed a response indicator aesthetics 11 sensation of motion in the 'movement' in film 'setan jawa' (a.k. dewi, 2019). figure 2. questionnaire of movement perception (ak, dewi (2019), developed from hoege (1984), roger long (1979), goffman (1959)) questionnaire perceptual response given to 15 respondents were determined using purposive sampling technique, with the consideration that the selected respondents are respondents who have watched film 'setan jawa'. respondents were then also become participants in the focus group discussion smooth rough slowly very fast rotating motion jerking motion active aggressive slow fast move forward move backward face to face back to the back together separate (there is a gap) real movement dramatic movement easy to understand difficult to understand dull light ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 295 findings and discussion garin nugroho (2017) revealed that 'setan jawa' foretold in the frame of the history of the early period of the 20th century as a concept is an exciting time to be explored, allowing diachronic events shaping the expression of the film moves between tradition and contemporary and in a variety of cross-disciplinary and culture. this film brings together contemporary perspective with traditional dance, music, to fashion the free space interpretation. the dialectic of visual language, motion and sound in 'devils java' became a constant in the fabric of the signs of culture, even across cultures. the relationship between the visual, motion and sound presented reflect that in the field of representation, labelling and communication, there is a relation of meaning that is placed between the symbols and the world of concrete, signs and their meanings. 'setan jawa' film represents a variety of collaborative movie code between the code and the code movie tradition of modern films. collaboration is indicated by the visual code 'movement' tradition of characters / characterization with integrated camera motion code with the code of the sound of gamelan-orchestra. in the visual code, 'movement' is raised through videography / cinematography, characterization, setting and properties; while the sound code, 'movement' is raised through graphic signs on partiturnya. collaboration these codes is interesting to study the mechanism of incorporation in making them into codes that reveal the identity of cultural otherness. 'movement' is a change in position on the body from the point of initial balance. positioning technologies 'movement'; 'acceleration'; 'acceleration motion' become important keywords that need to be presented in any communication channel (wj thomas, 1994). in a further study on the research karl duncker associated with motion, oppenheimer identify two conditions that visual stimulation can be regulated and / or translated into a 'movement' through two construction components 'movement', namely directions motion and motion speed. two indicators of this is the aspect of the findings is generated for a study on moving media, i.e. movies. in the media over, another aspect that is assumed to also affect the 'movement' is the time; duration; intensity. in the media moves, 'movement' is the actual change of position; real moving objects from one point to another. 'movement' in this case, has the potential to construct a semiotic sign into code. the code is a system of signs with prior agreements between the source and destination, which is used to represent and convey information. code with regard to a system with significant unit which incorporates the rules and pentransformasian; system of rules provided by the culture (miller, 1951 and eco, 1968 in noth, 2006). code movie, is mapped into the category of intersemiotika involving elements of nonverbal, while the target text is super semiotic meaning, the meaning conveyed more than two channels (gottlieb, 2007, as updated in the publication by the same author in 2012). thus, the 'movement' as a cultural code is a rule that pairs the elements of the expression systems 'movement' with the contents of system elements 'movement' in the position of representing the information culture; in which the coding in 'action' lies in the dynamic dimension (or kinaesthetic) films, including visual gestural behavior and movement in music, transposition of the third sign (deleuze, 1986; eco, 1968 in noth, 2006). ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 296 correspond to the various interactions that take place between persona, goffman (1959) through the concept of its dramaturgy highlights from other interaction (of the body) in relation to the social meanings that consists of several different ways in which a person tries to portray himself in society, namely the front stage and back, 'impression management' to highlight the desire of the 'self' to manipulate people's impression about himself on stage 'front', the physical status of 'self' and describing themselves through facial expressions, body language, and gestures of personal space (goffman, 1959). the test results sensation of motion response in film 'setan jawa' indicates that there is a dramaturgical concept applies equally javanese culture in the perception of other cultures (sundanese, malay-javanese, sundanese-javanese, sundanese-batak). 'movement' smooth, slowly and in the interaction of the body represents the values of javanese culture associated with self-control over the emotion to the 'front stage' (surface), which is assumed to be associated with the noble values of javanese culture on ethical behavior in life daily. these results were later also confirmed in the fgd, which identifies the perception of other cultures alignment with the perception held by javanese culture with a sensation of 'movement' is lifted through the 'movement' in this film. in the presentation of self in everyday life (1959), goffman outlines a conceptual framework in which every opportunity to-face interaction can be interpreted as a theatre performance. he expanded the ideas of kenneth burke, who pioneered the approach 'tis tic drama', which in turn paved the way for the concept of dramaturgy goffman to create their own. goffman believes the idea that life is like a game that never ends where everyone is an actor, and when we are born, we were driven to a stage called everyday life, and that socialization of ours consists of learning how to play the role assigned from others, he uses the metaphor of the theatre on the stage, the actors and the audience to observe and analyze the subtleties of social interaction. in dramaturgical concept of "self" consists of various parts that people play, and the main purpose is to bring together social actors themselves are different in different ways that create and maintain a special impression to their different audiences. erving goffman is probably one of the most important sociologists in relation to the "self." his book about the presentation of self in everyday life (1959) highlighting all of the above and is commonly known as a "model of dramaturgy". dramaturgical models consist of five models. or six different ways in which an individual is trying to portray himself in the community. first, goffman distinguish between the front and rear stage. the next stage is defined in the model of dramaturgy as a place where we, as an actor, playing the role himself. individuals may want to control the response of the audience for the action because the purpose of the individual. for the same reason, it is the interests of the individual to mobilize his activity in the presence of others (goffman, 1959). the stages are behind the times when a more private where a person is not judged. for example, when in the classroom environment, as an actor, someone was sitting there watching, listening with open ears and ask questions on the material. this is known as the next stage of a person's behavior. however, when a person is no longer in a classroom environment, then he can go home, relax, turn on the television, and no longer think about the content of topics ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 297 that have been studied, and became his true self; this is known as the behavior backstage. the reason someone act very differently when in the front stage and back stage is due to the 'self', he tried to display a particular image while in front of the stage, while on the contrary, a person can be a real self in the rear stage. the key is how the 'self' views and the credibility and reputation of the 'self' depends on this. in the dramaturgy goffman, the front stage and backstage is a concept used to describe the relationship between the role played by the actor at a given time and the various audiences involved this role. when someone does a role in relation to the audience or community, a role that usually is in the front stage and the performance or behavior of the 'self' is open to judgment by those who witnessed it. backstage area is a place where the 'self' as an actor able to discuss and fix itself without having to reveal themselves to the viewer. in the back of the stage, one can allow to express aspects of themselves that may not be acceptable to a particular audience. second, goffman "create" phrase "impression management" to highlight the desire of the 'self' to manipulate other people's impression of himself in front of the stage. according to goffman, at this stage apply mechanisms mark, to present ourselves to others; when an individual projects a definition of the situation and thus create an implicitly or explicitly claim to be of a certain type, it automatically exerts moral requirement of the other, obliging them to respect and treat it in a way in which people have entitled to expect (goffman, 1959). the system most commonly used marks that are used to implement; appearance, ways to interact, as well as the social setting is selected. third, another feature that will be captured audience fairly quickly is the physical status of 'self'. the general assumption about the character and personality of a person judged by his physical. the other major thing to be taken immediately by the audience is ethnic or racial someone. in anthropology there are three main races, white, black and asian, with each race comes with their own cultural background that people will soon be in touch in terms of assessing a person. fourth, in addition to the appearance and physical, viewers may be able to assess how the depiction of themselves through facial expressions, body language, and gestures of personal space. for example, shaking hands is a common occurrence when meeting someone for the first time and it showed a desire to greet him but sometimes these gestures can be rejected by others involved and because it would insult the man who started the movement. the last feature that will affect how we 'react' in front of the stage is a social setting. social setting is a physical place where the interaction occurs. the social setting is closely related to 'space; in the social environment. as well as the above, role conflict can also occur when people are faced with the hope roles are not appropriate in different social status they occupy. this role conflict can take several different forms. when a role is associated with two different status, the result is known as strain status. when a conflicting role both related to the same status, the result is known as strain roles. conflicts can also occur when people disagree about what the expectations for a particular role or when a person has difficulty meeting the expectations because the task is not clear, too difficult or unpleasant. for example, parents may feel an obligation as ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 298 opposed to the employer who demands complete devotion to the job and the kids who need to be treated when they are sick. all aspects of the presentation of different acting and theatre can be very close and easy compared to everything in our lives. those terms are very clear, but very useful and have taught people that the way we act in life is never constant; no matter what, how 'self' socializing always influenced by where a room where someone is, with whom together, and when to be there. goffman, adapting burke, stated that in social interaction, all of 'self' is an actor and the world is a stage. in 1976, hall developed the culture of the iceberg analogy. if culture is the iceberg, according to hall, there are some aspects that looks, on the water, but there is a bigger part hidden below the surface. this means that the external portion, or a conscious awareness of the culture is what we can see and the tip of the iceberg, including behavior and some confidence. internal parts, or subconscious, beneath the surface of the culture of a community and includes some of the beliefs and values and mindsets that underlie behavior. there is a big difference between conscious and unconscious culture. figure 3 edward t. hall's cultural iceberg model (hall, 1976) hall suggested that the only way to study the internal culture of others is to actively participate in their culture. when someone first enters a new culture, only the behavior of the most obvious visible. more time to be in a culture, the underlying beliefs, values and mindset that determines the behavior will be revealed. 'slow', 'back to back' which is a form of explicit form of cultural values are closely related to the model of dramaturgy that is how the views of 'self' and the credibility and reputation of the 'self' depends on it. in terms of dramaturgy goffman on social interaction, the front stage and backstage is a concept used to describe the relationship between the role played by the actor at a certain time and the various audiences involved in this role, or between one actor to another actor. when someone does a role in relation to the audience or community, a role that ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 299 usually is in the front stage and the performance or behavior of 'self' while the backstage area is a place where the 'self' as an actor able to discuss and fix themselves without having to reveal themselves to the viewer (mother, when he discovered the fact that his daughter (asih) is in pesugihan owned by her husband, setio (heru purwanto)), but cannot do anything as it is limited by ethics. backstage, one can allow to express aspects of themselves that may not be accepted by a certain audience, in this case the film while the backstage area is a place where the 'self' as an actor able to discuss and fix themselves without having to reveal themselves to the viewer (mother, when he discovered the fact that his daughter (asih) is in pesugihan owned by her husband, setio (heru purwanto)), but cannot do anything as it is limited by ethics. backstage, one can allow to express aspects of themselves that may not be accepted by a certain audience, in this case the film but cannot do anything as it is limited by ethics. backstage, one can allow to express aspects of themselves that may not be accepted by a certain audience, in this case the film but cannot do anything as it is limited by ethics. backstage, one can allow to express aspects of themselves that may not be accepted by a certain audience. figure 4. perceptual response test results of movement sensation (ak dewi, 2019) other findings from the test results that confirmed the aesthetic response through the fgd is their perception of contrast between other cultures with javanese culture regarding the meaning of 'movement' in film 'setan jawa'. if other cultures identify the 'movement' in the film is almost all dramatic gesture that is easily understood as a metaphor for the dramatic situation specific, javanese culture is different, identify the 'movement' in the film has a denotative too explicit, but it is difficult to understand in order symbolism java. it is assumed to be related to the 'impression management' to highlight the desire of the 'self' to manipulate other people's impression about himself on the 'front stage'. 'movement' aesthetics as in accordance with the opinion of thomas aquinas argued that, beauty includes three conditions, namely unity, balance, and clarity. malay-javanese sunda sunda-java sundanese-batak java ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 3, no. 2, march 2020, pp. 287-302 300 and all the movement dramaturgy in ‘setan jawa’ still have the tenacity on three indicators of beauty (rianta, im, santosa, h., & sariada, ik, 2019). according to goffman, at this stage to apply the mark mechanism, to present ourselves to others; when an individual projects a definition of the situation and thus make a claim implicitly or explicitly of a certain type, automatically give the other moral requirements, obliging them to respect and treat it in a way in which people are entitled to expect. the system marks the most commonly used are used to implement specific cultural codes of which is the appearance and the way it interacts (goffman, 1959). conclusion the cultural identity often refers to the definition of ethnic groups, a group formed by kinship as the main core of social relationships terintitusionalisasi; values and cultures, and are aware of the sense of community in the form of culture, communications networks and the interaction itself, and characterize their group that received by other groups and can be distinguished from other population groups. in this study, 'movement' as a cultural code that represents the cultural identity refers to the difference identities are fluid and can change; marked with specific symbols as a sign of cultural identity that appears on the surface. from the test results of aesthetic sensation 'movement' in film 'setan jawa' as a product of visual culture, it can be concluded there is a code of javanese culture deemed constructed through the 'movement' as a sign that is encoded visually. however, there are some indicators that need to be reconfirmed both in advanced research and / or review of literature searches related to javanese mythology and symbolism. an understanding of the creation of the concept of ethnic identity construction are represented by 'movement' which is translated in the film as a product of visual culture with a local knowledge base of the archipelago is expected to provide an understanding of the existence of 'self' as part of the social system and culture in indonesia. the foregoing which in turn will make the individual can still have and maintain their cultural identity, references akimoto, t., & ogata, t. 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(2009). teori semiotika, signifikasi komunikasi, teori kode, serta teori produksi tanda. bantul: penerbit kreasi wacana. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 69-80 69 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia power relations in two contemporary indonesian novels with political themes susilawati endah peni adji sanata dharma university correspondence: peniadji@gmail.com doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i1.2788 received 2 august 2020; accepted 8 august 2020 abstract since indonesia began its political reform in 1998, indonesians have enjoyed increased freedom of expression, and as such it has been possible for long-censored themes such as politics to be freely discussed in contemporary indonesian literature. this article examines two such novels, (1) junaedi setiono's dasamuka (2017), which deals with javanese politics during the diponegoro war; and (2) arafat nur's lolong anjing di bulan (dogs howling at the moon, 2018), which deals with acehnese politics during the military operations era. this article borrows its theoretical framework from fairclough, bourdieu, and gramsci, using the concept of power relations to investigate the novels dasamuka and lolong anjing di bulan. it finds that such power relations are strongly evident in both novels, particularly in their depictions of: (1) language as capital, (2) dominance and hegemony, and (3) opposition to outside dominance. this study finds that, in these novels, power relations have economic roots. power is exerted, for instance, through (1) the taxation of civilians by the yogyakarta palace and the dutch colonial government; (2) the land rental system implemented by the british and dutch colonial regimes, which resulted in all profits flowing to these regimes, the palace becoming economically dependent on these regimes, and the common people being reduced to laborers, and (3) natural gas exploration in aceh, with all profits flowing to the indonesian and american governments. power relations in these novels, thus, are structured by economic factors, reflecting a marxist paradigm. this reflects the marxist view that economic factors are foundational for the class structure of society. keywords: power relations, dominance, hegemony, counter-dominance/hegemony, political literature introduction the year 2019 was a highly political one in indonesia, being a time of both presidential and legislative elections. candidates and their supporters espoused their political beliefs using expressions that ranged from the polite to the offensive, from the logical to the illogical, from the factual to the fictional. although such expressions were most commonly made using social networking platforms, they were not limited to such popular media. works of literature, as forms of human expression, likewise offered their authors a medium for conveying political beliefs and attitudes as well http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs mailto:peniadji@gmail.com ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 69-80 70 as exposing the equalities and inequalities in contemporary society. as noted by taum (2015: 1), in the early years of indonesian literature, the political situation was not conducive to such practices. under the dutch colonial regime, the government-backed publisher balai pustaka would refuse to publish content with explicitly ideological, religious, or political themes (teeuw, 1989: 31). similarly, in the first decade after indonesia's independence, few works of literature are recorded as having explicitly rejected the ruling government's ideology (teeuw, 1989, and rosidi, 1986). under president soeharto (1966–1998), the indonesian government (through the office of the prosecutor general) explicitly prohibited the publication and distribution of works identified as espousing communist beliefs, as well as any works that criticized the government. as authors who fell afoul of this prohibition were imprisoned (suroso, 2015), writers began utilizing indirect and creative means of critiquing the government; as argued by seno gumira ajidarma (1997), a journalist and short story who rose to fame in the 1990s, "when journalism is silenced, literature must speak". after political reform began in 1998, however, indonesians began to enjoy greater freedom of expression. such a shift has been particularly evident in contemporary literature, where political themes—once prohibited by law—have become commonplace. power relations are often prominent in such works, including junaedi setiono's dasamuka (2017), which deals with javanese politics during the diponegoro war; and arafat nur's lolong anjing di bulan (dogs howling at the moon, 2018), which deals with acehnese politics during the military operations era. these works, though of sound structural and aesthetic quality, are not included in books on the history of indonesian literature, such as those written by rampan (2000) and wiyatmi (2018). the novel dasamuka follows willem, a researcher from the university of edinburgh, scotland, who arrives at sunda kelapa harbor on august 3, 1811, as part of an english armada. willem is described as having travelled to java for two reasons, academic and personal, simultaneously being a member of a research team investigating the javanese custom of bronjong for the london times and escaping his frustration over his erstwhile fiancée's decision to marry his father, jeremias. as part of his duties, willem becomes a student of den waryono, from whom he learns not only the javanese language and culture, but also the political intrigues of yogyakarta. meanwhile, the novel lolong anjing di bulan is set in aceh during the late 1990s. it follows a young student named nazir, from elementary school through senior high school. although his uncle is a recruiter for the free aceh movement (gerakan aceh merdeka, gam), nazir—as with his father and his brothers—care little for the separatist movement, focusing instead on maintaining their crops and avoiding conflict. however, after nazir's father is brutally killed by indonesian soldiers, nazir begins to hate the indonesian government and decides to join gam. this section will review previous publications that have examined the novels dasamuka and lolong anjing di bulan, thereby enabling the author to show the novelty of the current study. dasamuka has been examined in several articles and theses. for instance, hidayati et al. (2018) employ the theories of sigmund freud to investigate the personality and characterization of willem. they conclude that willem's id is dominated by his death instinct and his desire to avoid discomfort; willem's ego is shown through the decisions he makes to realize his desires and complete his duties; and willem's superego—his understanding of social mores and norms—is evident in his sense of guilt and shame. meanwhile, muniroh (n.d.) uses a romance formula perspective to understand dasamuka. according to muniroh, this romance formula is apparent in ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 69-80 71 the novel's (1) strong javanese cultural background and codes of etiquette, (2) depictions of its four female characters' beauty, which stimulate readers' imaginations, (3) detailed depiction of characters' romantic activities and struggles. however, she finds that the novel does not adhere strictly to such a formula, as the romance between dasamuka and rara ireng comes to a tragic ending. misbakhumunir (n.d.) utilizes a genetic structuralist perspective to ascertain whether dasamuka can appropriately be used as learning material for grade 9 students. after providing a detailed description of the themes, characters, plot, and setting of the novel, he examines dasamuka in terms of (a) human fact: cultural creation, social activity, and political activity; (b) collective subject: differences between the javanese nobility (priyayi) and common people (wong cilik); and (c) author's worldview: humanitarianism. he then offers a lesson plan for using dasamuka to teach students how to analyze the intrinsic and extrinsic elements of indonesian and foreign novels. this lesson plan is designed following a team game tournament (tgt) model of cooperative learning, one that incorporates lectures, discussions, question-and-answer sessions, and assignments. in his thesis, zahro (2018) uses a sociological perspective to investigate the novel's depiction of political conflicts and consensuses. he draws the following conclusions: (1) dasamuka depicts both internal conflicts (within the yogyakarta palace itself, as a consequence of the weakness of its elites) and external conflicts (as a result of colonial influences on the palace); (2) dasamuka depicts political consensuses through the practices of law enforcement and deliberation; (3) dasamuka depicts the javanese propensity for compromise as a means of avoiding conflict and maintaining political consensus. such practices are based on nonmaterial considerations, being more influenced by the spiritual than the physical. faizah (2015) similarly reads dasamuka through a sociological lens, but uses this perspective to investigate its potential for character education. she argues that this novel deals with such themes as kinship, morality, education, and finance. it also offers examples of such desirable character traits as courage, honesty, responsibility, tolerance, democracy, and nationalism. studies of lolong anjing di bulan, meanwhile, remain uncommon; the author has only identified two, a review written by dewi (2019) and an article penned by adji (2019). in the newspaper kompas, dewi writes that this novel, which draws from recent indonesian history, has a clear message: in times of war, humans lose their humanity. she contrasts this message with the undying fealty of dogs, who remain faithful to their masters in all situations, and are thus ironically more loyal than humans even though they are believed to have been created from the saliva of demons. meanwhile, adji examines power relations in the novel lolong anjing di bulan as apparent at the surface level. she argues that the novel presents power relations in terms of dominance and counter-dominance/hegemony. the former is practiced by political actors, i.e. the indonesian military, which uses coercion to influence the behavior of acehnese civilians and thus exerts a degree of hegemony in advancing a pro-profit ideology. the latter, meanwhile, is practiced by intellectuals, who consist of (1) civilians who enter political society; (2) political actors, who use their hegemony to counter the dominance of the indonesian government and promote an ideology rooted in perseverance, harmony, and selfworth. from this review, it can be seen that the novel dasamuka has often been discussed by literature scholars and critics since 2017. however, the power relations presented in the novel have yet to be discussed. meanwhile, although the power ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 69-80 72 relations depicted in lolong anjing di bulan have been mentioned in the literature, they have not been explored in-depth. this study, thus, seeks to offer a deeper understanding of power relations in the novel lolong anjing di bulan and link said power relations with those in a contemporary novel, dasamuka. although power relations are inexorably related to collective efforts to survive and prosper, they exist in various forms and involve diverse groups. such groups are often described in terms of binary opposition, with one group wielding and exercising more than another. this can be seen, for example, in the relations between the lower class and the upper class, between women and men, between blacks and whites, between youths and adults, etc. (fairclough, 1989: 34). according to praptomo (2012: 18), language embodies the purposes of power, that which may be termed ideology (cf. fairclough, 1989: 77–108); this ideology is an important element of studies into power and power relations. similarly, bourdieu (1991: 43-45) argues that the production and reproduction of formal language inherently involves the assertion of authority and power, and thus language has a central role in creating and maintaining power. when individuals express their thoughts through (formal) language, thus, they are tacitly limited by the power structure (cf. haryatmoko 2016: 41). according to bourdieu, power structures are shaped by capital (economic, cultural, social, symbolic), class, habitus, and field (haryatmoko 2016: 35-61). gramsci argues that, to maintain the status quo and its embedded power relations, those who wield power rely on hegemony. hegemony can only be practiced by those who exert dominance, and its particular form is determined by class and national considerations. although gramsci refers to the classical marxist understanding of structural dominance, which regards power as being shaped simultaneously by the basic structure (economy) and the superstructure (ideology, politics, education, culture, etc.), he holds that power relations are not rooted in economic structures (gramsci, 2013: 513–514). referring to consensus as an element of hegemony in capitalist society, gramsci argues that a contradictory consciousness exists in society. bourgeoisie hegemony is perceived as being supported by some illdefined consensus. gramsci thus recognizes three levels of hegemony: total hegemony (integral), declining hegemony (decadent), and minimal hegemony. total hegemony occurs when the powerful and the powerless are locked in specific power relations, which are reaffirmed by a shared moral and intellectual framework. there is no contradiction or opposition, be it social or ethical. declining hegemony occurs when conflict and disintegration become possible; this evidences that, although the existing system of power relations is being maintained, the powerful and the powerless do not share the same moral and intellectual views. as such differences become increasingly exaggerated, and as economic, political, and intellectual elites begin to fragment, a minimum hegemony is created. in such a situation, the average person is unwilling to become involved in state affairs. gramsci also identifies three elements of society: economic society, political society, and civil society. economic society refers to those who determine the dominant means of production in society, those who own the means of production, and those who use production to shape interpersonal relations. such economic factors create class and social divides in society (gramsci, 2013: 289-300). political society, meanwhile, refers to those who are directly involved in the state bureaucracy and its practice of violence. political society is coercive, exerting and maintaining its power not only through bureaucratic institutions (those tasked with taxation, trade, financial affairs, industrial development, social welfare, etc.) but ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 69-80 73 also through the military, police, judicial system, and the prison system. at the same time, it legitimizes its power by creating a consensus through education and other public programs (gramsci, 2013: 200-204). finally, civil society refers to organizations that exist outside the government and the economic system. it is within civil society that intellectuals operate, challenging the existing hegemony by offering new mindsets, understandings, and worldviews, as well as by transforming the norms and mores of society in what gramsci identifies as an intellectual and moral evolution. it is through the activities of civil society that those who experience domination/hegemony can learn to challenge it (gramsci, 2013: 3–5). this understanding of power relations, as developed by fairclough, bourdieu, and gramsci, will provide the conceptual framework for this article's discussion of the novels dasamuka and lolong anjing di bulan. in more detail, it will consider language as capital, dominance, and opposition to said dominance. method to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the research topic, this article will employ a discursive approach. in doing so, it assumes that the novels dasamuka and lolong anjing di bulan, as well as all analysis of them, are part of a discourse that is oriented towards producing knowledge (cf. taum, 2017). data were collected from two novels, namely junaedi setiono's dasamuka (2017), published by ombak (2017), and arafat nur's lolong anjing di bulan (2018), published by usd press. data were collected through library research. the researcher conducted a careful reading of dasamuka and lolong anjing di bulan, and from this reading recorded the words, sentences, and paragraphs within the novels that revealed the power structures within the novels. data were analyzed through content analysis (ratna, 2004: 48–49, in endraswara, 2011: 160–181). the novels were understood as communication between their authors and their readers, with a meaning that could be interpreted discursively. in this study, interpretation focused on the power relations contained within the novels dasamuka and lolong anjing di bulan. findings and discussion language as capital linguistic abilities provide characters with the necessary capital to access power, be it academic or political. in dasamuka, willem is dispatched from the university of edinburgh, scotland, to study the javanese practice of bronjong; he is expected to report his findings to doctor leyden, the leader of the research team, and publish them in the london times. to achieve this goal, willem studies javanese under den waryono. in this context, waryono is a javanese man of some power, being an intellectual fluent in both dutch and english. he has the power to direct willem's studies of java, shaping his understanding of javanese leadership system (pangreh praja), local politics, the diponegoro war, and the practice of bronjong. willem's report to the university of edinburg is even formulated following a framework prepared by waryono. after willem's description of bronjong is published in the london times, the british government prohibits its practice in java. waryono thus plays an integral role, shaping not only western knowledge of bronjong but also british practical politics (i.e. the prohibition of the practice). his command of the "formal" language of power, the language of the colonial government, enabled him to directly influence their knowledge and to indirectly determine their political ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 69-80 74 policies. in the novel lolong anjing di bulan, meanwhile, the use of language as capital is not as complex. nazir, the novel's main character, is depicted as speaking indonesian fluently. as such, he is able to better communicate with the indonesian military than his fellow villagers; when captured and interrogated, he is even able to use his fluency to ensure his safety. dominance and hegemony dominance and hegemony, dominator and dominated, are clearly depicted in the novel lolong anjing di bulan. after aceh is designated a military operations area by the indonesian government, the indonesian military acts (as political society) uses violence to coerce the people of alue rambe (as civil society). this violence is not only physical, but also psychological and verbal. in one incident, the civil society of alue rambe—young and old, male and female—are forcibly gathered in a field and held from morning to night. several of the men are beaten and tortured in front of their wives and children. meanwhile, soldiers raid the villagers' empty homes and steal their jewelry, money, and rice. ironically, however, this occurs as the commander is proclaiming his kindness and mercy: follow the laws, and don't resist us. we soldiers defend the country; why do we get your enmity? we are good people. we don't like violence. we don't like to hit. why, we don't even hurt animals" (nur, 2018: 84). elsewhere in the novel, villagers are described as being held at military posts, where they are ridiculed, insulted, shamed, and threatened by the indonesian troops (nur, 2018: 97). even when they install lights in front of their homes and in the streets to help the military, they are detained and accused of being gam sympathizers. they are subject to significant verbal violence, as seen in the line, "out, all of you! swine!" (nur, 2018: 101). the violence practiced by the indonesian military is presented symbolically in chapter 14, which is titled "kemanusiaan dan kesetiaan anjing" (humanity and canine loyalty). in this chapter, dahli (nazir's father) is captured by the military and killed brutally. "father's body was only found thanks to his beloved pet dog, nono. father's body had been caught on a piece of driftwood in the river. seven bullets had torn through his body, and his brown shirt and black cotton pants were ripped and torn. however, there wasn't even the slightest hint of blood. all of his blood had drained from his body through the torn flesh of his thighs and the holes in his thighs and back. his face was torn, his cheeks were bloated, and his nose broken, but all remained unsmeared by the blood that had been carried away by the river's flowing brown waters …. for the soldiers, dead rebels were dirty, dangerous, and undeserving of a proper burial" (nur, 2018: 175–176). through its title and content, chapter 14 of lolong anjing di bulan may be interpreted as depicting the indonesian soldiers as lower than even dogs, which the acehnese consider haram and inherently impure. when military operations begin, nazir is willing to accept their dominance. "i had never the indonesian government, never intended to oppose the army, never wanted to rebel. i hadn't cared whether the acehnese people were free of subjugation" (nur, 2018: 182). such an attitude reflects an implicit agreement ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 69-80 75 between the dominated and dominant, signifying that the indonesian government had achieved at least partial hegemony over the people of aceh. over time, nazir changes, being driven by the repressive actions of the indonesian government to challenge its hegemony (and even its dominance). as nazir narrates, "i hated those vile people who had killed father, and who had killed thousands of other guiltless men, who had raped [my sister] baiti, and who had raped hundreds of other innocent women" (nur, 2018: 182). indonesia's dominance over aceh began under president suharto and continued even after the fall of his regime. legally, this dominance ended with the signing of the cessation of hostilities framework agreement between government of the republic of indonesia and the free aceh movement on december 9, 2002, in switzerland (nur, 2018:334). afterwards, indonesia's hegemony in aceh was reduced. political and civil society did not share the same ideology, and civilians were unwilling to become involved in political life. unlike in lolong anjing di bulan, the power relations depicted in dasamuka are highly complex. hegemony is minimal, and resistance is apparent. responding to a new taxation policy, implemented by the sultanate of yogyakarta upon the instruction of the dutch governor general, raden rangga—the regent of madiun— rebels against the sultanate and the colonial regime (setiono, 2017: 20). members of civil society, such as ki sena and den waryono, perceive raden rangga as heroically fighting to ensure that their interests are accommodated by the palace. by transforming particular economic interests into collective ones, raden rangga is therefore capable of achieving total hegemony over civil society and gaining their support for his fight against the palace and the colonial regime. at the same time, members of the yogyakarta royal family (represented by patih natadiningrat) know and even approve of this rebellion. such an attitude is understandable, as the palace has limited power vis-à-vis the dutch colonial government. "the dutch resident was no longer required to remove his hat to honor the sultan. rather, the sultan was required to rise from his throne upon the resident's entry to the palace and to have welcome him to sit upon a chair located beside his throne" (setiono, 2017: 20). before the dutch, the sultanate of yogyakarta therefore lacked the power to create hegemony. to deal with the sunanate of surakarta, raden rangga sends a letter to the sunan and to the other regents, urging them to recognize him as king (setiono, 2017: 23). having already gained the support of the common people by promoting an economic vision, he uses this approach to ensure the formal recognition of his power. although raden rangga's rebellion is ultimately unsuccessful, his hegemony over the common people endures. this can be seen, for instance, in ki sena's description of his death: "[rangga] met his fate while defending his dignity and his honor as a man, not as cattle, not as a dutch whipping boy. he is worthy of remembrance, of being commemorated by the javanese for years after his death." (setiono, 2017: 24). a similar view is maintained by patih natadiningrat, whom the dutch replace with the pliant patih danurejo as advisor to sultan hamengkubuwana ii. java's power structures are transformed after the british replace the dutch as the colonial overlords of indonesia, including yogyakarta and surakarta. willem, as a british scholar, describes the situation as follows: the javanese palaces were no more, their valuables having already been seized by general robert gillespie and his troops on june 21, 1812… i can detail the fall of these palaces because i also partook in gillespie's raids, as blessed by governor general raffles…. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 69-80 76 these palaces were attacked as they always are. if there is no significant opposition, the shouts of the victorious are always followed by the cries of the defeated. … the cruel joy of the soldiers, bearing the fruits of their raids, acting in a manner ill-suited to their claims of advanced civilization. …. if such raids are not opposed, are they always followed by rape? (setiono, 2017: 51–53). through his description of the fall of the javanese palaces, willem insinuates that colonialism is the same around the globe. english colonialism is no better than dutch colonialism, as both achieve dominance through bloodshed, seize the wealth of those they conquer, and practice rape. they remain motivated primarily by what marxism identifies as the basic structure, by their own economic interests. complex power relations are also evidenced in dasamuka through the division of power between the dutch colonial government and the javanese nobility. although both assert dominance over the javanese people, they are not equals. "years of dutch colonial rule had resulted in the true kings, those who cared for the welfare of their people, being replaced by puppet kings who only enriched the dutch… if a king refused to do so, he would be pushed aside by the dutch. sultan hamengkubuwana ii was exiled to penang island on june 28, 1812… so great was the power of the colonials that they could easily seize power from the javan kings, play them as pawns in a global game of chess (setiono, 2017: 50). the javanese nobility and the dutch colonial government both exerted dominance over the javanese people. the nobility, in turn, were under the hegemony of the dutch. they were compelled to follow dutch policy, as described below: "the javanese, especially the nobility, feared hard work. it was useless to involve them in the advancement of world civilization …. the javanese were in dire straits, their minds preoccupied with matters of wisma, curiga, kukila, turangga, and wanita, with their homes, krisses, birds, horses, and women. they weren't ready to understand matters of nation and state" (setiono, 2017: 51). hegemonized by dutch/british colonial rule, java's kings act repressively towards their own people. this is exemplified by sultan hamengkubuwana iv, who prioritizes his own pleasure over the needs and interests of the people. for example: (1) the sultan travels in a carriage that is drawn by persian horses and escorted by an honor guard. however, he cares little for the safety of his escorts, and many have died under the hooves of his horses or the wheels of his carriage. such a dire fate has also befallen several of his subjects. (2) the sultan's mother, gusti ratu kencono, ensures that beautiful women are made available to the sultan to fulfil his libidinal urges. many of these women feel tortured, not desiring his advances but being unable to refuse them. (3) the sultan frequently travels to karangbolong, finding mirth in the deaths of those who fall to their deaths while collecting swallow nests. the power struggles continue even after the death of sultan hamengkubuwana iv. fearing what would happen if prince diponegoro ii were made sultan, gusti ratu kencana manipulates the court to ensure that her three-yearold grandson is made sultan hamengkubuwana v. with palace policy being set by herself and patih danurejo. these maneuvers are backed by the dutch resident, baron de salis. consequently: ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 69-80 77 the sultanate fell into chaos after the death of sultan hamengkubuwana iv, and fell further into chaos after smissaert's appointment as resident of yogyakarta on february 10, 1823. resident smissaert, patih danurejo, and a colonel named wiraguna consolidated their power. they considered puri tegalrejo (diponegoro ii and his allies ) their greatest threat…. taxes became increasingly illogical. there were taxes for having too many doors, for mothers bringing their children to market, and more. these new taxes widened the gap between the palace and the people (setiono, 2017: 275). in lolong anjing di bulan, the power relations between the dominant and dominated are clear. political society, as represented by the indonesian military, exerts its dominance by coercing the civil society of alue rambe, aceh. its hegemony, however, is minimal; although nazir initially chooses to focus on his agricultural activities and avoid conflict, the wanton cruelty of political society drives him to join gam and challenge the dominance of the indonesian government. meanwhile, in dasamuka, the question of dominant and dominated is a complex one. even as the dutch colonial government exerts partial hegemony over the sultans of java, the colonial regime and the javanese nobility use taxation to assert their dominance over civil society, which responds with resistance and rebellion. similarly, the british exert dominance over the javanese nobility shortly after their arrival, then use this dominance to create hegemony and advance their economic interests. even as the javanese nobility benefit from this arrangement, profiting significantly from the rental of their lands to the english and the dutch, the common people are reduced to laborers and farmhands. agents of change: countering dominance and hegemony both of these novels depict an organic intelligentsia that is opposed to the practices of dominance and hegemony. such individuals thus become agents of change. in dasamuka, the main agents of change are raden rangga, ki sena, den waryono, and prince diponegoro ii. rejecting the new taxation policy, implemented by the sultanate of yogyakarta upon the instruction of the dutch governor general, raden rangga—the regent of madiun—rebels against the sultanate and the colonial regime (setiono, 2017: 20). he thereby becomes a political actor, one capable of challenging the political structure that solely advantages the sultanate and the colonial regime. ki sena, meanwhile, begins dasamuka as part of civil society, but over the course of the novel he becomes a political actor by allying with raden rangga. he is driven by two motivations: his displeasure with governor-general daendels decision to implement new taxes (setiono, 2017: 20), and his personal vendetta against the political elites. ki sena is described as having been born in bagelan, an area west of the palace whose residents are frequently derided for their less refined language and behavior (setiono, 2017: 20–21). despite being a simple farmer, ki sena is an intelligent man, one with a deep knowledge of history, strategy, and mindfulness. he is so exceptional that he is allowed to marry den rara ningsih, a woman of noble birth, after answering a series of questions about prince diponegoro and winning a fight against den mas mangli (rara ningsih's brother). however, even after marriage ki sena continues to be mocked for his low birth, and thus he feels most at home amongst the rebels (setiono, 2017: 22). ki sena may thus be said to use his organic intelligence to counter hegemony and dominance. the third agent of change in dasamuka is den waryana, willem's teacher. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 69-80 78 by choosing what willem learns, and how he learns it, den waryana is able to indirectly shape the world's knowledge of java. den waryana is a man of great intellect, being not only fluent in english and dutch but also well-versed in the political intrigues of the javanese nobility. however, willem knows little about den waryana's personal life; his past and family are not discussed. indeed, only towards the end of the novel is den waryana's importance in prince diponegoro ii's campaign revealed. recognizing that the british seek an alliance with the prince, den waryana writes to willem, "according to diponegoro ii, this war is a holy one, intended to ensure the rule of religion in java. his campaign is supported by most of the religious scholars living in the yogyakarta sultanate and the surakarta sunanate. as such, he does not require the support of the british" (sutiono, 208: 286). meanwhile, in lolong anjing di bulan, the dominance and hegemony of the indonesian government is resisted by arkam. through his actions, attitudes, and behaviors, he is able to influence the people of alue rambe (in the mountains of north aceh) and their acceptance of indonesian policies. through his speech and actions after returning to aceh from malaysia and libya, arkam is able to mobilize the village youth and convince them to defend their religion and land by joining gam. borrowing from gramsci, arkam is an organic intellectual, one whose knowledge enables him to convince others to oppose indonesian hegemony and dominance. his position as the commander of the local sagoe (gam unit), a group of forty youths, enables him to act as a political actor. another organic intellectual in lolong anjing di bulan is its main character, nazir (arkam's nephew). at the beginning of the novel, which is set in july 1989, nazir is depicted as paying little heed to arkham's lectures and struggles. he focuses instead on his studies and on helping his father, dahli, with his agricultural activities. he views dahli as a good father, from whom he learns how to work the land. they, as with many of their peers, simply accept the hegemony of the indonesian military. similarly, nazir does not oppose the indonesian military when soldiers enter his village. "i knew that they were looking, hunting, for those involved in the rebellion, people like arkam and his followers" (nur, 2018: 9). he also sees the operations of mobile corp, an american oil company with massive refineries and pipes spread along the acehnese coast. drawing on his knowledge as a junior high school student, he attempts to understand the connection between arkam's fight, american gas operations, and indonesia's military activities in aceh: "they said that hasan tirto's rebellion traced its roots to the construction of these enormous refineries, which had begun as early as 1976. as arkam claimed in one of his speeches, almost all of aceh's natural wealth had been carried to jakarta, without anything being sent back. the government continued to drain aceh's natural wealth, treating aceh as nothing more than a cash cow. the people of aceh lived in destitution amidst a cornucopia of natural resources. even though the arun gas field was the world's largest producer of gas, the people of aceh could only stand by as it was drained" (nur, 2018: 10). the only local youth with a senior high school education, nazir possesses a literacy and fluency that enables him to communicate with the indonesian soldiers. it may thus be concluded that nazir, a young man of considerable intelligence, initially accepts indonesian dominance and hegemony without protest. however, nazir and his brother-in-law muha begin opposing indonesian hegemony after nazir's father dahli is brutally killed by indonesian soldiers. their ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 69-80 79 opposition becomes stronger after nazir's sister, baiti, and beloved zulaiha are raped by indonesian soldiers. with their domestic lives having been destroyed by the indonesian military, the young men are driven by their hatred, anger, and desire for vengeance to join gam and fight against indonesia's dominance (nur, 2018: 307). from this discussion, it is evident that the primary agents of change in these novels are intellectuals. although the majority of these agents (nazir, ki sena, and waryono) are members of civil society who later enter political society, some (arkam and raden rangga) begin their journey within political society. through their struggles, they challenge hegemony and oppose dominance. conclusion power relations are clearly depicted in junaedi setiono's dasamuka (2017) and arafat nur's lolong anjing di bulan (dogs howling at the moon, 2018). this topic has been fruitfully examined using the theories of fairclough, bourdieu, and gramsci, which are rooted in understandings of language as capital, dominance and hegemony, and opposition to outside dominance. power relations are clearly depicted in lolong anjing di bulan. dominance is practiced by political society, as represented by the indonesian military, and maintained through coercion. initially, there is minimal hegemony, with nazir (as a member of civil society) avoiding conflict and focusing on his agricultural activities. however, over time the wanton cruelty of political society leads him to challenge this dominance by joining gam. in dasamuka, meanwhile, power relations are highly complex. the dutch exert partial hegemony over the sultans of java, and both use taxation to assert their dominance over civil society. facing such subjugation, the regents and common people of java respond with rebellion. similarly, the british exert dominance over the javanese nobility shortly after their arrival, then use this dominance to create hegemony and advance their economic interests. even as the javanese nobility benefit from this arrangement, profiting significantly from the rental of their lands to the english and the dutch, the common people are reduced to laborers and farmhands. opposition to such dominance is undertaken predominantly by intellectuals. although the majority of these intellectuals are members of civil society who later enter political society, some begin their journey within political society. no matter their origin, they consolidate the public to challenge hegemony and oppose dominance. power relations are shaped by language, dominance, hegemony, and counter dominance, all of which serve to advance specific economic interests—what marxism identifies as the basic structure. in the novels discussed, these interests include: (1) natural gas exploration in aceh, with profits taken by the indonesian and american governments; (2) taxation, collected by javanese nobility and the colonial governments, (3) land rent, resulting in the javanese nobility becoming economically dependent on the colonial regime and reducing the common people to mere laborers. in all cases, profits are enjoyed by those in power. references adian, d.g. (2011). setelah marxisme: sejumlah teori kontemporer. depok: koekoesan. adji, s.e.p. (2019). relasi kekuasaan dalam novel lolong anjing di bulan karya arafat nur. jurnal ilmiah kebudayaan sintesis, 13(1), 19-25. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 1, september 2020, pp. 69-80 80 ajidarma, s.g. (1997). ketika jurnalisme dibungkam, sastra harus bicara. yogyakarta: bentang budaya. baryadi, i. p. (2012). bahasa, kekuasaan, dan kekerasan. yogyakarta: usd press. bourdieu, p. (1991). language and symbolic power. cambridge: blackwell. dewi, n. (2019). kemanusiaan dan kesetiaan anjing. kompas, 19. fairclough, n. (1989). language and power. new york: longman group. faizah, u. (2015). kajian sosiologi sastra dan nilai pendidikan karakter novel dasamuka karya junaedi setiyono. paper presented at the national seminar on literature, character building, and creative industries, surakarta. gramsci, a. (2013). prison notebooks: catatan-catatan dari penjara (trans. teguh wahyu utomo). yogyakarta: pustaka pelajar. haryatmoko. (2016). membongkar rezim kepastian: pemikiran kritis poststrukturalis. yogyakarta: kanisius. hidayati, f, suwandi. s., & slamet, st. y. (2018). kepribadian tokoh willem dalam novel dasamuka karya junaedi setiyono. jurnal lingua didaktika, 2(2), 140– 153. misbakhumunir, m., kadaryati, k., & bagiya, b. (2017). analisis strukturalisme genetik novel dasamuka karya junaedi setiyono dan rencana pembelajarannya di kelas xi sma. surya bahtera, 5(48). muniroh, z. (2015.). romance formula pada novel dasamuka karya junaedi setiyono. jurnal bahtera-jurnal pendidikan bahasa sastra dan budaya, 2(4). nur, a. (2018). lolong anjing di bulan. yogyakarta: usd press. patria, n., & arief, a. (2015). antonio gramsci, negara, dan hegemoni. yogyakarta: pustaka pelajar. ratna, n.k. (2004). teori, metode, dan teknik penelitian sastra dari strukturalisme hingga postruktural. jakarta: pustaka pelajar. rampan, k. l. (2000). angkatan 2000 dalam sastra indonesia. jakarta: grasindo. rosidi, a. (1986). ikhtiar sejarah sastra indonesia. bandung: binacipta. setiono, j. 2017. dasamuka. yogyakarta: ombak. suroso. (2015). sastra dan kekuasaan di era orde baru. paper presented at the national seminar on language, literature, and power, faculty of language and arts, state university of yogyakarta. suwardi, e. (2011). metodologi penelitian sastra: epistomologi, model, teori, dan aplikasinya. yogyakarta: pustaka widyatama. taum, y.y. (2015). sastra dan politik. yogyakarta: usd press. taum, y. y. (2017). kritik sastra diskursif: sebuah reposisi. in makalah disampaikan dalam seminar nasional kritik sastra yang diselenggarakan badan pengembangan dan pembinaan bahasa kemendikbud, jakarta (pp. 1516). teeuw, a. (1980). sastra baru indonesia i. ende: nusa indah. teeuw, a. (1989). sastra indonesia modern ii. jakarta: pustaka jaya. wiyatmi. (2018). novel indonesia periode 2000-an. yogyakarta: ombak. zahro, l.h. (2018). konflik dan konsensus dalam konstelasi politik keraton yogyakarta (kajian sosiologi sastra novel dasamuka karya junaedi setiyono). thesis. department of indonesian language and literature education, post-graduate program, muhammadiyah university of malang. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia 206 demographic factors and parents’ communicative acts: their implications on models of child’s use of language rafael ibe santos university of asia and the pacific correspondence: rafael.santos@uap.asia https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.3951 received 8 december 2021; accepted 30 april 2022 abstract this case study investigated halliday’s models of child’s use of language involving an english-filipino bilingual boy and how he was influenced by certain demographic factors and parents’ communicative acts. data was from nine videos that captured the child’s naturally occurring interactions involving his parents and family friends between the ages 2.6 and 4.10 within a span of almost three years. the multimethod approach was used in analyzing data, namely, qualitative frequency analysis and online interview for triangulation purposes. five of the seven functions of language in children were demonstrated and appeared to have been influenced by ethnicity, age, gender, and parents’ communicative acts and attitude but not by bilingualism as earlier predicted. more importantly, four nascent models were exhibited, suggesting that there could be more than seven language functions in children as previously posited by halliday. the esteem function, rescue function, corrective function, and asserting function, reflective of models of child’s use of language in filipino and asian contexts, were discovered and such typologies are proposed in this study. findings have implications on bilingualism, language teaching, and language development theories. keywords: child, function/s, halliday, language, model/s introduction for young children, language is and has power, a tool to achieve what they desire in their day-to-day experience (halliday, 2002, p. 53). like a magic wand, it is tapped for their own advantage. in the words of byrnes and wasik (2009), “the most skilled and successful language users choose ways of communicating that accomplish their goals while also helping them maintain positive social relationships with others” (p. 37). according to o’grady (2005), children can “talk effortlessly in [an] impossible language” (p. 1), and as early as age two, typically developing children demonstrate what they are capable of accomplishing in terms of language use. halliday (2002) notes that the brain of a young child is a complex machine, able to construct a highly complex schema that constitutes, mailto:rafael.santos@uap.asia https://doi.org/10.24071/ijhs.v5i2.3951 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 207 guides, and governs the use of language. not only is the child able to fully grasp what language is but can also internalize what it is for. he elaborates: the child knows what language is because he knows what language does. the determining elements in the young child’s experience are the successful demands on language that he himself has made, the particular needs that have been satisfied by language for him. (p.50) two important arguments about language use in children are raised here. first, youngsters understand what constitutes the language that they were born in. second, it is understood that language exists for a purpose, meaning it has certain functions, and it is these functions that they want to take advantage of. the ability to use language is undergirded by chomsky’s theory of linguistic competence and performance. the competence-performance theory is similar to de saussure’s concepts of langue and parole, the first referring to the abstract systems and rules of language and the latter to application of language systems (lukens-bull & zahn, 2018). competence consists of a collection of linguistic systems to be mastered by the language learner, making the production of countless number of sentences possible. it ought to be exhibited via the articulation of language rules, an aptitude referred to as performance. competence, therefore, is the built-in knowledge of language units while performance is the actualization of linguistic codes in concrete situations (devitt, 2015). children’s goals and intentions in language use in 1978, ann carter (as cited in hoft, 2014) published a seminal work on how developing young children use language and established what she called the systematic use of “‘sound-gesture’ combinations to express eight different communicative functions” (p.102). these are: (a) requesting help, (b) directing the listener’s attention, and (c) expressing pleasure. referring to them as “goals”, carter believed that a typical child uses different facets of a language to articulate his or her thoughts as well as needs and emotions (p. 19). the communicative strategies were listed as: (a) getting help in obtaining object, (b) drawing attention to object, (c) drawing attention to self, (d) getting or giving object, (e) getting help in changing situation, (f) getting help in removing object, and (g) expressing pleasure. expounding on the list, ninio (1995, as cited in hoff, 2014), labels these strategies as “intentions” which are used to express the following: (a) agreeing/disagreeing with a proposition, (b) correcting an utterance, (c) asking a yes-no question, (d), requesting clarification utterance, (e) giving affirmative or negative answers to yes-no questions, (f) making a verbal move in telephone game/pick-a-boo game, (g) making object transfer, (h) marking completion of action and the falling of an object, and (i) exclaiming in disapproval, distress, surprise or enthusiasm. the first two intentions reflect children’s capacity to make decisions, as well as showing of approval/disapproval, and expressing their opinions against something that is perceived as incorrect. the third and fourth intentions reveal the capacity of children to be actively engaged in conversation, knowing when and what to ask in order to comprehend utterances and supplying ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 208 answers to questions. the other intentions embody the child’s feelings and emotions, both positive and negative. incidentally, halliday also refers to “intentions” which represent both “material and intellectual needs” (p. 50). he posits that language use among children is not a matter of talking, but a matter of meaning. he argues: for the child, all language is doing something: in other words, it has meaning. it has meaning in a very broad sense including here a range of functions which the adult does not normally think of as meaningful…the child’s awareness of language cannot be isolated from his awareness of language function…(p. 53). halliday’s models of child’s use of language based on his extensive pen and paper method of recording his son’s communicative repertoire, halliday concluded that young children use language for manipulation, ordering or commanding, establishing connections, showcasing their uniqueness, questioning, imagining, and articulating ideas. by the time a child reaches the age of 5, he or she is thought to have possessed and used these language functions in varying degrees. in their daily experiences, children observe that language could be used to regulate behavior, and soon they find themselves adopting the same practice, known as the regulatory model. they realize that through language instructions can be given and compliance demanded, thus, a tool for controlling or manipulating the environment. manipulative tendencies do not always require complete utterances but can be expressed via “a noise in commanding tone”, “a contextualized yell” or any other imperatives (p. 50). this function evolves, becoming more elaborate as “experience of the potentialities of language [increases]” (p. 51). to get along with others or establish connections with important persons in their lives, boys and girls perform the interactional model. every young child, explains halliday, is able to internalize language while actively listening and talking to others. the fourth function, known as the personal model, demonstrates individuality and uniqueness by way of expression of feelings, personal preferences, and attitudes. in hallidayan tradition, every normal child is intrinsically inquisitive, seeking explanations for things that they see or do not understand, an investigative function called heuristic model. language can also be a viable instrument to create an imaginary realm, and this accounts for the imaginative model demonstrated through dramatic games like storytelling activities. this makebelieve construction or reconstruction does not need to be confined to the sophisticated but may be as simple as “pure sound” or “rhythmic sequences of rhymes and chiming syllables” (p. 52). encompassing all the other functions of the child’s model of language is the representational model which is seen through the articulation of inner thoughts. more dominant in later years as the child matures, this function shows the child that there is more to language than merely achieving something or controlling others: it is a tool for one to be heard and understood. throughout childhood, some or all these functions are employed by children to realize their goals. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 209 demographic factors and language use and development certain demographic considerations have been associated with language production. these factors include ethnicity/race, gender, bilingualism, and parents’ communicative acts. the fourth variable encompasses parental activities, practices, intentions, communicative competence, parenting style, etc. that may result to or involve interactions with a child. ethnicity or race has been linked with how children develop and use language. for instance, studies have shown that african american children tend to demonstrate inferior language skills as compared to their white counterparts (basit et al., 2014). faitar (2011) also found that socioeconomic status of parents as well as their race impact their children’s language performance. gender also plays an important role in terms of verbal abilities, which become apparent at an early age (barel & tzischinsky, 2018). girls are said to develop verbal skills faster than boys (adani & cepanec, 2019). between ages 2 to 4, females demonstrate more pronounced non-verbal and verbal skills (toivainen et al., 2017). a related study that determined preschoolers’ fundamental motor skills proficiency found certain differences between the two sexes, but distinction is not consistent during such period (kokštejn, musálek, & tufano, 2017). bilingualism also factors in when it comes to language skills (bialystok, craik, & luk, 2012). it is also normal for bilingual children to possess one dominant language and one that is weaker (van dijk et al., 2021). children who acquire two languages before age three are classified as early childhood bilinguals, while those who learn their l2 beyond that age are referred to as later childhood bilinguals (kapa & colombo, 2013). others refer to these classifications as simultaneous and sequential bilingualism (stoehr et al., 2018). in the former, acquisition of two languages takes place at the same rate while in the latter, learning of an l2 occurs at a later time. (bird, genesee, & verhoeven, 2016). in terms of language dominance, bilinguals can be classified as either as balanced bilinguals’ (both l1 and l2 having equal dominance) and unbalanced bilinguals’ where either language is dominant (tsui et al., 2019). a child may be categorized as bilingual even if he or she has not achieved fluency in the l2, known as incipient bilingualism (ansah et al., 2017). bilinguals tend to demonstrate linguistic and cognitive advantage compared to monolinguals (blom, 2017). across all ages, bilinguals are thought to demonstrate executive control compared to monolinguals (kousaie et al., 2014). majority of filipinos are either multilingual or bilingual (ledesma & morris, 2011; wattimena & manara, 2016) because they get exposed to or acquire multiple languages because of the existence of multiple languages in the philippines (dimaculangan, 2018; dita, 2009; unsworth, 2013). residents of metro manila, for example, may speak english aside from filipino, the national language. inhabitants in the northern or southern parts of the philippines have their own mother tongues besides the two official languages (tupas, 2015). some parents coming from middle to upper classes especially in urban centers tend to introduce english to their growing children, hence, becoming their first language. as they interact outside the home and in school, children may acquire filipino which is the most widely spoken language in the archipelagic nation spoken by at least 28 million (tanaka et al., 2014). alternatively, children with filipino as their ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 210 l1 are forced to learn the language by being sent to english-only schools (dawe, 2014) children’s language skills are said to be affected by their parents’ behaviors. madigan (2015) and colleagues have found that responsive parenting helps facilitate language development. this is seen through the level of sensitivity to the overall needs of children (wade, 2018), and particularly obvious among boys (barnett, 2012). manifestations of sensitive parenting are mothers’ warmth, affection, and pleasure when interacting with the child (brophy-herb et al., 2012; madigan et al., 2019). sensitive or responsive parenting involves giving attention to verbalizations and initiations from the child as well as communicative activities (madigan et al., 2019). use of emotion words, desire words, assertions, and cognitive words also aid in language development (brophy-herb et al., 2012). all these, occurring within the context of social relations, constitute language input that facilitate language competence (pancsofar & vernon-feagans, 2006). additionally, parents’ self-efficacy, which relates to their emotional and communicative competences, has positive impact on children’s language development (albarran & reich, 2013). similarly, maternal social support when children are young is beneficial for early language development (chang, 2017). method the focus of this case study is a young boy who was exposed to english as his first language (l1). based on the video recordings, the parents had intended to ground the child in this language although he is slowly being introduced to select expressions in filipino, his emergent l2. the boy is considered as incipient bilingual, able to communicate through his l1 but not in his l2. in this case study, the utterances of the subject between the age of 2.10 and 4.6 years old were examined to determine halliday’s child’s models of language use. a descriptive study, this work attempted to correlate the demonstration of the models with four demographic factors namely, ethnicity, age, gender, and type of bilingualism, and parents’ communicative acts. other possible factors that could influence language use in young children were not the concern of this study. sources of data are nine videos recorded in a span of three years from october 30, 2018, to june 5, 2020, each lasting between less than a minute to more than three minutes. containing the child’s interactions with parents and family friends, the recordings represented both regular and special socializations, all occurring in a natural environment. the utterances were captured via smartphones when the child. the recordings were done to document what the parents perceived as milestones in his life. some of the videos have been made available on instagram and youtube and were supplied to the researcher upon request. the child is a son of a minister in his early 30s and an event organizer host mother who engages in a lot of communicative functions as part of her job. the subject spoke only english since every member of the family communicated to him in the language, although the mother has started introducing him to some filipino words through children’s stories in the vernacular. the nine recordings were deemed sufficient in ascertaining how language was used since they represented unique situations wherein the subject is on an interactive mode, according to o’grady, (2005), who recommends documentation when a child is expressive and actively engages with others. the capturing of the ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 211 nine videos coincides with o’grady’s advice since they are not limited to “just one setting or...one conversational partner” (p. 201). following the transcriptions, the data was analyzed using descriptive method to determine the models demonstrated and how they correlated with four demographic factors. frequency analysis was used in classifying utterances based on halliday’s functions of language in children. select demographic factors such the communicative practices of the parents were correlated with his language use. results were triangulated with an online interview with the parents, conducted via messenger chat to determine the role of parental communicative acts and habits. this study is guided by the following research questions: 1. how were the hallidayan models of child’s use of language demonstrated by the boy? 2. how are demographic factors and parents’ communicative acts correlated with language use in the child? findings and discussion this paper looked at how an incipient bilingual boy used english (l1) and filipino (his emerging l2) in his interactions with his father (jpk) and mother (kk). in this section, the hallidayan models of child’s use of language are presented through multiple productions of morphemes and more complicated lexical combinations such as phrases, clauses, and sentences, as well as nonverbal forms of communication. demonstration of models of child’s use of language the first video is a short conversation while the mother and the child were aboard their vehicle on their way to a disney event when the child was 2.10 years old. the parent attempts to rectify incorrect language productions of her son and takes advantage of the same for socialization. the utterances such as “ah…ahwana”, “mana”, “wana” of the boy are responses to the mother’s promptings (6, 8, 10). this shows the use of the interactional function of language. in lines 7, 8, and 9, the default use of language is the interactional function, apparently because of the age of the child. note that in these lines (except line 8), the boy does not initiate interactions but merely responds to prompts from the parents. again, this is understandable because of the age of the child. the second video is an interaction between the subject—aged 2.11 years old at the time of the recording—and his parents on their way to their resort cabin during a family trip south of manila. aboard a cart drawn by a water buffalo, the parents strike a conversation with their son, and responds with the words “ethan”, “poknut”, and “cho-nut” (6, 11, & 13). here, the interactional model is also exhibited. in line 15, he surprises his parents with the longer phrase, “is eating” while pointing to the animal, demonstrating that he can make sense of the events around him, somehow reflecting an element of the personal function. video 3 is storytelling time, filmed when the subject was 3.1 years old. while the mother and son are reading a children’s book, the boy reacts with mostly incomplete sentences and mono-syllabic short utterances such as “yeah”, “the track”, “boul-der”, “truck”, and “the lookout” (6, 13, 17, 21, 34, & 37). being a participant and an observer in this interaction, the child illustrates the interactional model. an explanation for very limited linguistic outputs from the child is his ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 212 focus on playtime rather than on the storytelling, aside of course from his age. noticeable here is the progression of the child’s use of language from the default interactional function to personal function, which is more pronounced, and this appears to be influenced by his age. the fourth video is also a reading time. the goal, according to the mother in an online interview, is to introduce tagalog (filipino) lexicon. in line 5, the child, who was 3 years old at the time of the filming, articulates the phrase, “wagon, mama”, reflecting the interactional and instrumental functions. based on the video, the child is not demanding but merely expressive of a desire to have his toy, which the mother sidelines and focuses on the task at hand. this appears to be a variant of instrumental model without the intent to control or manipulate. having difficulty learning a new language, the boy resorts to his comic ways which are also seen in the other videos. he acts and sounds funny by mimicking his mother albeit incorrectly, and when gently chided, he responds with laughter and made-up word combinations such as pata-poo-poo (17, 19 & 21), which appear to be an intentional distortion of “puto bumbong”, a steamed rice delicacy available at christmastime). when unable to deliver the right phonemes, the child resorts to comic ways and alters the words, again, to sound hilarious. we see here the intentional use of phonological and morphological distortions to divert the adult’s attention from his errors. it suggests that young children resort to diversionary tactics (such as mimicking, being funny, word distortion, etc.) to demonstrate another language use that halliday did not find in his study. this is understandable since halliday based his theory on his observations of his son nigel up to the age of 18 months only (thwaite, 2019). this technique found in the filipino boy appears to reflect the diversionary function of child language as posited by canadian psycholinguist frank smith (thwaite, 2019). but unlike smith’s typology, the diversion employed in the case study is not an end to itself but a means to another function. it is possible that the boy engages in diversionary function to avoid correction or chastisement. conversely, the child’s ego appears to be affected whenever he is unable to produce the correct phonemes, hence, the distraction. the child’s alterations and funny ways are apparently intended to steer away the focus from his childish blunders and highlight his other strengths or potentials. the child is insinuating that beyond his phonological gaffes, he has other things to offer to the world, demonstrating what i will call the esteem model or “i am confident” and “i am an achiever” function which elicits affirmation from adults. the child distracts the mother in an attempt to direct her attention to his other ways of showcasing language performance and away from his perceived lack of linguistic competence (ahearn, 2017). because he cannot produce the compound “puto bumbong” correctly, the child offers the distorted but funny version “pata-poo-poo”. similarly, unable to utter another compound “sapinsapin” and producing “pasin-pasin” instead, the boy concocts “sapin-dadu”. highlighted in this transcription is a non-hallidayan function of language. i propose this to be reflective of the esteem function of child’s use of language. for the boy, the esteem function is a matter of great importance. the video culminates with the praise, “very good!” (44) from the mother. in this video, the child, who is a bit older, demonstrates two hallidayan models and a new function, possibly asian/filipino child’s use of language. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 213 video 5 is family bonding time at a swimming pool. recorded in this clip are short but complete sentences. the interactional model is obvious in this case. the question, “how about me?” (6) communicates a desire to imitate what the boy’s father is doing, that is, spouting water with his hands. categorizing this expression according to the remaining hallidayan lenses in terms of functions of language is problematic since it does not seem to fit any of them. at first glance, we may assume that it demonstrates an element of the interactional function, but a deeper analysis will show that the child wants his dad to teach him how to squirt water using his hands. the statement is also not reflective of the personal model because the subject has no particular capability or talent to showcase. we can sense a wish to be like his father or to perform an activity that adults can do. more than a case of idolizing his father, the boy is displaying another function that halliday may not have accounted for. although partly reflective of the instrumental function, it is not in any way controlling or manipulative. in fact, the child is requesting assistance from his parent. at the very least, this may be a variant of the regulatory model—sans the manipulation—and i call it the “teach me” function or the supporting model wherein the child communicates a need for adult assistance in performing an activity. in line 12, the boy reacts with, “not funny, papa!” when his father splashes water at him. based on chomskyan orientation, these linguistic codes could have been produced independently by him, or if vygotsky is right, this could have been absorbed from his environment (akhmetova, chelnokova, & morozova, 2017). we see a sharing of an idea which has some elements of the interactional and representational models. however, examined closely, the remark expresses rebuke in a lighter tone, thus, the statement deserves another label. indicating correction, the child projects to the father that the splashing of water was unwelcome and even wrong. this may be referred to as the corrective or judgmental model. in this situation, more complicated or novel models are demonstrated. in the sixth video, the subject is with his mother in the home of family friends, unwrapping egg-shaped presents as part of the easter celebration while engaged in conversation with the adults. the boy, now 4.4 years old, does not seem to be distracted by the activity. while occupied with the presents, the boy actively interacts as shown below: boy: to crack an egg… kk: so what are you doing? boy: cracking the egg… kk: and then… boy: and then, you can crack an egg and crumble it in the eggs. no! (unwrapping easter egg) the mother and son are into a snappy and lively question-and-answer discourse. the boy provides straightforward answers, showing his deep involvement in both the dialogue and the activity. this is further shown by the next lines: kk: so what are we gonna do with those eggs? boy: keep it. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 214 kk: keep it and? boy: the baby… the baby scramble. the dialogue depicts the child as an active participant and as an observer in a social interaction, reflecting the interactional model. no other models were observed, apparently because the video is short. in video 7, the boy is seen crying uncontrollably and is upset to the point that he resorts to wailing as the father attends to his concern. he uses words and cries to express what he wants. in the interaction, the boy, now 4.5 years old, articulates that he misses doing exercises. although the boy does not directly make demands, his statement, “i miss exercise” can be interpreted as, “let us/me have exercise or i will keep crying”. this scenario showcases personal and interactional models. when asked how many hip openers he wanted, the child is explicit and with emphasis declares, “fifty!” the boy is able to communicate what he wants or demands through the use of language while crying and wailing at the same time (lines 13,14, and 17). by resorting to loud cries as a way to control an adult, the child shows the instrumental model. manipulation or control can be subtle and not necessarily expressed through a “full dress imperative” which is observed in the recording (p. 50). in the same scenario, the boy articulates his frustrations, and he does so by wailing at the same time, reflecting the representational model. in this context, the child demonstrates four models of language use. the eighth video is a recording of a child learning filipino, the boy’s emerging l2, through the art of reading. the mother, using a children’s filipino book, assists the latter in recalling previously learned lexical items in the vernacular. the reading session takes place by the kitchen table, and both are seated. part of the dialogue goes: kk: okay, anong mga nakasampay, ___ (name of the boy is called)? may? [okay, what is hung, ___ (boy’s child)? those are…] boy: [unintelligible] … at medyas. […and socks.] kk: may… butas… [there is…a hole] boy: butas…[hole] kk: na…na…[in…in the] boy: bayong. [native shopping bag.] kk: bayong. [native shopping bag.] in this segment, participation is at its peak and the child maintains a high level of excitement as demonstrated by his ecstatic tone throughout the interaction, an example of interactional model. similarly, the boy manifests his enjoyment in the activity by constantly laughing and making appropriate gestures (e.g. pointing at the broom when reading about the word). the following lines indicate the pleasure being exhibited by the child during the interaction via reading: boy: haring… bundok! [celebratory or excitedly] [king…mountain!] kk: may haring… [the king…] boy: soldier [laughs]! ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 215 not only does the boy actively participate, but he also engages with exuberance, giggling, and laughing as he performs oral sentence completion. the following dialog adds to the role of the child as a participant (being a listener and reader) and as a communicator, all of which reveal his amusement. note specifically the first line which shows the child amused, apparently by the picture of a monkey, which was being talked about, or by his own mistake, giggling as he expresses agreement to the mother’s subtle correction. boy: wehenga, unggoy. [right, monkey.] (agrees; giggles) kk: papel…[paper] boy: vinta. [muslim boat] kk: na vinta [muslim boat]. ito ay matibay na… [this is a sturdy…] boy: walis! [broom!] (points to a broom in the kitchen) kk: ito ay bagong… [this is a new…] boy: xylophone. the fifth line documents a gesture made by the child, pointing to an object, apparently a broom in the kitchen (though not captured in the video) when he says, “walis!” or broom in filipino. the action is performed with glee. the remaining lines in the mother-child conversation culminate in the emphatic delivery of the word “filipino!”, referring to the local alphabets that are illustrated in the book. the lines read: kk: makulay na… [a colorful…] boy: yo-yo! (points up) upstairs. kk: unan na… [a pillow that is…] boy: zebra. kk: wow! iyan ay ang alpabetong…[these are the alphabets in…] boy: filipino! the emotion as conveyed by the boy suggests not just elation but also satisfaction with the activity, perhaps partly because of the funny-sounding words unfamiliar to him. in all this, the child showcases the interactional model, demonstrating how much he values and enjoy such interaction. as the boy exhibits comical actions and making himself sound funny, he appears to demonstrate his uniqueness, a reflection of the personal model. he does this when he points to a broom and the location of a yoyo upstairs (by pointing up)again with a funny face and gestures. many instances in the exchange showcase the boy’s propensity to act comically while at the same time spotlights his wit. the boy’s words and actions are a show of a sense of pride in a positive sense, somewhat reflective of the personal function, but not fully. i will return to this shortly. as far as the funny personality of the boy, it appears that children find pleasure in showcasing who they are especially in comfortable situations like the home. i also reiterate the esteem model or “i am confident” or “i am achiever” function, which reveals more than just identity, individuality, uniqueness, ideas, and intentions. i theorize that this use of language in (filipino) children may be connected to the psychological need to be affirmed, classified under esteem needs ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 216 popularized by maslow (lester, 2013). reflecting a higher need, this expression of a desire to be valued and accepted is related to self-respect or self-esteem. the former reflects individuals’ regard to their standing while the latter refers to their confidence and satisfaction in themselves. self-esteem, which is ego-driven, is classified into two types. the first is experienced when a person is accorded respect and affirmation or some form of acknowledgment. the second emanates from a person’s own assessment of himself or herself. this kind of esteem is shown through independence and self-confidence (pinquart & gerke, 2019). in the case of the subject, it was clear that there was no intention to receive something or to be attended to, a common goal in communicative repertoire of young kids (hoft, 2014). the boy was simply enjoying an activity while exhibiting the esteem model. i posit that children, at least filipino kids, use language as an instrument to highlight their important place in the family and community, and they do so by articulating confidence, achievement, etc. we see here a showcase of child power, that children are as capable and confident as adults. at the very least, this is a call from children to be recognized as smart individuals or co-equal with adults. in the same video, the imaginative model is also evident as shown by the words “meow” and “corn dog”. note the lines below (47-55): kk: may… maliksing…[there is…a nimble…] boy: kuting! [kitten!] meow! kk: may kumpol na…[a bunch of…] boy: osan… ng chick-leta! [clock of the bike!] kk: ng… lansones! [longkong ] boy: lansones-si! kk: may mais na…[corn that is…] boy: corn dog? kk: no, it’s not corn dog. mais na nilaga. [boiled corn.] after giving the correct answer, which is “kitten”, the youngster pairs it with the appropriate sound that is associated with the cat, and he does so without prompting. this shows the boy’s sense of imagination, instantly recalling the sound associated with the feline. in line 54, the child produces the phrase “corn dog”, a combination of a real corn and a child’s delight of the same name which contains no corn at all, but a hotdog fried in a batter. the production of such word further reveals the child’s imagination. in this video, four child’s models of language use were observed including the new esteem function. the ninth and last video, which is an interaction between the boy and his parents, is replete with utterances that reveal the boy’s affinity with his mother. the recording begins with an announcement from the child, “mama, to be love life with me” (line 5) followed by a question from the father, “who will you like to hold hands with forever?”, providing context to the child’s declaration. the interaction continues with the following lines (7 and 10): boy: mama, love life. jpk: [laughs] kk (mother): only? ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 217 boy: only mama. in line 7, his earlier pronouncement is repeated, which captures his feelings for his mother, and affirmed in line 10 with a two-word response to an inquiry about the certainty of the boy’s remark. the reply is direct, and it is backed with both the promise and an assertion, “i miss you, mamaaaa!” (line 16). this signifies the subject’s effort to prove the sincerity of his statements, thus, the emphatic declaration. despite its short duration, the video captured four ways by which the boy used language. first, the personal model is demonstrated as shown by his personal preferences and feelings while also producing words that reveal his identity—that he possesses love or is capable of loving. second, since the utterances reflect the child’s thoughts and feelings about his mother, which also unpack certain “content” or “propositions” (halliday, 2002, p. 50), representational model is seen. the utterances reveal the child’s conception of an ideal female partner in life, thus the phrase “to be love life with me”. furthermore, the concept of boy-girl relationship or even marriage, apparently observed from his parents, are conveyed. the child’s desire to interact or connect with significant people in his life indicates the interactional function. fourth, the imaginative model was reflected as the child envisioned a future life with a female as represented by the mother. although he did not engage in the typical storytelling activities of make-believes, he nevertheless demonstrated such function through the surprising expression “love life” which was mentioned twice. halliday explains that this function need not be sophisticatedly communicated. again, four models are demonstrated in this recording. child’s models of language use, demographic factors, and parents’ role this study analyzed nine video recordings of a manila-based child whose l1 is english and whose use of filipino was just emerging. five out of the seven hallidayan language models were displayed: instrumental, interactional, personal, representational, and imaginative. more functions were observed in the last two videos where the child was more mature. crying and wailing which are forms of manipulation demonstrated the instrumental model. the data is replete with examples that showcase the child’s talents, skills, preferences, attitude, identity, and uniqueness which showed the personal model. in terms of the interactional model, the boy was an active participant in activities while actively engaged in conversations within those realms. the child asserted his place in the family and in the world, showing the representational model which allowed him to impart his propositions and important ideas. the imaginative model was seen but rather in uniquely “boyish ways”. in place of typical narratives, the child produced animal sounds, offered a substitute lexicon for an object in a funny way, and seemed to act out expressions. of the five child’s model of language use, the most prominent are the interactional and personal functions which were demonstrated six times. the second most prominent models are the representational and imaginative (each used two times), with the instrumental model being the least prominent having been used only once. table below shows the models of child’s use of language, their frequency of use, and their prominence. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 218 table 1. functions of language, their frequency of use, and their prominence model of child’s language use frequency of use prominence instrumental once least prominent interactional six times very prominent personal six times very prominent imaginative twice prominent representational twice prominent regulatory not demonstrated not applicable heuristic not demonstrated not applicable total 17 times certain utterances in the data that did not correspond to halliday’s child’s models of language use. a total of four language functions, unique to philippine and asian context, were uncovered. the boy exhibited what i call the esteem model, exhibited by insinuating his need for affirmation while showcasing achievement through his wit, hilarious sounds and behavior, and production of concocted/distorted phonemes. such distortions, which are referred to as diversions (thwaite, 2019), were intentional so that the attention would veer away from the child’s errors and focus instead on his funny antics. two more models were uncovered: the rescue model and judgmental model, the former reflective of the child’s need to be assisted or taught a skill or the “help me” or “rescue me” function. this typology is proposed as it the scenario did not fit any of the hallidayan functions, although one may argue that this is a variant of the regulatory function but without the manipulation. the child showed the corrective or judgmental model when he described a behavior of his father as unacceptable or unwelcome. this shows that young children use language not only to communicate thoughts but to rebuke or make judgments. halliday has a vague classification called representational function, which can practically stand for almost everything a child utters. it is obvious that young children use language not simply to communicate inner thoughts but to rebuke or make judgments. communication experts teach us that we communicate to express or inform, which reflects halliday’s representation model, and to persuade or convince which mirrors the instrumental function. when one analyzes a certain behavior or speech act and labels it as “not funny”, the child is demonstrating language maturity and an ability to synthesize information, verbal or non-verbal. the corrective or judgmental function corresponds to austin’s concept of expressives, speech acts that are used to make assessment of psychological states or attitude (ramayanti & marlina, 2018). when the boy uttered, “wagon, mama”, he was expressing a desire but without pressure, a fusion of the instrumental and representational functions, but both fall short of accounting for the utterances. i propose another function which i call the asserting model, coming very close to the judgmental function that assesses information that the child perceives. the imaginative model was uniquely demonstrated, however, it was not as obvious as predicted. the regulatory and heuristic models did not surface in the analysis. while the child attempted to control his father in a subtle way (video 8), he never manifested signs of regulation. indications of inquisitiveness (the heuristic function) were not detected. there were no signs that the subject was ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 219 investigating the bigger worldsomething that relates to heuristic model. this is not surprising since, as halliday argues, uses of languages do not develop simultaneously. in fact, some functions develop ahead of the others and viceversa. there is a possibility that manifestations of certain models may not have been captured in the nine videos; thus, appearing to be untapped. the length of some of the recordings could have also missed some functions. we now turn to certain demographic considerations and parenting factors in order to provide explanations for the use of language and the phenomena encountered. the obvious models as well as the novel assisting, esteem, asserting, and corrective functions appear to be linked to the language behaviors of orientals like filipinos. also, the new functions of language that the child demonstrated may not have been accounted for by halliday since his theorizing is of a western orientation. in this study, i examined the possible connection between language models and certain demographics of the boy, namely ethnicity, age, gender, and type of bilingualism in addition to his parents’ communicative acts and attitude. findings showed that besides ethnicity, the child’s gender, age, and parents’ communicative acts helped influence language development and use. bilingualism did not appear to be a significant variable in terms of language models in the child. results also point to the role of race in the demonstration of the models of child’s use of language and the display of previously unaccounted functions. asian/filipino kids may use language quite differently from european children as shown in this research. basit et al. (2014) and faitar (2011) have linked race with socioeconomic status (ses) and language production in children, one’s ethnicity predicts language skills. in the case of the boy, his apparent advanced verbal skills were shaped and enhanced by both ses and ethnicity. besides ethnicity, gender appeared to have influenced the demonstration of the models of language use in children. in his interactions, the boy seemed to differ from his parents, particularly the mother in terms of word choice. the mother pointed to a corn, but the boy saw a “corn dog”, and for a bunch of local fruits, the boy perceived them as a clock. experts believe that the language spoken by people reflect and shape their worldviews (allard-kropp, 2020), hence, in the case of the subject, his language use could have been influenced by who he is such as his gender. although girls tend to develop language skills faster than boys, etchell et al. (2018) believe that gender differences may be distinct only at certain developmental stages. thus, demonstration of advance verbal skills is also possible among boys, and, as asserted earlier, this development could have been influenced by his ethnicity and parents’ communicative acts and habits. age was a major factor in the language use of the boy. as he matured, he tended to showcase more models. in addition, novel models that seemed to be distinctly filipino and asian were shown when the child was between three and four years old. experts agree and explain that children between ages 3 and 5 can engage in more complex conversations characterized by deep thoughts as well as feelings (“language development”, 2021). it is also at this period when they become more inquisitive and try to make sense of their surroundings. additionally, grammar and lexicon also expand and so their curiosity with other topics that were not of interest before. these provide support to the verbal skills ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 220 that the child in this study demonstrated, particularly his use of multiple models including the new ones that halliday did not posit. language input, sensitivity, and other communicative acts of the parents seemed to have aided the subject in demonstrating somewhat language competence (brophy-herb et al., 2012; madigan et al., 2019; pancsofar & vernon-feagans, 2006). young children not only learn a language but also become adept in using it so that they become expert as language users and as members of society. in the case of the boy in this study, there was an active participation from the parents particularly the mother. in all the videos, the mother was actively engaging the subject. communication was intentional. in short, demonstrating the functions of language became a reality because the parents’ communicative acts and attitude. in an online interview, the mother explained that that she and her husband spent almost equal time in dialoguing with the boy. she, in particular, took advantage of available moments for mother-child interactions, obviously to help the boy develop speech. because both parents were involved in the communication enterprise, the father being a minister (which involves preaching and teaching) and the mother as an event organizer-host (which requires a lot of interactions with people) appeared to have influenced the use of language in the child. as such, both could be described as socially and communicatively competent. implications this study has implications bilingualism, language teaching, and language development theories. regarding bilingualism, there are two important points to be made. first, acquiring more than two languages has become inevitable due to globalization. even if growing children are not exposed to more knowledgeable individuals who speak a different language, there are countless external factors that can result to simultaneous, sequential, balanced or unbalanced, and incipient bilingualism. these factors include education and media such as the internet. second, while bilingualism is positively correlated with verbal and non-verbal skills and other cognitive functions, such cannot be true in all cases. each child, as shown in this study is unique, and their language development and usage is dependent on their own unique circumstances at home and in their culture. nevertheless, i do not discount the fact that since the subject here was just acquiring his l2, it was possible that such factor could have impacted his language skills at the time of the recording. it is possible that as the child gains more foothold in filipino that he might be able to demonstrate more maturity in language use in the language and even in his l1. turning now to language teaching, it was obvious that language development is influenced greatly by parental involvement particularly by responsive, sensitive, and communicative mothers. taking the time to interact with a typically growing child can stimulate responses in terms of language production, and parents will be surprised as to how much their offspring could demonstrate as they are talked to. among preschoolers, communicative activities in the school environment can help enhance language development. this means employing routines and lessons that elicit child-child, child-teacher, and child-parent interactions will go a long way in achieving language skills. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 5, no. 2, march 2022, pp. 206-224 221 in terms of theorizing, filipino and asian children demonstrate some unique models of child’s use of language. they communicate to be esteemed or affirmed, to be assisted, to assert himself, and to correct. although one may argue that these may be encompassed by the representational model, this particular function is just too broad, even vague to fully account for the uniqueness of filipino or asian children. the four typologies are more definite and descriptive of actual realities in models of child’s use of language. conclusion halliday’s models are a good starting point but may not be fully representative of all the possible functions of language in young children as shown in this video. the models are simply that—patterns or prototypes and may not entirely represent all reality. in the case of this research, it is clear that each child is unique, and that while the hallidayan models assist in understanding language utilization, they may be found lacking to some extent. halliday’s context was european, and this study featured a filipino male child in a bilingual context and whose parents demonstrated communicative acts and attitude. ethnicity, gender, age, and parents’ role seemed to have influenced the use of language models. of the seven functions, five were evident, and these are the instrumental, interactional, personal, imaginative, and representational models. obviously untapped were the regulatory and heuristic models. of the five functions, the most prominent were the interactional and personal models. this shows that for young children, language is primarily for communication and for self-expression. it is a tool to achieve, accomplish, receive, and get. four filipino or asian models of child’s use of language were observed, and these are the rescue, judgmental, esteem, and asserting functions. it can be inferred that these were not captured by halliday in his participant observation study involving his son. a case study involving a female youngster can provide valuable data to validate the results of this research. longer recordings and a greater number of videos (more than nine) are recommended in future studies of the same nature to arrive at more conclusive inferences. alternatively, the investigation could be expanded to include another gender or involve more than two subjects and allow more interaction contexts to determine the functions of language among young kids. finally, the same study could be applied with monolinguals and multilinguals as subjects. references akhmetova, d. z., chelnokova, t. a., & morozova, i. g. 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(2016). language use in shifting contexts: two multilingual filipinos’ narratives of language and mobility. indonesian journal of english language teaching, 11(2), 153-167 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2006.08.003 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01417-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01417-5 https://doi.org/10.24036/ell.v7i1.8800 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2017.07.007 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.01.005 ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 142-151 142 international journal of humanity studies http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs sanata dharma university, yogyakarta, indonesia identities in efl creative writing in indonesia *dewi widyastuti1, khin khin aye2, melinda kong3, carolyn beasley4 and novita dewi5 1,5sanata dharma university, indonesia 2,3swinburne university of technology sarawak 4swinburne university of technology australia *correspondence: ewi@usd.ac.id doi: 10.24071/ijhs.v4i2.2828 received 3 september 2020; accepted 30 october 2020 abstract creative writing is created for aesthetic rather than informative purposes and its creation is greatly influenced by the writers’ background. thus, how the writers’ perception of themselves or their identities are expressed in the creative writing products. as such, creative writing in the english as a foreign language (efl) context may offer a space for foreign language learners to express their perceived identities. in this study, an analysis of two short stories written by students of the english letters department, universitas sanata dharma, yogyakarta, indonesia, revealed that the students’ perceived identities were used as the resources for their creative writing outputs. in the first short story entitled “calling him back”, through the internal conflicts of the main character, the student writer expressed her doubt as to which identities to claim. in the second short story entitled “happy birthday”, the student writer exploits her identities as a literature student when she did a research on novels with indian background. the data were gathered through document analysis on the two short stories and correspondences with the student writers. these two short stories were evidence that foreign language learners utilized different aspects of their multifaceted identities as the resources for their creative writing outputs. keywords: identities, perceived identity, creative writing, efl introduction identities are defined based on how a person sees himself/ herself, which is also influenced by how others see him/ her. identities are responses of individuals towards how society perceive them (lawler, 2011, pp. 7-8; mackinnon and heise, 2010, p. 22). the identities that one claims are related to the interpretation of the individual within certain contexts in society. as a result, every individual has multiple identities instead of a single one (mackinnon and heise, 2010, p. 35) depending on his/ her relation to society. identities can be identified from various markers, such as origins and gender. in language learning, creative writing is one of classroom practices that enables learners to express their identities through their writing product. however, even though studies show the success of creative writing practices for expressing learners’ identities, many are conducted in the first or second language contexts. as stated by lim (2015, pp. 336-337) that not much attention has been given to creative writing in the second or even third language contexts. in contexts where english is used as a foreign language, creative http://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/ijhs ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 142-151 143 writing is often applied as a method to improve language proficiency. for instance, studies by mansoor (2013) in pakistan and shahri (2018) in iran proved the effectiveness of creative writing for developing language proficiency. in a foreign language context, creative writing is reduced to language exercises for the learners’ mastery of the target language. foreign language learners’ abilities are considered insufficient for producing literary work that fulfills the standard for creative writing practices. for instance, insufficient vocabulary means limiting learners to use subjective expressions. this study intends to investigate how two foreign language learners in indonesia utilize their identities in creating short stories in their creative writing class. this study also intends to reveal the multifaceted identities of the learners that are expressed in the two short stories written by these two learners, namely “calling him back”, published in 2014 and “happy birthday”, published in 2015. for the framework of analysis, this study utilizes norton’s theory (2016) on perceived identities, chin’s theory (2014) and that of mansoor (2013) on how learners utilize their identities in their creative writing outputs. identity, creative writing and efl context identity and creative writing identities are related perceptions of individuals of themselves. however, the perceptions of the individuals towards themselves are not the sole factor that develops identities. as individuals are always in contact with society, how society perceive them influence the construction of identities (norton, 2016, p. 47). identities, therefore, are determined not only by the individual but also by others (norton, 2016, p. 47) through interactions. because individuals continue to interact with society, identities are always fluid and changes of identities are contextually driven. identities are not fixed but they continue to change as individuals continue to interact in society (block, 2007, p. 1). the autoethnographic study of harendita (2017) is one of the examples to show that the perceived identities are also ascribed by others (norton, 2016) and that identities are subject to change (block 2007). harendita (2017, p. 60) described that even though she would identify herself as a javanese as her perceived identity, she may not fully fit with the expectations from society. her adaptation to the contemporary world influenced the ways she perceived herself, showing that identities are subject to change. yet, she did not completely ignore the javanese code of manner, either. she still conformed with the javanese tradition, for example, by communicating in the high level of javanese to her parents to show politeness, as required by the society. her way of communication in high level of javanese to older people was one of the markers javanese identities although in the contemporary world, the characteristics of javanese tend to be more diverse and may no longer fit with the stereotypes. that personal identification itself is “not without conflicts” as the javanese stereotypes may no longer describe her personalities, while she asserts her javanese identity (harendita, 2017, p. 60). harendita elaborated that individuals may have conflicting identities. her experiences described the conflicting identities that she wished to claim. as a javanese woman, she described her struggle to negotiate her conflicting identities. she explained that when she mentioned her origin was from solo, a city in central java, the society’s stereotyped perceptions of a person from solo are directly attached to her (harendita, 2017, p. 58). the stereotyped labels of women from solo thus determined that women who did not fit with the characteristics “will be considered as breaching the norms or as not belonging to the culture” (harendita, 2017, p. 58). this implied that her being javanese was decided by both her own perception of herself and ascribed by others. thus, she had to negotiate which identities to perform in different contexts. one of the markers of identities is language which may express cultural values ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 142-151 144 (majchrzak, 2018, p. 75; p. 79). the writer’s choice of language shows the cultural identities that individuals claim (kramsch in mansoor, 2013, p. 55). that is, the speakers’/ writer’ identities are reflected through the linguistic features, such as vocabulary and pronunciation. for instance, people’s origin is sometimes easy to guess due to the strong accent or particular dictions. it is also through language that a speaker shows how he/ she wants others to perceive him/ her (mackinnon and heise, 2010, p. 5; shahri, 2018, p. 89). for instance, in a foreign language context, the ability to speak english fluently gives a certain impression towards the speaker and therefore the use in this context confirms how the speaker wants others to perceive him/ her. one of the classroom practices where identities can be expressed through the use of language is in creative writing. being different from academic writing, creative writing serves as an aesthetic purpose rather than informative (maley, 2009) as one of the purposes is to express emotion. this is because creative writing is often associated with the need of writers to express their feelings subjectively. expressing something subjectively in creative writing enables learners to express their identities. significantly, the creative writing output is often influenced by the writer’s background this influence is often manifested in the blend of the native culture and the target language where the native culture of the learners is used as the resources for writing in efl. for instance, learners might use their native language as a form of language play in their creative writing output to create a certain nuance (mansoor, 2010, p. 211). even though the use of the native language inserted into the target language is often considered as an interference, when it is used intentionally, it is, in fact, the evidence of the identities that the learners wish to claim. this also shows that the learners develop their target language competence, and that they can manipulate the language. other than inserting the local language in the creative writing in english to enhance language identities, learners might also use their cultural background as the resources for writing. for instance, even though they write in english, they might use settings from their geographical origin, local names or cultural values in their writing output. mansoor’s study (2015, p. 85) revealed that foreign language even draws learners closer to the native roots seen from the learners’ creative writing outputs where they used local culture and history as the resources for their creative writing outputs, such as a local demon and a story about a “maharani”. this implies that language and environment as learners’ identity markers are utilized as the resources for their creative writing. creative writing in the efl context despite the success of creative writing in the first and second language contexts for expressing identities, creative writing in the efl context is often utilized as a means to improve language proficiency. despite the effectiveness of creative writing for language improvement, little attention has been given to the application of creative writing to facilitate efl learners’ identity expressions. as stated by lim (2015, p. 337), the practices of creative writing in efl context is reduced to language exercises with the teachers’ focus on introducing standard and proper grammar. when applying creative writing pedagogy for improving language proficiency, teachers create exercises, for example, where students only need to complete a poem with provided words or phrases. after that, the learners will be asked to write their own poem similar to the samples. as a result, learners will only exercise by imitating examples (lim, 2009, p.85) instead of expressing their identities in their own works freely. thus, identity expression or subjective expressions for aesthetic purposes of the learners as mentioned by maley (2009) do not get enough attention. as a method for improving the target language proficiency, indeed creative writing is effective. in a study by tin (2010) in the university level in indonesia, for instance, learners’ linguistic ability is improved through the practices of making acrostic poems. ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 142-151 145 through the acrostic poems, learners not only learn to express their feelings but also to improve their grammar and vocabulary. the emphasis on applying creative writing for improving language proficiency rather than on the subjective expressions is due to the doubt of the ability of efl learners to produce works of literature. when learners still struggle to get a grip of their mastery of the target language, they do not have confidence in producing even literary works appropriate for the standard of creative writing class. insufficient vocabulary, for instance, might hinder learners for aesthetic expressions let alone identity expressions in the creative writing outputs. studies on the application of creative writing in the efl contexts have proved that learners may utilize their cultural background as the resources for writing. according to maley (in babaee 2015, p. 77), these exercises may also develop students’ awareness of their surroundings that they might not be aware of before. the awareness of their surroundings brings benefits that learners will observe within themselves for resources for writing from their “memories, observations, feelings, thoughts and even dreams” (maley in babaee, 2015, p. 78). when learners are encouraged to use their native culture to express in the creative writing, they will be able to use the resources they are familiar with in their writing (hanauer, 2014; hanauer, 2015; disney, 2014; kelen, 2014; and tay, 2014). the following two studies are examples of creative writing that successfully encouraged efl learners to utilize their native culture in the production of their creative writing. these also provide evidence that learners may utilize their multifaceted identities as their creative writ ing outputs. the first study was conducted by mansoor (2013) in pakistan. in the classroom practice, learners were encouraged to look into their native culture as the resources for creative writing to create novelty. learners utilized their native language in their narration to enhance the cultural expressions. words which do not have direct translation in english, such as “‘roll paratha’, ‘masha allah’, ‘tauba hay’, ‘haii!, teri qasam,’ etc.” (mansoor, 2013, p. 57) were chosen to create certain nuance in the learners’ creative writing outputs. by doing this exercise, learners were encouraged to be aware of their cultural background while improving their target language proficiency. when these expressions of identities are used, they also indicate how the speakers want others to perceive them. the second research in brunei darussalam also prove the effectiveness of utilizing the learners’ backgrounds in their creative writing output. chin (2014) encouraged the leaners to use their identities in their play script writing. learners were encouraged to explore issues that the students considered important in their society. the result was fostering local themes, such as arranged marriage, gender relations, and cultural values (chin, 2014, p. 133) being utilized as the resources in creative writing. the research previously mentioned prove that despite the doubt on efl learners’ ability to produce creative writing, their creative writing outputs reflect the identities that the learners wish to claim. through creative writing, learners also develop the sense of accomplishment that enhances self-confidence which becomes the drive for positive motivation as stated by maley (2009). method in order to investigate how two indonesian students, who learn english as a foreign language utilize their multifaceted identities in their creative writing products, this research was conducted in the english letters department, univesitas sanata dharma, yogyakarta. being a student city, the city itself became the destination of high school graduates from many places in indonesia and this offers interesting contexts in which multi-ethnic groups of people with diverse identities interact with each other both in formal and informal ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 142-151 146 situations. in the english letters department, universitas sanata dharma, yogyakarta, indonesia, the compulsory creative writing subject is offered to the third-year students. in order to pass this subject, each student is required to submit three final creative writing products, namely a short story, a play script, and a poem. the participants of this research were two female students taking the compulsory creative writing class in 2014 and in 2015. both participants wrote their short stories were in their third year of their study in the english letters department, universitas sanata dharma, yogyakarta. the story “calling him back”, written by ni putu vitria arizona, was taken from a collection of short stories entitled aide memoire: love, death, sorrow published in 2014 while “happy birthday”, written by dian windriani, was from monochrome, published in 2015. the two short stories were chosen because they represented two different examples of identity expressions. the first short story, “calling him back”, expressed the cultural identities through the internal conflicts of the main character. the student writer took her experiences and her cultural identities as the resources for the creative writing output. the student writer of the second short story, “happy birthday” did not use her life experiences as the resources. instead, she used her identities as an english letters department student who studied indian culture either from literary works she had read or from her own study on indian culture before she wrote the story. the data for this study were collected through two methods, namely document analysis and correspondence. during the creative writing process in the class, the students were asked whether they would allow the researcher to observe and use their creative writing outputs, particularly the short stories, as the data for research. the students were willing to participate in a research and gave their consent. after the short stories were submitted at the end of the semester, the researcher analysed the short stories to find the expressions of multifaceted identities and took some notes on the two short stories. then, the researcher asked further questions concerning the details of the short stories and process of creation through email correspondence because there were no more creative writing classes with the student writers. the questions included, for example, the sources of inspiration for their creative writing, the intention of writing, and the steps of creation. based on the short stories and the answer to the questions, the student writers’ perceived identities were identified. findings and discussion the analysis of each of the two short stories produced by the two students will be discussed separately. the background of the student writers will also be described to provide the contexts to better understand the identities expressed in the short stories. “calling him back” “calling him back” was set in bali. the story begins with a description of a mother and daughter’s visit to the house of a balean, “a person who leads a ritual in balinese culture to call the family member who has passed away through supernatural way” (arizona, 2014, p. 47). from the beginning, the main character, rana, shows some conflicting identities derived from her cultural background and her modern way of life. she does not believe in spirits and the power of a balean but she cannot deny that hearing her late grandfather’s voice as described at the end of the story is calming. the balinese setting and the rituals to call the spirit of rana’s late grandfather are based on the student writer’s experience. she explained that “instead of making story based on imaginary events, i choose to use the event (that) happened in my life. therefore, i choose my grandfather’s death because it’s the saddest moment of my life.” ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 142-151 147 there are several examples from the short story that show rana’s conflicting identities. first, rana is described as a girl with multifaceted identities. even though the setting is in bali and she seems to inherit balinese ancestry because she visits the balean’s house with the whole family members, she does not understand balinese language. this is clearly seen through her narration, “she greets my family and me with a very delicate traditional language that i can interpret as ‘welcome’” (arizona, 2014, p. 45). the fact that she does not speak the ethnic language shows that she does not consider herself to belong to the balinese ethnic group. this also implies that being a balinese is not the identity she wishes to claim. the student writer explained she intentionally created rana with such characterizations to show that rana is different from the other balinese. second, rana does not believe she will ever need a balean. indeed, some people will need a balean but she is not one of them that she said, “so, she is the woman who will help us. us? no, it is not for me. it is just for those who believe it.” (arizona, 2014, p. 45). her statements “it is not for me” and “…just for those who believe it” also confirm that she does not believe in the balean. however, the student writer also explained that her attitude towards rituals is different from that of rana. she stated that rana is similar to her, yet the way she reacts to rituals is different. third, rana’s reluctance to participate in the rituals for calling her late grandfather’s spirit is revealed through her wish to wait outside the room while the rituals continue. even when her mother forces her to sit inside, she refuses and answers her mother back. the way she raises her tone indicates that she is upset to be forced to join the rituals. fourth, the conflicting identities is clearly depicted through her inner conflict. her thought “grandfather, yes my grandfather, i miss him so much, but to do such a thing is not logical for me” (arizona, 2014, p. 46) pictures how she considers herself as being logical although she respects the elders and even misses her grandfather. she finally gives in and joins the rituals because the balean uses ‘the grandfather’ to make her feel guilty of being unwilling to participate. yet, her identity as a person who lives with logics forces her to consider this participation as being illogical. she says, almost 15 minutes she has been doing it and i cannot wait for it anymore, i feel so stupid. i am an educated person, sitting on this place and watching all this foolishness is like i am insulting myself. on the other hand, i have to respect my family and their belief, so i try to be patient (arizona, 2014, p. 46). the quotation clearly shows rana has a conflict with her multiple identities. on one side, she wants to show respect to those who believe in the rituals. on the other side, she wants to appear as an educated person who believes in logic and thus considers such rituals illogical. she shows the two sides of her identities that she wants to confirm: a girl who respects cultural values and a girl who is highly educated. then, at the end of the story she makes a decision on which identity she wants to construct. she decides that she will not continue participating in the rituals and let her grandfather rest peacefully. as she is about to leave the ritual room, she suddenly hears her grandfather’s voice and when she turns around, she also sees his smile on the balean’s face. this last part of the story confirms her identities. therefore, instead of leaving the room as she was about to do, she decides to return to the room where the ritual happens. her final statement saying, “… but i know exactly that my sight exactly turns black and black, and peaceful” (arizona, 2014, p. 47). with this statement, she concludes the short story. this statement confirms her identity that even though she wants to appear to be educated and logical, deep in her heart she wants to embrace her cultural heritage. what is in conflict is her two identities: her identity as an educated person which is derived from the modern ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 142-151 148 way of life which she is deeply assimilated in and one as a balinese which is deeply rooted in her heart through her willingness to embrace her cultural heritage. “happy birthday” being different from “calling him back” in terms of setting, “happy birthday” does not take indonesia as the setting in the story. the story is set in an indian family where a daughter lives with her father and step-mother. her birth mother, who was abused from the father, already passed away. the story which describes the female character who ends her life represents the student writer’s perspective on women’s life. she stated that she got the inspiration from indian movies, such as mahabharatha, joda akbar, and uttaran that stereotype female characters as being weak and subordinated. to ensure her conclusion, before writing the story, she did some studies on indian women and how they were situated. she found that women in india are considered as second-class citizens under the strong patriarchal system. she said that “i got frustrated with the female lead character that was really helpless and did nothing even for defending herself, i suddenly got the idea for my creative writing.” for that reason, she depicted “the hardship of indian women who lived in patriarchal world and how they dealt with it.” through her short research, the student writer developed sympathy towards indian women and she justified suicide in the story. she strengthened the subjugation of women in india through the comparison and contrast between the mother and step-mother characters who were under the domination of the father while the narrator, the girl, chose to end her life as the way of reaching her happiness. interestingly, as stated by the student writer, the idea of death to end the subjugation on the part of the narrator was inspired by the student writer’s reading on edgar allan poe’s works that often romanticize death to end the story while the strong female narrator who has the desire of her own was influenced by the feminist spirit as pictured by charlotte bronte and jane austen. this implied that the student writer’s identity as a literature student influenced the creation of the plot of the story. she utilized her knowledge on works of literature she had read as the resources for her creative writing. the story begins with a flashback of an incident that happened three years before the main character’s mother assured her, saying that “life is a valuable journey of tackling sadness and achieving absolute happiness” (windriani, 2015, p. 99). from her mother’s statement, the main character patiently searches for happiness in her family. in this short story, the student writer used her identity as a literature student who was introduced to works of literature from different countries and learned to analyse them. through these works, she reads the depiction of abuse by men towards women and she also learned from the works that domestic abuse that commonly happened in india. she admitted that her ideas for the strong and rebellious female narrator was influenced by the works that she read, such as works by charlotte bronte and jane austen. that women were considered unimportant and powerless was also commonly shed light on in works with india as a background. the situation in which indian women had been in had been described as being unchanged until now. for the stagnant situation faced by indian women, the student writer explained that “modern era is chosen to bring an irony in the story. although the world has changed, the patriarchal ideology remains intact in people’s mind because those values have been well internalized since a long time ago; same goes to india.” for this reason, this student writer also pictured the female character as being powerless when she witnessed her father abuse her step-mother. this character was also described as living in fear and hopelessness despite her desire to fight in anger. she wrote, my body was quivering and my mind was full of fear and anger. without ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 142-151 149 thinking twice, i slammed the door and run into my bedroom. i feel my feet weren’t strong enough to stand. so, i lied down on the bed and began to think. sometimes i wanted to fight against my dad, but i was powerless. sometimes i tried to give love to him but it was useless to give love to a man who didn’t have love in his life. sometimes i argued god, but god didn’t hear me. i protested why i was trapped in a woman’s body: once i was born a woman, i was like a ghost, i could scream as loud as possible but no one would hear me. therefore, in the hopeless and gloomy night, i unconsciously slept with the fear, tears and anger inside me (windriani, 2015, p. 100). as can be seen here, the female character was vividly described as being in frustration against the subordination of women in india. here, the student writer manipulated her multifaceted identities as a literature student who used her knowledge as the resource for writing. other than reading works with indian background, critics, such as gayatri spivak who confirmed the subordination of indian women also influenced the writing of the student writer. to strengthen the knowledge on the subordination of women in india, the student writer used the culture of malvai that “never let a woman to fight against a man” (windriani, 2015, p. 100). the student writer perfectly included the setting that will make the story of subordination towards women only is logical. this showed the identity that the student writer wanted to claim as a literature student who had the knowledge of india and may wish to fight against the subordination towards women. to make sure that her conclusion on challenges faced by indian women, the student writer did a library research. this implied that when she wrote the story, she already had an intention to picture real situations in india as the background of her short story. the quotation depicting the female character’s feelings of hopelessness also described the identities of the student writer in the use of capitalized god. the capitalized god was mentioned several times in the story consistently. when asked about the use the capitalized god, she explained “i missed to research on that while in fact i am also aware that arundhaty roy did not use capitalized god.” then, the student writer also confirmed that she could not avoid to include her own identity as a moslem woman. her demographic identity as a moslem who acknowledged only one god instead of gods in hinduism as the belief of most people in india confirmed how the student writer utilized her perceived identities. other than studying about the situation of women in india, she also did some study for some simple expressions in hindi that she used in the story to produce indian flavor: malvai one of a rural area in bumbai india (windriani, 2015, p. 102), janmadina mubar ka, ananda – happy birthday (windriani, 2015, p. 102), and ladoo – india’s traditional cake (windriani, 2015, p. 102). these three expressions were intentionally inserted in the story with the meaning provided in the footnote. this also denoted that the student writer wanted to show her identity as a literature student who not only understood indian culture but also indian expressions. through this short story, the student writer wanted to show her sympathy towards the miserable life of women in india. she emphasized the fact that women who survived to adulthood must be grateful. for this reason, she ended the story by justifying suicide to emphasize the happiness of the female character to reach 18 years of age with an abusive father in a culture that structurally is not on the side of the women victims. “i chose this path because i had achieved the most valuable thing in my life. honestly, i had been alive for 18 years but i was never happy.” (windriani, 2015, p. 102). through this ending, the student writer confirmed that with the situation for women in india, death was the only ijhs, e-issn 2597-4718, p-issn 2597-470x, vol. 4, no. 2, march 2021, pp. 142-151 150 source of happiness. there was no possible solution to subordination of women except death. even though the story ends with a suicide, the student writer intentionally used the self-death as a protest against the subjugation of women in india. suicide may raise a controversial issue but the student writer argued that sometimes i can justify suicide as the narrator’s decision to achieve her ultimate happiness; not merely based on “no life is better than life” and opt out from her responsibility to her life. in contrary, i sometimes think that her controversial decision can be a form of her responsibility to her life by considering harms and benefits. if people said her suicide is the result of her impulsiveness, i don’t think so because the narrator repeatedly perceives life as something valuable, only happens once in the whole life and cannot be replaced. this argument showed the student writer’s perceived identity that in general she did not tolerate suicide when she said “sometimes i can justify suicide”. however, when the suicide was for ending the life tragedies of the narrator, it was justifiable. in addition, the suicide was not considered as an escape from life problems. it was more of a form of protest against subordination. the student writer argued that “the narrator gives a justice for both herself and her life, even further, this is how she resists and not to subjugate to the patriarchal arrogance.” conclusion the two selected short stories were analysed to see the identity expressions of two students of the english letters department. the creative writing outputs represented how efl learners utilized their multifaceted identities as the resources for their short stories. this is also in line with the theory that the learners will use the resources they are familiar with in their creative writing, such as their cultural and educational background and those they put in effort to make themselves familiar with as in the case of the writer of the second short story. the short stories indicate that foreign language learners can produce works of literature that fulfill the standard of a creative writing class by using different aspects of their multifaceted identities even though their language ability is still in progress. in this study, identities are derived from the modern community in which they live or the student community they are in. these identities may also come from their cultural and traditional origin or from borrowed background as the resources for writing. references arizona, n. p. v. 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